Apart from being the name of my atonal college avant-garde anarchist punk band, “benign, vanilla gruel,” is apparently Jake Tapper’s nightmare vision for CNN, according to a leaked audio recording. (Jim Acosta’s is “Fox News Lite.”) Tapper, Acosta, and apparently everyone else at CNN were disappointed that Jeff Zucker was fired, ostensibly for not disclosing an affair with a staffer in his chain of command but really because (outgoing) WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar apparently can’t stand him. Since incoming WarnerMedia CEO David Zaslav loves Zucker, don’t be surprised if Zucker returns. (Warner Bros. Discovery is apparently going to be the new name for the company.)

Remember when news organizations actually aspired to be benign and vanilla (if not gruel)? In this context, vanilla, to me, means neutral, objective, temperate, and measured. CNN certainly isn’t that! Not anymore. As for benign, well, the opposite of that is malignant.

I think what Tapper is admitting here is that he loves how Zucker turned CNN, which used to be a place you could rely upon to deliver mostly facts about what was actually happening around the country and the world, into an overtly left-wing Washington-obsessed partisan attack machine, which in turn enables the kinds of people the Brits humbly describe as “newsreaders” to think of themselves as swashbuckling Heroes of the Resistance. CNN is now a robust and spicy paella of, um, malignance, and Tapper will be very disappointed if the new boss changes that.

Maybe I’m being unfair? Maybe Tapper didn’t mean he wants CNN to be malignant. Here are some more antonyms for benign: poisonous, venomous, menacing, ominous, sinister, threatening, hazardous, imperiling, jeopardizing, perilous, risky, unsafe, unsound, nasty, noisome, unhealthy, unwholesome, offensive, painful, scathing, wounding, deadly, fatal, destructive, insidious, noxious, pestilent, polluted, and tainted. Take your pick!