Workin’ for the Weekend #12: Stelter Fired, Moynihan on FIRE, Kmele Gonna Take You Higher

Also: Reports of MY replacement have been greatly exaggerated....

Sure, Moynihan can keep floating the Great Matt-Replacement Theory, as he did on #369, but all I’m saying is that you applicants (and God help me, y’all are turning in applications) need to submit proof you can handle a weekly written roundup, since Allah only knows these other two bozos aren’t gonna be filling that space…. (Also, my ears have regained the strength of 10 men, so you’ll have to wait until the next physical breakdown.)

Anyhoo, today was Brian Stelter’s last Reliable Sources broadcast after CNN gave him the axe, which is a good reminder that he was a guest here way back on Episode #127, though alas I could not be there. Kmele back in the day had a rather spectacular appearance on Reliable about Jussie Smollett and racism and so forth, which we discussed on #131; he also once debated Facebook bans there. Moynihan went on in 2019 to talk about Jill Abramson’s plagiarism (discussed in #130 and #140), and also in 2017 about some inscrutable Euro-intelligence scandal. I went on I think exactly once, in 2015 (remote from Austin!), to talk about the insane gag order that the Southern District of New York imposed on Reason. “The free world needs CNN to be strong,” Stelter closed his final episode with. (Also, for insiders-waxing-about-the-state-of-the-media completists, Margaret Sullivan dropped her final column today for the Washington Post.)

* The aforementioned #140 was also noteworthy for being the second of Ben Dreyfuss’s six spectacular/shambolic guest appearances, culminating most recently with this Hey Koolaid act in Members Only #129. The others were #83 (of the famous Kevin Spacey story), #97 (w/ Kat Timpf; involved salsa on legs), #148 (Shitty Media Men list), and #214 (just after Ben’s breakup with Mother Jones). Will he be the Welch-replacement? Sorry, pal—job requires two working eyeballs.

* Moynihan this week went on So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, brought to you by our friends at the newly rebranded Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), to talk about the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. You can watch him, and judge his bookshelves, here:

* Remember #366, in which Kmele once again confabbed about race with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter? First, let’s not forget that this Dream Team has been assembling to great effect throughout our history—in #121 (w/ Thomas Chatterton Williams and Coleman Hughes), #188 (ditto); plus McWhorter went mano-a-Kmelo in #84. Second, Loury has published a transcript of #366 over at his Substack; here’s a bit from the intro:

When it comes to thinking about race and identity, Kmele is something of a radical, though not in the way that many “antiracist” ideologues consider themselves radicals. As you’ll see below in this transcript of my appearance with John on The Fifth Column, Kmele rejects race as a category that need have any bearing on an individual’s self-conception.

I find Kmele’s way of thinking about these matters intriguing, though I have to admit I worry that he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In Tuesday’s post, I argued while we should not allow ourselves to become prisoners to socially legislated identities, neither should we discard communal traditions from which we may draw sustenance and strength. Kmele says he doesn’t think it valid to feel personal pride or shame about even our parents’ and grandparents’ actions, whereas I confess that there are many aspects of my own black heritage of which I am quite proud.

These are deep disagreements but productive ones. We need radical thinkers like Kmele who take up positions that cut against the orthodoxies of both right and left.

* In other Kmele news, Adweek awarded an Intelligence Squared debate on cancel culture that the Freethinker participated in as its “Best Podcast Event of 2022”:

To shed light on a topic commanding the zeitgeist, Intelligence Squared US Debates provided a platform for healthy debate on cancel culture and the impact it may have in dividing Americans across the country at its November 2021 event. Reaching more than 200,000 unique listeners, the live event brought together widely respected thinkers who didn’t simply pander to partisan allegiances, but endeavored to share their point of view in hopes of arriving at a clearer understanding of the phenomenon.

* Last add Kmele: Freethink just posted a nice video in conjunction with the Higher Ground early education specialists. Back in February 2021, Kmele joined a Higher Ground panel discussion on—you guessed it!—Black History Month. You can watch:

* The loose talk around these parts about posting old articles that never for whatever reason got published, combined with Liz Cheney’s drubbing on Tuesday, triggered the repressed memory that in December 2019 I wrote a long unpublished feature about the comically futile attempt to challenge then-President Donald Trump from the quasi-libertarian right. I posted the thing, with fresh intro/outro, over at Paloma Media: “The #NeverTrump Reality Check.” Oh, and for Reason, I flung more poo at the “fact-checking” industry’s ongoing water-carrying act for the White House’s IRS-enforcement spin.

See you next weekend, replacers!