It's been nearly a week since CNN's top executive, Jeff Zucker, got the boot, supposedly over a longtime affair with a subordinate, and the bawling through the ranks hasn't stopped. 

Here's how bad it is, according to website Puck, apparently an industry-insider blog, spotted by Ace at Ace of Spades:

Five days after Jeff Zucker's dramatic and still-stunning ouster from CNN, network insiders remain vexed by WarnerMedia C.E.O. Jason Kilar's refusal to elaborate about the circumstances that led to their former leader's resignation. On Monday morning, Kilar held yet another Q&A session with CNN's top producers and on-air talent in New York—this time over video conference, from his office in California, not in person, mercifully. But it went just as poorly as his in-person meetings had last week in New York, Washington, and Atlanta.

The hour-long meeting, a recording of which I obtained from a source, once again highlighted the profound sense of loyalty that CNN's on-air talent have expressed toward Zucker and the overwhelming sense of grief that they feel in his absence, especially as they head toward the impending WarnerMedia-Discovery merger. Many spoke in grave terms, emphasizing their own grieving process, and in heavy-handed metaphors. "I think that what you're hearing, and what we're all experiencing, is just a huge shockwave to all of our mental health," Alisyn Camerota, the CNN host, said during one of the most poignant moments of the meeting. "This has been incredibly destabilizing and unsettling. One of the secrets to mental health is understanding, and the way that happens is getting some answers and some closure. And we don't have that. We don't understand why the death penalty was necessary."

Grieving process?  Shockwave?  Mental health?  Incredibly destabilizing and unsettling?  Death penalty?  Throw in "threat to democracy," as has been stated elsewhere, and this is starting to sound like the apocalypse to these clowns.

Ace reports that Jake Tapper has held a "wake" for these bawl-babies, while Brian Stelter, the lowest-ranked of the network bunch, and the biggest suck-up among them, is begging the suits for "emotional healing."

He's so out of touch that he reads public distrust in the media like this:

The most busted name in news pic.twitter.com/lT5uLgMmPe

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 8, 2022

Had enough?

Obviously, this guy Zucker, the big fallen Goomba-Goomba cult idol, wasn't this bottom-ranked network's boss or leader; he was really their best friend forever.

Ace has some trenchant observations about what that amounted to:

For context, I've heard it reported that Jeff Zucker was very buddy-buddy with all of his "talent" (what an inappropriate word in this context), constantly texting them all like they were eighth grade girls, which actually sounds about right, psychologically speaking.

Also, bear in mind that the network is absolute s--- and in a merger you get rid of all of the low-performing "talent" (lol) and at CNN, that means pretty much every single one of them. Because they all apparently though [sic] they were Bestest Fwendz with Jeff Zucker, they were almost all certainly relying on that Very Deep Superficial Friendship to protect them from the coming bloodbath.

That explains a lot about their strange coverage over the past few years — the Russia hoax, the Trump impeachment, the false attack on the Covington kids, the "fiery but peaceful" protests, and other insane left-wingery that could not by any standard be called "journalism."  It was all Zucker whispering into his suggestible little minions' ears about what kind of left-wing narrative he wanted to project and watching them "go fetch" for him like the dogs they are.  The whole network was truly his, and these characters were his arms.

Now that he's gone, along with an assorted collection of perverts (this was some place we are talking about), the remaining minions are lost, the walking dead, in shock, and like any Goomba-Goomba cult, fearful because their idol has fallen.

As Ace notes, they're afraid they'll be fired, too.  Big shakedowns have been in the works for months, what with CNN having another owner rolling in.  Apparently, these clowns, who made their once-respected network fall to the bottom of the rankings, all thought that was irrelevant and they were protected by the godlike protective wing of Zucker, so if Zucker has been knocked out, what hope is there for them?

That's a burnt bridge for them because there's no going back now.  They've shot their journalistic credibility by scrapping journalistic standards and reporting phony and fake news as "yes" cretins, which limits their employability elsewhere.  The big networks like at least some appearance of objectivity and the occasional straying from party lines, though CBS's 60 Minutes, NBC's Lester Holt, and all of MSNBC are notable exceptions.  They no longer have that.

The CNN eminento who understands this best is Jake Tapper, who's paddling as fast as he can to produce the old real journalism, of the kind he did in his long-ago, before the Clinton Foundation and all that.

Now he's playing objective journalist.

Another one who had some of that objectivity appearance is Chris Wallace, who reportedly bitterly rues jumping ship from his excellent perch at Fox News over to the sinking ship at CNN.  Zucker was his protector, and he's new around there.  He still didn't have staff in place, nobody from Fox followed him to CNN, and now Zucker is gone.  It's all gone to mud for him, and to make matters more painful, the well-entrenched Tapper hates his guts.  Playing objective is all he has now if they allow it, but he probably wanted to go Full Zucker biased as he left Fox.

The big issue looming is that of Chris Cuomo, the fired CNN anchor who was the only one who drew some traffic for the network.  He's bitter about his ousting, which came as a result of his using his journalistic contacts to dig up dirt on women who accused his pervy governor-brother of sexual assault and the like, and now that his governor brother is fallen, he's dispensable, too.  He is reportedly blackmailing the network for a large settlement after his disgraceful exit from the network.  He knows where the bodies are buried, apparently, and since he's not employable elsewhere, his bridges are burnt, so by his logic, he's got to stand up on his hind legs and fight it, especially since he's got nothing better to do.

Ace notes this:

Per this report, Zucker did resign, but as part of a package deal in which AT&T would spend a lot of money to protect Zucker (and itself). So it's a resignation, yes, in exchange for protection.

I'm not sure that Cuomo's information would all be about Zucker. It has been reported that Fredo claimed that there was zero distance between himself and Zucker, and if Zucker knew it, then Fredo knew it — so he's got a lot more blackmail material. Maybe about other CNN executives and "talent."

Maybe Alysin and the rest of the broke-brains should pause a moment to wonder what Fredo might have on their fellow Preening Moralists at CNN.

It's the behavior of a cult with a fallen idol.  Like the Heaven's Gate cult, they've castrated themselves, and now that the Big Guy is off to outer space and has left the corpses rotting, they don't know what to do with themselves.

Their professionalism is gone.  The king is dead.  The reaper is coming.  They've sold themselves out to become left-wing mouthpieces and now have nothing to show for it.

Instead of carrying professionalism to get themselves through, they've forgotten what professionalism is.  They are lost without their gang leader.  So now they are bawling about it.  This is gross.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.