In the United States, there are numerous criminal actions that will earn you a deserved spot among the lowest of the low. Beyond the world of law enforcement, however, there are other social and cultural wrongdoings that in this country, you just don’t do, or else risk the dreaded backlash.
This week, CBS’s Bari Weiss apparently committed the worst of all these social crimes, and her victim was Abdul el Sayed.
Salon reported that CBS “attacked” el Sayed. “MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Hit With Furious Staff Backlash,” declared the Daily Beast. “CBS News Now Performing Oafish Racism On Behalf Of Bari Weiss,” said Defactor.
The New Republic even complained that Weiss “personally” led the “twisted” article, as if it’s controversial for the head of a news platform to be involved in the delivery of news.
So what was Weiss’s misdeed here? According to the Hollywood Reporter, Weiss “over[saw] an article that critics say falsely insinuated Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed had ties to the September 11 attacks.”
Here’s a pro-tip: if you see any left-wing journalist utter the words “critics say,” they’re usually just repacking their own opinions.
But is that true? What was “racist” about this article, “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks,” by Zak Hudak?
What horrors lie within?
Well, the article doesn’t blame el Sayed for 9/11. Instead, the core of the problem seems to be that CBS News shared verified posts that el Sayed posted and then deleted regarding the attack.
In one, el Sayed compared the Americans who died during the attacks to the rising COVID-19 death toll, and in another, el Sayed hoped that since more Americans died from COVID-19 than from 9/11, “We’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health [and] against poverty … like we launched a global War on Terror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.” In yet another post on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, el Sayed mourned those lost during the attacks “perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith,” and then declared that the following day, he would mourn the greater scale of deaths, injuries, and infrastructural devastation “perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
What sent the left-wing media into a tailspin wasn’t this anti-American nonsense, but that a media outlet reported on it.
And why does this matter? Well, because Islamists — and el Sayed is an Islamist — can only politically survive with the support of this same left-wing media that is willing to climb into the mouth of the wolf and gaslight the entire country into believing that Islamists don’t mean precisely what they say.
While this could be seen as just another example of “Republicans pounce,” we’ve gone beyond talking about Republicans and Democrats, and have entered the arena of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, reality, and fantasy.
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The fact is that el Sayed said those things about 9/11. If that’s embarrassing for his campaign — and it should be — that’s his problem, and not the problem of Weiss or CBS News.
Don’t let them gaslight you into thinking that it’s racist to simply hold a mirror up to his face.
Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) is a syndicated columnist. You can find his work on Substack.