The story is old – almost three years old. Suffice to say, the tale of my being fired from CNN is not only old, it has long since ceased to interest even me. Until last week.
Last week there were two notable stories in the media world. The first was the much-discussed resignation letter from The New York Times of opinion writer Bari Weiss. The Weiss resignation was discussed in this space last week.
But now there has been a second departure. The second from New York magazine of conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan. Here is some of what Sullivan had to say:
“The good news is that my last column in this space is not about “cancel culture.” Well, almost. I agree with some of the critics that it’s a little nuts to say I’ve just been “canceled,” sent into oblivion and exile for some alleged sin. I haven’t. I’m just no longer going to be writing for a magazine that has every right to hire and fire anyone it wants when it comes to the content of what it wants to publish.
The quality of my work does not appear to be the problem. I have a long essay in the coming print magazine on how plagues change societies, after all. I have written some of the most widely read essays in the history of the magazine, and my column has been popular with readers. And I have no complaints about my interaction with the wonderful editors and fact-checkers here — and, in fact, am deeply grateful for their extraordinary talent, skill, and compassion. I’ve been in the office maybe a handful of times over four years, and so there’s no question of anyone mistreating me or vice versa. In fact, I’ve been proud and happy to be a part of this venture.
What has happened, I think, is relatively simple: A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me, and, in a time of ever-tightening budgets, I’m a luxury item they don’t want to afford. And that’s entirely their prerogative. They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m out of here.”
This doesn’t even touch on the forced resignation of Times editor James Bennet, forced out of his job by a “woke” Times mob of staffers furious that The Times had published an Op-Ed from Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton calling for the president to send troops into cities erupting in riots. Or the forced departure of Stan Wischnowski, a senior vice president and executive editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Wischnowski’s sin: As reported at The Washington Times, it was using “the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” on a column Tuesday about looting and vandalism on the margins of protests of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis at the hands of a white police officer.” So, off with Wischnowski’s professional head.
Yes, this is in fact the cancel culture at work. As I now realize, it was at work with my departure from CNN. I recall CNN President Jeff Zucker telling me that he was “protecting me.” I thanked him, of course, but quietly wondered from whom, exactly, I needed protection from in the first place.
Make no mistake. This war is on.
In retrospect, I realize that CNN clearly had its share of what is now called the “woke” crowd. They were unknown to me by name, but while anonymous to me they may have been, they were there. Every private company, CNN included, has the right to hire and fire their own employees. But that wasn’t what was really going on at CNN. I had committed no corporate sin – no sexual harassment, no bad language, nothing but respect exhibited for all colleagues. Yet a look back at this Daily Beast story by Lloyd Grove on my firing exemplifies the cancel culture that was, unrealized by me at the time, at work at CNN. The headline:
Some Insiders ‘Elated’ as CNN Sacks Jeffrey Lord
‘STANDARDS’
‘Jeffrey had been getting uglier and more crude, almost as if he had to keep finding a bigger dog whistle. Obviously he went too far.’
Say what? As I noted in my book Swamp Wars, this is a network where various commentators have routinely called President Trump Hitler, a racist, unhinged, a dictator, a bullshit artist, ignorant, an animal and xenophobic.
All of that, one would think, would qualify as “getting uglier and more crude” not to mention as a seriously loud “dog whistle.” But no. Not in CNN world.
By now it is crystal clear that this “woke” mentality is running not only one journalistic institution after another but everything from colleges to corporations. In the media, this New American Fascism is practiced with regularity by Media Matters or Sleeping Giants.
The question now is…what to do about this? Conservative media, whether it’s Fox News, talk radio or web sites like this one is at least a serious part of the answer. Andrew Sullivan is heading off to his own website, and there are rumors out there that Bari Weiss may be working with him. Thank heavens that 21st Century technology makes all of this possible.
But make no mistake. This isn’t about this or that conservative (or self-described centrist like Weiss) zapped from some liberal media platform like CNN or The New York Times or New York Magazine.
What is happening here is a much-larger serious ideological war to eliminate dissent from “woke” ideology wherever it appears. With the target of the moment drummed out of whatever job or position he or she happens to occupy.
President Reagan famously touched on a version of this topic years ago, saying:
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Stunningly, beginning in American institutions of journalism like CNN, The Times and New York magazine, the hard reality is that this fight is now a serious, quite deadly national culture war.
Sometimes the targets may have famous names – Hannity, Tucker, Laura – or names that may not be (yet) household names like Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan. Or they may have been laboring in the relative anonymity of a college faculty or a corporation or in some other American institution infected with the New American Fascism.
But make no mistake. This war is on.
It is, just as President Reagan said, a war designed specifically to make freedom extinct.
Roll up your sleeves.
