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Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Friday June 11th, 2021. It is the 17th birthday of my oldest daughter.

Sheena, so happy birthday Sheena. Yes, and as I said yesterday, it came almost exactly on the anniversary of my 20th anniversary of my first meeting with her mother.

So we were very hopeful that day that she would be born on that anniversary and she ended up being born half an hour into the following day. And then we got our wish two years later, oddly enough, because our second child, Sheena, was born on our anniversary, which turns out to be a complex matter when you were the parent of a small child.

Because you really aren't allowed to celebrate anything, but the birthday of the child on the day of the child's birthday, even if there is something else to celebrate, this is not taken well.

It's not considered an appropriate matter for celebration since the only possible celebration on the birthday of a child is that child's birthday and any other anything that intrudes upon that is a moral hazard of extraordinary proportions.

So anyway, so we so an our third child just born on best the old day. That's all I can say. It doesn't really doesn't really count for anything. Anyhow, so happy birthday to Sheena.

And with me as always executive editor, a greenwald high Abe hi John senior writer, Christine Rosen, high Christine, and associate editor, no, Rothman high Noah.

So the news of yesterday within certain circles was the fact that mid afternoon, I don't know where Jeffrey Tuben pops up on CNN. After seven months, of course, having been caught, pleasureing himself on a zoom camera in front of his colleagues at the New Yorker fired by the New Yorker, then I guess suspended by the New Yorker.

It's suspended by CNN, where of course he has been a commentator reporter, whatever you want to call him for, you know, more than more than 20 years.

And brought back to both answer questions about to to to to to answer questions about what happened as the as the prologue to him returning to CNN as a legal commentator, largely because in part because the Supreme Court is now issuing its decisions.

For this year's term, and they apparently wanted it back. I have very complicated feelings about Jeff Tuben and they're very personal and go into that a little later.

But I bring this up only because we this is a very.

This raises interesting issues about our culture and forgiveness and how peculiarly unforgiving our culture has become.

And and then how the sort of the people at the people who are at the summit of our culture apparently get to pick and choose based on no observable or co comprehensible or coherent standard.

Who gets a second chance who gets a pass who gets treated with compassion and forgiveness and who is, you know, ostracized, excommunicated and shunned in perpetuity.

And so apparently Jeff Tuben is being given a second chance is being shown compassion is being shown forgiveness and I go into a little later why there's something peculiarly hypocritical or ironic about that relating to my own family.

But where do you guys come down on this question?

The question of selective mercy as needed out by the.

And then the second question I guess is the larger question of how are we going to understand this given what is going on in America over the last few years and given what is going on right at this minute all over the place every single day whenever anybody says something that somebody else wants to call out.

For him I'm glad by the way that you didn't introduce the question as it being a touchy subject but he so him personally if it was just confined to that issue of him accidentally masturbating on a zoom call I would say the it was an outsize over reaction of the New Yorker to fire him for that maybe you know that there were other means that they could have taken to deal with that.

He also has a history and has some credible accusations of harassment and kind of questionable sexual behavior that became public and his behavior in general with regard to these matters gives it a slightly different tint in my opinion I still don't think that that should have destroyed his entire career and so I guess it's good that CNN brought him back on I think it was ridiculous they they had this poor female anchor in a kind of hostage like situation having to read the questions to him that was one of the more the kind of second hand embarrassment watching this.

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