March 2020 | Rolling Stone | 57
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and twin sons, ages 19, 17, and 15, respectively),
Maria Shriver gave her tips for how to gracefully
vomit in a trash bin off camera. In 2003, she
moved to CNN, where she helmed the Black in
America series and won an Emmy for her cov-
erage of the 2012 presidential election. In 2013,
however, while she was hosting the morning
show Starting Point, her CNN career ended
abruptly when she was pushed out by then-
incoming president Jeff Zucker.
O’Brien is sanguine about the terms of her
departure. “When Jeff came in I knew they were
gonna go a different direction, so I was ready,”
she says. It also helped that, as part of the terms
of her exit, CNN became the first client for Sole-
dad O’Brien Productions, airing documentaries
like 2014’s The War Comes Home, which focused
on veterans with PTSD. She now heads up a staff
of 11 from its headquarters in New York, travel-
ing one night a week to shoot her syndicated TV
talk show, Matter of Fact.
Being her own boss has given O’Brien the
freedom to spotlight stories told by marginal-
ized or underrepresented voices: Hungry to
Learn, her recent documentary with filmmaker
Geeta Gandbhir, shines light on low-income col-
lege students too mired in debt to afford food. It
has also given her the freedom to publicly hold
major media figures and outlets accountable.
“When you’re largely self-employed, you have
a lot more latitude to call it as you see it,” says
her former executive producer Kim Bondy, who
first met O’Brien at NBC News, in 1997. “There’s
no calling her to the principal’s office. She is the
principal.”
In person, O’Brien is quick to voice her
criticism of well-known media figures, from
CNN media reporter Brian Stelter (“He cannot
call out the hypocrisy within his own company
— he just can’t”) to New York Times columnist
Bret Stephens (“I think he’s just lost his way”)
to Chris Cillizza (“That’s a person I really think
is terrible”). She bristles at a CNN representa-
tive’s recent comment, in response to O’Brien’s
criticism of a much-maligned Cillizza column,
that she has become “more of a liberal activist
than a journalist.” Such a categorization, O’Brien
says, is only accurate “if you consider yelling at
people on Twitter activism. I’m in the service of
telling people, ‘This is just bullshit. This is just
not true.’ ” Still, she seems to derive glee from
burning as many bridges as she can, though she
acknowledges that as the CEO of her own com-
pany she is in a “very rarefied position” to do so.
“Often people will DM me and say, ‘Listen, that’s
so true. But I’m trying to be a guest on Meet the
Press, so I can’t say anything,’” O’Brien says. “I
don’t want to be booked on Meet the Press. I’m
OK with that. I’ve done a lot of stuff, and it’s just
not my path now.”“SINCE
trump was
elected,
there’ve been
all these
times when the news is on and
I’m singing a Bikini Kill song
in my head,” says Kathleen
Hanna. “It’s like I need to hear
these songs.”
She’s not alone. Since re-
uniting with Bikini Kill bassist
Kathi Wilcox and drummer
Tobi Vail in 2019, ending a
22-year break, Hanna has been
performing songs like 1993’s
“Rebel Girl” for their biggest
crowds ever. “With the #MeToo
movement and a president
who says, ‘Grab them by the
pussy,’ it’s hard not to feel like,
‘OK, feminism’s coming back,’ ”
adds the singer, 51.
Hanna discovered feminism
at age 19, when she first read
Simone de Beauvoir’s The
Second Sex. Soon, she was per-
forming spoken-word poetry
about sexism and violence, and
later packing clubs with Bikini
Kill. Onstage, she screamed in
dresses and body paint, the
word “slut” sometimes written
across her stomach. After
Bikini Kill disbanded, Hanna
kept pushing forward with
new bands Le Tigre and the
Julie Ruin. She wasn’t sure at
first about reuniting: “I didn’t
want to be a parody of myself
in my twenties,” she says. “But
I was so excited to be hearing
the songs live again that it felt
natural and right.”
One thing that’s changed
since Bikini Kill’s first run is
the wholehearted way the
world has embraced them this
time. “We are getting so much
more positivity and love than
ever before,” Hanna says, “and
we’re not having to spend all
of our energy being upset thata fanzine we like just wrote a
whole article about my ass.”
In 2016, Hanna played New
York with the Julie Ruin just
days after Trump’s win. “It
ended up being cathartic,” she
says. “At least we weren’t all
at home crying to Cat Power
records.” She’s still mulling
whom to support as this year’s
Democratic primary heats up,
but notes, “I believe in [Eliza-beth] Warren. I would love to
see her win.”
In the meantime, she’ll
spend this spring and summer
on the road with Bikini Kill,
starting with a pair of benefit
shows in their hometown of
Olympia, Washington. “It’s
definitely what I call, ‘these
troubled times’ ” Hanna says.
“But [performing] is... nour-
ishing.” BRENNA EHRLICHKathleen Hanna
The riot-grrrl pioneer returns with Bikini Kill in the era of
Donald Trump, just when their feminist fury is needed most