The best moment of TV this month? Episode three of HBO's HEATED RIVALRY.
As the episode comes to a conclusion, the New York Admirals win the Memorial Cup and the fans go wild. As they scream and cheer, team captain Scott Hunter (Francois Arnaud) looks out and spots Kip (Robbie GK) in the crowd, Kip who he broke it off with despite loving because Scott couldn't handle coming out or even just a few of their friends knowing. Scott gestures to Kip and it takes a moment but Kip begins heading towards Scott. Once on the ice, Scott kisses Kip in front of everyone. One of the best TV moments of the month and of the year.
By contrast, this month also delivered one of the worst TV moments of the month and year as the genre of news documentary/event was bastardized to include whoring.
Friday, December 12th, over on the new MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Rachel Maddow hosted a live news program from Chicago's Harris Theater focusing on the illegal tactics of ICE and the people's ability to fight back. You heard about the importance of the whistle as heads up saying ICE is in the area and how this came about, you heard about the way immigrants were being terrorized by Donald Chump's gestapo force, you heard about how we can learn from one another. Over and over, this was a news program. First, it addressed a news worthy topic. Second, it brought on witnesses and experts Third it truly was a public service.
And we can't stop praising RACHEL MADDOW PRESENTS: BURN ORDER LIVE. It deserves an Emmy -- No, it deserves several Emmys.
The following day, CBS aired CBS NEWS PRESENTS A TOWN HALL WITH ERIKA KIRK. For some, "Who?" is an honest answer and that might have been the only thing honest about or around the special.
Grifter Erika was married to the younger Charlie Kirk -- one of those tradmarriage scolds who thinks the wife stays home and submits to the husband. Of course, if Erika did what her late husband preached, she wouldn't be on TV every week or at fundraisers or on panels or on podcasts or every where that she is except at home with her two grieving children.
It was a story when it happened and we almost wrote about it. But did we really want to do a piece whose sole focus appeared to be beating up a widow -- a crass and trashy widow, yes, but still a widow?
We decided to take a pass.
But then CBS was set to air a 60 MINUTES segment on the prison -- gulag -- in El Salvador that Donald Chump had used to dump immigrants. It was about the conditions in the prison, the torture, etc.
Bari Weiss pulled it.
The opinion writer who's never been a reporter, let alone an investigative one, insisted publicly that the piece needed more work. She based that, no doubt, over her many years reading GILMORE GIRLS fan fiction. It was for that 'work' and possibly those nude sketches she did of Allison Mack, that CBS made her the "editor-in-chief" of CBS NEWS -- which has led Bari into a whole new field of slash-fiction where Allison's Chloe works under her at THE DAILY PLANET.
But in the real world, the world where Bari insisted that they did not have a statement from the White House so the segment couldn't air, Bari was revealed as the two-bit whore she's always been and always will be. And remember that because she's going to get fired and when she does get fired she'll whine to the left -- the same left that she's long spat on -- about how unfair it is that a lesbian like herself got fired.
When that happens, don't shed a tear, just waive a middle finger.
That's truly all she deserves.
She has repeatedly insisted that her problem was news value and that the program didn't live up to it.
How did a town hall with the widow of a racist live up to it?
We may be doing another piece on racism in the near future, in terms of people trying to justify racism on the basis of a Black performer and pretending that he and a TV performer were on the same playing field when in fact the program has been notoriously racist over the years, that the power structure was racist and that the Black performer was a guest on one episode. They try to pretend this was an equal playing field when it was no such thing.
We bring that up because when Chump's right wing buddies took over CBS, this was White people and they installed White Bari Weiss. And she and the power structure chose to present the wife of a racist -- who echoes his racists opinions -- and treat her as some sort of expert who should be allowed to pontificate for one hour of prime time TV.
Mary Whitfill Roeloffs (FORBES) noted, "An hour-long interview with the widow of political commentator Charlie Kirk on CBS criticized for its editorial approach drove away big advertisers without drawing a hoped-for big audience in what could be a defining moment for Bari Weiss, the newly appointed editor in chief of CBS News." Brian Steinberg (VARIETY) noted, "Viewership was off 11% compared to the average viewership in the hour year to date, according to data from Nielsen, and the “demo” audience was down 41% compared to its year-to-date average." Justin Baragona (INDEPENDENT) makes the poor performance look even worse by bringing basic facts, "Making the low viewership for the Erika Kirk town hall even more striking is that CBS pulled in a large audience for the annual Army-Navy game that afternoon, drawing 7.3 million viewers per Nielsen’s early measurement. The post-game show, which served as a lead-in for the Kirk-Weiss chat, attracted a viewership of 3.5 million and 901,000 in the advertising demo, according to Nielsen." Even with a huge lead-in, the 'news' special flopped. THE NEW YORK POST explained it wasn't even a hit on YOUTUBE.
Maybe Bari Weiss needs to answer for that?
And maybe the new owners of CBS and PARAMOUNT need to answer to shareholders about why they paid Bari $150 million for her website -- that's about $149 million more than it was worth.
Mainly we should all be aware that Bari Weis killing that news segment on 60 MINUTES was censorship.
She had all these excuse about how it wasn't news and it wasn't ready.
But she's the one who put on an Erika Kirk special. Three months and three days after racist Charlie Kirk was shot dead, she put on an Erika Kirk special.
How did that qualify as news?
Are we supposed to pretend that Erika had anything to share? She's still working through the stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in ON DEATH AND DYING. She's not come out of the grief, she has no lessons to share, she's garnered no perspective. If anything, she's avoided dealing with her grief and loss.
This month alone, Sean Hannity interviewed her on December 8th, she took part in THE NEW YORK TIMES DealBook Summit, she showed on Megyn Kelly's show, she showed up on Glenn Beck's show, and on December 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st she was part of AMERICAFEST. That's not a full listing of her events and appearances
She's not taken time to grieve and she's overexposed.
How was she ever going to have anything worth sharing -- let alone anything news worthy worth sharing?
She wasn't. Nor will JD Vance when Bari sits down with him for another 'news special' next month. She'll baby him as well. Spend a whole hour babying him. Failing to grasp that her job as an interviewer is to push back, is to question. Bari Weis has neither the skills nor the training to be an editor-in-chief as she's made that clear. And she didn't need to wait until 2026 to share that with America.
