One of the pleasures of working at a place like The New Republic is that every so often, something comes in over the transom that just delights us. This poem landed on my computer screen on a December Saturday. Who is this Clement Ogden Friendly? If you know anything about a) Christmas-related poetry, b) great American twentieth-century humorous poets, and c) the history of CBS News, you’ll figure it out. Let’s just say he’s someone I’m very close to.
A Very Bari Christmas
By Clement Ogden Friendly
Things weren’t very festive at old CBS
A wasp’s nest of intrigue, a pool full of cess
Yes, spirits were low in Manhattan (the borough)
At the Tiffany Network of Edward R. Murrow.
“We’re dead,” said a wag. “On our house, there’s a pox
I mean Christ on a cracker, we’re losing to Fox.”
“Well,” said another, “we’re fated to lose
Cuz all we put on every day is fake news.”
“Piss off,” yelled wag one, who didn’t easily embarrass
At edited footage of Kamala Harris.
“You’ll see what we need soon enough,” crowed wag two.
“A strong, mighty wind will quite soon here blow through.”
The old days of Cronkite, of Dans Schorr and Rather
Were best thought of now as just so much blather
There’s a new breed today whose opinions most count
And they hail from a kingdom we call Paramount.
In came Askinasi and Cheeks and Jeff Shell
And with them, to some, a quite ominous smell
But even they were subordinate—and just a bit jealous’n
Envious of the one who was called David Ellison.
“Listen up!” cawed the chief in his first all-hands Zoom
(He cared very little for reading the room)
“Pay attention, Achtung, sit right down and park it
For my sermon on personal liberties and free markets.”
“Oh!” he then added, sounding just a bit cross,
“I almost forgot: And you’ll have a new boss.”
A winner of Pulitzers? A war correspondent?
One whose experience on Capitol Hill is abondant?
“Well, no,” David said. “She’s none of those things;
Carries none of the baggage those boring things bring
They’re all so old hat! And I sense the nation’s
Suspicious of these so-called ‘qualifications’
“What we need is straight thinking. Someone who won’t pause, uh,
Over phonies who lie about tariffs, or Gaza
She’ll be all over those wokesters just like white on rice
So meet your new leader. She’s named Bari Weiss.”
“Well, hi everyone!” Bari said with a smirk.
“Our time is a’wasting. Let’s get right to work.
Here’s a big scoop on which I’ll spare no expense
About alleged nonbinary bathrooms at Spence.
“I also have sources who say confidensh’ly
And again—on this scoop, I will spend exponensh’ly
Cuz I believe this one’ll spread like warm butter
The Chess Club at Wesleyan is funded by Qatar.”
“Uh … boss,” said a staffer, “those sound … super great
But we’ve got some in the works that really can’t wait.
There’s this piece on Tom Homan that looks at him squarely.”
“Love it!” chirped Weiss. “He’s been treated so unfairly!”
And so things did go, through October, November;
There were buyouts for those old enough to remember
Mike Wallace and Khomeini, Scott Pelley on Tenet,
Old-timers who’d someday say, “I was there when it
All started to crumble. I never did count
On this new breed of man from this place, Paramount.”
No—as Christmas approached, the mood wasn’t merry
For many who’d crossed paths with Weiss comma Bari.
But there was staff to be shed, a truth undeniable
A need to defenestrate those unreliable
She had just a certain kind square in her sights
In the pre-Christmas layoffs, she retained all the whites.
There were some at the Times, a few souls misbegotten,
Who knew her m.o. since that piece by Tom Cotton.
And on West 57th, the adventure was new each day
In the reign of the neo-MAGA cantatrice.
“These people,” she told Nellie, “don’t see things through my prism
It’s news to explore the failures of feminism!
And surely no serious-minded news juggernaut
Should waste its time on yet another ‘expose’ of CECOT!”
At the holiday party, she toasted her triumphs
“This running a network—it ain’t rocket science!”
With dissenters being few now, no one went berserk
When she named the new morning news anchor: Erika Kirk.
So that’s where things stood, at old CBS
Where what heldeth the future was anyone’s guess
And where some heads hung low in Manhattan (the borough)
At the Tiffany Network of Edward R. Murrow.
