Scott Pelley worked at CBS News as a journalist for 37 years. He was recently fired and went on the NY Times Daily podcast to give an interview. I really wanted to be on his side, but he made it so difficult. In fact, at the end of the podcast, I really hated him.
Within the first 10 seconds, he compared being fired to having his wife murdered. Ugh.
This happened about a half dozen times in the interview. The same metaphor saying that his loss felt the same as a murdered spouse. I wanted to slap him in the face. Real people in the world have lost their family members to violence. This guy had a stable job for his whole life, getting paid tons of money to do exactly what he loved doing. He had a stellar career by any measure. To compare the firing to your wife getting murdered is absolutely pathetic.
He kept using words like massacre and humiliation and catastrophe. 60 minutes has been a long running successful show, but it’s just a television show. It’s no different than Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons. It’s a bunch of people being paid to make the corporation money by selling commercials. They are not special unicorns that we must protect or the beast will devour the sacred forest! They are businesses.
He started crying, multiple times, during the interview. He said that they fired people after working for decades with minimal notice. He said “What kind of company does that?!” I literally screamed in my car, “EVERY COMPANY DOES THAT YOU ASSHOLE!” He was so entitled and so out of touch. I literally got nauseous listening to his non-stop whining. People get fired Scott. It feels like shit and then you dust yourself off and try to move forward. It feels like shit, sometimes for years, but it’s not like having a family member be murdered!
Scott Pelley is emblematic of what I think is wrong with establishment politicians. They are old, white men, stuck in the past. They are way too old to be leading, but feel entitled to keep power (and their jobs) forever. He reminds me of Chuck Schumer. I hope that someone like AOC takes his Senate seat in the 2028 election. These people do not understand how the world is changing and how dangerous the next few decades will be. They are not able to meet the moment.
Scott Pelley said he didn’t even know who Bari Weiss was when they hired her. The interviewer (Lulu Garcia-Navarro) was a little stunned at that. She said Weiss had been a lightning rod in journalism for years. It clearly showed that this guy was not paying attention to the world.
Is 60 minutes going to have a more right-leaning bias? Yes! Obviously. What do you think all of these mergers are going to do? Make the world a better place?? Grow up Scott! Deregulation makes the world shittier. Monopolies are bad for society. You are a journalist for crying out loud. Wake up!
I try not to blog about how much I hate someone or something, but this was beyond the pale.
Other things I hate this month
Since I’m on a roll…
The new mini-series The Count of Monte Crtisto on PBS was TERRIBLE. The pacing was awful. I loved the movie from 2002 with Guy Pearce. It was compact and compelling. The PBS show was more in line with the book, but it made the watching excruciating. They spent an eternity on meaningless B-Reel moments but skipped every character development moment completely.
Additionally, the French version from 2024 was also complete garbage. What the hell was the point of the masks? It’s like a Mission Impossible fake face technique, but in the early 1800’s. Also, they made the hero into a sadistic weird batman villain. The whole thing was awful.
Ahh, I feel better getting that out of my system. Whew!
Whatya think?