By Charles C. W. Cooke
Thursday, March 28, 2024
If, in apt deference to the growing number of grey
patches in my beard, a plucky, young, ink-stained buck were to ask me if I had
any advice for conservatives who wish to work within the bowels of our
mainstream media, I think I would say, simply, “Get a prenup.”
From a distance, this idea sounds rather absurd — like a
union filled with graphic designers, or an op-ed department that abhors debate
— but, at this stage, it is probably sensible nevertheless. Once is an
accident, twice is a coincidence, but whatever this is seems both deliberate and
predictable. Kevin Williamson wrote one piece for the Atlantic before
he was canned for comments he’d made years before he started there. Ronna
McDaniel made a single appearance on Meet the Press, and was then
fired for reasons that had been just as true the week before. Shane
Gillis was ejected from Saturday Night Live before
he’d spoken a word on air. Adam Rubenstein lasted longer at the New York Times than
those three, but he did not survive his first run-in with the mob. To avoid
that list growing longer, those who worry that they are eligible for the same
treatment ought to start raising the stakes.
Explaining why McDaniel had been dismissed, the chairman
of NBC Universal’s News Group, Cesar Conde, proposed that “no organization,
particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned.” At
best, those words are euphemisms for “homogenous”; at worst, they are cynical
excuses for illiberalism. Either way, they are indicative of the culture in
which we now live. The more high-minded among us seem to believe that, by dint
of some dark, ineluctable magic, the passage of time will serve as a remedy to
that culture. I have fastened onto a different solution — or, rather, to a bag
full of different solutions. Those solutions are green, they feature
photographs of Benjamin Franklin and Ulysses S. Grant, and they can be used by
their owners to sustain themselves if they suddenly find themselves out of a
job. Yesterday, I was told that Ronna McDaniel intends to sue NBC for the full
amount of her two-year contract. Good for her. Next time, though, she should
get it all in writing before the shouting even starts.
Such an arrangement would have two complementary
benefits. The mere act of negotiating it would help to inform aspirants as to
whether the employer who is seeking their time is serious about the move; and,
if said employer were serious, the resulting accord would insure said aspirants
against the manifold risks that are associated with the move. As ought to be
obvious by now, I have no interest in working for the New York Times,
but I have often thought that if I were to be offered a role at that outlet, I
would demand a contract that paid out a $5 million lump sum if I were fired as
the result of an ideological outcry, that defined what such an ideological
outcry would look like, and, as a final prophylactic measure, that contained
the rough headlines and broad-brush arguments of my first 15 or so columns. In
this drafting process, there would no doubt be some give and take — that is the
beauty of contracts — but, by going through that give-and-take, I’d glean a
decent sense of the paper’s resolve. It is probable that, if the paper wanted
to get rid of me on some pretext, it would still find a way to do so anyway,
but, with a prenup in place, it would at least have to work hard at the
endeavor, and, legal fees and jury pools being what they are, it would end up
with a greater incentive to settle or to ’fess up than would otherwise be the
case.
Or, to put it in terms that might make sense to Cesar
Conde: It would ensure that my relationship with the powers that be remained
“cohesive and aligned.”
That the talking heads who prompted McDaniel’s departure
are disingenuous ought to be abundantly obvious to anyone with a pulse. I hold
no brief for the woman whatsoever, but I am perceptive enough to know when I am
being lied to, and, here, I am being lied to. If, as her critics insist, the
problem with Ronna McDaniel is not that she is an emissary of conservatism or
of the Republican Party but that she is a flack for Donald Trump, then they
will presumably be keen to prove that by demanding that she be immediately
replaced with a right-winger who does not have any of the same baggage. That no
such appeals have been forthcoming has told me all I need to know, which is
that McDaniel has been used by the network’s loudest voices as a means by which
to display their own political immaculacy and to burnish their own credentials.
In a free country, one cannot definitively prevent that sort of thing — but one
can make it a great deal more expensive.
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