By Becket Adams
Sunday, August 02, 2026
One takeaway from the Very Online right’s weird crusade
against Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is this: We have become a
dangerously incurious people.
All of us have grown so accustomed to assuming the worst
of others that we leap into panic and rage without asking questions.
Had the weird right bothered to ask questions or simply
waited to see the film, they would have found, instead of “woke” politics, a
three-hour story that upholds these values as necessary to civilization:
family, law and order, duty, honor, service, chastity, respect for private
property, free trade, tradition, and the examined life.
In Christopher Nolan’s movie, Odysseus bemoans the loss
of trust.
In real life, we should bemoan our loss of curiosity.
You see it everywhere, most notably in politics. We saw
it just last week when CBS News announced that it had hired longtime New
York Times columnist Ross Douthat as a 60 Minutes contributor.
Douthat is a conservative. Besides his work at the Times,
he is also a contributing editor and film critic for National Review.
He is also one of the most fair-minded people working in
media today, his evenhandedness the secret of his thoughtful and insightful
commentary.
But rather than asking what his specific duties at CBS
will entail, the too-online types jumped immediately into anger. Rather than
wait to see whether he fits the role at 60 Minutes, they embraced
indignation.
“Making Ross Douthat a 60 Minutes correspondent is
the least self-aware thing an opinion journalist hired to run a TV news network
could do,” complained former Obama adviser Dan
Pfeiffer.
This is harsher than anything he has ever said about the
networks handing out news and opinion shows to former government mouthpieces,
including George Stephanopoulos and Jen Psaki.
A headline in the Daily Beast read: “Right-Wing Religious Zealot
Unveiled as New Star of ‘60 Minutes.’”
It’s little wonder that People Inc. is once again looking
for someone to take the Daily Beast off its hands.
“What will Ross Douthat report upon at ‘60 Minutes’? How,
very secretly, Netanyahu spends minutes of each day not killing Gaza children?”
complained columnist Ted Rall.
As a bit of fun context: Rall once wrote an article
predicting that former President Joe Biden would resign halfway through his
term and turn the reins over to Vice President Kamala Harris. This obviously
didn’t happen. Biden had to be dragged from the spotlight, staying in office
even as he handed off the nomination.
The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last contributed
only by mocking Douthat’s appearance.
“Say what you will about Ross Douthat, but I’ve always
maintained that he’s a tremendous reporter with a face for TV,” he remarked,
his hands no doubt tired from the Graham Platner hagiographies of earlier this
year. “CBS News is in good hands.”
Yes, yes. We’ve heard this all before.
This is something like the fifth or sixth CBS
News-related outrage cycle since October 2025, when Bari Weiss took over as the
network’s editor in chief.
We had a freak-out over a story being held until it was better sourced and more thoroughly reported, a meltdown
over CBS laying off a 69-year-old fossil of the big-three
network era because of his hostility toward executive producer Nick Bilton, and
even a baby outrage cycle over Weiss having the nerve to ask CBS News employees
what they do during their work hours.
Douthat is a fair person. He conducts thoughtful and fair
interviews. He is not a firebrand. He is not a carnival barker.
He is also one of the more intellectually honest and
consistently correct writers in the Times’ recent pool of columnists,
his political prognostications hitting the mark more often than not.
Recall that ahead of the 2024 presidential election he
correctly predicted that Donald Trump would receive around 312 electoral votes
and Harris around 226.
The same people complaining today were then beside
themselves with offense.
“What’s funny about Ross isn’t that he’s almost always
wrong,” said Last, presumably shouting at his phone, “but that he’s
almost always wrong in the same direction. It’s almost like he’s trying to make
the people who read him dumber. But great job, NYT. Keep publishing Ross. He’s
adding tons of value for your subscribers. Somehow.”
Trump went on to receive exactly 312 electoral votes;
Harris received exactly 226.
I can’t say how Douthat’s tenure at 60 Minutes will
go, or how long it will last. His work at the Times would indicate he’ll
do well.
But let’s find out.
Let’s be curious.
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