ANALYSIS: TRUE. Go See American Fiction. 

One [Academy Awards] Best Pictures nominee that qualifies on the “merits” demanded by the diversity commissars is “American Fiction.” It features a black cast, black screenwriter, and black director. I noted the film here back in October when the first trailer came out (posted below for reference), noting that it seemed like an anti-woke film.

I have now seen it in the theater, and it is a superb piece of filmmaking. It does indeed make woke white liberals look foolish and idiotic, but it does so with a two-track story that is quite effective. And it is all the more effective for making its critique with a slow-rolling back story.

It is worth contrasting “American Fiction” with “An American Carol,” a satire of the left that David Zucker (of “Airplane” flame) made back in 2008, starring Kelsey Grammer and other A-listers. (Trailer below.) It was a direct attack on Michael Moore and his popular style of leftism. And while the film had lots of great set-piece jokes and musical numbers mocking the left, it wasn’t very good overall because it attempted to be a full-frontal assault, and had no subtlety.

Having seen it last week in Fort Worth, there’s no doubt that American Fiction is a much more watchable film than American Carol. Just a heads up, as Steve Hayward alludes above, with the exception of American Fiction’s postmodern last act, the big belly laughs are almost all in its trailers. The rest of the film plays like a slightly edgier version of a good Cosby Show episode from the late 1980s, albeit with excellent on-location widescreen cinematography, not Cosby’s set-bound videotaped 4X3 look.

As Hayward concludes, “Go see ‘American Fiction,’ and help boost its box office numbers, and perhaps—who knows?—an underdog bid to win the Best Picture award with a design meant to reject the whole ‘diversity’ regime that the Academy has embraced. That would be true racial justice.”

UPDATE: American Fiction cast say Oscars shouldn’t just reward ‘Black pain’ (video):

(Updated and bumped.)

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China to launch lunar navigation and communications test satellites.

DEADSPIN CANNOT CLAIM IGNORANCE IN BLACKFACE LAWSUIT:

The opening paragraph of the article also claimed the face paint proved the fan “hates black people and Native Americans.”

The full photo of the fan was available online the night of Jan. 26, a day before Deadspin published its piece. We also sent Deadspin and Phillips the full photo in an email three hours after the publication of the article.

Phillips acknowledged our email almost immediately in a now-deleted tweet, saying he could explain how “red and black face paint is just as offensive as blackface.”

He also accused me of “hating Mexicans” in the same post.

Nonetheless, it’s inarguable that Deadspin and Phillips both knew they had printed a harmful lie about an innocent 9-year-old kid by mid-afternoon on Nov. 27.

And yet the article remained as is. Deadspin did not correct the article. That’s journalism malpractice.

In fact, an editor for the site doubled down on the accusation three days later.

Read the whole thing.

SELF-ABSORBED TAYLOR SWIFT DOESN’T GIVE A RIP ABOUT DECEASED MENTOR TOBY KEITH:

When is @taylorswift13 going to share some words about Toby Keith? The man who discovered her, got her the 1st record deal? Taylor, where are you today? #TobyKeith https://t.co/6mz88PD5gK

— John Rich🇺🇸 (@johnrich) February 6, 2024

To answer Rich’s query: Taylor Swift sells off one of her $40m private jets — but keeps her even larger plane to commute to lover Travis Kelce in Kansas City, as she threatens to sue college student who tracks her whereabouts.

Given that Swift was branded “the world’s most carbon polluting celebrity” by one wag in December, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP: Biden Regime Designates Martha’s Vineyard as “Low-Income” Community to Qualify for Federal EV Charger Tax Credits.

IN A GOOD WAY, THAT IS: Caffeine in Your Blood Might Affect Body Fat And Diabetes Risk, Study Finds.

Coffee: The All-Natural Wonder Drug.

NO, IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE AWFUL: NYC note to Eric Adams: You’re not criticized because you’re ‘chocolate’ or ‘Jesus.’ “Mayor Adams says nobody likes him, and the polls suggest he’s close to correct. An African-American, he blames race — but maybe it’s really because nobody likes a whiner. Especially an unfocused whiner.”

THAT’S NICE, BUT WERE THEIR PRONOUNS CORRECT? AND WHAT KIND OF SHIRT WERE THEY WEARING? Cornell Engineers Develop New Lithium Battery That Can Charge in Under Five Minutes.

READER FAVORITE: TurboTax Deluxe 2023 Tax Software, Federal & State Tax Return. #CommissionEarned

I KINDA LOVE THE BRAND NAME, THOUGH: “SCHWINNNG!” FDA recalls male sexual enhancement supplements over undeclared drug ingredients.

CHARMING: Self-Absorbed Swift Doesn’t Give a RIP About Deceased Mentor Toby Keith.

JIM GERAGHTY: The Self-Defeating Republican Party.

• When McDaniel took over, Trump was about to be inaugurated, there were 52 Republican senators and 246 Republican members of the House, and 4,205 of the 7,383 state legislative seats (almost 57 percent) were held by Republicans. Today, Biden is president, there are 49 Republican senators and 219 Republican members of the House, and 4,022 of the 7,383 state legislative seats (54.4 percent) are held by Republicans. Filings with the Federal Election Commission indicate that the RNC begins 2024 with just over $8 million in cash on hand, the lowest since 1993, adjusted for inflation. The Democratic National Committee begins the year with $24 million on hand.

• Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar reported that the RNC spent about $297,000 on office supplies, $1 million on management consulting, $70,000 on floral arrangements, $116,000 on media-booking consultants, and $263,000 on limousines — significantly more than their counterparts in the Democratic National Committee in each category. Meanwhile, the DNC significantly outspent the RNC on voter-file maintenance, get-out-the-vote texting, and transfers to state parties — you know, the sorts of efforts that actually help candidates get elected.

• Oh, and finally, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that “Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company” and that “Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?” Jeff Miller, a lobbyist for Anheuser-Busch, is hosting a fundraiser for Trump on March 6.

I don’t know about you, but I find all this “winning” exhausting. Will Rogers famously said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.” Lately, the Republican Party is demonstrating all the organization of Bogota rush-hour traffic.

We can’t get a bipartisan consensus to aid our allies. America’s enemies must be laughing this morning.

As Jim Treacher adds, “Even Trump says Bud Light is good now. So I guess that whole thing is over. Sure, fine, so this was one of the few culture-war skirmishes the Republicans were actually winning. But what’s so great about winning anyway, right? Such a hassle. Lay down your guns, Kid Rock. War is over if you want it. Oceania is not at war with Bud Light. Oceania has never been at war with Bud Light.”

Exit quote:

Republicans want to run from every win (Disney, Bud Light) and race to every loss (Mayorkas impeachment, border battle). They're rudderless flotsam at the mercy of the winds. It takes skill to be that unbelievably ridiculous.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 7, 2024

“PEOPLE” WITH PCOS? People with PCOS are 8 times more likely to attempt suicide, a new study finds. Here’s what to know and how to get support. I’m pretty sure that people with polycystic ovary syndrome are people with ovaries, which is to say, “women.”

BACK TO THE FUTURE! What to Expect From Kodak’s New Super 8 Camera.

The camera is a fascinating blend of new and old technology. While it still shoots to standard Super 8 film cartridges (including VISION 3, EKTACHROME, and TRI-X and each cartridge contains 50 feet of film, or about three minutes of footage, depending on the frame rate) it also sports a microSD card slot to record audio.

* * * * * * * *

“The viewfinder is based on an integrated video assist system, which means the image coming through the lens is bypassed and then projected onto a frosted ground glass,” B&H explains. “Then [it is] captured with an internal CMOS camera that gets displayed on the LCD. As a result, you’re actually able to see the image and compose your shots via the LCD screen even when there is no film in the camera.”

Way back in 2016, when Kodak first announced plans to go back to the future and release a new super 8 camera, the Guardian speculated on who the product is aimed at:

The analogue revival is more than a marketing stunt. Just as film-makers such as Abrams, Tarantino and Nolan still prefer to shoot on “real” analogue film, so demand for the audio-visual old-school is rebounding. Alongside Kodak’s new cameras at CES this year, Sony is exhibiting a new record player(a machine for playing vinyl audio discs, younger readers) and Polaroid is exhibiting a new range of instant cameras. Amazon, too, reports that its top-selling camera and audio products this Christmas were a turntable and instant-camera film. All of these products combine analogue “warmth” with digital functionality, which suggests that either the near future won’t be as virtual as some algorithm predicted it would be, or that we’re sick and tired of having new formats continually foisted on us.

At $5,495 (its 2024 suggested retail price, not including the film and developing charges), this is one example where being a retro hipster or wannabe rock video director mashing together a variety of formats won’t come cheap.

STEPHEN MILLER: CNN rearranges the deck chairs… again.

Thompson and CNN see an election year coming and are once again attempting to put CNN at the center of the anti-Trump universe, positioning itself as both a Donald Trump elevator network, while trying to maintain Jeff Zucker’s hires of #Resistance. Back then, it sacrificed mainstream cachet for the viewership of fierce partisans — and it’s hoping to repeat the trick eight years later.

Viewing audiences, for the most part, understand that MSNBC leans left, while Fox News leans right, and see through the fact CNN badly attempts to perform the news while pretending to be both. CNN’s integrity problem won’t be solved until it cleans house, completely, and returns to actual trustworthy news analysis, not the furrowed moral preening of personalities like Jake Tapper and his last-honest-man-in-journalism act.

Considering that in the run-up to Fox News’ launch in 1996, Ted Turner was red-lining the Godwin meter by comparing Rupert Murdoch to “the late Führer,” what could CNN in 2024 do to pretend to be “objective?” And after first the Drudge Report (mark I), the Blogosphere, and 15 years of reading preening DNC-MSM “journalists” reveal their biases on Twitter, why would viewers believe them?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Ronna McDaniel May Not Be Resigning As RNC Chair After All.

OUT ON A LIMB: There’s No Defending Woodrow Wilson.

Frum’s article, “Uncancel Woodrow Wilson,” appears in the March 2024 issue of the Atlantic. How perverse a choice is it to write on this now? Consider that the last thing the magazine published was a special issue dedicated to the topic “If Trump Wins,” warning of peril to the American system and the civil liberties of our people from a man who would come to the Oval Office with a dictatorial temperament and contempt for the constraints of our Constitution. Frum himself contributed a screed against the menace of such a president:

If he wins the election, Trump will commit the first crime of his second term at noon on Inauguration Day: His oath to defend the Constitution of the United States will be a perjury. A second Trump term would instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War. . . . For his own survival, he would have to destroy the rule of law.

How terrible to contemplate a president who loathes the Constitution and is bent on permanently subverting it. And worse, imagine one who might win the job without a popular majority at his back, owing to an opposition divided by a third-party challenge:

If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time.

If the nation indeed stands at such a precipice, you and I might think it the worst possible occasion to laud Woodrow Wilson. But you and I are not David Frum.

Back in 2013, Frum himself wrote:

Wilson was also the most disdainful racist to hold the presidency since Andrew Johnson in the 1860s. Wilson’s administration sought to remove black Americans from all but the most menial federal employment. Those who could not be removed were required to work in spaces screened from public view and to use segregated lunchrooms and toilets. When a black newspaper editor led a delegation to Washington to protest the introduction of Southern Jim Crow into the national government, Wilson — a slaveholder’s son — retorted that segregation “was not humiliating, but a benefit” to black people.

Wilson led the United States into the First World War in April 1917, justifying his decision in characteristically idealistic language: “to make the world safe for democracy.” Only five months before, he had won reelection on an antiwar platform: “he kept us out of war.”

* * * * * * * *

Yet these same admirers also quietly came to see Wilson as the very model of how not to be president: as a dogmatist, a chatterbox, and, ultimately, a loser. When it came their turn to decide issues of war and peace, they praised Wilson — then did just the opposite. That seems likely to be the lasting verdict of history, too.

So why the change of heart, and why now?

MIXED RESULTS: Ford beats expectations, sees more profit growth ahead. It did, however, lose billions on EVs.

COURTESY OF ELON MUSK, DISNEY’S ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT ‘INCLUSION STANDARDS.’ Assuming these are real, of course.

Whatever moral justification there might be for quotas for “underrepresented” groups cannot possibly stretch to using those quotas to create a new underrepresented group composed of the people you like less. If accusations of racism are starting to lose their sting, this kind of thing is why it’s happening.

I’M SORRY, STEVE, I CAN’T DO THAT: Google’s New AI Image Generator Is So Great I Want to Reprogram It With an Axe.

COLORADO: Out-of-state money dominates fundraising for anti-hunting ballot measure. “In a January 16 filing with the Colorado Secretary of State, the issue committee backing the measure (Cats Aren’t Trophies) reports raising just over $218,000 in the last quarter of 2023, with another roughly $60,000 in ‘non-monetary’ contributions. Of that, $100,000 comes from the Washington, DC-based Animal Wellness Action, with another $2087 in-kind donation of “personnel services” provided. The group lists a Colorado state director on its website as the campaign manager for the effort, currently numbered as Initiative #91.”

SO LONG AGO THAT IT NEVER REALLY HAPPENED:

On Mother’s Day, in 2021, after all the official mandates had ended, my family was kicked out of an ice cream shop for not wearing masks. We were living in an entirely different world.

I should have reached this conclusion sooner. I had already withdrawn my children from the public schools. I had already lost friends.

The question plagued me – Why?

* * * * * * * *

I realize, now, that totalitarianism is primarily a societywide delusion that enables despots to flourish with power. This is the opposite of my beliefs before. I used to think that it was the despots who used their power to create the totalitarian society.

The innate goodness and beauty in all people becomes hijacked by terrible ideas. Willing participants believing in the truth of the idea then create a burgeoning inhumanity masquerading as virtue, and they execute it systematically.

It is a simple fact I had never considered: a deluded person is perfectly capable of applying their delusion rationally. One-way grocery aisles, masked toddlers, and vaccine segregation are all rational applications of what most now see as the mistaken Covid ideology.

Rationalization allows participants to maintain the delusion even in the face of massive contradictory evidence. The personal investment is often enhanced by performance of often bizarre new rituals. The rituals work to reinforce the investment and lead to the expression of rage when challenged — rage even towards those closest to them.

Mass formation psychosis, to coin a phrase. Or to put it another way:

FISH, MEET BICYCLE: Women may find it harder to adjust to later life divorce and break-ups than men. And yet, most divorces are initiated by women.

“LET FLORIDA TRY” ITS HIGHER ED REFORM EFFORTS: An FSU prof does what the media will not, giving a rundown of the changes in Florida higher ed and the potential benefits and drawbacks of things like anti-DEI efforts and post-tenure review. Seriously, it was so refreshing to read an article about this subject that’s not just straight propaganda.

HOW IT STARTED: Not Satire: Nikki Haley Loses Nevada Primary To “None Of These Candidates.”

–Not the Bee, today.

How it’s going: Haley vows to stay in race following embarrassing Nevada defeat.

—Reuters, today.