At the home of Walter Cronkite, journalists debate Israel’s existence. Also: Hurricane Milton. Are we overmedicating kids? Will Ferrell’s new doc. And much more.
I’m a liberal and I was so hopeful that the 2020 struggle sessions we had to go through in many large corporations were behind it. And they are, the vast majority of Americans have moved on and many corporate executives are a lot less inclined to entertain the fringe views of some junior associates.
Except in media, it would seem. It’s especially disheartening to see this at CBS, which had a reputation for being the most news-focused of the big networks and was one of the last ones to enjoy bipartisan viewership. It’s easy to disparage them and stop watching but where does this leave us? My team has my echo chamber, your team has your echo chamber? How do we live together if we are so divided that there’s hardly any shared news both sides trust. It’s a grim outlook.
I know that you follow the YLE substack, but I wanted to make sure that you have read the mini-series that she just completed. It's a masterpiece. A summary from her today:
But first, a note from me
270,000 of you are still here. Thank you for hanging in here for the mini-series on losing trust in vaccines through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The mini-series made a lot of people uncomfortable. After being on the frontline for the past 5 years (and the trauma, PTSD, the receiver of hate, and risk to my personal safety), it’s tough to write, edit, and even harder to admit mistakes or read negative reactions. But being uncomfortable is the point. If we don’t look in the mirror, we will never rebuild trust and move the needle forward for a healthier society. This means challenging our perspectives, becoming vulnerable, and having tough conversations.
I applaud Kristen for her courage in cleaning the wounds so they can heal.
While misinformation certainly sows distrust, distrust also sows misinformation. We need to work on this problem from both ends. We do this through empathy, listening, addressing needs on the ground, equipping trusted messengers, and being very clear about where values overlap with data.
What’s NOT being talked about is what Coates actually revealed (and by the way I am no fan of his. He is an elegant writer but here, he has a book to sell and he is being (deliberately?) provocative - reparations anyone?). Still, his basic claims are that: Israel is essentially 1. A theocratic state, and 2. An apartheid state. Now, let’s examine those. In 1948, David Ben Gurion (to keep the peace between religious and secular Jews) allowed the rabbis to control, essentially, what is Israel and who is Jewish. In essence, the theocrats decide. As for apartheid, yes, the Israeli Supreme Court decides on the law with impartiality - but only in Israel, and even then, it discriminates against Palestinians in Jerusalem in property disputes. On the West Bank, it’s open season against the indigenous people vis a vis the ultra orthodox settlers. Israelis - and the Jewish diaspora worldwide - don’t want to talk about this because it means confronting a central conundrum about the Jewish state: is it a theocracy ruled by God (and the self-appointed rabbis and right-wing adherents) or is it the Israel that likes to present itself to the world, a modern, secular technocratic democracy governed by the rule of law? It can’t be both. Coates touched on a raw nerve.
If you listen to him, including today on the Ezra Klein show, he is absolutely uninterested in understanding the causes for the current conditions Palestinians are forced to live under. He says so on several occasions. He sees them as oppressed, akin to blacks in the Jim Crow south, therefore any agency on their behalf is not relevant to the conversation. This is an utterly simplistic argument and had it come from some leftist activist wrapped in a keffiyeh, we would have rightly dismissed it as such. Dokoupil said so much in his interview.
For assisted suicide, why buy some new fangled machine that suffocates you with nitrogen? Go to any industrial supply store and buy a bottle of nitrogen and open it I. You car. Get two to be safe. You’re dead.
Just more evidence illustrating the extent to which leftist progressives control both public and private institutions in the United States as well as how they treat anyone with the temerity to stray from their agenda.
It’s obvious that there are different rules for King and Dokoupil. This DEI behavior justifies racism against the perceived “oppressors” CBS is kowtowing to morons this is unacceptable.
I was excited to hear about the new show with Candace Owens and Meghan Kelly so not being a CBS viewer would have drawn me to the station. I’m still not sure if this is really happening and I’d hate these women to be subjected to curbing their mouths because of a DEI department which really pisses me off to put it mildly and to have the “higher ups” who are obvious idiots curtail their dialogue. I think these women have more integrity than that however a $400 million contract is a $400 million contract so it’ll be interesting to see how this goes (if it in fact is happening).
"There was an open debate in the meeting about whether it is 'fair to talk about whether Israel should exist at all.' There are some people at CBS who think that 'Israel’s existence as a state should be part of fair conversation,' said one CBS source. Can you imagine journalists having that conversation about any other country?"
No, because I cannot think of another ethno-nationalist state artificially created by Western powers after WWII, forced upon the peoples who already dwelled there, and that has received $200+ billion in military funding from the US since its founding: https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts.
If this is the sense in which the subject of whether the STATE of Israel should have been established by Western powers was being debated, that's totally fair to discuss from a historical and prudential standpoint, especially looking back in hindsight at the chaos the Middle East has experienced since then. There's no logical connection between the so-called "Jewish Problem" of the 19-20th C. and the creation of the State of Israel. The best solution to said Problem was for the world to stop problematizing the Jews at all, and welcome them as people within their nations! A pox upon all post-Christian European states that wanted to get rid of the Jews as part of their own satanic ethno-nationalist projects.
But if the debate was over whether the State of Israel should be dismantled or whatever... first, I seriously doubt this was the conversation being had, and second, the answer is "No." Israel exists, and while it in no way represents Jews across the world (nor its own people, necessarily, given that many Israelis are pissed at their own government), it is now an established nation that has a repeatedly confirmed, internationally recognized right to exist.
However, that doesn't mean Israel gets a pass at doing whatever it wants, especially when the US is bankrolling its military and it benefits from US protection and largesse in other ways. It's not in the US' interests, for instance, to support a Netanyahu Administration influenced by these schlemiels:
Funny how I've not seen much coverage of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, nor of the extremist movements they represent, in the articles of FP. Hmm.
In summary: Right to exist? Maybe, ante hoc. Right to exist? Yes, post hoc. Right to do whatever it wants? No.
And Israel is going to have to answer for its own brutality in the execution of this war, possibly even for war crimes. It should be accountable for this: it was created by the "international community" and benefits from its protections, so it should have to answer to said community perpetually if it wants the world's support. Kvetch all you want about the declining international support for Israel: it's what happens when you overreact in bloodlust and refuse to stop.
If anyone is looking for less biased reporting on Israel than you'll find on the FP, I can't recommend enough the work of Isaac Saul (a fairly centrist Jew, like many of the people at FP) through his Tangle Newsletter: https://www.readtangle.com/oct-7-anniversary-israel-hamas-gaza-war. That's what truly nuanced reporting looks like. Go subscribe and read what he has to say. It's a good counterpoint to the narratives you're reading on this Substack.
Numerous "ethno-nationalist" states were created in Europe after the breakup of empires between 1918 and 1991, to say nothing of ex-colonial states in Africa and Asia. Does every disgruntled expatriate minority, of whom there are plenty both in Europe and elsewhere, get a free pass to bombard its former homeland without retaliation, and parade its grievances before the world in perpetuity ? No, that's the Palestinian Privilege.
Your response is filled with incorrect assumptions. "do whatever it wants"? Israel is - and HAS BEEN - reacting to constant attacks from Palestinians. The checkpoints, the blockade, the violent responses are all the result of being - CONSTANTLY - attacked in the first place. Please point me to a country that would put up with being attacked on a daily basis? As for "bloodlust"? Civilians are killed in almost every war and they are killed far more often than they have been in this war. Which is doubly remarkable given that Hamas is using their civilians as shields. This is also an overt and ongoing war crime, but hey, it's Hamas, what can we do? You can be Israel and try to wipe them out as much as you can. Listen, I get that Palestinians feel Israel shouldn't exist at all and should've never been created by those evil Western powers (unlike non-Western powers who ruthlessly avoided slavery and building empires of their own), but it's not going anywhere. And for the record: there's a reason why the Israel bashers can only compare the death tolls to 21st century conflicts or "recent conflict in a single year". If they start the clock any earlier, Israel has been - by MOST 20th century measures - extremely restrained. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict
The way you describe how the next day CBS has interrogated Tony Dokoupil about the vocabulary used , his body language and so forth reminds me of one thing : the Gestapo interrogations or the KGB interrogations
Why is it surprising that CBS has different rules for Tony Dokoupil and Gayle King? The entire anti-Zionist movement (AKA antisemitism) is based on double standards.
“ Good news: Philadelphia saw fewer homicides in September than any other month over the last nine years, according to new analysis of police data by The Philadelphia Inquirer. From 2020 through 2022, the city saw an average of 44 killings a month and many worried the city was spiraling out of control. But that figure halved this year to a monthly average of 21 homicides. And last month it halved again to ten homicides. Some of the most violent districts have seen as much as a 70 percent drop in homicides compared to three years ago.”
CBS is just standing by anti racist doctrine which states that blacks can't be racist and anyone who notices they are is a racist..
I’m a liberal and I was so hopeful that the 2020 struggle sessions we had to go through in many large corporations were behind it. And they are, the vast majority of Americans have moved on and many corporate executives are a lot less inclined to entertain the fringe views of some junior associates.
Except in media, it would seem. It’s especially disheartening to see this at CBS, which had a reputation for being the most news-focused of the big networks and was one of the last ones to enjoy bipartisan viewership. It’s easy to disparage them and stop watching but where does this leave us? My team has my echo chamber, your team has your echo chamber? How do we live together if we are so divided that there’s hardly any shared news both sides trust. It’s a grim outlook.
I know that you follow the YLE substack, but I wanted to make sure that you have read the mini-series that she just completed. It's a masterpiece. A summary from her today:
But first, a note from me
270,000 of you are still here. Thank you for hanging in here for the mini-series on losing trust in vaccines through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The mini-series made a lot of people uncomfortable. After being on the frontline for the past 5 years (and the trauma, PTSD, the receiver of hate, and risk to my personal safety), it’s tough to write, edit, and even harder to admit mistakes or read negative reactions. But being uncomfortable is the point. If we don’t look in the mirror, we will never rebuild trust and move the needle forward for a healthier society. This means challenging our perspectives, becoming vulnerable, and having tough conversations.
I applaud Kristen for her courage in cleaning the wounds so they can heal.
While misinformation certainly sows distrust, distrust also sows misinformation. We need to work on this problem from both ends. We do this through empathy, listening, addressing needs on the ground, equipping trusted messengers, and being very clear about where values overlap with data.
What’s NOT being talked about is what Coates actually revealed (and by the way I am no fan of his. He is an elegant writer but here, he has a book to sell and he is being (deliberately?) provocative - reparations anyone?). Still, his basic claims are that: Israel is essentially 1. A theocratic state, and 2. An apartheid state. Now, let’s examine those. In 1948, David Ben Gurion (to keep the peace between religious and secular Jews) allowed the rabbis to control, essentially, what is Israel and who is Jewish. In essence, the theocrats decide. As for apartheid, yes, the Israeli Supreme Court decides on the law with impartiality - but only in Israel, and even then, it discriminates against Palestinians in Jerusalem in property disputes. On the West Bank, it’s open season against the indigenous people vis a vis the ultra orthodox settlers. Israelis - and the Jewish diaspora worldwide - don’t want to talk about this because it means confronting a central conundrum about the Jewish state: is it a theocracy ruled by God (and the self-appointed rabbis and right-wing adherents) or is it the Israel that likes to present itself to the world, a modern, secular technocratic democracy governed by the rule of law? It can’t be both. Coates touched on a raw nerve.
If you listen to him, including today on the Ezra Klein show, he is absolutely uninterested in understanding the causes for the current conditions Palestinians are forced to live under. He says so on several occasions. He sees them as oppressed, akin to blacks in the Jim Crow south, therefore any agency on their behalf is not relevant to the conversation. This is an utterly simplistic argument and had it come from some leftist activist wrapped in a keffiyeh, we would have rightly dismissed it as such. Dokoupil said so much in his interview.
IDK but I found the claim that TV news held itself to journalistic standards to be a LOL idea.
For assisted suicide, why buy some new fangled machine that suffocates you with nitrogen? Go to any industrial supply store and buy a bottle of nitrogen and open it I. You car. Get two to be safe. You’re dead.
Just more evidence illustrating the extent to which leftist progressives control both public and private institutions in the United States as well as how they treat anyone with the temerity to stray from their agenda.
recent polling shows....... attribution, please
CBS head honcho: "we will still hold people accountable, that's part of our job too." No, that IS YOUR JOB. My god, how far the mighty have fallen.
These midwit functionaries--who sound about as smart as your average local news reporter--now run our lives.
It’s obvious that there are different rules for King and Dokoupil. This DEI behavior justifies racism against the perceived “oppressors” CBS is kowtowing to morons this is unacceptable.
I was excited to hear about the new show with Candace Owens and Meghan Kelly so not being a CBS viewer would have drawn me to the station. I’m still not sure if this is really happening and I’d hate these women to be subjected to curbing their mouths because of a DEI department which really pisses me off to put it mildly and to have the “higher ups” who are obvious idiots curtail their dialogue. I think these women have more integrity than that however a $400 million contract is a $400 million contract so it’ll be interesting to see how this goes (if it in fact is happening).
"There was an open debate in the meeting about whether it is 'fair to talk about whether Israel should exist at all.' There are some people at CBS who think that 'Israel’s existence as a state should be part of fair conversation,' said one CBS source. Can you imagine journalists having that conversation about any other country?"
No, because I cannot think of another ethno-nationalist state artificially created by Western powers after WWII, forced upon the peoples who already dwelled there, and that has received $200+ billion in military funding from the US since its founding: https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts.
If this is the sense in which the subject of whether the STATE of Israel should have been established by Western powers was being debated, that's totally fair to discuss from a historical and prudential standpoint, especially looking back in hindsight at the chaos the Middle East has experienced since then. There's no logical connection between the so-called "Jewish Problem" of the 19-20th C. and the creation of the State of Israel. The best solution to said Problem was for the world to stop problematizing the Jews at all, and welcome them as people within their nations! A pox upon all post-Christian European states that wanted to get rid of the Jews as part of their own satanic ethno-nationalist projects.
But if the debate was over whether the State of Israel should be dismantled or whatever... first, I seriously doubt this was the conversation being had, and second, the answer is "No." Israel exists, and while it in no way represents Jews across the world (nor its own people, necessarily, given that many Israelis are pissed at their own government), it is now an established nation that has a repeatedly confirmed, internationally recognized right to exist.
However, that doesn't mean Israel gets a pass at doing whatever it wants, especially when the US is bankrolling its military and it benefits from US protection and largesse in other ways. It's not in the US' interests, for instance, to support a Netanyahu Administration influenced by these schlemiels:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz55y6k0p5go
https://www.ft.com/content/e468283a-04de-4f33-9f10-5eaf4b1dc657
https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-rise-of-ben-gvir-and-smotrich-israel-risks-a-catastrophic-lurch-to-extremism/
Funny how I've not seen much coverage of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, nor of the extremist movements they represent, in the articles of FP. Hmm.
In summary: Right to exist? Maybe, ante hoc. Right to exist? Yes, post hoc. Right to do whatever it wants? No.
And Israel is going to have to answer for its own brutality in the execution of this war, possibly even for war crimes. It should be accountable for this: it was created by the "international community" and benefits from its protections, so it should have to answer to said community perpetually if it wants the world's support. Kvetch all you want about the declining international support for Israel: it's what happens when you overreact in bloodlust and refuse to stop.
If anyone is looking for less biased reporting on Israel than you'll find on the FP, I can't recommend enough the work of Isaac Saul (a fairly centrist Jew, like many of the people at FP) through his Tangle Newsletter: https://www.readtangle.com/oct-7-anniversary-israel-hamas-gaza-war. That's what truly nuanced reporting looks like. Go subscribe and read what he has to say. It's a good counterpoint to the narratives you're reading on this Substack.
Numerous "ethno-nationalist" states were created in Europe after the breakup of empires between 1918 and 1991, to say nothing of ex-colonial states in Africa and Asia. Does every disgruntled expatriate minority, of whom there are plenty both in Europe and elsewhere, get a free pass to bombard its former homeland without retaliation, and parade its grievances before the world in perpetuity ? No, that's the Palestinian Privilege.
Your response is filled with incorrect assumptions. "do whatever it wants"? Israel is - and HAS BEEN - reacting to constant attacks from Palestinians. The checkpoints, the blockade, the violent responses are all the result of being - CONSTANTLY - attacked in the first place. Please point me to a country that would put up with being attacked on a daily basis? As for "bloodlust"? Civilians are killed in almost every war and they are killed far more often than they have been in this war. Which is doubly remarkable given that Hamas is using their civilians as shields. This is also an overt and ongoing war crime, but hey, it's Hamas, what can we do? You can be Israel and try to wipe them out as much as you can. Listen, I get that Palestinians feel Israel shouldn't exist at all and should've never been created by those evil Western powers (unlike non-Western powers who ruthlessly avoided slavery and building empires of their own), but it's not going anywhere. And for the record: there's a reason why the Israel bashers can only compare the death tolls to 21st century conflicts or "recent conflict in a single year". If they start the clock any earlier, Israel has been - by MOST 20th century measures - extremely restrained. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict
The way you describe how the next day CBS has interrogated Tony Dokoupil about the vocabulary used , his body language and so forth reminds me of one thing : the Gestapo interrogations or the KGB interrogations
The shaming continues…
Why is it surprising that CBS has different rules for Tony Dokoupil and Gayle King? The entire anti-Zionist movement (AKA antisemitism) is based on double standards.
“ Good news: Philadelphia saw fewer homicides in September than any other month over the last nine years, according to new analysis of police data by The Philadelphia Inquirer. From 2020 through 2022, the city saw an average of 44 killings a month and many worried the city was spiraling out of control. But that figure halved this year to a monthly average of 21 homicides. And last month it halved again to ten homicides. Some of the most violent districts have seen as much as a 70 percent drop in homicides compared to three years ago.”
I call BS on this. Cui Bono?