Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Wednesday July 15th.

The new tax day the pandemic tax day so get your taxes in if you haven't already.

Not that I need to tell the listeners of this podcast when tax day is but it just popped into my head.

I'm John Pajorci editor of commentary with me as always executive editor a greenwald hi a.

Hi John senior writer Christine Rosen high Christine.

Hi John and associate editor Noah Rothman high Noah.

Hi John.

So I would ordinarily consider this sort of thing a gigantic explosion of interest enthusiasm in a tiny little world in which that in which we live.

But I think the resignation of New York Times opinion editor and columnist Barry Weiss yesterday and the incendiary letter of resignation that she sent to.

The A.G. Cells burger the the head of the New York Times is the sort of thing that has broken out into into general discussion outside of the realm of oh who's been hired and who's been fired at you know inside journalism to raise the question of whether or not the world of the cancel culture and the world of this.

The great unraveling as as as Abe has has dubbed it.

The effects that it is now having on on people and on institutions that which is really the subject of Barry's resignation letter Barry I should say is a friend of mine someone that to my I offered a job 11 years ago when she was getting out of college.

And so we are not going to be impartial in our conversation about this.

But I stipulate that that I say that the beginning because I don't really think that the question of whether or not you like Barry I love Barry or whether you don't like Barry is material to this.

The subject of what what it was she was discussing and whether or not there is a real phenomenon going on that that she had diagnosed in this resignation letter.

So who wants to go there first.

I'll go there.

First of all I think anyone contemplating getting involved not just in journalism but in any sort of political or civil society related or adjacent profession in the next I don't know five to 10 years should read her letter and they should see it because she's it's kind of a it is a Jeremiah in a way it's not just an explanation of why she felt she needed to leave the times.

But it really is a warning about a broader and insidious cultural decay that's going on in some of our most vital and important cultural institutions and certainly not limited to the New York Times.

But the times has has unfortunately given us extremely clear example of it all note this what struck me about that letter in part was her and I am quite sure that she didn't even give us all of the examples of harassment that she has has experienced working.

At the New York Times but if you would take us take Barry out of it and put any minority in the position of someone who on a slack channel is being sent acts emojis by her colleagues or his colleagues you at the New York Times and then writes a letter saying I felt you know harass I needed to resign say say for example was Nicole Hannah Jones who had resigned and she one of the things she cited for the reason for leaving was because she was feeling this threat with an axe emoji sent to her honest.

Like just that singular episode would have been enough to raise a hue and a cry about racism about any sexism about any of the other things when Barry did that when she when she sort of gave that just as a kind of passing example people left I mean people at her own institution were like well we shouldn't even believe this in Nicole Hannah Jones said everyone's assuming that everything she put in this letter is true.

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