By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog
Every systemic change has a dividing line and that line arrived for CBS on September 30, 2024.
Ta-Nehisi
Coates, a black supremacist author, whose books had taken off in the
era of BLM, had made the same post-BLM shift as many others of his ilk,
and had come out with a book, ‘The Message’, denouncing Israel
and Jews, he claimed that Jewish history was “an enormous con” and
suggested that he might have joined in the murdering and raping on Oct
7.
No one in the media, which went on hailing Coates as an
“acclaimed author” and “public intellectual” (and recently trotted him
out to attack the deceased Charlie Kirk as a racist) thought that there
was anything amiss here. Coates had enjoyed immunity for previously
suggesting that 9/11 first responders were less than human so hardly
anyone objected to this latest racist rant.
Like most big woke authors, Ta-Nehisi Coates was published by Random House,
a front for the ex-Nazi German publisher, Bertelsmann, which had more
than enough juice to get him on CBS Mornings for a chummy chat about his
new book denouncing Jews (and as usual, America.)
Just in time for the week commemorating Oct 7.
But something went wrong.
Oprah
pal Gayle King was ready to gush over yet another racist, but Coates
encountered unexpectedly challenging questions from host Tony Dokoupil.
Unlike Gayle and fellow host Nate Burleson, Dokoupil was there to fill
the morning show’s ‘serious journalist’ quota. And while he was not born
Jewish, he had converted as an adult, and proved far more willing to
stand up to Coates than the ordinary Jewish liberal news talking head
would have thought to do.
“Why not detail anything of the first
and second intifada. . . the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little
kids blown to bits?” Dokoupil asked. Coates didn’t have an answer. He
was doing what he had done all his life, put out propaganda that guilty
white liberals swooned at.
No one had ever asked him a question before.
Dokoupil’s
Jewish conversion would inappropriately come up often in the
post-interview media cancel culture session in which CNN, the New York
Times and the usual suspects set out to destroy him for describing
Coates as an “extremist” and asking him why he had made no mention of
Islamic terrorism. CBS executives issued an apology to Coates for an
employee having asked him tough questions and the media echo chamber
mulled Dokoupil’s punishment.
But something went wrong again.
Among
the handful of voices defending Dokoupil was Shari Redstone: the
non-executive chairwoman of Paramount and Viacom, the media industry
company that controlled CBS. The Redstone family was Jewish, but like
most Jewish Hollywood and media executives, did not let that interfere
with their role in companies that demonized Israel and defended
terrorists.
It is hard to say why this moment, of all the others,
the 60 Minutes hit pieces, the past lies and smears by the likes of Dan
Rather, Bob Simon to the more obscure murderer’s row of their
contemporary counterparts, was the straw that broke the camel’s back,
but everything had to start somewhere and maybe it started with a cozy
morning show trying to run a softball interview with a defender of the
mass murder of Jews to commemorate the Oct 7 massacre.
Maybe it started with CBS News personnel trying to lynch a journalist for asking a question.
The
Free Press, a Substack publication started by Bari Weiss when she was
pushed out of the New York Times for being a liberal rather than a
leftist and pro-Israel rather than pro-Hamas, got hold of audio
from a CBS News editorial meeting and condemned the news network for
the disgraceful way it had brought on Coates and then gone after
Dokoupil on Oct 7.
That was last year.
This year,
Paramount bought The Free Press for $150 million and Bari Weiss is set
to become the Editor-in-Chief of CBS News. That’s the latest development
from Shari Redstone’s sale of her company to David Ellison (son of
Oracle boss Larry Ellison) and a process during which Colbert’s failing
late night show was canceled and 60 Minutes reached a settlement with
Trump.
The media fumed, denouncing the Ellisons as “Trump allies”
and claiming that Redstone and CBS were appeasing ‘Hitler’. They might
have saved their breath. Shari Redstone, once a member of the club in
good standing, much like J.K. Rowling, doesn’t seem to give a damn
anymore. After the Coates interview, Redstone reportedly had dinner with
Dokoupil, overrode attempts to sanction him and urged CBS News brass to
hire more conservatives.
At an Axios forum, she warned that “we
have to go back to a place where facts are what the news is about and
opinions are not facts.” Redstone suggested that Weiss was a “voice that
would bring a different perspective” and urged “you’ve got to give your
audience credit for being smart enough to hear different points of view
and being able to narrow down on the facts.”
And, more publicly,
she joined an Israeli production company after the sale, certainly not
because she needs the money, has spoken passionately about Israel, and
Paramount became the only company to publicly reject a boycott of the Jewish State proposed by radical celebs like Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo.
The
Ellison/Paramount deal was a complicated one (as any big industry deal
tends to be) and it may be overly simplistic to view the Coates
interview as a game changer, but the New York Times profile ties its
beginning to conservations that began after the Oct 7 attacks.
Redstone
notably sounds different than she did in 2023, when her public remarks
tended to be peppered with Biden era pieties about “protecting
democracy”, and instead now speaks about the importance of facts and
different points of view. Dumping Colbert was no doubt a financial
decision, as Redstone says, but a willingness to breezily violate the
sacred shibboleths of the leftist club no doubt made it easier. The 60
Minutes payment and a deal with a Trump ally might have also been far
more repugnant before the Left showed what repugnant really meant.
If
cheering on the mass murder of Jews on Oct 7 was the price of remaining
in the club, the Jewish woman who controlled the destiny of CBS (not to
mention Paramount) decided that it wasn’t worth it. There is a lesson
here, both for the major Jewish industry figures who have remained
silent (with the exception of Sherry Lansing) and for the media which
has grown complacent about bosses who sign the checks and don’t
interfere with their radical antics.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
tried to wrest control of the Washington Post by, in part, trying to
appoint UK conservative media vets to key positions. Ellison and
Redstone signing off on Bari Weiss’s role at CBS News takes a similar
approach.
There comes a time when even liberals, and even liberal
Jews, the greatest doormats for every radical cause the world has ever
seen, have had enough. CBS found that out the hard way.
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Once American capitalism is unleashed it becomes a force of nature no nation on Earth can match. That’s why it’s important to dismantle all these foreign schemes, especially with China.
On March 16, John F. Di Leo published this piece, Tariffs and the Moral High Ground, laying out an argument to justify America taking on the world over trade, and did it very impressively I might add, and then failed, with the, "it's not the right time", meme. I see that pattern playing out so often.