Tough Love: Pour Your Time Into (Real) Community Life
(ANALYSIS) In the world of The Free Press, Nellie Bowles is the snarky, raging wit who tears into news events and trends in her weekly TGIF column.
The former New York Times news-feature star is also the spouse of journalist Bari Weiss (the lesbian moms have two children) and they are the co-founders of The Free Press, a Substack startup so successful that it inspired a corporate takeover of CBS News.
Meanwhile, check out the Bowles bestseller, “Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History,” which dissects the world of liberal journalism and culture that she has long called home.
Needless to say, these old-school, pro-First Amendment liberals are not the kind of public intellectuals that cultural and religious conservatives have, in the past, valued for their insights into public life. However, they have created a multi-media space in which all kinds of voices — including strong, vocal Christians (Paul Kingsnorth, leaps to mind) — have been able to reach millions of new readers and listeners.
Abigail Shrier (author, attorney, journalist) is a perfect example of another thinker whose writing, at The Free Press and elsewhere, has rattled establishment cages. Many know her from two recent bestsellers, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” and “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.”
In terms of faith, Weiss, Bowles and Shrier are all Jewish and, from all appearances, linked to progressive congregations of some kind.
This brings me to “Tough Love with Abigail Shrier,” an advice column launched at The Free Press earlier this month.
You can read the rest of this post at Rational Sheep.
Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.