On Sunday, former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss appeared on Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources" show to talk about a column in which she stated that many Americans "feel that the world has gone mad."
Stelter: "So in what ways has the world gone mad?"
Weiss: "… When you're not able to say out loud and in public that there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad. When we're not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad; and that silence is not violence, but violence is violence, the world has gone mad."
She didn't stop there …
Weiss: "When we're not able to say that Hunter Biden's laptop is a story worth pursuing, the world has gone mad. When, in the name of progress, young school children, as young as kindergarten, are being separated in public schools because of their race, and that is called progress rather than segregation, the world has gone mad. There are dozens of examples …."
Stelter tried to push back, but Weiss insisted that radical progressives have left reason and facts behind to pursue a nonsensical worldview – and that speaking the truth about it can be dangerous:
Weiss: "You and I both know – and it would be delusional to claim otherwise – that touching your finger to an increasing number of subjects that have been deemed 'third rail' by the mainstream institutions and increasingly by some of the tech companies will lead to reputational damage, perhaps you losing your job."
Bill D'Agostino of Media Research Center watched the interview – and he says it was an ambush.
"I'm not sure if [Stelter] was expecting what she hit him with, but she basically completely defended the piece that he brought her on for, and accused Stelter and his ilk of completely censoring certain stories or aspects of stories that don't fit a specific narrative," he offers.
According to D'Agostino, Weiss is part of a small, but growing brand of "principled" liberals.
"[Those are] liberals who have not really moved from the positions that they held, say, 10 or 20 years ago who are beginning to take on this sort of 'the-world-has-gone-mad' worldview," he tells AFN.
Weiss resigned her position with The New York Times in July 2020, explaining that the newspaper chooses and tells stories in a way to "satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions."
