Liel Leibovitz

Liel Leibovitz writes for The Free Press about entertainment as the place where Americans work out questions of faith, family, and national character. His pieces treat movies, television, music, and digital media less as escapist diversions than as moral arguments, using them to examine what kind of country and culture his audience is being asked to inhabit. He brings a critic’s eye and a historian’s memory to current releases and viral phenomena, tying them back to older traditions in storytelling, religion, and journalism.

Alongside his role at The Free Press, he serves as Editor at Large at Tablet magazine and as a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He publishes long-form essays rather than quick-hit reviews, typically structured around one cultural artifact or event and then widening out to questions of meaning, ethics, and civic life. His work sits at the intersection of entertainment, ideas, and public life, and he writes across formats from film criticism and TV analysis to essays on live performance, podcasts, and the evolution of American journalism.

The Joyless Return of ‘Ted Lasso’

Leibovitz’s coverage of prestige television shows how he distinguishes himself from a generic entertainment reporter.

In his piece on the latest season of “Ted Lasso,” he argues that the show has traded character depth and emotional truth for broad political messaging designed to flatter a certain class of commentators rather than actual viewers. He treats the series as a case study in how contemporary television can lose its soul when it subordinates storytelling to ideology, paying more attention to the moral and psychological impact of that shift than to casting or production details.

Similar patterns appear when he writes about film.

In his review of the movie “One Battle After Another,” he frames the work as evidence of Hollywood’s “moral, artistic, and creative ruin,” focusing on the ethical universe the film constructs and the kinds of heroism and villainy it endorses. Rather than simply judging performances or box-office prospects, he concentrates on what the film signals about the culture’s willingness to confront evil, sacrifice, and responsibility. For a source looking to place a story, this means he is most engaged by projects that invite an argument about values, not just about entertainment trends.

‘Toy Story 5’ and the Disney Imagination

Leibovitz’s writing on animation and franchise entertainment often centers on family and tradition.

In his essay on “Toy Story 5,” he celebrates the film as a rare mainstream portrayal of fatherhood that treats fathers as tender, frightened, and flawed rather than as buffoons or tyrants. He uses the movie to challenge a broader pattern in pop culture that either sidelines fathers or casts them as obstacles, making the piece less about a single sequel and more about what children’s entertainment is teaching audiences about parental love.

He extends this line of argument in his defense of “Disney adults,” where he describes a viral Disney cruise advertisement and the enduring appeal of the brand as a kind of countercultural commitment to tradition. In that essay, he presents Disney as one of the few mass cultural institutions still offering a coherent, optimistic vision of American life rooted in continuity, ritual, and shared stories.

His focus is not on corporate strategy or fandom demographics, but on the emotional and civic story Disney tells about what America is and could be.

When he writes about casting choices in Greta Gerwig’s planned “Chronicles of Narnia” adaptation - specifically, the decision to have Meryl Streep voice Aslan - he moves from entertainment news into theology and symbolism. He treats Aslan as a stand-in for Jesus and explores the implications of making that figure female, arguing that the choice carries serious religious and cultural weight. This willingness to parse religious meaning in popular franchises is a consistent thread: he expects entertainment to respect, or at least seriously engage with, the stories and doctrines it borrows from faith traditions.

The Strange Religion of the American Podcast

Leibovitz pays close attention to the new media personalities who sit at the border of entertainment and belief.

In his piece on Candace Owens, Joe Rogan, and Theo Von, he characterizes their shows as more than talk entertainment, describing them instead as attempts to build “theological universes” for audiences hungry for something to believe in. He analyzes how long-form conversation, confession, and recurring moral themes in these podcasts function like spiritual communities for listeners who may be distant from conventional religious institutions.

This approach aligns with his broader coverage of reality television and influencer culture.

In an essay about Spencer Pratt’s evolution from reality-TV villain to political candidate, he treats Pratt’s campaign as another season of reality programming, arguing that American public life increasingly runs on the logic of viral storylines and character arcs rather than on policy or party structures. He treats such figures as cultural theologians of a sort, sketching narratives of redemption, persecution, and belonging for their followers. His interest lies in how these narratives shape people’s understanding of good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, not merely in their celebrity status.

New York Is Not ‘Habibi City’

Although his assigned beat at The Free Press is entertainment, Leibovitz regularly follows cultural stories into questions of American identity and civic belonging.

In his essay rebutting a viral magazine feature that branded part of New York as “Habibi City,” he insists that the city’s meaning lies in its role as a place where people from everywhere come to become Americans, not in the creation of sealed-off cultural enclaves. He reads the original essay as a rejection of that assimilationist ideal and responds with a defense of a shared national story.

His work on the New York Philharmonic’s choice of conductor similarly combines arts writing with a critique of institutional priorities. In that piece he argues that the orchestra has spent too long chasing politics and prestige at the expense of musical excellence, and that a conductor like Gustavo Dudamel matters because he returns focus to the music itself. Elsewhere, in essays on the Pulitzer Prize and on America’s 250th anniversary, he revisits past moments when journalism and statesmanship were oriented toward capturing the “nation’s soul” rather than signaling ideological virtue.

Taken together, Leibovitz’s body of work shows a writer who treats entertainment and culture as the front line of deeper conflicts over faith, family, and what it means to be American.

He is most engaged by stories, releases, and campaigns that raise questions about tradition, moral seriousness, and the narratives ordinary people use to make sense of public life. He moves comfortably from children’s animation to opera, from streaming shows to podcasts, so long as the subject offers a way to talk about the values embedded in the culture.