Too many stories, not enough time.

Sadness

Sadness is the only word I can come up with on this second anniversary of the pogrom that shocked us all on October 7, 2023. Horror is the only word that conveys my feelings about the celebration of that massacre that erupted that same day. Please, may the people who have been calling for a ceasefire recognize that Israel has accepted Trump’s proposal; Hamas has not. Hamas needs to release the remaining hostages and relinquish power.

Confusion

Congratulations to trans activists who have conflated gay conversion therapy with exploratory therapy that is not sanctioned as “gender affirming therapy.” These are not equivalent, but now the Supreme Court is being pulled into this quagmire. The result is likely to be the resurrection of gay conversion therapy – despite its proven harms – with exploratory therapy, which is what confused young people need in this era of trans madness. Perhaps states should stop trying to legislate solutions to LGB and TQ matters? I don’t know. I feel for gay people who have been harmed and confused young people who are being harmed. Sure, guarantee rights to housing, jobs, education. Then let medical professionals get their heads straight about treatments that are based on actual evidence rather than ideologies.

Possibilities

In the war between cancel culture and billionaires, the latest battle has the billionaires coming out on top, again. Remember when Musk bought Twitter and reinstated accounts that Jack Dorsey had cancelled? That was a good day for free speech. (No, I don’t love everything that Musk has done, but undoing censorship was a good deed.) The thread now is David Ellison… Skydance Media… CBS… The Free Press (aka Bari Weiss)… free speech?

I know that most of my friends paid little attention when Bari Weiss left her position as an opinion columnist at The New York Times in the summer of 2020. Wasting little time, Weiss began publishing “Common Sense” on the Substack platform in January of 2021. Common Sense rebranded as The Free Press in 2022. It now boasts 1.5 million paid subscribers who want a source of information that is neither far right not far left.

I’ve read/watched/listened to The Free Press since its Common Sense days. It has published voices that were shunned by the MSM (mainstream media), voices that I appreciated. Yes, there’s a pro-Israel bias (that mirrors my own), but otherwise, it offers viewpoints that I don’t find elsewhere. Actually, I don’t find pro-Israel voices elsewhere much either. Why is that?

Well, good news for the curious: The Free Press has dropped its paywall this week. Go to thefp.com. Spend some time there and see what you think. Then tune in to CBS News once Bari has had an opportunity to bring in some balanced coverage. Let’s pound cancel culture into dust!