The weekendus horribilis (with apologies to anyone who actually knows Latin) at CBS News was a marvel to behold, as though division chief Wendy McMahon had spent days carefully laying a field full of rakes before donning clown shoes and dancing across the field to Ricky Martin's "Livin’ la Vida Loca."
As I'm sure you're already aware, things kicked off Sunday morning with the social media backlash — I need a better, happier word than "backlash" — to "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan insisting to SecState Marco Rubio that the problem with the Nazis was all their free speech.
PJ's own Sarah Anderson had that story for you in near real-time yesterday, but let me give you a brief rundown. Vice President JD Vance's European address defending free speech was given "in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide," is a thing Brennan actually said out loud on network television, perhaps because she lost a bet.
Sarah still has all the gory details in case you missed it yesterday.
Today, Victoria Taft nailed it with her column, echoing the principal in "Billy Madison."
"Margaret," Rubio could have said, "What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."
My only issue with Victoria's column is that I didn't write it. Read the whole thing if you haven't already.
But that was only the first of many dozen rakes CBS News stepped on last weekend.
My favorite moment was probably when "60 Minutes" celebrated German fascists doing genuinely fascist stuff:
German state police raid a home, seizing the suspect’s laptop and phone. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. https://t.co/4LHUP1ZWrB pic.twitter.com/tEC1N1Nm1L
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025
Sunday morning, CBS News bemoaned how Hitler's Germany was all free speech-y. Sunday evening, CBS News pondered the proper limits on free speech, enforced by well-armed German state police.
“Half of the internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion,” says German lawyer Josephine Ballon. She says free speech needs boundaries. https://t.co/IwjN7gLogB pic.twitter.com/MRbZWdSfoj
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025
I'm not even getting into Ballon's weird insistence that the solution to people self-censoring out of fear is to give them something to be really frightened of.
That was part of a segment showing German police conducting a huge armed raid on some rando for posting a racist cartoon online.
They actually did the "Parks & Rec" meme.
Capping things off was a puff-piece interview with Kristina Drye, a distressed underling of Deep State functionary Samantha Power. “People are really scared,” Drye whined. “Twelve days ago, people know where their next paycheck was coming from. They knew how they were going to pay for their kids’ daycare, their medical bills. And then, all gone overnight.”
Welcome to the real world.
We've seen what USAID did with our money. In most countries around the world, there would be thousands of backs up against various walls for that scale of corruption and outright theft.
Media critic Western Lensman says that "CBS ‘News’ may have overtaken MSNBC and CNN as the premiere anti-American DNC propaganda outlet in all the land," but I'm not sure that's the case. Since Walter Cronkite, CBS News has always been an anti-American DNC propaganda outlet. Maybe it's just that McMahon's crew is so laughably ignorant and hamfisted with their anti-American DNC propaganda.
Or maybe they just enjoy dancing in a field of rakes.
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