Why No One Trusts Today's Media.

This account of Bari Weiss' book party is telling...

“I’m so proud of her,” said Redstone, the new chair of ­ViacomCBS. The daisy chain that led to Redstone’s invitation exemplified the particular mix of guests who made this night different from all other nights. Redstone and Weiss met at a dinner thrown by Richard Plepler — the former HBO chief executive and patron of the arts — and his wife, Lisa. The Pleplers met Weiss, who is 35, not through some philanthropic group but via Times reporter Nellie Bowles, Weiss’s girlfriend of more than a year.

Plepler had been mulling an HBO documentary about anti-Semitism, and Weiss — galvanized by the mass shooting at Tree of Life, her hometown Pittsburgh congregation — had set aside another book project to rush headlong into a dissection of anti-Semitism everywhere she found it (left, right, Islamic). So the Pleplers wound up sponsoring Weiss’s first book party. “Judaism, journalists, and — what’s the third J?,” asked the writer Boris Fishman, whose stories Weiss has edited at the Times and on Tablet, in an effort to describe the scene. “Oh, the third J is for ‘philanthropy.’ ”
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As the canapés came out (pastrami and pickle on rye squares!), the temperature rose, and the head count approached 140, guests grumbled about Twitter mobs and cheered Weiss’s ­outspokenness — though not all were so outspoken themselves. 

Mad Men creator Matt Weiner, who met Weiss through Tablet founder Alana Newhouse, wouldn’t be quoted. Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger said, “I think she brings a terrific and really brave voice to the Times. I’ll leave it at that.” 

Asked what Weiss had contributed to the opinion pages, section editor James Bennet parried, “Is that a party question?” before offering that “she’s got a lot of guts and ambition, and it’s been a privilege to watch her become the writer she’s meant to be.” Asked a party question — what he thought of the party — he said, “I’m not an expert,” and wished me luck. 

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Frank Bruni, the liberal Times columnist, defended the need for intellectual diversity at the “paper of record.” ...“This party isn’t Twitter,” he said, “and I think it’s easier for diverse people to find points of connection. [Even] if this were a Bret Stephens party, you would see a far greater diversity than you’d expect.”  ... Bruni was quick to say Stephens had told him “many weeks ago” that he would be out of town the week of the party. In her book’s acknowledgments, Weiss writes that “no one taught me more than Bret Stephens."

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Weiss was once married to a man, but before that, at Columbia — where she was known for leading a student campaign against anti-Zionist professors — she dated SNL comedian Kate McKinnon. McKinnon was also at the party; Weiss greeted her with a long hug. In April, Weiss told Vanity Fair, “I don’t trade on my sexual identity in that way for political points.”

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But here in the glow, as Weiss hugged and kissed guests good-bye, she told me she was “having the time of my life.” When I said she seemed unusually extroverted for a writer, she agreed: “My alternative career path is rabbi or agent. Those are the things I love, making matches with people.”

Oy!