Archive for 2025

October 8, 2025

October 7, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Play nice.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 7th, 2025

GOOD GRAVY! Mashed Potato Meltdown: Katie Porter Melts Like Butter Under Journalist’s Gentle Heat.

I’m pretty sure even TV’s Batgirl could stand up to this tiny amount of media pressure: Holy impeachment! Democrat Katie Porter is slammed on social media for dressing up as BATGIRL in Congress on same day as historic inquiry vote.

Maybe Porter should heed Mark Manson’s advice here:

As I wrote at the time, I think it’s more a case of Katie Porter held up a copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck during the speaker vote for the photo op, because I doubt she’s read it, considering the most important passage in Manson’s book:

The deeper the pain, the more helpless we feel against our problems, and the more entitlement we adopt to compensate for those problems. This entitlement plays out in one of two ways:

  1. I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment.
  2. I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.

Opposite mindset on the outside, but the same selfish creamy core in the middle. In fact, you will often see entitled people flip back and forth between the two. Either they’re on top of the world or the world is on top of them, depending on the day of the week, or how well they’re doing with their particular addiction at that moment…What most people don’t correctly identify as entitlement are those people who perpetually feel as though they’re inferior and unworthy of the world.

This sounds like a pretty nifty summation of Porter, to be honest.

Flashback: Rep. Katie Porter scalded ex-husband’s scalp with mashed potatoes: documents.

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025

UNEXPECTEDLY: Jimmy Kimmel’s audience boom comes crashing down as he loses 71% of viewers in one week.

Jimmy Kimmel‘s triumphant return to late-night television has turned into a ratings nightmare with more than two-thirds of his audience vanishing in a single week.

The liberal comedian, who roared back to ABC’s airwaves on September 23 after being briefly suspended for inflammatory remarks about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has seen his viewership collapse by a staggering 71 percent.

The plunge in numbers puts his program’s future on shakier ground than ever before.

On Thursday, October 2, Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged just 1.9 million total viewers, down from the 6.5 million who tuned in for his hotly anticipated comeback.

Among the coveted 25-54 demographic, the hemorrhage was even worse with Kimmel drawing only 265,000 viewers, an 85% nosedive from the 1.7 million he had scored just days earlier.

That figure marked his smallest demo audience since the suspension and signals a brutal comedown for a host who had hoped the furore surrounding his suspension would translate into ratings gold.

Evergreen:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025

DAVID DESROSIERS: The Parents of Charlie Kirk’s Prodigal Assassin.

Charlie Kirk’s assassin was born and raised in southwestern Utah. Mormon territory. He was the son of a mother and father who raised kids in the Mormon way, which creates exemplary fruits that are missionaries to the world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – its formal name – instills family loyalty, stewardship, tolerance, sobriety, hard work, and sharing. They tithe. They contribute. They are impressive people.

Even Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with their “Dumb the Dumb, Dumb” view of the Mormon religion (which is a cutout for all organized religion), recognized that Mormons have strong families and raise very good kids. The whole “Book of Mormon” craze began with a 2003 “South Park” episode featuring an impressive Mormon high school kid. His ending soliloquy put it best:

“Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that,” he says. “The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people.”

I don’t know about you, but I admire the old-school way the accused killer’s father brought his son – his own flesh and blood – to face justice.

The family saw the fruit of their loins on video surveillance in a national all-points bulletin. The family reached out to their own. Father and grandfather. They talked him into coming home. Once he was home, they convinced him to turn himself in for the crime – and to stanch the dishonor that he had done to his family’s name.

Would Luigi Mangione’s wealthy and well-connected Maryland family have done the same if they recognized his distinctive eyebrows? “Come home, son,” followed by, “You must turn yourself in to the authorities and be held accountable.” There’s no evidence they did anything of the kind. If they had, would Luigi have complied? I doubt it.

Fathers and mothers of America: Do you think you and yours could do similarly? To ask that question is not to easily answer it.

Read the whole thing.

Related: At City Journal, Martin Gurri charts “The Progressive Left’s Descent Into Barbarism.”

The psycho-political pathologies unleashed by Kirk’s assassination should not have surprised us. The signs were already evident. Polls show that 55 percent of those who identify as “left of center” say that killing President Trump would be justified. We heard the giggles, including from another Democratic White House wannabe, Tim Walz, at rumors of Trump’s death or grave illness—Trump would, with luck, die soon. Two real attempts on the president’s life have failed, to the loud regret of many on the left. We watched progressive women idolize Luigi Mangioni for shooting a health-insurance executive in the back. And in every case, media narratives could be found ready to explain away, even justify, the violence.

And there were other signs. A repeat offender—a black man—slashed a young white woman to death on a Charlotte light rail train, and the city’s enlightened mayor issued an initial statement full of understanding for the attacker and his mental condition, while never once mentioning the victim. The lesson was plain: some groups in our society deserve compassion; others apparently deserve to die.

Charlie Kirk’s murder pushed many of us to a tipping point. We now know where we stand. Kooks and cranks thrive under every dispensation—granted. But most conservatives and Republicans don’t cheer assassinations. Most old-fashioned liberals and Democrats don’t, either. This derangement belongs to the progressive Left.

And alas, some of their most visible politicians: Jay Jones’s Texts Are a Frightening Peek into a Bleak Moral Worldview — And it’s not as uncommon as we’d like to think.

I disagree with one take by Gurri, though:

In a better world, liberals would grasp that the fundamental threat to their ideals comes not from the villainous Trump but from the radical Left—not least because Trump always gains when the public associates liberals with their unhinged progressive allies.

This realization seems unlikely, however. Democrats are too deeply consumed with Trump-phobia—87 percent of the party faithful are positive the president is a fascist. But Trump will not be around forever, and his successors probably won’t inherit his peculiar gift for driving otherwise rational actors insane.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney all would like a word here.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025

SASHA STONE: The NYT’s Mean Girl Cope Over Bari Weiss and CBS.

Here is how the author of the piece, Jessica Testa, covers Bari Weiss’s exit from the New York Times:

In its nearly 100 years, CBS has not seen a leader quite like Ms. Weiss. Neither has the media industry. Ms. Weiss, 41, has ascended the mountain of journalism on a slingshot. In 2020, she publicly resigned as an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times to start a newsletter on Substack. Today, she has one of the most prestigious jobs in news.

Oh, is that what happened? She publicly resigned? I think there is a little more to the story, Ms. Testa. You know, that whole thing about how the New York Times lost its mind one night because of a massive Twitter hissy fit? Any of that ring a bell?

She then writes:

She achieved this without climbing the typical journalistic career ladder, and with no experience directing television coverage. She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions. While newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs, Ms. Weiss has described herself as a “left-leaning centrist,” a “radical centrist,” “a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice” — she is married to Nellie Bowles, a former Times reporter who is a co-founder of The Free Press — and a proud recipient of the label “Zionist fanatic.”

I laughed out loud reading the line, “newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs.” They don’t? Since when? As far as I can tell, all of the major legacy news outlets have done nothing BUT trumpet their personal beliefs.

And let’s not forget this line, “And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions.”

So-called wokeness? You mean it hasn’t gutted American culture and transformed it into cult-like, identity-obsessed dogma with pregnant men, chest-feeders, DEI mandates, sensitivity readers, and intimacy coordinators? Emptied out the box office, crushed television ratings, and sent voters fleeing the Democratic Party like rats off a sinking ship?

That’s the way Jessica Testa believes Bari Weiss “won,” by defeating “so-called wokeness,” and that, along with her billionaire pals, landed her a job at CBS News. That is what I call an act of bad journalism, Ms. Testa, because you left out the best part of the story: the truth.

Read the whole thing.

As Andrew Stiles writes at the Washington Free Beacon, the collective meltdown over Weiss is particularly telling, given how it could be just as easily framed by those in the legacy media: Liberal Media, Activists Silent as Bari Weiss Makes LGBTQ History at CBS News.

Bari Weiss made history this week as the first openly LGBTQ journalist to lead a major network newsroom. Paramount announced Monday that Weiss, the former New York Times opinion writer who founded the Free Press, would serve as editor in chief of CBS News. Alas, the landmark achievement was largely ignored by media outlets and LGBTQ activist groups that purport to celebrate diversity and inclusion.

Stories from the legacy wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press, did not even mention that Weiss was gay and happily married to Free Press cofounder Nellie Bowles. Neither does CNN’s report on Weiss’s new role at CBS News. The New York Times briefly mentions toward the end of its story that Weiss is married to Bowles, a former Times reporter, but does not address the historic implications for LGBTQ representation in mainstream media.

At Red State, Ward Clark asks: Is Bari Weiss Bringing Respectability Back to the Legacy Media?

Bari Weiss is not exactly a mainstream conservative. She describes herself as a “left-leaning centrist.” But it’s not her political views that are in the forefront here, but rather her journalistic skills and integrity – and her leadership ability. She’s facing a big, bloated organization with many entrenched legacy media adherents. It’s not an easy job ahead. The beast may well try to devour her, but Bari Weiss seems to understand that when you’re riding a tiger, the trick is to keep a good grip on its ears.

We wish her the best of luck at CBS. Maybe she’ll be able to turn them around.

Good luck — there are many, many deck chairs on this Titanic:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: The View Promotes Latino Face Painting at Super Bowl.

This week, “The View” discussed Bad Bunny’s upcoming appearance at the 2026 Super Bowl. The conversation turned to illegal immigration on two fronts. The far-Left singer is an avowed ICE hater, having announced he wouldn’t tour the U.S. as long as ICE was still arresting illegal immigrants stateside.

Performing at the Super Bowl? That’s another story, apparently.

Plus, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says ICE officials will be at the annual event.

That set off co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who served up a curious way to respond to the lawful group’s efforts to enforce immigration laws.

Goldberg’s solution served as a painful reminder of the nation’s blackface past, a dehumanizing practice that has long since been abandoned. Even comical uses of the practice have been memory-holed in recent years.

“Here is the thing, everybody, get a little cocoa butter, sit in the sun, that’s the first thing. And then — and this is the only time you can probably ever do this, give yourself a Latin accent.”

This is apparently a major hobby of at least two of The View’s hosts:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 7:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 7th, 2025

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Gran-Tifa Armed With Folk Songs In Portland.

They are the warriors of our time, fighting for justice. Seriously, these old people (I’m almost there) have nothing better to do then strum on a ukulele, a box drum and sing out of tune to reveal their utter tone-deafness. I think I even heard an out-of-tune trumpet in there. They have retired and are now reaping the rewards of that retirement and free to live in their delusional little utopias. So, what do they do? They bust out in song to relive their days of 60s sit-ins.

This land is your land, this land is my land.

I’m am SHOCKED Maxine Dexter and company did not preface this bad jam session with a paragraphs-long, land acknowledgement of sorts. After all, Maxine and The White Geezers are standing on the very river banks that belonged to indigenous tribes. It was their land. And, now, they pollute it with this noise. The ukuleles!

Exit quote: “Bad Bunny at The Superbowl? Hell no! Not when we have such RAW talent as this on our city streets!”

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 7th, 2025