Victor Davis Hanson: Scott Pelley’s CBS Complaint Backfires

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler: Okay, let’s go to Scott Pelley. Here’s the headline from the Daily Mail. “Teary-eyed Scott Pelley goes scorched earth on Bari Weiss as he calls for her removal and describes CBS firings like his family being murdered.”  

He says at one point he started to tear up when talking about his former colleague, executive producer Tanya Simon, being fired and said it felt like, “Your spouse being murdered.” 

Victor Davis Hanson: They always do that. I mean, anybody who’s in the arena and espouses political views, “I was almost murdered, Jack. I was swatted. I didn’t get close to being murdered. I’ve had people show up at my ho—”  

True, I was not close to being murdered. I’ve had people come up to me and want to engage in a very heated conversation that could have very, very easily— 

But I wasn’t in danger.  

I’ve been at Reagan Airport where an Antifa-like person ran out and hit me in the back of the head. Was I endangered? I don’t think so.  

It’s always these psychodramas. I mean, Scott Pelley is not endangered. And then it was even—you can’t believe—why can’t you believe that? 

Because what he said is completely unbelievable. He said that he goes into a meeting with the new producer, then he insults him, and instead of having a question and answer, he dominates the conversation of the CBS “60 Minutes” team and says to the person that, “You are unqualified. You are unqualified.” 

And the person was trying to explain that CBS is losing money and has been losing money a long time and losing market share, and even “60 Minutes,” that’s still somewhat popular, loses money. 

They all lose money. They’re all overpaid if you consider market value.  

And then he started attacking Bari Weiss.”She’s completely unqualified. She wants to destroy us,” and he just attacks. And then he says, after doing all that, “I had no idea they were going to fire me.  

Oh my gosh.” Does he really—either there’s one of three explanations. 

He went in there to deliberately insult his new employer and CBS’s ultimate employer with the idea that he would be a wounded fawn and get fired, and then maybe go to MSNBC, kind of a Dan Rather figure, wounded fawn.  

Or he’s stupid and he thinks you can insult your employer. 

Or he thought he could insult his employer, and he’s even stupider and could convince him that Scott Pelley knew exactly what he should be doing and he could tutor him. 

I’ve had a lot of employers and I don’t ever recall—I had some really tough people in graduate school that didn’t like me because I didn’t— I don’t know why, but I think they thought I was a bumpkin.  

But, you know, I can remember going in to a person who had my future in his hands and him telling me, “You’re racing through these exams like they’re hurdles.” 

I said, “They are hurdles.”  

And he said, “Is your goal to be the quickest ever to finish the PhD program in classics?”  

I said, “Yes.”  

“No matter what you learn?” 

I said, “If I can’t pass the exams, then I didn’t learn them, but I passed them all. I passed my Greek and Latin exam. I passed my Greek literature, Latin literature, Greek history, Roman history. 

“I’ve done my 12 seminars. I passed my Greek and Latin composition exams. I passed my three PhD exams.”  

And he said, “Yes, but you’re not a rounded intellectual. You can read French and German, but you don’t speak them. A good intellectual can.”  

I said, “I didn’t see that in the handbook. Reading knowledge required. I don’t think I’m going to go to Germany and give a—”  

“You never know. You never know. You might be invited to go to Paris. How would you present your paper?” I said, “I’d read it in English.”  

And the point I’m making is that I was defiant, but then he said, “Here’s what you’re going to do for your thesis. 

“You’re going to take your thesis and we’re not going to discuss it. You’re going to give me—how many chapters is it?”  

I said, “It’s about 80,000 words.”  

“You’re going to give me eight chapters and you’re going to put it in my box and I’m going to correct it and I’m going to hand it back in two weeks and you’re going to make every change. 

“And we’re not going to discuss it, we’re not going to talk again. And then we will go out on your oral exams and I will take you out to dinner and we will have a pleasant discussion and then you’re through.  

“And you will reach your goal of getting a PhD in a little over four years and you’ll be very happy and we can send you on your way back to your farm.” 

I said, “Okay.”  

But the point is I never— 

Jack Fowler: Wow, what an attitude.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the worst thing about it, I’m not mentioning names, is I was flat broke and I was doing landscaping for the professors to make money.

I had an old Ranchero and a guy who was very poor from Cleveland, wonderful guy, Jeff Sellers, and I, we would go tear up cement patios, all the stuff the gardeners wouldn’t do, take trash out, dig ditches. 

We did all of that and we made $1.25 an hour, which was a lot of money then, on our weekends. And they were really angry. The professors that were hiring us for cheap labor were mad that we weren’t studying that day for our exams on weekends.

So anyway, the guy who was telling me was the tightest person in the world. He would say to me, “There are some mandarin orange trees on campus. They’re decorative, but they had fruit, and I want you to go after work and pick them all and bring them by my house.” 

Or he said, “You have that pickup of yours, don’t you?”  

I said, “It’s a Ranchero. It can only haul so much.”  

He goes, “There’s an office building on campus and they have solid oak bookcases and they’re going to completely refit it, and they told me I could have them. So I want you to go over there.” 

And I said, “I can’t drive through the quad.” And he said, “Oh, there’s a way. Get your friend to lift the cross arm up. Go in there. Here’s the key. I want both those bookcases.” 

So I put these two things at 8:00 at night tied down to my Ranchero, and a campus policeman says, “You are in a restricted area in the quad. You’re moving things out of a classroom. What am I supposed to think?” 

And I had my Stanford ID and I explained it, and he said, “That is such a preposterous story that it has to be true.”  

And he let me go, and I did the route.  

Jack Fowler: Did he know the chief?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, he did know him. By reputation. 

I don’t know if he knew him, but I gave him the professor’s name and rank and title, and he said, “This is so preposterous he’d ask you to do this, but it has to be true.”  

And then he said something like, “If I were you, I’d get a new director.” 

But anyway, my point in this is unlike Scott Pelley, I didn’t insult him. I said, “Yes, I will do that. Yes, I will do that. I promise it will be there the first of the week.”  

And you know what the comments were? I’m not kidding you. The comments were, “On time. Adequate. See me sometime,” but no comments. 

And the only reason it was a book—there was a very famous Italian scholar who just happened to be a visiting professor when I was farming. And he called me up a year later and he said, “I’m Emilio Gabba from the University of Pisa, and I was nosing around the dissertations and I read this dissertation you wrote. I love it. Can we publish it in Italy?” 

And I thought, what?  

And I was on a tractor when my wife came and told me she’d talked to him, and I got up, came back, and called him back in Italy. And that’s the only reason it was published. 

Jack Fowler: I’m so happy to learn that you’re beholden to an Italian, Victor. That just warms the cockles of my heart.  

Victor Davis Hanson: He was a great historian too. He was a very famous historian. He was very kind to me. 

Jack Fowler: Yeah,  

Victor Davis Hanson: And you know what? The point is, when I had these altercations or disagreements, because I was always on the receiving end with my director, I never talked back to him in a rude manner.  

And I always tried to—I would come home once in a while, I was 22, 23, come back and work on the farm on weekends or Christmas, and my mother would always—I’d say, “I’m having kind of a problem.” 

She said, “You treat him with respect. It’s not fair, but you treat him with respect.” I always did. I never mouthed off to him. 

And she always would say, “Look for the good thing.” I said, “Well, he’s a beautiful writer, Mom. I read his articles. They’re beautifully composed. He’s very smart.” And she said, “Surely you can learn something from him.” And I tried to. 

And you know, when he passed away, there was not a very large contingent at his funeral. But they asked former students, and I wrote a very nice thing about him because I did learn a lot from him. But our personalities were too different. 

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