The long-threatened merger between Warner Brothers and Paramount seems to have been put on pause… for now. Plans to combine the two major entertainment entities are shady for many reasons, but the most dangerous aspect of the deal concerns CBS News EIC Bari Weiss taking the reins of yet another news network, and all the MAGA-aligned consequences that come with that dubious appointment.
Weiss, a “gender-critical” lesbian whose Free Press outlet is somehow still going strong, likely wouldn’t have only used the merger to further compromise the newsroom with pro-Tr*mp propaganda. According to some juicy entertainment gossip, her first move as CNN head would have been to fire beloved Bravo host Andy Cohen, a blow for non-self-hating gays everywhere.
According to Rob Shuter’s industry insider Substack, the merger, if eventually successful, could mean that Cohen’s days at CNN are “winding down.”
“Andy is a liberal New Yorker who has never hidden his disdain for D*nald Tr*mp,” a source told Shuter earlier this month. “Many insiders don’t see him fitting into the next chapter.”
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Well, if your goal is create a state media, then yes, that makes sense. Cohen is enough of a legacy figure that he doesn’t have to hide his personal views, and that probably wouldn’t jive with Weiss’ plans to uplift certain aspects of the MAGA agenda.
“Andy’s authenticity is his brand,” another anonymous source told Shuter. “He’s funny, fearless, and says exactly what’s on his mind. That’s made him enormously successful, but it’s not necessarily the profile the new ownership is expected to embrace.”
We saw a similar ousting of beloved liberal comic Stephen Colbert earlier this year—though Colbert got the final, hilarious word via a costly piece of music use, the end of his show spoke to a dramatic, painful shifting of network priorities in the MAGA era. If Cohen is next, his own version of a final middle finger to Weiss surely won’t be as subtle.
Cohen also won’t be alone in the fight: his longtime friend and co-worker Anderson Cooper has also been engaged in a high profile tiff with Weiss for her Tr*mp-aligned tactics at CBS News, including the gutting of the longstanding hard news hour 60 Minutes. According to insiders, Cooper “refused” to work with Weiss, whose conservative views continue to transform once-beloved news sources nto genteel versions of Fox News.
For now, it looks like Cohen’s job is safe, though the merger is still in danger of going through, a move that could constitute a monopoly and threaten what little neutrality is left in mainstream news reporting.
But even if Weiss, David Ellison, and the Tr*mp-aligned powers that be are successful in creating a mega news trust, newly-independent figures like Cohen and Cooper—not to mention reporters with established non-associated platforms like Don Lemon—will still have the ear, and eyes, of the people.
Usually we hate to see gays pitted against lesbians in a battle royale, but if it’s a fight between legacy news gays and a Tr*mp-aligned, anti-trans pundit or the soul of the country, I think we all know whose side we’re on.
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