An under-appreciated benefit of having Donald Trump as America’s dominant cultural figure is his effortless ability to inspire cringeworthy exclamations of self-worth from pathetic people in the media. This past weekend saw two that really should go down in history among the most self-discrediting episodes of anti-Trump, anti-American hysteria.
CBS 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley summoned his most solemn expression and tone to bore viewers on Sunday for nearly two minutes about an internal HR matter dressed up as a stunning news event. The shock development: Bill Owens, the show’s longtime executive producer, quit.
How America will ever recover is anyone’s guess. I’m certainly in deep prayer about it.
“[O]ur parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger,” Pelley said by way of explaining Owens’ departure. “The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”
Though he said nothing had changed with the program’s editorial content — nope, their lying on behalf of Democrats was coming along just fine! — Pelley said Owens “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” In other words, Paramount executives might have told Bill that perhaps 50 back-to-back segments on “why Trump isn’t Hitler, but kind of is” weren’t really necessary right now.
Pelley said that Owens’ resignation was “for us and you” and that it “proved … he was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.” How does it feel knowing that Owens sacrificed himself for you, just as Jesus Christ did?
We were treated to a similar sickening display at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., just one day before. WHCA President Eugene Daniels, of MSNBC and old lady wardrobe fame, told the room full of deceitful propagandists (often self-identified as “reporters”) that they matter and are very important to the world.
“We miss our families and significant life moments in service to this job,” he said. “We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust.” And then he lied some more: “What we are not is the opposition. What we are not is the enemy of the people, and what we are not is the enemy of the state.”
He earned a standing ovation for that piece of wince-inducing dreck. But, to quote Margaret Thatcher, if you have to tell people you’re not the enemy of the state, you are. (More of a paraphrase, I guess.) If you have to tell people how virtuous you are, you’re not.
60 Minutes hasn’t been a respectable program for about two decades now, which is about how long Bill Owens was with the show. He didn’t sacrifice just his job, he helped squander all of CBS’s credibility by using it to prop up one political party and demean half the country. Recall the Trump interview Owens oversaw in 2020, during which 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl denied the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop story and Trump’s demonstrably true claim that his 2016 campaign was spied on by feds. Yet we’re supposed to be moved by his resignation and angry that it might change things at 60 Minutes. If only.
And the Washington press corps (soon to be stylized as “corpse”), plus its annual self-congratulatory dinner, are so far beyond parody that the WHCA president declaring them “not the enemy of the people” was like George Santos swearing he never stole from anyone while checking his Cartier wristwatch.
These melodramatic displays of defiance produce the opposite of their intended effect. Ultimately, that’s a good thing for America, which can’t sustain itself with a media so thoroughly corrupted as ours.
