The Dog That Isn't Barking In Ottawa

I haven't commented on the Canadian trucker protests here, because so far, I don't think I've had anything to add beyond what Canadian independent media and other observers worldwide have already said. If they get any of it wrong, that's on them. But as of the middle of last night, one thing has struck me, the dog that isn't barking.

As far as I can see, the Ottawa civil authorities, backed up by the prime minister himself, have issued the following bill of particulars against the truckers:

• They are boorish
• They are violating traffic laws
• They are violating noise ordinances
• They are maintaining dangerous stocks of gasoline and propane
• They are conducting psychological warfare
• They are infiltrated and financed by anti-Canadian Trumpists from across the border
• They are destroying Canadian democracy
• They are un-Canadian
• They are racists, Confederate secessionists, and Nazis.
• UPDATE: Sedition and treason

I may have left some out, but this is the most comprehensive list I can think of as of this writing. I will add others if anyone can suggest more. And I venture no opinion as to the truth or falsity of any allegation; I agree with those Canadians who say that Canada is a sovereign country that is entitled to work out its own political disputes.

The one observation I make is that there's a dog here that isn't barking. Nobody, north or south of the border that I've been able to locate, has said the trucker demonstrations are COVID superspreader events.

As of mid 2020, rightly or wrongly, US public health authorities and legacy media were insisting that Trump rallies be discontinued specifically because they were thought to be superspreader events. Although the same authorities and media tolerated BLM riots, the right at least accused them of hypocrisy by not labeling them as superspreader events. By the same token, throughout 2020 and 2021, even family holiday gatherings were discouraged on the basis that they were potential superspreader events. It took a US Supreme Court order to establish that religious services were not superspreader events.

So why, in Canada which up to now has had among the more stringent COVID regimes in the world, are no public health authorities denouncing the trucker protests as superspreader events? As far as I can tell, Nova Scotia forbade roadside gatherings in support of truckers traveling to Ottawa on a broad "safety" basis, possibly implying that people could get sick that way, or maybe just get hit by a runaway 18-wheeler, but even if there was an underlying public health justification, this was a distant event in a small province.

And there are, as far as I can tell, noise Karens in Ottawa itself, but no mask Karens. I made a quick survey of photos from Ottawa and found that by and large, nobody but police are wearing masks, but of the arrests that have been made, none appears to be for mask violations, nor indeed for singing the national anthem unmasked in a crowd, which would normally be a superspeader event, every bit as dangerous as chanting Let's Go Brandon in a stadium.

I take this as an acknowledgement, both tacit and universal, that the policy dispute over COVID has become exclusively political. The public health jusification has been effectively abandoned, even as political -- not public health -- authorities in even blue US states, the heretofore curfew-loving Canadian province of Quebec, and several European countries are announcing the phaseout of COVID restrictions. In California, Gov Newsom has announced the phaseout of its mask mandate -- he faces reelection this year -- while LA County public health authorities -- not politically accountable -- insist masks will remain.

I make no predictions and make no judgments. I simply observe that even Canada has acknowledged that the debate has become political, not scientific. Prime Minister Trudeau himself has declared the threat is now Nazis and US Trumpists, not a virus. I do, however, agree with the characterization from US observers that the prime minister looks like an elite cupcake.

What Can Men In Black Teach Us About Meritocracy?

My thinking abouit trhe Penn women's swim team has inevitably brought me back to the selection scene at the beginning of the whole Men in Black franchise. For those who aren't familiar with it, the premise of the series is that the space aliens have already arrived, but the government has worked out a super-secret agreement with the aliens to let them stay on the planet if they're careful to stay out of sight. The job of the Men in Black, an ultra-secret, ultra-elite cadre, is on one hand to enforce the agreement with the space aliens, while on the other to act as a cleanup crew in cases where the aliens have inadvertently revealed themselves to ordinary people.

It goes without saying that anyone tasked with making sure the space aliens stay quiet and out of sight, as well as cleaning up situations where they don't, must have extraordinary tact, intellect, skill, and initiative. At the start of the first Men in Black film, Agent J, played by Will Smith, has unknowingly applied to be a member of this team. How he's selected gives an indication of how merit ought to be selected, even if the real world falls far short of this ideal.

Agent J arrives late to the selection session, in which it's explained that the government is looking for "the best of the best of the best". His fellow applicants are clearly the cream of the government's best, Navy SEALs, honors graduates of the academies, Marines, and the like. Agent J, in contrast, performs a series of gaucheries. His first test is to find a way to fill out his application when no desk or table is available to any of the elite applicants. Agent J is the only one to see the coffee table in the middle of the group and noisily pull it to himself, the only possible way to accomplish the task.

At the conclusion of the test, Agent Zed, who's conducting it, announces to the military meritocrats who feel they've made all the right moves, "Gentlemen, congratulations. You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training." Expecting one of their group to be selected, they're instead led off to an "eye test", which Men in Black savants will recognize is a device that wipes their memories of all recent events. Agent J is selected.

Over the past several days, I've thought and thought about this episode vis-a-vis the Penn women's swim team. I would go so far as to say that for them, this is a test very much equivalent to Agent J's selection process, but in their case, there's no Agent J. Or if there is one, the winner is Lia Thomas. The Penn women's swim team is, after all, everything we've come to expect from the Ivy selection process, the best of the best of the best. And their potential employers, or perhaps the Olympic teams they might hope to join, are fully entitled to expect the same. The top-tier law firms will happily recruit them as associates down the road given their flawless records. They will never commit the remotest gaucherie.

Except that, confronted with what must be in at least some cases, the ony serious challenge they may have had in the successful progress of their lives in the form of a wild-card competitor, a male impersonating a female, none has come up with an effective counter strategy -- not even, as our Roman Catholic parish clergy might advise if asked, to pray, seek out a Plan B, and leave the team if that's the path that presents itself. I hear a number like 36 as the total women's team membership presumably including Thomas, the guy.

Of the 36, or maybe 35 women, 16 have gone so far as to enlist a spokesperson to write a letter on their behalf, allowing them to keep quiet and out of sight, a little like the space aliens have been told to behave. This has been met with silence from Penn; they needn't have bothered. Several others, just as anonymous, have written the administration to say that they're tickled pink that Lia has had such a wonderful opportunity, and they're copacetic with the whole program.

Of the 35 women, I have the impression that none is going to find a solution that will be remotely satisfactory for herself, sacrificing a sense of justice or even plain common sense to an illusory idea of a future career that's likely to be just as unsatisfactory. None seems willing to come out of the shadows and identify herself by asking for simple justice, either reporting the indecent exposure to law enforcement or reporting the sexual harassment to the designated campus authority. That way, I have a feeling, leads to issues like ulcers, cancer, or alcoholism down the road. Just sayin'.

The real elites here are the people who are running the show, the ones who must certainly have put Lia Thomas up to the stunt and paved the way for it over a period of years. Remember that Thomas began transitioning nearly three years ago and must certainly have done it with the assurance they'd have a place on the women's team. But even to start nearly three years ago means the assurance had to have been in place well before that. The game was well and truly rigged before most of the women swimmers arrived on campus their first year.

The people who set that plan in motion are the real elites, the ones who control the hazing. The Penn women swimmers are just the best of the best of the best, the hazees. They don't have the remotest idea who the real elites are, nor the remotest idea of how to counter them. They'll spend their lives doing as they're told, which is the point.

The Ivy Dilemma

Unfortunately, while the acounts I've linked of the Penn women swimmers' dilemma outline their near-impossible choices very clearly, my sympathy extends only so far. The conventional wisdom is that the swimmers are being denied the chance to compete fairly in women's competitions by allowing a male swimmer to skew the results, and on top of that, they're being subjected to sexual harassment when the male exposes his genitals in the women's locker room. But if they complain -- indeed, if they go even so far as to report the indecent exposure to law enforcement or follow policy and complain to the campus sexual harassment coordinator -- they face loss of scholarship, dismissal from the team, and loss of future career prospects.

But this is simply a microcosm of the larger Ivy dilemma, which has been around since the late 1940s when the Ivies became selective and at least in theory "meritocratic". At least, David Brooks thinks that way. The more or less direct effect of this was to create a rat race for the suburban middle class and their children; the media stirred up a need for families to have their children attend "the college of their choice", which was just a way of saying an Ivy. The route to this was felt to be via SAT scores, grades, and extracurriculars, an intense and consuming effort that began during the elementary grades.

I recall during my own early teens I was beginning to display behavioral problems in school that caused Dr Callahan, the middle school principal, to call my parents in for a conference. I'm not entirely sure if my parents even told me about this before they went in. Indeed, the odd thing was that the person who said the most to me about it was Dr Callahan, who called me in the next day, shaking his head.

"You need to understand something," he told me. "Your parents are . . . panicking. They're focused completely on how you can get into the college of your choice. They're ignoring everything else." The impression I have in hindsight is that whatever issues in my behavior may have caused Dr Callahan to call my parents in for a chat, it appears my parents' attitude must have struck him as some cause of the problem itself, and any attempt to reason with them was impossible.

The "college of my choice" was Dartmouth, about which I knew nothing. As it happens, the day I was born, my father called them to see if he could enroll me at Dartmouth right then. Trust me, I know from college admissions rat race.

Several aspects of the Ivy experience have stayed with me. I remember an odd discussion in our dorm lounge one night in which several Dartmouth faculty turned up to lead a discussion on "cognitive dissonance". They cited psychological experiments in which subjects were told that they were about to have a "meaningful" or "valuable" experience, but then were subjected to various levels of meaningless and progressively unpleasant activity. The result was the more unpleasant the meaningless activity, the more "meaningful" and "valuable" the subjects rated it.

The professors went so far as to compare these results to the Ivy admissions process -- that the meaningless and unpleasant activity of compiling a successful admissions dossier enhanced the perceived value of the Ivy experience. (They didn't day so, but my own view has been that the Ivy undergraduate experience is itself a meaningless and unpleasant hazing -- I need point only to the Penn women swimmers forced to tolerate a man exposing his genitals. Penn's position appears to be that this is a meaningful and valuable experience as well.)

But what about those professors who conducted the dorm lounge discussion? They were telling us right out that we'd been manipulated into thinking we'd successfully negotiated a difficult, but meaningful and valuable gauntlet, and that this said something good about us. Didn't this say something about those professors as well, that they themselves were complicit in a cynical and manipulative process? Apparently the subtext of the whole discussion was that you're being screwed, relax and enjoy it.

My own reaction to the Ivy undergraduate experience was effectively to tune out. It was just as well; for at least 20 years after I graduated, my main intellectual preoccupation was discovering the need progressively to unlearn all the comfortable certainties I'd been taught there.

The problem for the Penn women's swimmers is that they've been caught in some version of the hazing that makes up the Ivy experience for just about everyone. Hazing is bad and unjust. Colleges generally have anti-hazing policies that they observe about as faithfully as their anti-sex harassment policies; such things notwithstanding, pledges and teammates still routinely pass away from hypothermia or alcohol poisoning from hazings that theoretically don't take place.

The Penn women's swimmers have been convinced that at the end of this process lie successful careers, successful lives. Much as they hate the hazing, they're going to put up with it. Things must certainly get better; they shouldn't rock the boat. The problem is that this isn't an education. Nothing remotely close. The people who might actually benefit from an education there are almost certainly not the ones on the women's swim team. By the time they find themselves in that sort of dilemma, they're already a lost cause.

More Penn Pushback

This story at Breitbart expands on another story at the Washington Post that fleshes out the circumstances of the letter that 16 members of the Penn women's swim team (also mentioned here) sent to university authorities requesting that they not sue USA Swimming over its new trans criteria. According to the Post,

Thomas’s teammates did not identify themselves in the letter. It was sent by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 1984 Olympic swimming gold medalist, lawyer and chief executive of Champion Women, a women’s sports advocacy organization. She said in a telephone interview that she sent the letter on the swimmers’ behalf so they could avoid retaliation; in the letter, the swimmers claim they were told “we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer” if they spoke out against Thomas’s inclusion in women’s competition.

The Breitbart story interviewed a second expert, Natasha Chart, whom they characterize as "a feminist who argues that women’s particular legal rights and social status depend on the public’s recognition that women’s bodies are fundamentally different from men’s bodies", who raised an additional point:

Consider what else is happening here. Lia Thomas is reported as [committing] basically what would be regarded as indecent exposure. He’s fully undressing in their locker rooms, so he’s displaying sexual power. This is endorsed by all of these [pro-transgender] elites, and the women who are being allowed into the elites have to put up with — or endorse — this sexual abuse of other women in order to be accepted.

Breitbart also quoted a letter sent February 1 by two feminist organizations, Women’s Declaration International, USA, and Keep Prisons Single Sex, to a wide range of Penn and local law enforcemernt officials:

We are writing to report a potential violation of Pennsylvania Code of Law Section 3127 and of Title IX and of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sexual Harassment, Sexual Violence, Relationship Violence and Stalking Policy. . . . It appears from news reports that many, if not most, of the female athletes on the University’s swim team fear retaliation and are concerned about maintaining their scholarships and reputation in the community. For this reason, a report such as this one should be considered an adequate basis requiring law enforcement and the university to conduct an investigation without any female members of the swim team having to make an individual direct report themselves.

The letter cites Pennsylvania Code §3127 Indecent exposure:

A person commits indecent exposure if that person exposes his or her genitals in any public place or in any place where there are present other persons under circumstances in which he or she knows or should know that this conduct is likely to offend, affront or alarm.

The letter continues,

Based on the news report [linked here in a previous post], Thomas has exposed his genitals in a place where it appears Thomas knows or should know that this is likely to offend. Further, based on this news report, a University of Pennsylvania employee, the women’s swimming coach, has been explicitly informed that the women are offended, affronted or alarmed by this. Rather than taking steps to further report and address this, according to this report, the female athletes of the University of Pennsylvania have been told that they must accept this harassment and indecent exposure.

The letter then quotes Penn's own sexual harassment policy, which contains the usual, and concludes,

Should there be any future litigation on this matter, the news reports, including the one cited here should be sufficient to have put the University of Pennsylvania on notice that there were reports of multiple female students being subject to harassment and sexual misconduct while engaged in a sanctioned student activity. According to your own policy, you are obligated to investigate this. You know the names of these female students. You know there are reports that they fear retaliation. For this reason, the initiation of any investigation and remedial action should not require a report directly to you by one of these impacted students.

My wife, a retired attorney, is astonished that nobody on Penn's legal staff appears to have raised these issues even before the February 1 letter. It seems to me that a minimal response to Penn's potential exposure in this case would be either to require that Thomas change in the men's locker room, or to carve out a separate locker room exclusively for transsexual team members, but of course, either solution would undermine the whole message Penn is trying to send, that men and women are interchangeable, gender is just a social construct, and Penn is entitled to enforce this. (Penn's endowment is $20.5 billion, so a few partitions and an extra shower should be affordable and a matter of a weekend's work.)

According to the Post, Penn so far has not responded directly to any of the complaints.

I've got to assume that since this is the Ivy League, there have likely already been quiet attempts by swim team parents and others to resolve this without publicity, but since this is the Ivy League, this is as serious as a Brooks Brothers tie, and Penn will not go quietly. They'll be on the hook for multimillion-dollar settlements, if you ask me. Plus various and sundry resignations.

COVID Fatigue

My wife and I throughout our marriage gave up wine for Lent, at least up until 2020, when along with a considerable slice of the world population, we found that wine was essential therapy for lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and the rest of the COVID madness. The other day we raised the question of whether we were ready to go back to giving it up for Lent this year and almost instantly decided no way. 2022 looks like not the beginning of the end, but at least maybe the end of the beginning.

What we're seeing is widely divergent policies worldwide on how to end the crisis, especially in the face of a general acknowledgement by all but the usual suspects that lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and even vaccine mandates have been either ineffective or counterproductive in combating the pandemic. An essay by Michael Bang Petersen, an adviser to the Danish government in its decision to end all COVID restrictions, makes an important point:

Our research has shown that public trust has taken a hit in many countries, including Denmark. As fatigue, personal costs and miscommunications have accumulated, the public has become wary. Until recently, the people losing the most trust have been those who felt that their governments’ responses were too heavy-handed. However, according to our data, the Omicron wave has also chipped away at the trust of those who have been supportive of their government’s approach up until now. Lifting restrictions while cases are soaring can seem like betrayal after two years of seeking to “flatten the curve.”

The key ingredients of an effective pandemic response — communication, trust and a shared sense of threat — are slowly dwindling. This can lead to social strife and will make it harder for leaders to steer their populations out of the crisis.

For two years people have debated the value of masks, vaccine passports and more, to the point that they are no longer opinions but identities. And when opinions become identities, they warp our understanding and make it harder to change one’s mind as the situation changes. The truth is that we are all biased. For example, research shows that in the United States, Republicans tend to overrate the risks of getting vaccinated, and Democrats tend to overrate the risks from the disease.

. . . Because Covid-19 vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease from the virus but less effective in preventing infections, the continued spread of the coronavirus in highly vaccinated populations will become a Rorschach test: Everyone will see something different. People who remain worried about getting Covid-19 will see high cases during surges, which will justify their concerns and strengthen their own observance of mask-wearing and distancing. Calls for removing restrictions will seem dangerous. People who are less vulnerable to infection will focus on the lessened severity and do the opposite. They may view calls to keep restrictions in place as unnecessary and infringing on their freedoms.

For people who have been highly vigilant about Covid-19, the end of the pandemic could end up feeling like defeat. At some point, it will be time to lift restrictions and lower the guards. The people they’ve been debating about masks or whether the crisis is improving will then be right. It won’t be because this position was always correct, but because the circumstances have changed.

That’s why strong leadership is so critical for ending the pandemic. As the need for restrictions lessens, it’s up to public health and political leaders to explain why restrictions are being lifted, just as they had to explain why they were being imposed in the first place. Authorities must tell the public why they are placing more responsibility on individuals and, ideally, address the concerns of those who may not be ready, as well as those who remain at higher risk, like the immune compromised.

Dr Petersen is very astutely sending the message that it's time for the public health authorities to declare victory and get out. This won't be an easy process. We're going to need our wine for the foreseeable future.

Penn And The NCAA Are Not On The Same Page

There's been a looming problem for Penn, Lia Thomas, and the Ivy League throughout the bizarre trans swimmer saga -- the NCAA, which represents many schools that, unlike the Ivies, rely heavily on their athletic programs for both serious ticket income and alumni donations, isn't quite ready to open women's sports to male competitors on the same basis as the Ivies. Last month, it tried to duck the controversy by changing its policy and deferring decisions on trans competitors to the individual sports' oversight bodies.

The NCAA Board of Governors on Wednesday [January 19] voted in support of a sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation that preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete. The new policy, effective immediately, aligns transgender student-athlete participation for college sports with recent policy changes from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and International Olympic Committee.

This past Tuesday, USA Swimming, the relevant oversight body in this case, issued its own guidelines, which are now effective for NCAA competition. These guidelines as written would prevent Lia Thomas, the six foot-four fully intact male swimmer, from competing in the upcoming NCAA championships:

On Tuesday, USA Swimming announced that competitors in women’s events must have recorded low levels of testosterone for 36 months; the previous rule required only one year. Thomas began “transitioning” in May 2019.

The specific policy "will be implemented by a decision-making panel comprised of three independent medical experts and eligibility criteria will consist of:"

Evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.

Evidence that the concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum has been less than 5 nmol/L (as measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) continuously for a period of at least thirty-six (36) months before the date of application.

There were immediate complaints about the policy change, although it isn't completely clear how it would actually affect Thomas's participation in the March NCAA championships.

Some advocates on Twitter argued that USA Swimming targeted Thomas in particular.

“This was a decision SOLELY to eliminate Lia Thomas from the team,” one person said.

Prior to the announcement, Penn was already considering a lawsuit against USA Swimming if its policy prevented Thomas from competing:

The University of Pennsylvania is considering a lawsuit if Lia Thomas is barred from competing in the upcoming NCAA women’s swimming championship, according to a report.

A swimmer on the Penn women’s team, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed to Fox News that administrators were considering legal action if Thomas is prohibited from participating in the championship.

“I have a feeling that if USA Swimming changes their rules, they will be filing a lawsuit for Lia to swim, but they wouldn’t do that for us,” she said. “That’s just really upsetting.”

As of this morning, the NCAA is going to get involved again, even if it deferred the decision to USA Swimming last month:

The NCAA will review the transgender policy recently implemented by USA Swimming prior to the women’s NCAA Championships next month, making it possible the new guidelines will be adopted by the organization ahead of the competition which begins on March 16.

. . . The Board of Governors aren’t scheduled to meet again until April, but Dent said they could possibly meet remotely prior to the start of the NCAA Championships.

The need for an updated policy has come to light amidst the ongoing transgender discussion in the sport, sparked by the performances of Lia Thomas, a trans woman, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania in the NCAA.

. . . On Thursday, a group of 16 members on the Penn women’s swim team sent an open letter to the Ivy League and the University of Pennsylvania asking them to follow USA Swimming’s policy and not partake in legal action with the NCAA.

Clearly the situation is fluid, but I have a sense that the NCAA doesn't want new controversies that would threaten the bottom line of big time collegiate sports in the same way that other manifestations of wokeism have hurt the finances of pro football and basketball. The basic problem is that sports fans don't buy this stuff and won't pay to watch it. I would guess the NCAA understands this.

Words Of Wisdom From The Late Rush Limbaugh

Due to the talk radio format he used, you often had to get lucky and hear him on the right hour and the right day to catch his most cogent thinking. (I think as well that he reached his peak eight or ten years ago.) But one set of remarks among several has stuck with me. I believe it was during the 2012 Sandra Fluke controversy, when he railed against

contraceptive mandates which included statements labeling Georgetown University Law Center student Sandra Fluke as a "slut" and "prostitute". Limbaugh was commenting on Fluke's speech the previous week to House Democrats in support of mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives. Despite disapproval from major political figures, Limbaugh made numerous similar statements over the next two days, which led to the loss of several of his national sponsors and Limbaugh apologizing on his show for some of his comments.

Limbaugh recovered from this setback and then some, as he did throughout his career. Remarks on his show during that particular kerfuffle reflected both his confidence and his insight. He said at the time words to the effect that if the media creates you, the media can destroy you. On the other hand, if the media didn't create you -- as he felt was the case with himself -- the media can't destroy you. He ended his career receiving the Medal of Freedom on his deathbed.

This applies in particular to Jeff Zucker, a Harvard alum:

Between January 2013 and February 2022, Zucker was the president of CNN Worldwide. Zucker oversaw CNN, CNN International, HLN, and CNN Digital. He was previously CEO of NBCUniversal. Zucker served as an executive in residence at Columbia Business School.

. . . He was a captain of the North Miami Senior High School tennis team, editor of the school paper, and a teenage freelance reporter ("stringer") for The Miami Herald. Zucker also was president of his sophomore, junior, and senior classes, running on the slogan "The little man with the big ideas." He graduated from North Miami Senior High School in 1982. Before college, he took part in Northwestern University's National High School Institute program for journalism. Zucker went on to Harvard University. He was president of the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, during his senior year. As such, he encouraged the Crimson's decades-old prank rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, then headed by future NBC employee Conan O'Brien, which culminated in Zucker having O’Brien arrested. Zucker graduated from Harvard in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in American history.

In 1989, he was a field producer for Today, and at 26 he became its executive producer in 1992. He introduced the program's trademark outdoor rock concert series and was in charge as Today moved to the "window on the world" Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza in 1994. He is credited with managing the show during its most successful years and launching it into its 16 years of ratings dominance.

. . . In 2000, he was named NBC Entertainment's president. A 2004 BusinessWeek Profile stated that "During that time he oversaw NBC's entire entertainment schedule. He kept the network ahead of the pack by airing the gross out show Fear Factor, negotiating for the cast of the hit series Friends to take the series up to a tenth season, and signing Donald Trump for the reality show The Apprentice. He is credited with the idea to extend Friends episodes by 10 minutes and convinced the cast to extend their contracts by two years. The Friends era was one of the most profitable ever for NBC. The Zucker era produced a spike in operating earnings for NBC, from $532 million the year he took over to $870 million in 2003."

. . . In 2010, in response to a public controversy over the network's reported rescheduling of late-night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, Los Angeles Times reporters Meg James and Matea Gold wrote that Zucker's tenure had led to "a spectacular fall by the country's premier television network" and dubbed the intra-network feud and subsequent public relations fallout "one of the biggest debacles in television history". Under Zucker NBC fell from being the number one rated network to the lowest rated of the four broadcast networks and was occasionally being beaten in the ratings by programming on some of the more popular cable channels.

Days later, The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that in Hollywood "there has been a single topic of discussion: How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and rising while the fortunes of NBC keep falling and falling? ...many in the Hollywood community have always regarded him as ...a network Napoleon who never bothered to learn about developing shows and managing talent." She explained that Zucker "is a master at managing up with bosses and calculating cost-per-hour benefits, but even though he made money on cable shows, he could not program the network to save his life."

After he moved to CNN, things peaked and then began a decline. A data point nobody has mentioned in discussing yesterday's ouster is this one in the Wikipedia entry:

On February 2, 2021, Zucker announced he would step down [as president orf CNN Worldwide] at the end of the year. In August 2021, however, it was reported that he did not plan to leave until the completion of the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc.

So let's get real. He was already on his way out at CNN, was theoretically going to leave at the end of last year, and effectively extended his tenure by all of a month, except that by resigning under allegations of sexual harassment, he probably will lose at least some part of what would have been a generous golden handshake if he'd just left a month ago the way he was supposed to.

What strikes me, though, is how applicable Rush Limbaugh's insight is here: the media created Zucker, and the media destroyed him. Zucker was what Bp Barron would call a contingent being; he owed his existence to someone else. Speculation this morning is that Zucker's departure so far is being attributed to what one observer called an "HR technicality"; viz, an undisclosed "consensual relationship" with a colleague. My guess is that someone in the new management over CNN already had Zucker's number, and the wheels were in motion even before the Cuomo crises raised any questions about hanky pank.

Somewhere El Rushbo is laughing.