Archive for 2024

August 31, 2024

A LONG TIME AGO, FROM AN NFL FAR, FAR AWAY:

I’d love to know the reasoning behind this opening; I assume it was signed off on by a CBS Sports exec for his family-friendly Sunday afternoon show, despite seeming like a cross between Rollerball and A Clockwork Orange in its level of violence.

Curiously, the only play that wouldn’t get a player permanently ejected from the league in 2024 comes at the end via the Oakland Raiders — Willie Brown’s classic interception from Super Bowl XI. I’m sure you can hear the announcer as well as I can saying, “Old man Willie, he could go all the way!”, after ESPN’s highlight reel of the game was endlessly rerun by ESPN in the January runup to each year’s Super Bowl in the ’80s and ’90s.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Aug 31st, 2024

HOLLYWOOD, INTERRUPTED: Amandla Stenberg: The Acolyte Got Canceled Because of ‘Hyper-Conservative Bigotry.’

As I argued in my 2nd take on this show, it’s obvious that the whole concept here was a post-2020, BLM-inspired take on Star Wars. If the Jedi are space cops then the Jedi must in fact be bad guys who indiscriminately murder entire communities of black and gay people and then cover it up. Why? Because all cops are bastards, you fascist! Someone might have suggested to the show’s creator that a show in which the Jedi are suddenly the bad guys maybe was a twist too far for the Star Wars universe, but I guess Disney though BLM-Star Wars would be edgy and therefore good. So they dumped a reported $180 million on this turd.

There’s also an interaction between the two problems. Someone could have made a very dark show about Jedi’s who abuse their authority but it wasn’t these writers. While it’s clear that was their intent, what you actually get is a show that doesn’t make sense. For instance, one of the Jedi is so ashamed of his secret past that he agrees to kill himself. Later we learn that aside from acting like an impulsive idiot (bad writing), he actually didn’t do anything to anyone. Another character (a Wookie Jedi) gets murdered for his role in this massacre, but what was his role exactly? His mind was taken over by the space witches to attack his Jedi friends. Other than that, he never harms anyone I don’t think. They started with a terrible premise about bad cops and made a complete hash of it, so much so that there is literally no one to root for in this show.

The show got canceled because the ratings were poor, the lowest of any Star Wars show released by Disney so far. And this week lead actress Amandla Stenberg, who previously put out a diss track calling her critics racist, once again released a video in which she said the show was canceled because of “hyper-conservative bigotry.” Here’s a bit of what she said.

Our show, our Star Wars show has been canceled. I’m going to be transparent and say It’s not a huge shock for me. Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality but for those who aren’t aware there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it. That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of I would say hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred, and hateful language towards us. You know, this really affected me when I first got the job because it’s just not something, even though I anticipated it happening, it’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.

Later on she added: “It’s not lost on me how the way that these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper-divisiveness of the time that we live in, that is driven I would say at this point by echo-chambers of thought and algorithms that reinforce our biases. And I think that applies to everybody.” Had she stopped there it might have been a somewhat neutral take on things, but of course she immediately went back to blaming the right. “But I think that in a particular sect of people it manifests as a lot of fear for what is changing, a lot of hatred for anything that is other,” she said. She closed the clip by saying, “Let’s vote, y’all.” No need to specify who she wants you to vote for. That’s a given.

I won’t add much to this except to repeat that while I’m sure there are some obnoxious racists out there sending hate mail to Amandla Stenberg, that’s not why her show was canceled. The show was canceled because it was a woke concept at odds with the universe it was in and because of the terrible execution of the concept. It succeeded neither as light entertainment nor incisive social commentary. Those who tuned it out did so not because everyone watching was an alt-right racist, but because it was bad art which seemed morally confused.

So once again, Kathleen Kennedy was given an enormous pile of money by Disney, which she then set alight by trying to make a leftist message front and center in a TV series whose primary goal should be to entertain Star Wars’ fan base. That would result in getting positive word of mouth, which would then get many more Star Wars fans to give the house of the mouse their credit card numbers.

There’s only so many times you can fail to do that, before audiences realize they don’t need to fund this: Hollywood Bust: Technicians, Craftsmen, and Below-the-Line Workers Being Laid Off in Droves. “Unfortunately, it’s the more blue collar workers — who are not nearly as left-looney as the higher-paid actors and soulless producers — who are bearing the brunt of the recession,” Ace of Spades writes.

As Rob Long wrote last year at Commentary in “The Content Mandate Murders:”

The world, I don’t need to tell you, is falling apart. That’s bad. On the other hand, bad years for the world often mean terrific years for us in Hollywood. The rule is: When times are lousy, people go to the movies. That’s what they did during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Those were banner years for the business. Audiences were desperate for a few hours of relief from the relentlessly terrible economic news, and after 1941 they were aching for something to distract them from war in Europe and the Pacific, telegrams from the War Department, from a world that was falling apart.

* * * * * * * *

Some of the biggest movies of the 1930s were sunny and upbeat fare—musicals, romantic comedies, the merry lives of the super-rich. Maybe when you’re surrounded by poverty and depression, it’s nice to lose yourself for a few hours in glamorous Manhattan skyscrapers and elaborately costumed dance numbers.

And if you look at a list of the top movies from 1941 to 1945, you’ll still find lots of musicals, Westerns, romantic dramas. You could spend the whole day at the movies and never know there was a war on. That is, as long as you didn’t pay attention to the newsreel.

Decades later, when the world was falling apart (again) in the late ’60s and early ’70s, among the biggest movies were Doctor Zhivago, The Sound of Music, Love Story, Airport—you get the idea. When young American servicemen are dying in Southeast Asia and crazed death-cult hippies are murdering everyone in the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, who can blame audiences for thinking, Let’s go see “Paint Your Wagon” because Clint Eastwood sings! Or A VW Bug that’s sentient? I’ll grab the car keys!

Show business, in other words, is at its most successful when it counter-programs against a world that’s falling to pieces. But “counter-program” is probably not the right phrase to use, because it’s highly unlikely that any movie-studio mogul, way back in 1939 (or, for that matter, 1969) commissioned a focus group and hired a marketing research team to figure out just what the national mood was.

People were selling apples on the street. The national mood was pretty easy to discern then. And then later, when the children of the Greatest Generation were old enough to read and adopt revolutionary left-wing claptrap, nobody in show business needed to conduct a national survey to know that the nation was having a slow-motion nervous breakdown. Just look at Hank Fonda’s daughter! She’s over there yukking it up with the commies! Quick! Somebody green-light Tora! Tora! Tora!

Studios and television networks operated mostly on instinct back then, which was easier to do because the men—and they were 99 percent men—who ran those companies were deeply connected to the great, chaotic American Experiment. They weren’t producing movies and TV shows for a distant, unfathomable crowd of nobodies somewhere out there in the dark. When you include yourself in the term “American viewing public,” it’s a lot easier to know what projects to invest in. They’re the ones you’d watch yourself.

Kathleen Kennedy cut her teeth as producer for Steven Spielberg on such films as the Back to the Future trilogy, the Jurassic Park movies, and Schindler’s List. Despite her far left worldview, does anybody think she’s actually watching shows like The Acolyte and Ahsoka for pleasure?

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Aug 31st, 2024

‘ONE OF THE LOWEST MOMENTS THAT I’VE SEEN:’ PBS Attacks Trump’s Arlington Visit.

Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr and New York Times counterpart David Brooks agreed on Friday’s PBS News Hour that Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery was “really one of the lowest political moments” they could recall.

Host Geoff Bennett set the scene by recalling that “The Army said in a statement, a rare statement, ‘that the campaign was made aware of federal laws prohibiting political activity at the cemetery.’ And they confirmed the reporting that a campaign staff — Trump campaign staffer—abruptly pushed aside an employee of the cemetery. This was a female employee who, according to the Times, didn’t want to press charges because she was afraid of retaliation from Trump supporters.”

Bennett should have added that the campaign claims it had permission to bring a photographer and that Trump was invited by Gold Star families who lost loved ones during President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

With vital context missing, Stohr began, “You know, there was a time that being disrespectful in any way at Arlington National Cemetery, one of the most sacred places in our nation, would have put an end to a political career.”

Curiously though, it didn’t in 2020:

UPDATE: Gold Star Mom Had a Perfect Response to the Lib Media’s Meltdown Over Trump’s Visit to Arlington Cemetery: “Are you in my shoes? I invited him. My son was murdered under the Biden-Harris administration.”

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Aug 31st, 2024

EPIC MONGOOSE AND COBRA FIGHT ON AIRPORT TARMAC DELAYS FLIGHT:

Fight or flight?

A cobra and a mongoose treated an airplane runway like a boxing ring, viciously attacking one another and causing havoc in India.

The airplane’s takeoff was delayed after the pilot spotted the creatures scrapping on the tarmac in Patna, Bihar, as seen in a viral video.

The interspecies grudge match reportedly transpired at the Jay Prakash Narayan Airport, although the plane’s intended destination is currently unclear, Jam Press reported.

In the footage, filmed from the aircraft’s window, a cobra can be seen striking at a mongoose as the lightning-fast furball tries to dodge its venomous fangs.

In accordance with the prophecy:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Aug 31st, 2024

LIKE MOST GREEN NOSTRUMS, A FAILURE: Railroads not so green after all:

The new electric trains will buy electricity only from zero-emission sources, according to Caltrain spokesperson Dan Lieberman. These numbers sound very positive, until you step back and consider their actual meaning, namely that the old diesel caltrain was using many times more fuel than its passengers would have burned if they each drove private SUVs, and that the train in general is hugely inefficient.

This is surprising, as the common public perception is that trains are more energy efficient than cars, and the initial instinct is to consider public transit as the greener choice. The math says otherwise, and in the case of Caltrain, it says it overwhelmingly. Nonetheless, this issue is not just one for this particular railroad, and applies to all systems, particularly in the U.S.

The numbers mean Caltrain was burning about 25 million gallons of diesel annually. But today, Caltrain has around 590,000 boardings/year and an average of 24,600 on weekdays. That means 3.5 gallons of diesel per boarding, on average, which is equivalent to 4 gallons of gasoline. Each round trip thus burned the equivalent 8 gallons of gasoline per person. A 30 miles each way round trip in a car with the average load of 1.5 people, which is less that one gallon per person in a Prius, and 2 gallons per person in a large SUV. Even if each passenger were given a personal Hummer H2 to drive, they would only burn 4.6 gallons for that round trip. If diesel Caltrain were a car, it would be class as one of the heaviest polluters per passenger.

Are you really surprised?

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024

PROFILES IN COURAGE:

Related:

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:57 am by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024

TO BE FAIR, NBC IS INCAPABLE OF SHAME:

You can tell how bad the Afghanistan debacle is for Democrats by how vigorously the press is running interference here.

Posted at 8:19 am by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024

SELF-CARICATURING:

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024

HE’S RIGHT:

Posted at 7:51 am by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024

ICYMI: MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Kamala Comes Out of Hiding.

It was, Dana Bash said on CNN at 9 p.m. Thursday, “a watershed moment.” Not just a watershed—”a defining moment.” Why the fuss? Kamala Harris was giving an interview.

Think about that. Somehow, in the whirlwind of campaign 2024, we have reached the point where it’s news that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America will answer questions from the press. Until now, if you’ve been interested in Harris’s views, you’ve had to rely, with one or two exceptions, on the Harris whisperers—the unnamed aides quoted in mainstream media disavowing the vice president’s previous positions on health care, energy, the environment, immigration, and crime. The interview mattered because it was the first time we heard the nominee unfiltered, without her teleprompter, no notes.

But bolstered by her sidekick:

UPDATE:

MORE: This is CNN.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 31st, 2024
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