Rosie O’Donnell is apparently very concerned about ideological bias in American media — just not the kind that dominated much of legacy television news for decades.
The comedian, who is spending this week guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, unloaded on Paramount CEO David Ellison and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss during an interview with Variety, warning that Ellison gaining control of CNN would supposedly represent a dangerous consolidation of conservative influence over American media.
The problem with O’Donnell’s narrative is that Bari Weiss is a particularly bizarre person to cast as some kind of MAGA conservative operative.
Weiss has repeatedly described herself as a centrist or even center-left, supported Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, supports same-sex marriage, is pro-choice and spent years publicly criticizing President Trump.
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Apparently, in Rosie O’Donnell’s political universe, opposing progressive ideological orthodoxy is now enough to make someone functionally indistinguishable from the far right.
O’Donnell Warns About Ellison Controlling CNN
O’Donnell’s comments came as Paramount continues pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
The former The View personality compared the prospect of Ellison controlling CNN to Fox News essentially taking over the American news business. She called the situation “tragic.”
She then turned her attention to Weiss and the changes at CBS News.
O’Donnell blamed Weiss for what she sees as the destruction of 60 Minutes and declared of the CBS News editor-in-chief, “I don’t know how she can live with herself.” She also warned that history would remember those who stood alongside Trump.
Then came the inevitable Na*i comparison.
Rosie O’Donnell hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! – ABC
“This Bari Weiss person, I don’t know how she can live with herself,” Rosie said. “There are people who are sidling up to him and history will record all of their names, what they did, and who they stood next to. If you’re in a room with 10 Na*is at a table and you’re the only one who’s not, there’s a pretty good chance you’re a Na*i.”
There is another rather glaring problem with O’Donnell reaching for that particular analogy: Bari Weiss is Jewish. Weiss has spoken and written extensively about her Jewish identity and antisemitism, including in her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
She also grew up attending Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 Jewish worshippers were later killed in the 2018 antisemitic attack. For O’Donnell to start invoking Na*is while condemning a prominent Jewish journalist who has spent years publicly confronting antisemitism is, at minimum, an astonishingly tone-deaf choice of rhetoric.
It’s also an extraordinary escalation considering the actual political history of the woman O’Donnell is condemning.
Bari Weiss Is Not Some MAGA Conservative
The effort to portray Bari Weiss as a conventional conservative — much less some Trump loyalist — falls apart rather quickly when examining Weiss’ own well-established political positions.
The Associated Press reported after Weiss took control of CBS News that she has described herself as a centrist and previously said she was politically “homeless.” AP noted that Weiss criticized Trump, opposed the Second Amendment, and supported NFL players protesting during the national anthem.
Her presidential voting history is even more revealing.
Bari Weiss laughs in an interview with Jerry Seinfeld – YouTube, The Free Press
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Weiss has said she voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 before voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. AP reported that Trump’s 2016 victory initially left Weiss sobbing, although she later acknowledged that her reaction to Trump had become excessive and subsequently agreed with some of his policies.
NPR reported that Weiss has described herself both as a “radical centrist” and a “center-left-on-most-things” person. NPR also noted that Weiss has identified herself as pro-choice, pro-Israel, and supportive of same-sex marriage.
Those are not exactly the credentials of a stereotypical MAGA Republican.
Bari Weiss addresses The Free Press working with Paramount – YouTube, The Free Press
What Weiss has become is one of the most prominent critics of progressive ideological conformity within journalism.
And that distinction seems to be disappearing for people like O’Donnell.
Weiss’ crime in the eyes of much of the modern left is not that she has spent her career promoting traditional conservatism. It’s that she has increasingly challenged progressive institutions from outside their ideological bubble.
Weiss Left The New York Times Over Ideological Conformity
Weiss’ split with the institutional left became particularly public in 2020, when she resigned from The New York Times.
In her resignation letter, Weiss explained that she had originally been hired to help bring ideological diversity to the paper’s opinion section, including centrists, conservatives, and voices that would not traditionally feel welcome at the newspaper.
She later accused colleagues of bullying her over her views and described an environment in which ideological conformity increasingly dictated what could be discussed.
Weiss specifically identified herself as a centrist in that resignation letter.
Bari Weiss addresses The Free Press audience – YouTube, The Free Press
Yet six years later, simply challenging the progressive consensus appears to have been enough for O’Donnell to lump Weiss into a broader warning involving Trump, Fox News, and Na*is.
There is another inconvenient detail for O’Donnell.
NPR noted that The Free Press, the publication founded by Weiss, criticized the Trump administration when it pressured ABC over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! — the very program O’Donnell is now guest-hosting.
In other words, the supposedly dangerous conservative media figure O’Donnell is raging against defended the principle of keeping government pressure away from the show currently providing O’Donnell with her national television platform.
That makes the caricature considerably harder to sustain.
Disagreement With Progressives Does Not Make Someone Conservative
There are legitimate arguments to be made about Weiss’ stewardship of CBS News.
Her lack of traditional television news experience has been criticized. Major personnel changes at CBS have generated controversy. Former employees have publicly challenged her editorial decisions. Nobody is obligated to support everything Weiss has done since taking the job.
But that is different from pretending her political and personal histories don’t exist.
Weiss’ rise is arguably less evidence of some grand conservative takeover of journalism than evidence of how dramatically the ideological boundaries of establishment media shifted.
A woman who supported Clinton and Biden, is pro-choice, supports same-sex marriage, has criticized Trump, and calls herself a centrist can now be treated as a right-wing extremist because she criticizes DEI programs, progressive activism, censorship, and ideological conformity.
Rosie O’Donnell hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! – ABC
That says considerably more about the people attacking Weiss than it does about Weiss.
O’Donnell appears unable — or unwilling — to distinguish between a conservative and a liberal who no longer agrees with every demand of the progressive left.
And once the conversation has reached the point where Bari Weiss is being discussed alongside Na*i analogies, the argument has ceased to be particularly serious.
O’Donnell may believe she is warning Americans about ideological extremism taking over the media. Instead, she’s provided a fairly compelling demonstration of the ideological intolerance Weiss has spent years criticizing.
How do you feel about Rosie O’Donnell and her comments about Bari Weiss? Sound off and let us know!
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