MONDAY: Hegseth was working for weekend rates!

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2025

Also, a touch of the labyrinthitis: As it turns out, Pete Hegseth was a team player at the Fox News Channel. As it turns out, he had been working for weekend rates:

Financial Disclosure Reveals How Much Pete Hegseth Was Making at Fox News

The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr shared a portion of Hegseth’s disclosure on X Monday, which showed his Fox News salary to be just a bit over $4.6 million over a two-year period. Hegseth’s impressive haul came from his role at Fox News as one of three co-hosts on Fox & Friends Weekend as well as his work on Fox Nation.

That's the start of Alex Griffing's report at Mediaite. Instantly, a question arises:

Was Hegseth paid $4.6 million for each of the past two years? Or was he paid $4.6 million for the two years combined?

Based on the disclosure document, we aren't entirely sure. Either way, Hegseth had plainly humbled himself by working for meager weekend pay. He was working a full two mornings per week, but he was only getting paid a bit over two (or four) million per year!

Griffing's report continues as shown below. We can't swear to the accuracy of the O'Donnell numbers, which track to the New York Post. Maddow's numbers have been reported so often that we're inclined to assume they're accurate:

Hegseth’s disclosure means he was earning a little more than half CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, who had her annual salary cut by more than half in 2022, from $8 million to less than $4 million.

However, his earnings paled in comparison to Fox’s Sean Hannity, who reportedly earns $25 million a year. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reportedly took a pay cut recently from $30 million a year to $25 million a year as well while only hosting her show once a week—although she is returning full-time for the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration.

We've long believed, and we've repeatedly said, that we the people should know how much these "cable news" figures get paid. In theory, a lot of devotion to Storyline can be purchased, depending on the amount of money which is changing hands.

Meanwhile, Recurrence of the labyrinthitis! We awoke this morning to our fourth attack of "The Big L" over the past twenty years. 

We managed to get this morning's report done, though we wish we'd been able to articulate our basic framework with greater clarity. To wit:

We know of no reason to believe that our society will be able to recover from the longstanding attack of the flyweights—some of whom are probably willing propagandists, some of whom may be mere true believers.

We know of no reason to believe that our failing American culture will be able to recover from the ongoing disorder which now defines our discourse. But we wanted to get off to a better start that we were able to manage.

We badly need to start saying their names! We badly need to develop a journalistic language with which we can describe what these flyweights do.

Calling them "liars" doesn't work; also, it might not be accurate. But we badly need to start saying their names, and we need to describe what they do.