Archive for 2024

A SEVERE BEATING WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER, BUT THIS IS NICE:

And to be fair, in Nashville, for all its blue-city flaws, they probably won’t get the catch-and-release treatment.

JIM TREACHER: Why Is Alec Baldwin Forgiven But Louis CK Isn’t?

The only time you’ve seen Louie on TV in the past seven years is if you happened to flip over to Animal Planet at 3:30 in the morning.

In the meantime, what has his SNL colleague Alec Baldwin been up to?

Well, there was this.

Baldwin shot a woman on the set of a movie, and next month he’ll stand trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Which makes it the perfect time to announce his latest project!

Hey, remember when Mike Brady shot somebody?

That’s right: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin are doing a TLC reality show, which is set to premiere in 2025. If he’s not in jail, I guess? I don’t know how that works.

That’s the question that Fox News anchor Kennedy is asking in the London Daily Mail: Will Alec Baldwin’s fake-Spanish baby-factory Hilaria drag their seven bambinos to meet him in JAIL to film this revolting new reality show?

As Kennedy rhetorically asks, “You know who won’t have their own family reality show? Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer and young mom who Baldwin accidentally shot and killed on the set of ‘Rust’ in 2021.”

HOW THE MONOCULTURE MADE SUPER SIZE ME:

If the filmmaker didn’t face serious health repercussions, Spurlock’s film would be dead on arrival. A five pound weight gain and some heartburn just wouldn’t cut it.

But here crafty Spurlock delivers again.

Not only does he gain 25 pounds, but he engages in all kinds of theatrics including throwing up on camera, and reporting troubling symptoms such as chest palpitations and difficulty breathing.

Spurlock’s doctors express horror at how his experiment has affected his blood tests. Most dramatically, they declare that it seems as though his liver had been flooded by alcohol.

Here’s how one doctor put it:

The results for your liver are obscene beyond anything I would have thought. You know that movie [Leaving Las Vegas]—Nicolas Cage? Pickled his liver during the course of a few weeks in Las Vegas. I never would have thought you could do the same thing with a high-fat diet.

Bloodwork that evokes Nic Cage at his booziest? Now that’s what I call high stakes!

Spurlock’s recipe worked.

* * * * * * * *

In 2017, Spurlock figured the #MeToo movement was coming for him. So in a preemptive move, the he released an open letter where he admitted to many incidents of sexual misconduct, including repeated infidelities and the sexual harassment of an assistant. He also notes a one-night-stand. He regarded it as consensual, but he women he was with accused him of rape.

The letter included a detail that reflected on his private and professional life. As Spurlock questions what drove him to behave so badly, he asks, “Is it because I’ve consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven’t been sober for more than a week in 30 years.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, filmmaker Phelim McAleer wonders if that’s what explains why his liver resembled that of an alcoholic:

Mr. Spurlock’s 2017 confession contradicts what he said in his 2004 documentary. “Any alcohol use?” the doctor asks at the outset. “Now? None,” he replies. In explaining his experiment, he says: “I can only eat things that are for sale over the counter at McDonald’s—water included.”

Would that revelation spur the monoculture to finally disavow the project it had done so much to champion?

As Ted Balaker goes on to write in his Substack column, of course not. Ed Morrissey adds:

When Nick Gillespie offered a shorter but still pointed criticism of Super Size Me last week, some commenters on social media took swipes at him for waiting until Spurlock died. The truth is that many of these criticisms have been circulating about that documentary for years and even came up at the film’s release, including criticisms of overdramatization and questions about whether Spurlock deliberately manipulated his intake for maximum impact. Those criticisms got buried by the same Eight Percenters* that Ted discusses here.

When Spurlock died late last month, we linked to James Glassman’s 2004 review of Super Size Me. The general public knew nothing of Spurlock’s alcoholism when his faux-documentary debuted, but Glassman was astute enough to smell a rat.

Incidentally, here’s Gillespie’s Reason TV retrospective from last week on Spurlock:

* “Only about eight percent of America is progressive, yet the biggest brands so often tailor their material for that demographic,” Balaker wrote last month, in a Substack column that asks (and answers) the question, “Why is Late Night Comedy One-Party Territory?

FASTER, PLEASE: First metal 3D printer on space station dribbles molten steel. “The first metal 3D printer aboard the International Space Station successfully dribbled out a molten ‘S curve’ last Thursday, in what the European Space Agency (ESA) is calling a ‘giant leap forward for in-orbit manufacturing.’ Combining a high-power laser and stainless-steel wire, an Airbus-built metal 3D printer deposited its first liquefied test lines inside the ESA’s Columbus research module. For ‘safety reasons,’ the machine operated in a ‘fully sealed box, preventing excess heat or fumes from escaping.'”

ANOTHER WIN FOR THE NEW CIVIL LIBERTIES ALLIANCE: In NCLA Amicus Win, Fifth Circuit Topples SEC’s Unlawful Effort to Regulate Private Funds. “Following the New Civil Liberties Alliance amicus curiae brief’s advice, the Court declared that SEC exceeded its statutory authority in promulgating the unlawful rule because Congress never gave SEC oversight of this aspect of private funds. NCLA thanks securities law scholars Paul Mahoney, Adam Pritchard, and J.W. Verret for joining in NCLA’s brief as amicus partners.”

Reminder/disclosure: I’m on the NCLA Board of Advisors.