Episode 14: Bari Weiss Is Right

Blocked and Reported

Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal

Unknown

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bari Weiss did some tweets about how there is a generational divide at The New York Times that is, in her view, hampering the paper's ability to publish quality commentary and journalism. In response, a sizable cohort of her colleagues LITERALLY devoured her (metaphorically, on Twitter). In their most frustrated episode yet, Katie and Jesse explain why Bari was fundamentally right. That doesn't mean her framing was perfect ('safetyism' isn't exactly the problem here), but, as the hosts argue, the fact that so many journalists think Bari is making this up is pretty insane given the rampant evidence for it. The problem is that the people who don't think there's a problem are the same people no one affected by these dynamics would ever, ever confide in. Along the way the hosts talk about their own experiences with an issue that is getting worse by the day: the most hysterical and dishonest journalists on Twitter effectively dictating editors' decisions about what stories to assign and what subjects to cover. Also, Katie talks about her struggle session at a Seattle rooftop bar and Jesse makes the case for converting Blocked and Reported into a full-blown scammy cult.

Bari Weiss's tweetstorm - https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1268628680797978625

Katie's article "The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren't" - https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent

Jesse's article "When Children Say They're Transgender" - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Katie here with just a quick note before we start.
0:03.0	The episode you're about to listen to is about the continuing fallout from the New York Times
0:07.3	decision to publish an opinion column by Senator Tom Cotton that advocated for sending the
0:12.0	National Guard into American cities to call the ongoing civil unrest. Those cities and states
0:18.3	wanted this or not. Almost immediately after recorded the episode, the editor of the Times
0:23.0	opinion section, James Bennett, stepped down from the paper, which as you will notice,
0:28.0	the one of us who is always right predicted what happened. This is like the third time there's been
0:32.4	an update to a story after we recorded. So if everyone could just like, I don't know,
0:35.9	let us know first before you break a story. We'd really appreciate it. Enjoy the show.
0:42.3	Katie, how are you doing this fine Sunday? Oh, pretty good. You know, just increasingly
0:46.0	concern. We're in the midst of a macissaria cultural revolution. How are you? Yeah, similar. I
0:51.0	went for a nice run yesterday, ate some good pizza recently, but the complete collapse of any sort
0:56.4	of institutional authority is disturbing. But you know what? It may have been time. Like, don't
1:03.7	you think institutional authority had a good, what, three year run? And now that I think about it,
1:10.5	did we ever really have institutional authority? Maybe during the Obama administration, I think I
1:15.6	trusted institutions then. Maybe I was a fool to do so. The extent to which it feels like there is
1:21.5	a major sort of epistemic or cultural crack up going on in our circles. And the circles adjacent
1:29.0	to our circles is, I don't know, it's hard to explain this to people because externally, if you
1:35.5	look at the country, what's going on is a pandemic mixed with a massive protest movement. And I think
1:41.5	maybe I'll play the sort of identity card if you're not in our circles. Some of the stuff going
1:46.3	on is a little bit obscure, but it is very unusual what's going on. And people at many media outlets are
1:53.8	in addition to their, you know, feelings about the awfulness of George Floyd's murder and the
	...

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