Over the weekend, a friend of mine whom I haven’t seen in a while but who’s aware of what I do, and happens to be an alumnus of Wake Forest University, sent me a message:

“Scott Pelley (60 mins clown) gave the commencement speech at WF. Have you seen this d’bag?”

With the link…

If you can’t listen to it, here’s a transcript of the relevant part…

“This morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack, universities are under attack, freedom of speech is under attack, and insidious fear is reaching throughout schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts.”

“The fear to speak in America. If our government is, in Lincoln’s phrase, ‘of the people, by the people, for the people,’ then why are we afraid to speak? Ignorance works for power. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. This is an old playbook, my friends. There is nothing new in this.”

Pelley’s speech drew sporadic — at best — applause. Wake Forest is not exactly the kind of campus where fiery, pompous leftist ramblings like those delivered by Pelley will whip up much positive sentiment — especially when parents forking over 69 grand a year for the past four or five years make up half the crowd.

And while the Democrats’ partisan core fell all over themselves with praise for Pelley’s “speaking truth to power,” it doesn’t seem like this was the moment he was going for.

Megyn Kelly was having none of it, for example…

Breitbart’s John Nolte laid into Pelley with special relish…

This is a big part of why the Democrat Party is losing young people.

Young people are genetically skeptical of authority, and here comes a humorless and smug Scott Pelley, all puffed up with himself, lying to them about how America is entering its darkest days under President Trump.

Contrast that with Trump himself, who at least has a sense of humor, a sense of playfulness, optimism, and belief in the future.

Think of Caddyshack. The Pelley v. Trump contest for the hearts and minds of the young is Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight) v. Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield). That’s no contest. So I’m not accused of being partisan, there’s a reason why former president Bill Clinton prevailed over his Republican political enemies, men who might have been morally right but came off as prudes and hypocrites.

Plus, young people can feel how manipulative Pelley is. They instinctively understand that he is 1) fabricating a dark world so 2) people join his cult, his side of the political aisle.

Also, don’t forget that these are people in their early 20s who suffered through the unnecessary and fascist COVID shutdowns and school closings, who had their proms, graduations, and homecomings canceled. They know who the villains are — and that’s authority that accuses you of being evil and racist if you question them.

Pelley went at them in the exact wrong way. A sense of humor, some self-deprecation, and a little faith in the future go a long way with young people.

Young people can smell a phony a mile away, and Scott Pelley is not only insufferable, he’s one of the phoniest.

The Judge Smails reference is absolutely platinum. It’s a perfect description of Pelley, who affects a patrician elite air despite an exceptionally ordinary background (he’s from Lubbock, Texas and stayed home for college, graduating from Texas Tech and working his way up from the local paper to CBS News).

There is nothing special about Scott Pelley. He looks like somebody who belongs on TV. That’s about it. He wrote an exceptionally boring, self-important book about journalism six years ago that almost nobody remembers, and he spent six years in the anchor’s chair at CBS Evening News, rebuilding some of the audience that his predecessor Katie Couric had chased away before watching the ratings begin to decline once again and then getting demoted back to 60 Minutes (Pelley’s successor, in case you don’t remember, was someone named Anthony Mason, and then CBS Evening News had rotating anchors until settling on the disastrous Norah O’Donnell, who was recently packed off to the glue factory).

And as Nolte reminded us, Pelley has the nerve to gripe that “journalism is under attack” on behalf of 60 Minutes, at a time when the atrocious fraudulent journalism of that show has put the entire operation of CBS News at risk of extinction.

Why? Because of a Soviet propaganda edit of a catastrophic Kamala Harris interview last year which was so naked in its boosterism for her doomed campaign that President Trump is suing CBS and Paramount, its parent company, for $20 billion.

The word is that Trump has signaled he’d take $100 million. He settled a suit with ABC News, whose Sunday morning host George Stephanopoulos made one comment falsely accusing Trump of being a rapist, for a reported $20 million. Given that 60 Minutes put an entire segment on the air editing Harris’ interview almost into fan fiction territory, $100 million seems pretty reasonable.

And yet Paramount doesn’t appear to have the money.

Exactly who is attacking “journalism,” Mr. Pelley? If there’s a villain here, it might well be your team at CBS News, and the “attack” begins to look like mere retribution, if not justice.

Given CBS News’ ratings, the real attackers of “journalism” appear to be the American people. Or maybe they’re the suits at Paramount, who are desperately trying to close the sale on a merger with Skydance and therefore stop the hemorrhage of cash at their woebegotten company. Per Nolte…

Then there’s the reported $500 million Paramount is looking to cut “in preparation for the lucrative merger with Skydance Media against the backdrop of a ratings freefall” and the ongoing, high-level personnel shake ups.

Fallout from the merger and the Trump suit has already hit hard. No less than Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News, and Bill Owens, the executive editor of the disgraced 60 Minutes, have already resigned.

So…

Where to cut? Where to cut?

Well, according to the report, Gayle King has become $10 million in damaged goods. Not only is she hosting the forever-in-last-place CBS Mornings, her grotesquely elitist Space Origin flight, combined with her claims that those few minutes in space mean she’s now an astronaut, have scalded her reputation.

“People don’t want to say it out loud in the office but the entire space debacle really hurt us,” one 60 Minutes staffer told the Daily Mail. “Gayle being part of that is not a good look for our brand. I think a lot of people resent Gayle for that. I know I do.”

King’s $10 million per-year contract is up in September.

“Multiple sources told the Daily Mail that 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley could also be on the way out.”

Pelley, of course, is infamous for his self-regard, unbridled bias, and dishonesty.

“We’re in the middle of a bloodbath,” a 60 Minutes staffer told the Daily Mail. “The axe is falling, people are leaving, no one knows what to do next. We’re all updating our resumes because it really feels like this is a sinking ship.”

Some call it a long overdue reckoning for a corrupt regime media that, at long last, has lost its influence over public opinion.

I’ve said that the Skydance-Paramount merger is just about the most entertaining story in American business, and I stand by it. The Scott Pelleys of the world have destroyed what used to be a profitable TV network and are now a drag on the ability of the parent company of that network to sell out and save itself from oblivion. In any business but media, Pelley would have already been dumped out to the unemployment line and made radioactive for high-level employment. But in media, he remains “respected,” so much so that he’s invited to give a self-important and ridiculously pompous rant of a commencement speech, making outrageous claims as though literal Nazis roam the land dragging dissident off to gulags (one might argue he’s about four years too late in those ramblings), at one of our nation’s more prestigious universities.

Whichever member of the Wake Forest faculty responsible for the “Hey, let’s get Scott Pelley!” idea probably has a very interesting e-mail inbox over the past week.

Far more interesting than Scott Pelley, who should go back to Lubbock and lecture the locals about the pestilence settling upon the land. But the guess is the applause would be even more scattered and sporadic back home than it was in Winston-Salem.