Bari Weiss is disingenuous.
She was never a liberal who became disillusioned with the Democratic Party. That wasn’t true. She was never canceled; she quit the New York Times on her own. She started a university and her online rag, the Free Press. These are not signs you are canceled. The deepest irony of Bari Weiss was that, despite all her whining about cancel culture, her very first moment in the limelight was trying to get three professors fired as a Columbia University student because she believed they were anti-Israel.
A month ago, Jay Michaelson published a sharp critique of Weiss, arguing that her career trajectory has been defined less by substance than by strategy and that strategy may now be paying off in a big way. With Weiss reportedly stepping into the top-dog editor-in-chief leadership role at CBS News, Michaelson suggests it’s worth looking closely at how she built her brand and what it could mean for journalism.
At the heart of his essay is a simple but damning metaphor: the shell game. Like a street hustler swapping cups, Weiss distracts her audience with gestures of balance and principle, while quietly advancing a more self-serving agenda. Michaelson points out that she often positions herself as a centrist liberal, concerned equally with left-wing excesses and right-wing dangers. Yet when challenged, she rarely engages the strongest critiques. Instead, she highlights the most overblown or unhinged attacks against her, recasting herself as a victim of intolerance.
This, Michaelson argues, is not just clever PR, but instead the engine of her influence. Each cycle of provocation, backlash, and self-defense allows Weiss to cultivate an image of courage under fire. The weaker her initial argument, the stronger the ensuing storm, and the more effectively she can claim persecution. It’s a feedback loop that rewards outrage over nuance, performance over persuasion.
Michaelson also notes the institutional danger of this approach. Weiss has long thrived in the niche ecosystem of newsletters, podcasts, and cultural commentary. But if she is indeed taking a leadership role at CBS, her tactics won’t just shape her personal brand. They’ll shape what millions of people see and hear as “the news.” By elevating victimhood narratives and cherry-picking opponents’ worst moments, she risks distorting journalism into a stage for ongoing spectacle rather than a forum for understanding.
Underlying the critique is a larger concern about today’s media landscape. Weiss, in Michaelson’s view, has mastered the art of using criticism as fuel. Rather than answering tough questions or refining her arguments, she turns every backlash into another badge of credibility. That tactic has proven remarkably effective in a polarized environment where attention is currency.
The question, Michaelson concludes, is not whether Bari Weiss has been successful. The question is what kind of success it is, and what it means when such success becomes institutionalized at the heart of American media. If the shell game works at CBS, we may see more of it, and journalism itself may tilt further toward performance over principle.
We should also be clear-eyed about something else: Weiss shares the same hate as the Trump administration. She despises universities, the media, and so-called wokism. It’s Trumpism Lite, the Just Asking Questions variety. It is something beyond dishonesty and disingenuousness to be so focused on the left of center in this moment, to insinuate that we are part of the problem. We are the solution, we are the people trying to save democracy, and our track record in freedom of speech is one helluva lot better than hers.
The tl;dr here is that the great journalistic institution that gave us 60 Minutes is no more. A grifting hack runs CBS News, and the timing couldn’t be worse.
The last word goes to Paramore.