Hollywood has historically been wary of government involvement, whether in the form of censorship or via anti-monopolization efforts. But unions and studio chiefs celebrated last week’s developments.
“In almost every instance, Hollywood by and large resisted and was scared of interference,” Galloway says. “The contrast is that these two moves are by and large welcomed by Hollywood.”
Democrats often decry “corporate welfare,” but have long made an exception for Hollywood studios, which provide union jobs. Now Republicans are coming around too. Last year, Texas increased its state incentive and offered bonuses for “faith-based” projects and films that promote Texas heritage.
“The cultural aspects were used to get more traditional fiscal conservatives on board with something that could be seen as a Hollywood handout,” says Pete Johnson, a media industry researcher and visiting assistant professor at New York University, who sees Texas as a precursor to President Trump’s backing of a federal film incentive.
From the left’s point of view, what’s the problem? I’m so old, I can remember 12 years ago, when Salon wanted to nationalize both the film and the TV news industries.
As Charles Cooke asked the left in 2016, “Herewith, an under-asked question for our friends on the progressive left: ‘Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the State?’”
“We were talking a lot about just the idea of replacement. When do you bow out gracefully? How long do you hold on? Right as we were having the conversation, we had already started talking about it and breaking it. The Democratic National Convention was coming up, and that’s when we were trying to figure out who is going to be the front-runner here. Is it going to be Kamala, or is it going to be Biden?”
Hal Jordan is Joe Biden, and John Stewart is Kamala Harris. I like those actors too much to saddle them with that comparison, but I’m not one of the writers of the show.
So, it all has to do with racism. This woman’s racial obsessions, and her privilege as a woman of color. And she is the one with privilege there.
I just think it’s really soured the show. It’s a weird mishmash. There are glimmers of something better, a better show, a better story. But then it goes right back to “white people are racist, whether they realize it or not.”
It’s a weird blend of detective stories, science fiction, superheroes, and racial grievance politics. It’s just a mess.
What’s wrong with just having a guy with crazy powers fighting crime? Why does it have to be a struggle session? Why do I need to interrogate my whiteness just to watch a show about guys in costumes blasting each other with space rays?
The Critical Drinker dubs Lanterns “A Superhero Show That Hates Superheroes,” but it seems as if all modern showrunners (with the exception of Andor’s Tony Gilroy) want to kill the TV series they’ve been assigned to:
Cooper has been completely sober for the past 43 years.
“If you’re in a touring band, nobody gets high, nobody ever drinks, because now it’s a big business and you can’t afford to have a guy that’s doing that. In the Seventies, you didn’t hire the guy unless he got high, so everybody was on the same level,” he laughs.
When did that change?
“You know, I think that’s in the last 15 years. Now, almost everybody’s a health freak. Mick Jagger’s, what, 82? [The Stones frontman turned 83 in July.] He does a half an hour on the treadmill before a three-hour show. Come on! He’s everybody’s blueprint for lead singers. Nobody gets better than that.
“And Keith Richards, my wife has the best line about Keith Richards. She says, ‘With all the wars and all the disease and all that death going around, what kind of a world are we gonna leave Keith Richards?’”
He is 78, with a sinewy build, black hair curling towards his shoulders; his face is marked by deep creases on his cheeks, accentuated this morning by the black lines running down his face and the black circles on his eyes applied earlier by his make-up artist. He is dressed, of course, totally in black.
Nowadays, Cooper usually plays golf each day – the perfect example, he acknowledges, of replacing one addiction with another – but touring in Europe, he is only able to play once a week. The show itself, he says, “is an aerobic exercise”.
Cooper peers through the window. Outside, the rain is sluicing the city’s grey buildings from the slate-grey sky.
He was a long-distance runner in school, he says. “And I’ve always maintained that body. There was a survey about your lifestyle, which tells you what your physical age is – it said I was 41. I’m 78, but I don’t drink, I don’t smoke – my dad smoked, all my uncles smoked, but I didn’t get what anybody was getting out of it. I just thought it was a nuisance. I get constant exercise, happily married, da-da-da, da-do-do, and all that adds up.
Nirvana, the iconic Seattle outfit that shaped the sound of ’90s alternative rock music, was honored with the Video Vanguard Award. Yet, the touching moment was overshadowed when one band member lit up during the heartfelt tribute, sparking criticism across social media.
The MTV Video Music Awards took place at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Throughout the CBS telecast of the pop culture awards show, Public Enemy rapper Chuck D gave a moving tribute to the legendary grunge act, particularly remembering the late Kurt Cobain. In a rare occurrence, the surviving members came together onstage to receive their accolade.
As Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic stepped up to accept the honor, Pat Smear was apparently puffing on a cigarette.
Rick Beato has some thoughts on the sea change that has occurred regarding smoking, in both the American population at large, and particularly among musicians, over the last 60 years or so:
Captain Smit Machchhar, the Indian captain of flydubai Flight 1073, fought back after being stabbed in the cockpit.
Despite being severely injured, he managed to unlock the cockpit door – allowing Israeli passengers and the Emirati crew to intervene and save all the passengers.
Together, their extraordinary courage saved 174 lives.
Indian. Israeli. Emirati.
Different nationalities. One extraordinary act of courage.
This man is a hero.
Captain Smit Machchhar, the Indian captain of flydubai Flight 1073, fought back after being stabbed in the cockpit.
Despite being severely injured, he managed to unlock the cockpit door – allowing Israeli passengers and the Emirati crew to intervene and save… pic.twitter.com/x4W3mtQkag
The Israel War Room Shared this, which included video of passenger Yaniv Hayoun, who Netanyahu described as a “lion,” recounting what he says he encountered and how he responded. He actually apologized to Netanyahu for having to meet him in the bloody T-shirt and shoes he still wore:
Hayoun has no background in security. But when he realized there was an attempted hijacking, he knew he had to do something.
He ran to the cockpit and physically fought with the co-pilot, who had stabbed the pilot and was attempting to crash the plane. Hayoun put the co-pilot in a chokehold and dragged. him out of the cockpit. Others came over to help restrain him.
Hayoun then went back into the cockpit and pulled back on the yoke to pull the plane out of its nosedive. The plane had dropped 17,000+ feet in under two minutes.
An off-duty pilot then entered the cockpit and took over the controls, and Haroun went back out to help guard the co-pilot.
Totally insane when you consider that it was a non pilot, a company CEO who choked out the hijacker while it was in a dive and who then grabbed the controls and pulled the spiraling plane out of the dive. He had seen this on "Air Traffic Investigation". The reserve pilots took…
It would be awful indeed if Bari Weiss were to tamper with the journalistic legacy of CBS greats like Walter Cronkite, Les Moonves (accused of forcing a woman into oral sex), former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager (accused of sexually harassing women), former 60 Minutes correspondent Charlie Rose (accused of sexually harassing women), former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt (accused of sexually harassing women) making “accused of sexually harassing women” into an official requirement for CBS News legends.
At least there was Dan Rather, who broke the network’s curse of sexually harassing women by merely trying to pass off a Microsoft Word document as if it had come from the Vietnam War.
Obviously, Bari Weiss doesn’t belong at CBS News. She hasn’t even raped anyone yet.
Read the whole thing.
When Dick Ebersol returned to produce Saturday Night Live after Jean Dumainian’s disastrous stint replacing Lorne Michaels in 1980, one of his first hires was original head writer Michael O’Donoghue, who returned because he wanted to give the show a “‘decent Viking funeral.’ He thought it would be fun to see the show go out in a blaze of glory, to make one last courageous charge into the banal maw of network TV,” according to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in their 1986 book, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. With the legacy media fading into senescence in general, perhaps Weiss can actually accomplish a well-deserved Götterdämmerung at the formerly self-described “Tiffany Network.”
Imagine if Flight 93 had had a happy ending. Israel and Saudi Arabia may have just experienced their own version, 25 years later.
The Wall Street Journal reports cautiously on what appears to be a terrorist hijacking over Israel. Their report notes a “struggle” in the cockpit, a steep dive, and an intervention by passengers to resolve it:
Pilots on a FlyDubai flight to Israel were injured after a struggle in the cockpit that sent the plane into a steep dive before it made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
FlyDubai, the sister airline to the long-haul carrier Emirates, didn’t explain what happened in the flight for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, only saying that it “experienced an incident while en route.” Flight FZ1073 landed in Tabuk in western Saudi Arabia and “all passengers are safe and accounted for,” the carrier added.
A statement from the Tabuk airport said “the captain and the co-pilot sustained injuries and were transported to the hospital for necessary medical care.” It did not elaborate on the cause of the injuries.
Itzhak Liber, a person who identified himself on his Facebook page as being a passenger on the flight, said in a video from the plane that an attacker stabbed a pilot. Liber said some on board had stepped in and removed the attacker from the cockpit.
The Times of Israel has a much more robust account of the attempted hijacking. The terrorist turns out to be the FlyDubai co-pilot, hired less than a year earlier, on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. After stabbing the captain, the co-pilot dove the plane 17,000 feet until passengers breached the cockpit and saved their own lives, not to mention whatever the co-pilot may have aimed the plane at in Saudi Arabia or Israel[.]
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said one of the pilots “stabbed the other pilot and apparently tried to crash the plane” on the Flydubai plane.
He described how a passenger and a member of the crew managed to “neutralise” the co-pilot while another crew member took control of the plane.
The suspected assailant is in custody and currently being questioned by the Saudi authorities, he added.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, said the incident showed Israel must continue its war efforts.
He said: “Thank God and the heroic passengers, but Israel’s security doctrine must be taken to the next level. We must not stop and must continue until achieving total victory in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and Judea and Samaria.”
Exit quote: “Mr Ben-Gvir, also a member of the security cabinet, said: ‘The naive notion that our enemies value life and that we should have mercy on them was met with another reminder this morning in the form of a terrorist who planned to crash a plane and murder the 180 Israelis on board.’”
Meanwhile as far as the Gray Lady is concerned, its origin and purpose, still a total mystery:
Tweet concludes, “We are getting our butt kicked here — companies are refusing cash to stay in Canada now….. and they’re openly violating agreements and just leaving.”
New Sacramento Kings guard Ben Simmons and his teammate Zach LaVine received an awkward welcome from several reporters during the team’s media day.
A live stream of the Kings’ press conference caught a few women in the room speaking about the players in between interviews. One reporter was seemingly asking which player had been speaking the podium.
“Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons was, that’s what comes with being Ben Simmons. Cringe. Cringe!” another woman responded.
“He’s lucky he’s so fine,” one reporter said.
“He’s a good looking dude! I didn’t notice, his skin is so smooth. I was like, damn, no tattoos?” said another.
One male reporter said that that former Golden State Warriors guard Jordan Poole was the woman’s type, to which the woman said, “Allegedly, I like lightskins, I guess.”
I’m sure the media would be equally laid back if the genders were reversed:
Women media members got caught on a hot mic discussing the hotness of Sacramento Kings players. If men in media were caught on a hot mic talking about hot female athletes they would be fired in five minutes and we’d have weeks of toxic masculinity stories. pic.twitter.com/E6qYQSAdVG
Tom Cruise wants an Oscar very, very badly. He’s been terrific in serious dramas and blockbusters alike, and you can’t blame him for wanting that golden statuette.
Along comes “Digger,” which offers a one-two punch for Oscar consideration. The film casts Cruise in an over-the-top role that dramatically alters his appearance.
Check!
The narrative is all about Climate Change, a message that speaks to Hollywood’s progressive heart.
Double-check!
And it all backfires in spectacular fashion. Put this one in the Louvre, a portrait of ego and ambition in a death cage match against Storytelling 101.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an obscenely rich oil tycoon who cares for his ancient cat the moment he wakes up. The poor cat is all but dead, but Digger refuses to believe it.
It’s outrageous and funny, suggesting he cares more about a cat than actual humans. Get it? He’s a monster.
Attacking “Big Oil” after starring in films such as Top Gun and its recent sequel, Days of Thunder, and a host of Mission: Impossible movies filled with endless car chases seems hypocritical, but Cruise attempted basically the same strategy in the 1980s to return to the industry’s good graces, ping-ponging from the pro-American Top Gun (which much of Hollywood hated in the Reagan era) to Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July in less than three years, complete with makeup and a receding hairline to age him to appearing closer to the real-life disabled leftist activist Ron Kovic’s appearance in the 1970s.
Sonny Bunch has an equally damning take on Cruise’s new movie: Digger Review. No one can be told what Digger is. You have to experience it for yourself.
Ultimately, I don’t think Digger really works, albeit for reasons I’m dancing around so as not to spoil your chance to experience the film as freshly as your humble narrator here. It is, structurally, an insanely ambitious film, and Iñárritu’s reach exceeds his grasp. I can’t even really say it’s never boring, as there’s a very slow opening act before we get to the reveal of what game, precisely, Iñárritu is playing with this film. Despite all that, you can’t help but marvel at the work being done by Cruise in this picture. He’ll probably get a Best Actor nomination—and he deserves it, even if Digger winds up being a legendary flop.
Which, honestly, the film might deserve too.
Speaking of which:
Tom Cruise’s DIGGER is now expected to lose $100M for Warner Bros. in their worst non-pandemic year this century.
The final nail in the coffin is the 40% Rotten Tomatoes score, Iñárritu’s lowest ever.
A Washington, D.C., councilman is celebrating a mistrial over allegations that he was involved in a $156,000 bribery scheme.
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday that her office will retry Trayon White after a jury said they could not reach a verdict despite deliberating for four days.
White was charged with bribery after prosecutors said they had recordings of his conversations with an informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his receiving cash on four separate occasions.
“We have video showing piles of cash being given to a D.C. councilmember as part of a $156,000 bribe. Rest assured that we will retry this case and every corruption case to verdict,” said Pirro in a statement after the mistrial.
White would not answer when a reporter asked him to explain why he received the money.
“If the $35,000 wasn’t a bribe, what was the money for?” asked the WRC-TV reporter.
“Let’s stick to the topic, man. Come on. You’re smarter than that. I can’t speak to that,” White responded.
Aviation Week confirmed that the agency approached Relja, Tim Conners, another former NASA SR-71A test engineer and others over the summer with job offers to work on the return-to-flight project for Tail No. 844.
In meetings with the prospective rehires, Ash brushed aside all questions about why NASA wanted to go to the effort and expense of putting the Mach 3-capable SR-71A back in flight.
During his remarks at the All-in Summit, Isaacman provided some context for NASA’s overall campaign to reinvigorate the agency’s aeronautics research mission with a new stable of X-planes pursuing breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements over the state of the art.
“In the service of the first ‘A’ in NASA, we are rebuilding our X-plane fleet,” Isaacman said. “It will not be long before NASA is once again flying as high and as fast from decades past—and then even more.”
An agency spokesperson declined to elaborate on Isaacman’s comments or the reason for the removal of Tail No. 844 from the display position. NASA has not confirmed that the return-to-flight project exists.
“We recognize the interest in the SR-71 and its remarkable history at NASA but have no additional information to share regarding the aircraft at this time,” the spokesperson tells Aviation Week.
To achieve that goal, Ash’s project must somehow restore to airworthiness a 59-year-old airframe that has not flown in nearly 27 years, despite a lack of everything—trained crews, spare parts and a supply chain ready to build them.
It is often said of postmodern “marriage” that it does not affect the marriages of heterosexual couples. As The Boston Globe asked in an oft-cited editorial defending same-sex marriage, “How would gay civil marriage affect your lives, liberties, or opportunities, or your own marriages?” This is the million-dollar question that has left conservatives and Christians stammering for an answer. This simple and seemingly commonsense question is no doubt important, but it is also a disingenuous and trivial evasion of the nature and point of marriage.
On a superficial level, a same-sex “marriage” would not affect my marriage for the same reasons that none of the various forms of postmodern marriage (e.g., polygamous, polyamorous, bigamous, incestuous, pedophilic, or interspecies) would affect my marriage. If two men want to marry, if a man and five women want to marry, if ten men and women want to marry each other, or if a woman wants to marry a dolphin, none of these unions will have any effect on my marriage in the same way that no other heterosexual marriage affects mine. Why not? On one level, all these relationships are private matters that do not have any bearing on my marriage, which is also a private matter. The simple truth of the matter is that there are only two people in the entire world who could affect my marriage: I am one and the other is my wife.
On a deeper and more fundamental level, same-sex marriage will unquestionably affect my liberties and opportunities in innumerable ways; it will affect my marriage indirectly and in meaningful ways; and it will certainly affect the way future generations experience marriage. The postmodern view of “marriage” will impose a variety of “negative externalities” on society and therefore actually harm the institution of marriage—and my marriage with it.
By democratizing and disconnecting marriage from its metaphysical roots, the postmodern view of marriage will inject a major dose of subjectivism, egalitarianism, and moral relativism into America’s marriage culture. It is grounded in the subjectivist premise that marriage is simply about individual wants, feelings, and needs, on the egalitarian premise that marriage is about companionship and all companionships are equal, and on the relativist principle that we cannot rank, distinguish, or judge one form of romantic union from another. The postmodern view makes different things the same and it makes unequal things equal.
Roger Waters and his son, Harry Waters, have revealed the dates for Pink Floyd’s tribute band tour next year, as well as who will be stepping into the shoes of the singer.
The Legacy – A Pink Floyd Show tour has been in the works in Waters’ world for some time, enlisting the help of his son’s band to perform the iconic rock group’s greatest hits.
Subsequently, having sifted through around 3,000 applications, Waters has settled on Clifton David Broadbridge, a Canadian singer living in Nashville, to take on the massive role of impersonating the former Pink Floyd frontman.
A description of the Legacy show, according to Consequence, reads, “Roger Waters Presents LEGACY – A Pink Floyd Show is an all-new live production celebrating the defining music and visual world of Pink Floyd’s golden era from 1971-1979.”
It adds, “Created under the direction of Roger Waters with a band led by his son Harry Waters, a longtime touring musician, pianist and composer, LEGACY features a world-class 10-piece band performing the ground breaking songs from The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.”
The description also says the show will be “spanning more than two hours, LEGACY reaches deep into Pink Floyd’s catalog and celebrates the music that defined a generation, music that is just as relevant today.”
As more and more elderly rockers like Roger Waters, age 83, shuffle ever closer to the proverbial Great Gig in the Sky, this is the future of boomer-era rock, or the lack thereof. Concerts with massively expensive ticket prices to see what were called in the Big Band days “ghost bands” with only one or two original members – or in this case, the son of an original member. (Or worse, the dreaded holographic recreations of ancient bands.) Steven Hyden wrote in his 2018 book, Twilight of the Gods, that for “classic rock” the brand is everything, and increasingly, the brand will be all that survives.
Okay, I admit my headline is overstated, but not excessively.. The midterms are important, though they are not nearly as significant as many more important things occurring simultaneously on this planet. In fact, they may be what’s been called “small beer” in the end.
In this era of rocketing rocket development, not to mention myriad other forms of advancing technology, politicians have been superseded as the real difference makers. We are now in the hands of the techno elite, and no one fits that definition in a positive way better than Elon Musk.
AI is integral to this, and there are other names (Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of ChatGPT, both tarnished by being funded by the incarcerated Sam Bankman-Fried), but Musk is the best of the lot because beyond promulgating AI through Grok (and putting it in his cars), he actually manufactures things, an extraordinary amount of amazing things, while employing and expanding the new technology.
If one were to write a history of the most significant person of this century thus far, it would be Musk by a landslide.
Just today (Sep 28), his SpaceX successfully launched Starship for its first orbital mission. Starship happens to be the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built by humans. According to AP, it “carried 26 of the latest and most advanced [of Musk’s] Starlink satellites to join the 11,000 older models already providing internet service. They popped out of the spacecraft one by one, drawing more cheers from the SpaceX crowds looking on from the launch site at Starbase, Texas.”
Today’s launch was deliberately crashed by the flight crew after three hours as a precaution and we will not get to see one of those spectacular grabbings by giant pincers of this behemoth spacecraft. Maybe next time. It marked, however, what has been called a generational leap in satellite technology through SpaceX’s unique “Pez-style” dispenser.
In collaboration with NASA, Musk is clearly setting the pace, actually outpacing nation-states in space travel for our species, arguably the future of humanity. At the same time, his Starlink internet connection may be the most potent instrument for finally inspiring a revolution against the brutally sadistic Iranian theocrats—or so I am told by someone inside that country with whom I am in clandestine contact while researching the EMET sequel.
LIGHTS OUT. Total Crowder victory. This is one of the most decisive blowout debate wins I’ve seen in recent memory. Definitely worth watching the full thing. https://t.co/RzIL2szcoE
The woke intelligentsia has identified yet another seemingly innocuous instrument of white supremacist oppression that literally emanates from your fingertips.
A bizarre article published by the BBC claims that a trending practice in which women’s nails are left unpainted is actually a racist plot against minorities.
‘When I do get a manicure now, it’s no polish. Why? Because I’m old and tired. Not because I joined the KKK.’
The article cites Kristina Rodulfo, a beauty journalist, who links the bare-nail trend to racism.
“That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities,” she said.
“They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty,” Rodulfo added.
The article goes on to enumerate far less extremist reasons for the trend.
“It’s just really chic. And I love less is more, I love minimalism … less consumerism and just self-care things that you could probably do at home,” said one woman who chose the unpolished look.
To be fair, if anybody gets to pass judgement, it’s someone who experienced his own personal resurrection. Flashback: ‘It’s Good TV:’ CNN’s High-Drama Coverage of the Pandemic Hits Close to Home: “But another current CNN employee who spoke with THR criticized Cuomo’s appearances, particularly the dramatic moment last Monday when he was filmed leaving the basement where he was quarantined to reunite with his family, as ‘reality TV.’ ‘Him coming out of the quarantine with the cameras there, that’s all Jeff Zucker reality TV, and that screams Zucker,’ the person says, referring to the network president who brought The Apprentice to NBC and helped make Trump a star.”
Throughout the past week, the top story among the Elitist Media was the Elitist Media. Specifically, the Trump administration’s revocation of White House Access to three specific outlets: CNN, MS NOW and Politico. ABC’s Martha Raddatz challenged Attorney General Todd Blanche on the merits of the ban, and got schooled for her troubles.
Watch as Blanche catches Raddatz trying to manufacture a quote:
MARTHA RADDATZ: The judge — the judge decided this was not based on national security. So what do you think?
TODD BLANCHE: The judge issued a temporary — the judge issued a temporary order. It’s not final. The litigation is ongoing, and I’m not going to talk about the specifics of what the judge said. That wouldn’t be right.What I’m talking about is the government’s position and what the Department of Justice said in court, which is the same thing that President Trump has said repeatedly, which is at some point, at some point, the complete misinformation and the inaccuracy and the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue, and it’s not right for the people of the United States have to put up.
RADDATZ: So, are you saying you’re going to screen people before they get on — on a flight coming —
(CROSSTALK)
BLANCHE: I did not say that. No, no, I did not say that.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: But you said the president gets to decide —
BLANCHE: You don’t get to put words into my mouth.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: I’m not.
BLANCHE: That’s not the way it works.
RADDATZ: The president —
BLANCHE: Yes, you just said, are you saying? I didn’t say that.
RADDATZ: Fine. You have a right to defend yourself there. But are you saying —
BLANCHE: I’m not defending myself.
RADDATZ: — that in the future —
BLANCHE: You said I said something that I didn’t say.
RADDATZ: That’s fine. That’s fine. We can go on.
The “so you’re saying…” reductio ad absurdum argument where an argument is distilled down into a ridiculous talking point is a favorite of the Elitist Media. Blanche caught it in real time, shut it down, and then rebutted Raddatz’ self-defense framing.
Raddatz inadvertently made Blanche’s case here, inasmuch as Democrats are never the beneficiaries of the Elite Media’s reduction ad absurdum distortions. As our own Tim Graham notes, Democrats don’t often have to tell an anchor “you don’t get to put words in my mouth.” That’s because the media are more than happy to let them say their own, unchallenged.
It’s a brilliant technique by Blanche, and I suspect if others start to employ it, most on-air personalities such as Cathy Newman, who singlehandedly made Jordan Peterson a global superstar in 2018 via an interview absolutely filled with “so you’re saying” attempted gotchas, would quickly be out of a job.
The Left has spent years erasing women in the name of trans ideology. From relabeling women as “egg producers” or “womb owners” or “birthing persons” to featuring men cosplaying as women on the covers of magazines and in awards, it’s been a problem for some time. Now the Left is doing the same thing to men in New York Magazine’s Men’s Style issue, by featuring Elliot Page shirtless in the spread.
I worry about the message Elliot Page is sending to the impressionable youth that it’s okay to irreversibly defile your body with tattoos https://t.co/eee2K9zXgi
Exit quote: “This is some next-level sarcasm. But it speaks to a larger truth about the message it sends to young, impressionable girls. Page is not a man. She is a woman, and even if New York Magazine pretends otherwise, that reality does not change.”
As Tom Wolfe wrote in “The Me Decade,” published in 1976, in a very different iteration of New York magazine:
The old alchemical dream was changing base metals into gold. The new alchemical dream is: changing one’s personality—remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one’s very self … and observing, studying, and doting on it. (Me!) This had always been an aristocratic luxury, confined throughout most of history to the life of the courts, since only the very wealthiest classes had the free time and the surplus income to dwell upon this sweetest and vainest of pastimes. It smacked so much of vanity, in fact, that the noble folk involved in it always took care to call it quite something else.
As farsighted as Wolfe could be, I doubt even he could imagine the craziness to come in the 21st century.
UPDATE:
So just so I understand this… New York Magazine releases its first ever issue on men’s style, and features a woman pretending to be a man on the cover.
My dad probably was listening to music from the 1920s — he had 78s in his enormous record collection dating back at least to the 1930s, so the ’20s was highly likely as well. Also, these twocompositions written in the 1920s were getting played as well in the 1970s:
You may recognize the latter composition better in its ever-so-lightly reworked cover version, released in 1971:
GOTHAM CITY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Batman Unable To Keep Up With Rising Crime As Gotham City Elects Another Democrat https://t.co/wUxuLz5r2e
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