Comedian Tim Dillon has been having a field day with Bari Weiss and her chaotic run as editor-in-chief of CBS News, turning what he describes as a slow-motion institutional collapse into recurring comedy gold on his show.
The trouble started when the Ellison family acquired Paramount and installed Weiss at the helm of CBS News, reportedly paying $150 million to acquire her online outlet, The Free Press, as part of the arrangement. Dillon wasted no time pointing out the absurdity of the valuation.
“Larry Ellison’s son’s buying the Free Press, the very important Free Press blog,” he said on his show. “That powerhouse conglomerate media company is worth $250 million, by the way. So the Tim Dillon show is apparently worth a billion. Where’s my money?”
The results at CBS have been, by most accounts, rough. Ratings have dropped to new lows, prominent anchors and producers have departed or been let go, and reports surfaced that Weiss has essentially barricaded herself in a secured suite on the sixth floor of the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, guarded by a security detail costing the Ellisons an estimated $10,000 per day.
Dillon did not let that detail pass quietly.
“You know you are doing a good job in an institution when you are afraid of your staff,” he said. “The mark of a great boss is to be ushered into a building with security and then ushered out again like the president.”
The relationship between Dillon and Weiss was not always adversarial. She appeared on his podcast and hired him for an event. Things soured, according to Dillon, when Weiss texted him to complain that he was platforming guests she felt were promoting antisemitism. He found the accusation frustrating given her public positions against cancel culture and ideological purity tests.
“She’s applying the same principles she supposedly didn’t like,” he said. “If you question something like Israel, you h*te Jewish people, which is insane. I thought she was the one saying we should have nuance.”
Once the CBS deal was announced, Dillon took it as a green light. He began doing a recurring impression of Weiss at the CBS news desk, thanking the Ellison family and noting with mock sincerity that delivering “fearless, unbiased journalism” was the whole point.
“Is Bari Weiss interested in an unbiased look at the Middle East?” he said during one bit. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Perhaps not.”
Dillon’s take on the situation is that the demolition of CBS was the assignment all along. “She was put there to destroy it,” he said. “She wasn’t put there to make it work. And she’s doing it. She’s stepping into her truth.”
With Weiss reportedly set to take over CNN as well, Dillon seems genuinely entertained by what comes next.
