I am an unabashed fan of The Free Press, Bari Weiss, and especially Nellie Bowles.
I have written before about how charming I find her and revealed my crush on the moderate lesbians who run one of the last news outlets worth reading. (The Federalist, The Washington Free Beacon, Washington Examiner, and a few others fit the bill as well. Don’t be offended if I left you out, because chances are I subscribe if you belong on the list).
Nellie is especially worth reading because she makes you smile, even if you occasionally wince as she pokes fun at your favorites.
As the author of The Free Press’ TGIF column, she pops a lot of balloons filled with Hot Air (ahem). This weeks’ edition gets right to the point about how deeply in the tank the corporate media is for Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
→ Kamala’s big hostile interview: It definitely looked like Kamala Harris was talking to a journalist, doing an interview in her quest for the biggest job in the country—nay, the world. They were sitting in chairs, yes. There were cameras, certainly. Patent pumps, check! And the woman acting as a journalist was asking questions with a kind of serious face. And yet. And yet it was not in any way an interview with a journalist. Here was Stephanie Ruhle, MSNBC host, just a few days earlier arguing on Real Time with Bill Maher that it’s not fair to ask that Kamala Harris have answers to policy questions. This is a real back-and-forth with the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who said that Kamala should answer questions:
Stephanie Ruhle: “Let’s say you don’t like her answer—are you going to vote for Donald Trump?”
Bret Stephens: “No, I’m not—I just said I’m not going to vote for him.”
Stephanie Ruhle: “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect—she’s running against Trump. We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her answer to.”
Good job, Stephanie Ruhle. Very good job. You get to do the Kamala interview now! And what an interview it was. Here was the vibe:
Stephanie Ruhle: “Prices are still high.”
Kamala Harris: “I agree with you.”
The message to the media is very simple: You have to be a huge Kamala fan, you must learn all the lyrics, you must debase yourself as a journalist, and then you’ll get to hear some “answers” to some “questions” and you’ll get one signed pair of Kamala the Cop handcuffs (I would do literally anything for a set, Kamala, I will debase myself more than anyone, please). Kamala, call on me! I know that when you worked at McDonald’s you did fries! Not McFlurries, fries!
It might sound crass, but as Kamala rises in the polls and journalists tear off their blazers to reveal Kamala Harris chest tattoos, I’ve never been more bullish on The Free Press. My message to mainstream media: Keep on keeping on. I love you guys. And if you’re a CNN anchor thinking about posting a Kamala appreciation TikTok dance to get your own Kamala sit-down “interview,” I love that for you. I’m not here to stop you. I’m here to teach you the dance, and profit from your weakness, which is why, Free Press board, I deserve a raise.
Yep. Nellie does deserve a raise, and I’m pretty sure she can wrangle one as she knows the boss pretty well. She is her wife, Bari Weiss.
I read Nellie’s column right after I saw this clip of a CNN personality taking a modest swing at Kamala Harris, and two things stood out. First, Harris took a minor shot, which blows you away.
CNN analyst blasts Kamala Harris for pretending to be “tough on the border.” pic.twitter.com/9NueB970ju
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) September 27, 2024
But, more importantly, what struck me was how her interlocutors responded: they were genuinely shocked that a weakness of Harris was brought up. There should be nothing controversial about pointing out that Harris’ trip to the border is based on a blatant lie: that she is at all inclined to close the border.
Not only is her failure as a Border Czar obvious, but her entire political history contradicts her newfound love of border secuity.
JD Vance makes an offhanded joke about cat ladies and it runs the news cycle for two weeks.
Kamala is chanting “down down with deportation!” and most of our wonderful media pretends like this video does not exist. Despite the fact it’s been viewed millions of times down here. https://t.co/ejkULDW7hn
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) September 24, 2024
Look at their faces as Harris’ dishonesty is brought up. You see genuine shock and discomfort.
They almost scream, “You CAN’T SAY THAT!”
That is our corporate media. Even bringing up a Harris vulnerability breaks the narrative and undermines the brainwashing.
As you know, I am almost a broken record (remember records?) when it comes to media malfeasance, but Nellie’s special brand of humor makes the point far better than I can. Poking fun at the hypocrisy is what she does, and she does it to everyone. That’s a talent. I am a former college professor, while she is a comedian, even if she isn’t labeled as one.
Nellie is my guilty pleasure who makes my Friday emails something more than a depressing burden, with another 200 emails clogging my already overloaded mailbox. I currently have 49,157 unread emails, according to Apple Mail. And that doesn’t include my two email accounts not yet linked to the app.
TGIF is not one of the few read emails.