Maher at the opening night of Web Summit Qatar 2024 in Doha. (Harry Murphy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
I used to be quite fond of NPR. Each time I’d tune in, I’d be treated to calm, reassuring voices, occasional folk music and high-minded liberalism. Yes, it was biased — but in a tolerable, occasionally hilarious way, still relaying facts about the world, occasionally even letting an always-qualified “conservative” voice on its airwaves. Yes, we used to refer to “All Things Considered” as “All Things Distorted,” but it was a tease, not an indictment.
And so when I read the NYT story about the new NPR CEO, Katherine Maher, being criticized for past tweets that were “embracing liberal causes,” it felt like a blast of ‘90s nostalgia. Who running the MSM doesn’t “embrace liberal causes”? Ditto the WSJ’s description: that the tweets “indicate liberal leanings.” Or the Washington Post, which wrote that Maher’s tweets included calling Tump a “deranged racist” and a photo of her “wearing a Biden hat, or wistfully daydreaming about hanging out with Kamala D. Harris.”
Nothing to see here. Nothing new. Just a liberal CEO getting blasted by a far-right activist (in this case, Chris Rufo), after an NPR stalwart, Uri Berliner, wrote a public critique of NPR. A tale as old as the MSM.
But of course, the MSM is lying — by obfuscating Maher’s politics and her tweets to make her views seem far milder than they are. She is not, in fact, a liberal of any kind. She is — as the tweets and the record prove — a near-parody of an illiberal leftist, dedicated to replacing open and free debate with benign censorship, and to constructing a journalistic regime rooted not in the pursuit of truth but in the urgent task of dismantling “white supremacy.”
She tweeted “white silence is complicity” in June 2020. She went after James Bennet for “platforming” Tom Cotton. She’s frustrated by the robustness of the First Amendment. She refers to her “cis white mobility privilege.” She chided Hillary for saying “‘boy and girl’ — it’s erasing language for non-binary people.” She even self-flagellates over her own “trans-erasure.” She is Titania McGrath — Andrew Doyles’ comic Twitter parody of a deranged SJW. Literally. Matt Taibbi — peace be upon him — has a delicious side-by-side comparison.
All of this, of course, is precisely why Maher was selected to be NPR’s CEO, just as Claudine Gay was picked to run Harvard. Maher’s predecessor, John Lansing, was clear about the recent change in NPR’s mission: “When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism, we can be agents of change.” In 2020, he said:
The leaders in public media — starting with me — must be aware of how we ourselves have benefitted from white privilege in our careers. … And we must commit ourselves — body and soul — to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions. We must do all this not as a ‘project’, not as an extracurricular activity, we must do this because, by definition, it is our work.
If you want to understand why NPR is now cringe, look no further. If you want to understand why social justice is best understood as a religious cult, ditto. Body and soul? The journalist sounds like a revivalist.
Maher’s tweets perfectly define our new cultural overlords. And I’m not just talking about tweets like this typical one, as cities burned and countless small businesses were destroyed in the mayhem of the summer of 2020:
I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property. Also, reporting on extinguished shoe store fires is just lazy reporting. … Cheesecakes are insured; the right to be black and breathe is without measure.
Maher’s full tweetage is a deep dive into the successor ideology. First and foremost, it means an end to the Enlightenment idea of empirical truth, discoverable by a curious human being, regardless of his or her identity. This idea is, in fact, a “white male Westernized construct,” as Maher once explained in an interview. “Seeking the truth, and seeking to convince others of the truth, might not be the right place to start,” Maher argued in her TED talk. “In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction … We all have different truths. They’re based on things like: where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us.”
That’s why, in Maher’s woke mind, you have to start not with an individual but with an identity. A white reporter is not interchangeable with a black reporter, or a female reporter with a male reporter, and only black reporters know the truth about race, just as only “nonbinary” or trans people can speak about gender. There is no objective truth; there are only narratives based on unfalsifiable “lived experiences”; and the job of NPR is to elevate the narratives that help dismantle the racist, heterosexist, patriarchal, transphobic regime of “whiteness” — and suppress those that don’t.
Those, like Ezra Klein on Threads and Kara Swisher on the Dishcast this week,who argue that the CEO has no editorial input, have to acknowledge that the content of NPR has obviously changed — exactly along the lines laid out by the last CEO and championed by the new one. They have to acknowledge that the last CEO argued that dismantling whiteness was, “by definition, our work.” Maher is aligned with the new NPR formula.
And that formula is why the hiring, firing and promotion practices at NPR are now primarily about race and sex and gender identity, and why NPR even catalogues the race and sex of every source in every story. The journalists themselves are siloed into identity groups at NPR. Among them:
MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (Black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).
This marination in identity politics, now common in the MSM, changes people. It makes journalists representatives of various groups, which helps explain why, in covering social issues, the MSM now takes its terms and language directly from outside activists. And that’s how the content of journalism gets shaped internally: by minority journalists and “allies” on staff calling out any deviation from the correct narratives, and always demonizing the author as a racist, sexist, transphobe and the rest. Which is, of course, not just unpleasant, but career death. And so the bubble tightens.
No surprise then that Maher’s own response to Berliner reflexively called him a racist: “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Code Switch, the critical race theory show on NPR, responded to Berliner’s critique thus:
[S]ome humble advice from someone who’s spent the last 15 years studying the dynamics of racism: Don’t get thrown off by the smoke and mirrors. Instead, when someone says they’re ‘just asking questions,’ think long and hard about whether those questions ever needed answering to begin with.
The writer targeted Berliner’s view that no one at NPR ever even questioned the idea that “systemic racism” was a fact in America in 2024. The response:
In regard to the question posed by the essay: We know that systemic racism exists.
Not my italics. But that merely confirms Berliner’s point, does it not? Ditto for a rambling essay in Slate, which argued that NPR wasn’t woke, but finds “the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought.” But, as Taibbi noted, isn’t that precisely what Berliner was saying: that at NPR, elite ideology is passed off as empirical truth? Katie Herzog, a lifelong NPR listener, explains:
It doesn’t bother me that NPR talks about race. It bothers me than NPR talks about race to the exclusion of everything else, and that they have one acceptable narrative about race that no one ever deviates from. … They’re so entrenched in their worldview that they don’t even see that they have a worldview.
Berliner, a lone public voice of dissent, quit NPR this week after 25 years. As Jeryl Bier quipped, “NPR, under fire for tolerating only left-leaning viewpoints, suspends editor who wrote an article criticizing NPR for tolerating only left-leaning viewpoints.” No one came to his defense. Why would they? Berliner wrote in his resignation, “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new C.E.O.”
The point I have been trying to make for years now is that wokeness is not some racier version of liberalism, merely seeking to be kinder and more inclusive. It is, in fact, directly hostile to liberal values; it subordinates truth to ideology; it judges people not by their ability but by their identity; and it regards ideological diversity as a mere dog-whistle for bigotry. Maher has publicly and repeatedly avowed support for this very illiberalism. If people with these views run liberal institutions, the institutions will not — cannot — remain liberal for very long. And they haven’t. Elite universities are turning into madrassas, and media is turning into propaganda.
Yes, Fox News is worse. The right-leaning media, apart from the WSJ, is woefully lacking in solid reporting and sober argument. But that’s why it matters that the big fish remain liberal. And it’s one thing when propaganda pervades private institutions, but at NPR, you and I are also subsidizing it with our tax dollars. I fail to see how that is in any way fair or sustainable — for its listeners or donors.
NPR’s biggest staff cuts since the Great Recession and its rapid decline in listenership — while radio and podcasts are booming everywhere else — are telling us something. It’s just something that the smug fanatics now running the place don’t want to hear.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my long chat with Kara Swisher on the evolution of the internet and today’s tycoons; a short piece on the absence of MSM coverage of the Cass Report; reader dissent over my column on that report; more dissents over Israel and other comments on recent pods; six notable quotes for the week, including an Yglesias Award for the Babylon Bee; 16 pieces on Substack we enjoyed on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of a pet iguana; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
A newcomer writes:
Your piece on Big Trans finally got me to subscribe. I’ve followed you off and on through countless publications and internet ventures over the past decade or so, but your recent commentary on medical interventions on gender non-conforming children got me on board (at least for a little while). I’m very much a San Francisco gay man (f-slur to the max), with associated liberal ideals, and while I do support trans identities, especially after a person enters adulthood, I too am worried about children deciding on medical transitioning before they have time to just explore themselves and their lives. And it all sorta feels homophobic too.
I was very much a sissy gay kid and came out at 13. And I myself questioned my gender identity in my formative years. Looking back now, as a very comfortably a queer cis-male in his 40s, I embrace my feminine aspects — and honor them — while still being very comfortable with being a male and in my masculinity too.
One of my great personal gay elders is Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall, especially for his Buddy Cole character. His revived Cole monologues echo your sentiments, so I thought you’d appreciate this video:
Thanks so much! Money quote from Buddy Cole:
I saw this one [talk show] recently, where they had this little boy on who was being bullied ruthlessly at school because he liked to wear dresses. They kept referring to him as “transgender.” You could tell the parents were thrilled. A transexual is so much more chic than a plain old sissy.
The Deafening Silence
Paid subscribers can read my followup on the MSM’s coverage of the Cass Report.
Heads Up
Chris and I are taking a spring break next week. I just arrived in England to visit family and friends (and some bluebells), and Chris is traveling to Oregon to visit family for his birthday. So see you the Friday after next.
New On The Dishcast: Kara Swisher
Kara is a journalist who has covered the business of the Internet since 1994. She was the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, and she's worked for the NYT, the WaPo, and the WSJ. She’s now the host of the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” and the co-host of the “Pivot” podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York Magazine. Her new memoir is Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. It’s a fun read, and it was good to hang out with her again after many years. We were both web pioneers and it’s good to remember those days of the blogosphere.And we get fiery at times.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — debating how woke the MSM really is, and how readers are smarter than journalists. (Money quote from Kara: “I feel like a conservative at NPR events, and I’m a lesbian from San Francisco.”) That link also takes you to listener debate over the episodes with Eli Lake on Israel, Richard Dawkins on religion, and Christian Wiman on suffering. And some lighter fare at the end — on Truman and two gay comedians.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Adam Moss on the artistic process, Johann Hari on Ozempic, Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Noah Smith on the economy, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Bill Maher on everything, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Here’s a rec:
Also, you should consider having on the great Oren Cass.
Oren is coming on this summer. Another rec:
I’m very much looking forward to your (possible) podcast on Oakeshott. A very long time ago, I was talking to John Casey at Caius in his rooms, and he kept referring to some guy named “Oakeshott,” of whom I’d never heard (though of course I did not confess my ignorance). Back in those days, Casey was running the white-tie “Oakeshott Ball” as his own private shindig. I can’t imagine it’s still going. My fondest memory of it was meeting Claus von Bülow, then in the news for certain delicate matters unrelated to Oakeshott.
We just booked the Oakeshott scholar Elizabeth Corey to come on the pod, so stay tuned.
Big Trans? Dear me. Forget about the culture war for a moment and think critically about the conspiracy theory that a trillion dollar global industry has decided to maximize its profits by trying to increase sales of generic drugs to a group that historically made up less than 0.5% of the population and now, after decades of relentless propaganda designed solely to juice the market, might just be pushing 1%. The VP of Sinister Schemes would be laughed out of the boardroom with such a weak pitch. It’s patently absurd.
As is the “patient for life” myth. I’m a 20-year, post-op trans person. I am not taking hormones or any other medications, and I have not done so for almost a decade. I am fit and healthy and medically unremarkable. Amazingly, trans people are just like anyone else: some of us take medication and some of us don’t. It’s entirely uncontroversial to reduce HRT with age, in line with the risks. Please don’t perpetuate the notion that trans healthcare is some kind of radical experiment, as if we only popped into existence a decade ago.
Read my response here, along with another dissent. As always, keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. From a new subscriber:
I continue to be grateful for your insistence on publishing dissenting views, and I admire the readers who so regularly provide them. If other news outlets did this as thoughtfully and faithfully as the Dish, they’d dramatically increase their credibility.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the major Iranian whiff against Israel, military dolphins, and the Genius Basic Income. A few examples:
Have you heard about Tickle v. Giggle, the new trans case out of Australia? Enjoy.
The “Sex at Dawn guy” lists the reasonsnot to be non-monogamous — and tackles dissent from readers.
If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Recently it was revealed that there are two super-sleuths in Ann Arbor (the newer one prefers the moniker “the amaize-ing sleuth”). The two of them met IRL:
Less than a week after our two closest celestial bodies perfectly aligned in the sky (well, almost: maximum of the eclipse here was 98.7%), the two Ann Arbor super-sleuths met in a place fittingly called the Windows Lounge:
We had a delightful and wide-ranging conversation about pattern recognition, music, AI, copyright, foreign languages and scripts, children, fulfillment, and much more. It goes to show how much common ground two people from opposite ends of the academic spectrum can find. Thanks to Chris for putting us in touch!
