Speaker 1: A ton of you asked me to talk about this recent Bari Weiss appearance on CNN, Bari
Weiss was a reporter for The New York Times and left under circumstances where she claimed that
her views basically weren't welcome. She was ostracized. She was made to feel uncomfortable.
So she went and launched a Substack, and she appeared on CNN with Brian Stelter. We're going
to look at the clip now. I want to mention I am no fan of Brian Stelter. Brian Stelter is
very controversial in like media, right wing media circles. A lot of people don't like
him. I don't really care about Brian Stelter, he said. Some things that I agree with, and
sometimes he's kind of wacky, whatever. You know, this is not an adjudication of Brian Stelter,
Bari Weiss. Sometimes she says things that I find sensible, and sometimes she makes no
sense. But this clip is being made out to be sort of like this incredible takedown
of the media establishment by Barry Weiss for the things that people aren't allowed to talk about.
My perspective, and I'll tell you upfront, rather than saving it for me and my perspective on this
is that it is the exact type of hyperbole about so-called cancel culture and censorship
that really is barely going on. And a lot of right wingers love this. I think it's all pretty dumb.
Let's just jump right into it and take a listen. Speaker 2: You write there are tens of millions
of Americans who aren't on the hard left or the hard right who feel the world has
gone mad. So in what ways has the world gone mad? Speaker 4: Well, you know when you have the chief
reporter on the beat of COVID for the New York Times
talking about how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak is racist,
the world has gone mad. Speaker 1: OK, now I agree with her there.
Investigating whether something came from a certain country absent anything else
is not inherently racist. It was used to justify and it fueled xenophobia against Asian Americans,
but simply saying, did this come from a lab in China that is not
inherently racist, that that I agree with Speaker 4: when you're not able to say out
loud and in public that there are differences between men and women. The world has gone mad.
Speaker 1: That's absurd. You can find some places where, I mean, I guess someone might be saying
there are no differences between men and women. I've still not seen that, and I know that the
right loves to talk about that when they say it's not that we hate trans people, it's that you're
not even allowed to say there's a difference between men. I've just not seen that. I'm not.
I've seen no evidence that that's the case Speaker 4: when we're not allowed to
acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad Speaker 1: again. When we saw, by the way, rioting
the real riots were January six, then many of the people claiming that police brutality protests
were riots won't call what happened on the 6th a riot. Like, put that hypocrisy aside, the left
that I'm a part of and that I see says destruction of property and violence as part of protests
is that you're who's not allowed to say that. Speaker 4: And that silence is not violence, but
violence is violence. The world has gone mad when we're not able to say that Hunter Biden's laptop
is a story worth pursuing. The world has gone mad. Speaker 1: The story has been pursued. The story
has that that she seems now to be taking issue with the fact that many media outlets looked
at the story and said it just doesn't meet the evidentiary rigor for us to publish it.
Speaker 4: When in the name of progress, young schoolchildren as young as kindergarten are being
separated in public schools because of their race. Speaker 1: Now that I don't even know what she's
talking about, I looked into that. I just couldn't find that. I don't know
what she's talking about with that one. Speaker 4: And that is called progress
rather than segregation. The world has gone mad. There are dozens of examples
that I could share with with you and with you. Speaker 2: Often say, you say L.A. knows this and
you say we're not allowed to lose the people stopping the conversation. Who are they?
Speaker 4: People let work at networks, frankly, like the one I'm speaking on right
now who try and claim that you know it was it was racist to investigate the lab leak theory.
It was, I mean, it said that it's right. Speaker 1: She's she's repeating that she
she had one example from one person at the New York Times. You know that almost no one is saying
that that's not a predominant opinion anywhere. Speaker 2: I'm just saying when you say aloud,
I do think it's a provocative thing to say. You say you say we're not allowed to talk about these
things, but they're all over the internet. I can google them. I can find him everywhere.
I've heard of it every story you mention. So I'm just suggesting. Of course, people are allowed
to cover whatever they want to cover. Speaker 4: But you and I both know,
and it would be delusional to claim otherwise that touching your finger to an increasing number of
subjects that have been deemed third rail by the mainstream institutions and increasingly
by some of the tech companies will lead to reputational damage. Perhaps you losing your job,
your children sometimes being demonized as well, Speaker 1: how it starts to get, like
very, very outrageous. Speaker 4: So what happens
is a kind of internal self-censorship. Speaker 1: Ah, so now she shifts to, well,
it's not actually that no one's allowed to talk about it. It's that people are self-censoring now.
Does self-censorship exist in some cases? Sure. I've talked about how I've self-censored in some
cases, but this is very similar to when, you know, the big thing was, Oh, the left is just overrun
with identity politics. But no, at the time it was like, yeah, identity politics in the Women's March
got a little toxic in saying Jewish women aren't intersectional enough to me, but that was going
on. But by and large, the left at that time was concerned with economic issues and environment
and the start of the pandemic and all these different things. This is always the idea they
exaggerated, and they say This is an epidemic. This is crazy. And then when you say, Well, so who
is not allowed to talk it? Well, you were allowed, but you might suffer reputational damage or people
are self-censoring or whatever the case may be. But then with a lot of these examples, there's
it's literally one example, one example and the issue of the, you know, the origins of COVID.
It's been looked at everywhere. We've talked about it. We didn't shy away. A lot of other, you know,
colleagues on the left have looked at it, at it, what she wants, fundamentally what she want. There
are so many people that think she really crushed CNN and the media establishment there. All she did
was argue for freedom from the consequences of speech and a lot of these people. All that are
sort of these anti-war focused free speech, no matter what type people, often what they
really want is freedom from the consequences of speech, and no one gets that. No one gets
that. And when they say we're not allowed to talk about, they're often talking about those things
on TV shows with global audiences, and no one is restricting their ability to talk about that.
She was on CNN talking about how on CNN, you can't talk about any of these things.
No one's talking over her. No one's kicking her off. There are things that CNN has talked about
now to the extent that she makes OK points like, you know, she was right there was that New York
Times reporter and some, you know, little bit of blip about it's racist to say the virus might have
come from China. No, it's not fundamentally racist. It is racist to then take that and
attack Asian-Americans and discriminate against Asian people. Right. But the entire thing seems
sort of unhinged, and she seems to conflate being allowed to talk about things with having to take
debunked stories seriously and giving Speaker 2: them more and more and
Speaker 1: more and more airtime or the freedom from the consequences of your speech. And you just
don't get that. Nobody gets that. I don't get that. Nobody gets that. Consequences to speech
is part of free speech. So for me, this was not a particularly titillating clip at all,
and it certainly was not the takedown that many on the right made it out to be.