OSCARS MAKE SURPRISE IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO DESANTIS REELECTION CAMPAIGN: Oscars Hosts Taunt Florida: ‘Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay.’ DeSantis Press Secretary Drags Them: ‘Florida Will Never Recover From This.’

Earlier this month, DeSantis, responding to a reporter who used the leftist verbiage of calling the bill the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, fired back:

Does it say that in the bill? Does it say that in the bill? I’m asking you to tell me what’s in the bill because you are pushing false narratives. It doesn’t matter what critics say. For who? For grades pre-K through three. So, 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and the idea that you wouldn’t be honest about that and tell people what it actually says is why people don’t trust people like you because you peddle false narratives. And so we disabuse you of those narratives. And, we are going to make sure that parents are able to send their kids to kindergarten without having some of this stuff injected into their school curriculum.

Yet another reminder: Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: NBC poll shows Biden still slidin’, particularly over Ukraine.

IF WASHINGTON IS HOLLYWOOD FOR UGLY PEOPLE, HOLLYWOOD IS HOLLYWOOD FOR TRASHY PEOPLE: Will Smith HITS Chris Rock during live Oscars broadcast after firebrand comedian joked about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s ‘GI Jane’ haircut. “Meanwhile, the organizers of the Oscars are under fire for paying ‘tribute’ to the people of Ukraine without mentioning the country by name or directly addressing Russia’s invasion, despite the hosts’ eagerness to go after domestic political issues.”

Well, to be fair, the Oscars is a garbage show about a garbage industry run by garbage people.

UPDATE (From Ed): Here’s the video (language warning, needless to say):

OPEN THREAD: This is where your sanity kicks in.

INSTEAD, HOW ABOUT SPACESHIPS THAT WORK? NASA emails reveal internal discussions over calls to rename James Webb Space Telescope: report. “The 1960s agency administrator’s treatment of LGBTQ people has come under question.”

FLASHBACK: French Fighter Jet Joy Ride Goes Très, Très Wrong. “A French defense contractor riding in a Dassault fighter learned the hard way that the grab bar next to his seat was actually the ejection handle.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Why Sugar Babies Do Not Deserve The Negative Stigma.”

THE #RESISTANCE IS EVERYWHERE: A reader emails: “I’m in Florence, Italy at the Lions Fountain bar. This was the mens room toilet.”

CANADIAN MEDIA IGNORES SCOLDING OF TRUDEAU WHILE REST OF WORLD REPORTS IT:

Despite Canadian legacy media outlets burying the story, the reprimand of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by European parliamentarians in Brussels has made headlines around the world.

Trudeau was treated to scathing condemnation by several Members of European Parliament (MEP) after giving a speech to the European Union on Wednesday.

Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic called out the Canadian prime minister for engaging in a “dictatorship of the worst kind” over his treatment of peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors in February.

At least three other MEPs echoed Kolakusic’s remarks, with Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș entirely boycotting Trudeau’s speech.

Just think of the Canadian media as Liberal Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Hunter Biden’s Laptop Contained Defense Department ‘Encryption Keys.’

I AGREE:

KIM JUNG-UN TAKES STARRING ROLE IN PROPAGANDA FILM TO PROMOTE NORTH KOREA’S MASSIVE MISSILE LAUNCH:

North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, wearing a leather jacket and shades, has played a leading role in a propaganda film promoting the country’s launch of its latest massive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The 11-minute Hollywood action movie-style video featured slow motion and speeded up sequences of Kim Jong-un walking side-by-side with military officials, apparently inspecting what North Korean TV called a “new-type ICBM” ahead of its launch at Pyongyang’s international airport.

He is also seen looking repeatedly at his watch during the countdown to launch and whipping off his sunglasses to look directly at the camera in what is North Korea’s most provocative weapons demonstration since US President Joe Biden took office.

In stills released to accompany the video, the leader and military men are seen cheering after launch as rousing music plays.

For North Koreans who aren’t digging the clip, which blends Soviet-style propaganda and MTV-era rapid cutting, they may be out of luck: “In North Korea, access to media from the outside world is strictly controlled, and TVs and radios are manufactured to only pick up domestic channels and must be registered with the authorities. But residents do find ways to access South Korean signals, either by using foreign televisions or modifying domestic ones. Getting caught during routine inspections with a TV that can pick up illegal signals is a punishable offense. Residents with more than one television hide their illegal TVs during inspections, only to bring them out again to watch Seoul’s latest hot drama or variety show, former residents told RFA. Authorities are aware of the deception and have issued a directive that every household in the city declare to their local neighborhood watch unit how many televisions they have.”

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: COVID Lockdowns Led to Huge Spike in Human Trafficking, Survivor Warns.

BE PREPARED: LifeStraw Personal Water Filter for Hiking, Camping, Travel, and Emergency Preparedness, 1 Pack, Blue. #CommissionEarned

SHOCKING HEADLINE: Former Union Boss Accused of Financial Shenanigans.

QUESTION ASKED: Do Biden Foreign Policy Blunders Stem From Dementia? Or Was It As Obama Said, “Don’t Underestimate Joe’s Ability To F-ck Things Up.”

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Chaser:

“Well, there’s that passage about tearing down the Wall,” Reagan said. “That Wall has to come down. That’s what I’d like to say.”

The speech was circulated to the State Department and the NSC three weeks before it was to be delivered. For three weeks, State and the NSC fought the speech. They argued that it was crude. They claimed that it was unduly provocative. They asserted that the passage about the Wall amounted to a cruel gimmick, one that would unfairly raise Berliners’ hopes. There were telephone calls, memoranda, and meetings. State and the NSC submitted their own alternative drafts–as best I recall, there were seven–one of them composed by Kornblum. In each, the call for Gorbachev to tear down the Wall was missing.

This presented Tom Griscom with a problem. On the one hand, he had objections to the speech from virtually the entire foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. government. On the other, he had Ronald Reagan. The president liked the speech. Griscom had heard him say so. The president especially liked the passage about tearing down the Berlin Wall, the very part of the speech to which the foreign policy experts were most vehemently opposed. If that passage had to come out, it would be Griscom’s job to explain to Reagan why.

The week before the president’s departure, the battle reached a pitch. Every time State or the NSC registered a new objection to the speech, Griscom summoned me to his office, where he had me tell him, one more time, why I was convinced State and the NSC were wrong and the speech, as I had written it, was right. (On one of these occasions, Colin Powell, then national security adviser, was waiting in Griscom’s office for me. I held my ground as best I could.) Griscom was evidently waiting for an objection that he believed Ronald Reagan himself would find compelling. He never heard it. When the president departed for the Venice summit, he took with him the speech I had written.

On the very morning Air Force One left Venice for Berlin, the State Department and the National Security Council made a last effort to block the speech, forwarding yet another alternative draft. Griscom chose not to take it to the forward cabin. Air Force One landed. Hours later, President Reagan delivered his speech.

There is a school of thought that Ronald Reagan managed to look good only because he had clever writers putting words into his mouth. (Perhaps the leading exponent is my former colleague Peggy Noonan, who while a Reagan speechwriter appeared in a magazine article under a caption that said just that: “The woman who puts the words in the president’s mouth.”) There is a basic problem with this view. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Bob Dole all had clever writers. Why wasn’t one of them the Great Communicator?

Because we, his speechwriters, were not creating Reagan; we were stealing from him. Reagan’s policies were straightforward–he had been articulating them for two decades. When the State Department and the National Security Council began attempting to block my draft by submitting alternative drafts, they weakened their own case. Their drafts lacked boldness. They conveyed no sense of conviction. They had not stolen, as I had, from Frau Elz–and from Ronald Reagan.

—“Tearing Down That Wall,” Peter Robinson in The Weekly Standard, then-edited by Bill Kristol, June 23rd, 1997.

Related: Blinken continues cleanup of Biden’s Putin ‘cannot remain in power’ remark.

More: Zelensky Responds to Joe Biden’s ‘Historic’ NATO Speech in Less Than Flattering Terms.

“TV – THAT’S WHERE MOVIES GO WHEN THEY DIE:” Rewatching the First Televised Oscars.

One decision the AMPAS board of 1953 did not have to anguish over was the selection of the host: the availability of stand-up comedian and radio and film superstar Bob Hope made life easy. The most versatile, reliable, and motor-mouthed MC of the mid-twentieth century, especially when his writers were waiting in the wings, Hope had first hosted the ceremonies in 1940 when Gone With the Wind took home eight Oscars (“What a wonderful thing — this benefit for David Selznick!”) and he would perform the duty 13 times in all, up until 1978.

The minute Hope walks to the podium he owns the room.  His cascade of non-stop punchlines taps two main veins: side-eyed swipes at television (“Jack Warner still refers to TV as that furniture that stares back”) and the long-running gag about his unrequited Oscar-love. (“I like to be here just in case. You can never tell — one year there might be one left over.”) For viewers under a certain age, Hope’s topical humor may require a footnote. “Don’t glare at me, you melted-down Stevenson button!” he snaps at the shelf of Oscars stage left. When actor Ray Milland walks off stage, he muses, “I wonder if he ever redeemed his typewriter.” An evergreen joke that cuts both ways gets the biggest laugh of the night: “TV — that’s where movies go when they die.”

In the 1998 A&E documentary version of Neal Gabler’s excellent 1989 book, An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, the narrator (actor R.H. Thomson) notes that after being unable to break the monopoly that east coast-based Thomas Edison had on moviemaking at the start of the 20th century, the largely Jewish immigrants who created what we now call Hollywood went west, both for the excellent weather that allowed them to film outdoors throughout most of the year, and for the freedom to build, as Gabler dubbed it in his title, “An Empire of their Own,” far from Edison’s (often anti-Semitic) control. Eventually, with 75 percent of the public going to the movies at least once a week between the wars:

Actors became the gods and goddesses of the new American religion. And where there are new gods, there must be new idols. So the studio heads began a movie guild with the lofty title of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It was [MGM’s Louis B.] Mayer’s brilliant idea [in 1929] to create the Oscars, where the movie moguls could honor themselves by giving each other awards. In this way, they went from being a group of immigrant Jews, to award-winning American producers.

Not to mention, as one biographer quoted Mayer, “I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them. […] If I got them cups and awards they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created.”

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Inside NBC News’ Inside Look at ‘Ghost Guns’ and the Laws They Broke in the Process. “Our friends at Ammoland Shooting Sports News have done incredible work exposing the crimes – actual crimes – NBC correspondent Vaughn Hillyard and his crew committed while producing the liberal network’s latest hit-piece on homemade firearms. I was asked to take a look at the story from a different perspective. What I found was simply unbelievable – the worst news story focused on firearms ever produced for a network news program.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Of Boiling and Jumping Frogs.

It is difficult to plumb the depths of cynicism that fires the Biden Administration’s motions with respect to Ukraine. On the one hand, we are being invited to join in a grandiose morality play in which the great white-hatted forces of the West talk endlessly about peace and democracy while waging or at least fomenting war. On the other hand, the war drums drown out the cries of ordinary people, those millions of people Hillary Clinton and her ilk dismiss as “deplorable,” who acknowledge Putin’s crimes but also acknowledge Ukraine’s deep corruption and totalitarian leanings and wonder why we are strangling ourselves to intervene in that battle.

The ostensible reason, of course, is to export truth, justice, and the American way, and to teach that bully Putin a lesson. The real reason, I suspect, is to consolidate power at home while attempting to fire up the war-profit machine abroad. So far, Americans have gritted their teeth and taken it. I am not sure, however, that those with their fingers on the knobs of the burner have been sufficiently careful about how quickly they are raising the temperature. Things can get out of hand very quickly, and I am not just talking about military showdowns.

When average families can no longer pay their rent or mortgage, gas up their car, or even put food on the table, all bets are off. Our rulers think they have anesthetized those portions of the population they have not simply bought off. They might find that there is quite a lot of jump left in the frog yet. If so, they may be the ones in hot water.

As VDH recently wrote: The Real ‘Reset’ Is Coming.

HMM: Vaccinated more likely to die during omicron wave if they got J&J shot: CDC.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Sally Field: If I See Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott ‘I Cannot Be Responsible for What I Would Do.’

Actress Sally Field says that if she sees Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) or Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), she “cannot be responsible for what I would do.”

“Those men who are doing that, and they’re mostly male governors who are doing it, are so backward, so ignorant and really just power hungry,” the Forest Gump star told Variety, after being asked what she thinks of these pro-life legislation in states like Texas and Florida.

“I think it’s criminal. They’re so wanting to roll back the achievements and important progress for women, for blacks, for the LGBTQ community. I can’t say enough horrible things about what I feel about those men,” Sally Field continued said while not specifying what’s “criminal” about what’s being done.

“If you see them coming toward me, those two governors specifically [Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis], lead me out of the way because I cannot be responsible for what I would do. Heidi [she addresses her publicist, who is in the room],” Field declared.

“Do you hear me? Lead me away,” the Smokey and the Bandit actress said.

While it’s true that, as Kyle Smith wrote in 2018, “Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang,” that doesn’t mean that most Americans want those symptoms to spread. In any case, as Kurt Schlichter wrote last week, DeSantis “loves to crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and to hear the lamentation of their women-identifying persons. And those of us in the base love it.”

THERE YOU GO: Lawmaker discusses his pro-free speech bill to improve students’ experience at public universities.

SO I FINISHED HIAWATHA BRAY’S THRILLER, Power in the Blood, the other day. A page-turning thriller with an interesting protagonist who sounds a bit like Hiawatha himself, but hopefully not too much so. Recommended! (Bumped).

JON STEWART BUSTS MEDIA’S ‘JAIL-GASM’ OVER MUELLER, PERVERSE INCENTIVES:

As NewsBusters previously reported, comedian Jon Stewart dedicated an entire episode of his Apple TV show, The Problem With Jon Stewart to how the media overplayed their hand with the Mueller report and filled their coverage with “bulls***,” and effectively turned it into a “noose-tightened, closed-walled, family-style jail-gasm.” But there was more to the show as he brought on media insiders to discuss the problem and surprisingly sat down with former Disney CEO and ABC News boss, Bob Iger.

* * * * * * * *

And that’s where the interview with Iger immediately picked up. “Do you have an idea of why they might be so reluctant to speak publicly,” Stewart wondered. Iger chalked it up to news organizations “being criticized in a way that they’ve never experienced before” and they’ve formed “a bit of a bunker mentality[.]”

Things got a bit tense when Stewarts was pressing Iger on how ratings drive what’s being shown to viewers and Iger was very defensive:

IGER: If you’re asking whether there have been incidents when news organizations fail to carry things because they don’t think they’ll be of interest to their audience. I’m sure that’s the case.

STEWART: I’m not saying instances. I’m saying that’s been shaping –

IGER: You think it’s a regular thing.

STEWART: And not told in the right way.

IGER: Not being — see that’s, that’s I would, I would argue that there are stories that are not told because there’s a belief that people aren’t interested them. I don’t think there are stories that are told that are told inaccurately just to make them more interesting to people—

STEWART: It’s not inaccurate.

IGER – I’m defending an organization as opposed to news in general. I just don’t have enough—

STEWART: But trust in news during the Cronkite era was it was one of the most valued institutions. Today, it’s somewhere between Congress and herpes.

The Cronkite era, you say? Walter Cronkite: Liberalism in the Guise of Objectivity.