Tony Dokoupil’s Tribute to Scott Pelley Feels Like Salt in the Wound

I let my kids fail sometimes. You have to. They’re only five, don’t have a lot of experience, and that’s how they learn. I’m not sending them into traffic with a stick shift they don’t know how to use, yet, like my parents did (both because they’re too young to drive and because doing so scarred me for life). Still, I’m letting them take multiple attempts to clean up their room or do their homework until such things are done correctly, even if I see they aren’t being done that way in the process.

The difference between me as a parent and, say, David Ellison as the owner of a large, once-respected television network is that I don’t want my kids’ rooms or homework to go up in flames because I didn’t like how they were trying to tell the truth about an evil friend of my dad’s. But that’s what’s happening. CBS, particularly CBS News, is being run by a bunch of inexperienced children who keep finding new ways to fail, and no one is stopping them anytime soon.

That failure really broke out into the public this week, as longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley was fired for voicing his displeasure with the direction the show was taking, which included firing the experienced executive producer, Tanya Simon. He told the new executive, Nick Bilton, that he was unqualified (because he is) to his face (hell yes), and Bari Weiss, another inexperienced person who is calling the shots at CBS News, fired him.

While none of it looks good, it’s what Weiss and crew want, so they don’t care. Maybe they’re quietly seething with embarrassment, but publicly, they’re dancing on Pelley’s career, calling him a liar, while also using another inexperienced dweeb to salute him on air. Tony Dokoupil, another loser, who was picked to anchor CBS News in another effort to destroy its standing in the world, offered a bunch of words as tribute to Pelley on the network this week, and it all feels like salt in the wound.

To say that Diokoupil’s promotion is seen as a joke would be an understatement. He is a laughing stock. And the network isn’t doing him any favors. A picture of his new set dressed up for something called Whiskey Fridays with Tony Dokoupil made the rounds on social media this year, was widely mocked, and CBS had to pretend like it didn’t happen. That guy, representing the owners and bosses that he does, acting as if he cares about Scott Pelley? Or the truth? Sure, Jan.