Conservatives are often fond of La Rochefoucauld's famous

Host:
The studio lights hummed faintly — soft rectangles of brightness cutting through the haze of a late-night newsroom. Outside the windows, the city glowed with quiet insomnia — towers of glass, ambition, and contradiction. The hum of the air conditioning was steady, like the breath of a machine that never sleeps.

On the set, two chairs faced each other. Jack sat in one, jacket undone, tie loosened, his expression sharp but weary — the look of someone who’s been arguing for too long. Across from him, Jeeny sat poised but calm, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her eyes lit by both the studio’s light and a deeper conviction.

Between them, on the table, lay a printed article, highlighted and annotated — Bari Weiss’s column, the line that had started the argument:

*"Conservatives are often fond of La Rochefoucauld's famous aphorism that 'Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,' and