'Moms for Liberty' Blasted on 60 Minutes Over Book Bans
Plus five more stories to start your week.
Hello, readers. Parker here.
I hope you all had a good and restful weekend. I’m here with your Monday edition of The Present Age.
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First Five: Stories on a Single Topic to Start Your Week
This week’s First Five looks at book bans and a recent interview Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich did with CBS News’ 60 Minutes. It… didn’t go well for them.
“South Carolina School District Reviews, Returns Dozens of Books After Ban Attempt” (60 Minutes, Scott Pelley, Aliza Chasan, Henry Schuster, Sarah Turcotte, 3/4/24)
“Moms for Liberty Had a Chance to Explain Themselves. It Didn’t Go Well.” (Mother Jones, Julianne McShane, 3/4/24)
In an interview with 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley that aired on Sunday night, the group’s two co-founders repeatedly struggled to explain their platform beyond empty talking points that have fueled the culture war in schools. They also failed to present facts to back up various claims.
“Parents send their kids to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology,” co-founder Tiffany Justice told Pelley at one point.
“What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Pelley asked.
“Let’s just say, children in America cannot read,” co-founder Tina Descovich responded, referencing the group’s effort to sharpen its focus on literacy issues, before Pelley’s voiceover narration interrupted to note that the co-founders “often dodged questions with talking points.”
“You’re being evasive,” Pelley shot back.
“Watch 60 Minutes Segment Expose Moms for Liberty’s Unsuccessful Book Ban Push in Conservative Communities” (The Advocate, Christopher Wiggins, 3/4/24)
The segment also touched upon the aftermath of the school board’s decision in Beaufort to follow established procedures for book challenges, a move that led to threats against librarians and board members, part of a larger national story of book bans and the influence of groups like Moms for Liberty.
In their response to the 60 Minutes piece, Moms for Liberty criticized CBS for allegedly “censoring” the content of the books they discussed during the filming, suggesting that the omission was either due to potential FCC violations or deliberate editorial choices. They listed specific books, such as This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, arguing that exposing children to such content without parental consent could be considered “grooming,” though neither of them would admit to using the word despite claiming that Justice runs the group’s social media account.
The electoral defeats of Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates in states like Pennsylvania and Iowa revealed a broader public sentiment against their approach to education and LGBTQ+ issues.
“The Moms for Liberty ‘60 Minutes’ Interview Was Such a Disaster That Their Allies are Scrambling to Do Damage Control” (Media Matters for America, Olivia Little, 3/5/24)
Despite these protests from right-wing media, 60 Minutes showed that it took minimal prodding for Pelley to unmask Moms for Liberty’s façade and expose the group's strategy for what it is — loudly repeating empty talking points about right-wing boogeymen like “critical race theory” or accusations of “groomers” in schools, all intentionally crafted to mobilize its extremist base. However, the illusion is shattered when its leaders are pressed for details because their boogeymen aren’t real.
“Moms for Liberty Co-Founder Slams ‘60 Minutes’ After Contentious Interview” (The Daily Beast, Brett Bachman, 3/5/24)
The interview, recorded in October and released Sunday night, was at times contentious, with Pelley chiding them at various points for being “evasive,” dodging questions with “talking points” and avoiding his repeated questions about the group’s attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans.
But Tiffany Justice told Fox that she believed the interview had been edited deceptively to make her look bad.
“I think that 60 Minutes came in expecting us to be Looney Tunes,” Justice said.
“They wanted some ranting and raving lunatic who was, you know, just wanting to get rid of… teaching and learning in general,” Justice continued. “And we sat down, and we wanted to have an honest conversation with them about the state of literacy in America.”
Justice even shared with the network her own full transcript of the conversation between Pelley, herself, and fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, which included several lengthy asides she presented about the dangers of “gender ideology” and comprehensive sex education in schools—as well as her reading from six different books she had deemed sexually explicit.
What Else I’m Reading
“The True, Dramatic Story of Robert Downey Jr.’s ‘Oppenheimer’ Villain” (The Washington Post, Dan Diamond, 3/10/24)
The scene is a perfect Hollywood finale — karmic justice after Strauss helped destroy physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s career, engineering a 1954 showdown that left the World War II hero stripped of his government security clearance and publicly tarred as a Communist sympathizer. And while Strauss lost his Senate fight, Downey is favored to win an Academy Award on Sunday for his portrayal of the embattled official.
In reality, Strauss’s rejection by the Senate in 1959 was only partly driven by his feud with Oppenheimer. It was shaped much more by presidential politics, a pair of journalists and a particularly vindictive senator — none of which were included in the film.
“Is Journalism Disappearing? These Top Educators Have a Lot to Say About That” (NPR, Fernando Alfonso III, 3/7/24)
The importance of journalism has not left Mochkofsky or any of her higher-ed peers ignorant to the headwinds America's fourth estate faces.
In interviews with [Graciela] Mochkofsky, [the dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York], David Ryfe, director of the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin, David Kurpius, dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School, Mark J. Lodato, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and Charles Seife, director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, each solemnly acknowledged the harsh economic realities plaguing news companies.
“Unionize College Sports And Watch the World Bow Down” (How Things Work, Hamilton Nolan, 3/7/24)
College athletes can be ambassadors for the value of unions; they can be a long-exploited class of workers who finally gets what they deserve; they can be a potent progressive political force in hostile red states; they can be a powerful part of a higher ed union wave that still has a lot of room to run. If Biden is reelected, the NLRB will have time to push to truly solidify the legal status of these unions and set them up for long term stability. The list of priorities for the labor movement is long, I know. But this is one that would pay for itself many times over. The Mercedes auto workers who are trying to organize their plant in Alabama were just forced to sit through a company-sponsored speech by University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. Imagine how nice it would be to have a union of the University of Alabama football players who could stand up and offer their support to the embattled auto workers. That’s the potential. That’s the way we can build this thing from the ground up. The kids are alright. Let’s plug them into this movement and let them rip.
“‘The Locusts Of The Newspaper World’: How Fortress Investment Group Decimated Newspapers Before Gutting Vice” (Defector, Diana Moskovitz, 3/6/24)
Layoffs at Vice have been the norm for years now as verticals came and went, as did TV shows, though the cable channel launched with the input of filmmaker Spike Jonze is still broadcasting. Vice filed for bankruptcy last year, and those documents reveal what did not change at the company over the years of constant layoffs and buyouts: Executives paying themselves well over $700,000 apiece.
Bankruptcy also brought a new name into the Vice ecosystem: Fortress Investment Group, which headed up the consortium of investors that bought the former media empire for about $350 million. Fortress might be a new name to digital media observers, but it's entirely too familiar to anyone following the decimation of local news, in which Fortress played a significant role.
That’s it for me today. As always, thank you so much for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow with another edition of The Present Age.
Parker
The reason these people and Chaya Raichik etc. can't do interviews like this is because the unscripted question-and-answer format is completely outside of their skill set. They need either the lecture format (them with a podium) or the softball format (interviewer feeds them prompts for their own talking points).
It's a little miracle whenever one of them gets bold enough to do this because most of these types will never go near it. You'll never see, for example, Donald Trump or Elon Musk do any kind of interview that isn't a softball with a friendly interviewer. The MFLs and Raichiks and sometimes Jordan Petersons of the world will occasionally let their ego overwhelm their sense to the point that they think they can tackle a real interview, but when they inevitably (and immediately) wind up getting a difficult question they can't answer they just get angry thinking the interviewer is pulling some kind of unfair trickery or witchcraft on them.
Such a disappointment, that "War on Woke." I remember how excited they all were when Glenn Youngkin won (turns out maybe Terry McAuliffe was just a really bad candidate?). They were sure they had the magic formula to turn suburban moms back into Republicans, this was gonna be BIG, sweep the country, Steve Bannon talked about "taking over every school board" with a pre-packaged mix of woke-hatin'.
And then it just fizzled. Disappointing results in the midterms, 70% of Moms For Liberty endorsed candidates lost their school board races and the Loudon County school board (which was supposed to be some sort of national bellwether) switched back to Democratic control with the next election. I hesitate to include Ron DeSantis failed Presidential bid in this list of examples, because his failure might simply be due to the fact that he is a truly repulsive human being, but being Mr. Anti-Woke sure didn't do him much good, did it?
Something to remember the next time they try to gin up the next moral panic, the public doesn't always buy their bullshit.
And none of this is intended to minimize the harm done along the way. Nex Benedict is dead, even though the fear-mongering that led to their brutal beating and death didn't win so many elections for the monsters who promoted it.