Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

September 18, 2025

HOW WE GOT HERE:

Obama was also prepared to aim much lower if it suited him:

And then there was Obama’s third term, or at the very least, the Obama-era retreads in “Biden’s” administration:

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Like Golfballs Through A Garden Hose…This is the streaming suck of our lives.

Director Spike Lee and Denzel Washington represent one of the most iconic director/movie star pairings in modern Hollywood history. There was a time not so long ago when a Spike Lee/Denzel Washington movie would have been a massive cultural event. And yet here I was in a room with a group of very smart movie people who had no idea that “Highest 2 Lowest”, this duo’s fifth collaboration and their first in almost 20 years, had just been released in theaters.

Why?

The answer, in a word, is “streaming.”

* * * * * * * *

Apple and A24 were trying to convince you to hold two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time…

  1. “Highest 2 Lowest” is a great movie worthy of Oscar consideration, but also…
  2. “Highest 2 Lowest” isn’t good enough to be worth a night out… don’t bother paying a babysitter, making dinner reservations and going out to see it in a theater… better to just wait for it to be available on your TV where you can watch with the lights on while scrolling X, yelling at the kids to be quiet in the next room, and finally resorting to watching the movie with the subtitles on because the neighbors’ house party is going off next door.

Thanks to the ubiquity of “streaming suck,” “Washington” describes the movie industry being in the Glenn Close Fatal Attraction “I won’t be ignored!!!!” moment of its existence. Her (spoiler alert) shock return at the climax of the movie is akin to what Rob Long describes in the new issue of Commentary as the stereotypical “third act boo” scene in slasher movies: In Show Business, No One Can Hear You Scream.

We’re all looking for signs that this terrible slasher movie is over and we can go back to making romantic comedies and adult dramas. But the third-act boos keep coming.

So when the final installment of Tom Cruise’s mega-smash Mission: Impossible series opened with a strong weekend box office and generally positive audience response, it must have felt like everything was going to be okay to Paramount Studios—itself exhausted and bleeding from a yearlong takeover wrangle. The movie made nearly $600 million worldwide, which sounds awfully good until you remember it cost about $400 million to make. Even the bankable moviemaking genius of Tom Cruise couldn’t escape the third-act boo.

And when the re-envisioned Marvel superhero movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps opened this summer to one of the strongest weekend box office takes in recent memory, it wasn’t just the employees of Marvel Studios and its parent company Disney that celebrated. All of show business set aside its usual bitter jealousies and rejoiced: The Summer Blockbuster is back! The next weekend, though, the movie tanked. Attendance dropped 66 percent. Boo!

About the only unalloyed bright spot is the performance of the latest installment of the DC franchise, Superman, which hit the $500 million mark early in its run, despite some headwinds in the international market. Superman is like the teenage girl in the third-tightest T-shirt: safe, for now. But that just makes the entertainment business more jittery and anxious for signs. The foundational economic rule of Hollywood is Find something that works and run it into the ground. Hard to do when nothing is working with any consistency. Hard to do when the layoffs are continuing, when streaming services are being sold or shut down, when no one in the business knows exactly what success looks like.

Washington concludes, “The only way out is with event movies, the old-fashioned hype machine and exclusive theatrical windows that are long enough that audiences won’t wait to see the movies they are excited about… which is the one thing the streamers can’t, and won’t deliver. It’s a shame we had to blow up the whole theatrical movie model to discover how well it worked.”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

CHANGE: Mazie Hirono Is Suddenly Concerned About the Differences Between Men and Women. Guess Why.

The most interesting part of this exchange, however, is Hirono’s accidental admission that men and women have physiological differences. After years of Democrats telling us there’s no difference between men and women, and their rabid support of letting men play in women’s sports.

In fact, Mazie Hirono herself blocked “anti-trans” legislation that would have prohibited men from competing in women’s sports back in 2022. During her remarks, Hirono said Republicans were “hurl[ing] insulting lies about transgender girls dominating sports” before calling the bans “deeply harmful” to “transgender girls.”

So we have to ask Senator Hirono, which is it — are women at a physiological disadvantage compared to men, or is it a lie that men dominate women’s sports?

It’s too bad Patel didn’t ask Hirono, “What is a women?” Her response would have added to all of the other leftist sputtering that Patel left in his wake today.

Meanwhile, “In an unexpected pivot, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) seized on Hirono’s remarks to make a broader argument about gender-based standards — and to advocate preserving sex-based distinctions in areas such as women’s sports:”

“Before I begin, I want to thank Sen. Hirono for what she said, acknowledging that there are physical differences between men and women,” Britt said. “I think she was making a case that there should be different standards … and that’s why we continue to say we should have biological men in men’s sports and biological women in women’s sports.”

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

HOW WE GOT HERE:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

TRUMP GOES THERE, AND IT’S ABOUT TIME: Antifa Is ‘A Major Terrorist Organization.’

We need to take action against this militant group, the president wrote:

President Donald Trump said he is designating the far-left anti-fascism movement Antifa as a terrorist organization, announcing the move on his Truth Social platform in the early hours of Thursday morning UK time.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote Thursday. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

It wasn’t immediately clear what mechanism Trump would use to make the designation, and Antifa lacks centralized structure or defined leadership, making it unclear who or what precisely would be targeted.

“This is just one of many actions the president will take to address left wing organizations that fuel political violence,” a White House official told CNN.

As RedState’s Brandon Morse and Bonchie have reported, there appear to be numerous links between Charlie Kirk’s assassin and the “anti-fascist” militant group.

Nahh, it’s a merely an aura of a penumbra of a perturbation of “an idea:”

 

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

ED MORRISSEY: Throwback Thursday Karma: Kimmel Celebrates Tucker’s Firing.

Hey kids, it’s Throwback Thursday time, and does MAZE have a doozy for us! Remember when Fox News took Tucker Carlson off the air over a content dispute, and everyone on the Left rushed to his defense and accused Fox of violating the First Amendment?

Er … neither do I. However, I do recall a lot of celebrating over Carlson’s abrupt departure on the Left. Among the most, ahem, colorful of these was in fact Jimmy Kimmel. MAZE gives us the flavor of that live-studio monologue, in which Kimmel channeled Noel Coward by claiming that Carlson had emerged from “Satan’s b***hole.”

How charming! What a delightfully classy moment for Disney.

Curiously, David French is not calling yesterday “the Day of Hygiene” for Disney:

Similarly, this 2014 XKCD cartoon summed up the left’s response to cancel culture back in the day:

To be fair, at least the way ABC showed Kimmel the door is far less permanent than the way the left retired Charlie Kirk’s career:

Exit question: Was Jimmy Kimmel’s TV Show an “In Kind Campaign Contribution” With Other Duties For The Democratic Party?

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

September 17, 2025

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: In love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot.

In this short clip, an unnamed woman proudly declares both her infatuation with – and ability to create an artificial construction of – Luigi Mangione outside of a Manhattan courthouse, where he has recently been absolved of various terrorism-related charges. Wearing an “I ♡ Italian Boys” T-shirt with an illustration of his face, the woman lists the many reasons why an AI chatbot, presumably trained on Luigi Mangione-related trivia, offers her the perfect romantic companionship. She gets to talk to him every day, she says, as a best friend and partner with whom she can plan a future and name their children. And, the woman adds, although she is aware that this might make her something of an imposter, the fact that Luigi studied AI at Stanford meant that this was an all-round reasonable thing to do.

It’s easy to write off this case as simply a harmless, albeit quite eccentric, example of the many ways in which young people are using AI today. But to do so would be to miss something much more provocative about how society has changed in the past decade. It’s the future of romance, she added in her clip. But it’s not. It’s the future of everything.

Something she notes in her monologue is that her Mangione AI-bot “fights her battles for her.” This seemingly innocuous statement is particularly interesting if you remember that a low locus of control – the term psychologists refer to when discussing whether people feel in control of their own lives or not – correlates quite strongly with support for political violence today.

I’m pretty sure that The Matrix and Her were intended to be viewed as warnings, not how-to guides for life in the 21st century.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): More fodder for my “seductive AI” book.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

CHEAT AND RETREAT: ABC news star makes groveling APOLOGY after gushing over Charlie Kirk assassin’s ‘very touching’ texts to his trans lover.

UPDATE: Gutman’s Dog Day Afternoon rerun yesterday is how the vegan sausage gets made by the DNC-MSM:

As is this: MSNBC’s Brandy Zadrozny: In Death, Charlie Kirk Became the Main Character in a Conspiracy Theory.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

DAVID DESROSIERS: Prove Charlie Right.

A young man, who was being groomed to be a moral monster by our culture and the passions it unleashes, heard the dog whistle call to arms, seized the opportunity of a public event in his home state, and did what was collectively seen by his ilk as necessary and proper.

To do so, he suspended morality, the rule of law, and human decency in order to serve what he and too many others see as a higher political purpose. Sadly, this moral madness is what is taught in our nation’s colleges. This is the ethic that guided the global left – paired now with America’s identitarian vanguard –to fundamentally remake America.

Their immoral reasoning not only led to the killing of Charlie Kirk, but it is also the rationale of messianic monsters through the ages. In the 20th century alone, under the guise of National Socialism and global communism, it led to the murder of a hundred million souls. Social media has given it another Great Leap Forward. It is the justification for the show trials, the guillotine, the oven, the suicide vest, and the lone sniper.

DesRosiers writes, “What does Charlie Kirk’s assassination portend for our country? I see the potential of a natural turning point towards the good, the restoration of the First Amendment’s spirit, and a return of political, civic, cultural, religious, and economic toleration. That would be a big rainbow following a storm.”

I hope he’s right, because the American left have arrived at a very dark place: When Charlie Kirk Died, So Did the Democratic Party. What’s Coming Next Is Even Worse.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

NOT LIBERAL, NOT PROGRESSIVE: Meet the Illiberal Left.

I asked my AI assistant to argue that celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination was somehow liberal or progressive. And it told me it couldn’t. Not really.

Oh, it could parrot slogans: “speech is violence,” “silencing hate is progress,” “free speech isn’t free from consequences.” But it couldn’t make a coherent case within the older framework of liberalism, usually referred to today as classical liberalism — the one that prized free speech, debate, and persuasion. Because there is no argument in that framework that justifies shooting a man for talking.

That realization hit me like a hammer.

It’s not just that the left leans differently on facts or values. It’s that we no longer share the same definitions of words. “Liberal,” “progressive,” “justice,” “violence,” “safety,” “democracy” — these words have been redefined until left and right mean opposite things when using them.

  • Violence used to mean fists, knives, bullets. Now, on the left, it means words.
  • Safety used to mean freedom from physical harm. Now it means freedom from disagreement.
  • Justice used to mean fairness. Now it means equity — enforced sameness of outcomes.
  • Liberal used to mean defending speech, even speech you despised. Now it means silencing “dangerous” speech.
  • Progressive used to mean reform. Now it means control in the name of inclusion.We literally are no longer speaking the same language.

    This is why Charlie Kirk’s words were intolerable. He didn’t threaten anyone’s life. He threatened the redefined reality that today’s leftists live in. By speaking clearly and persuasively, by listening and debating, he proved that disagreement was still possible. And that was enough to make him a villain in the new vocabulary of “progress.”

    That’s why his death was mocked, his vigils defaced, and grief for him romanticized away by the media. Because in their framework, silencing him was liberalism. Celebrating him would have shattered their narrative. And seeing us mourn him and lionize him as a martyr is intolerable to the intolerant.

As Melissa Chen tweets, “By refusing to debate, it helped to enthrone their ideological superiority.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

OBAMA OPENS UP ON KIRK ASSASSINATION, SCOLDS TRUMP FOR ‘EXTREME’ RHETORIC:

Former President Barack Obama addressed the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, calling the killing a “tragedy” that poses a “threat to all of us” before scolding President Trump for contributing to a dangerous political climate.

Speaking with journalist Steve Scully at the Jefferson Educational Society in Pennsylvania, Obama cast Kirk’s assassination as part of an escalating trend of political violence.

“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy,” Obama said. “And when it happens to some but even if you think they’re, quote, unquote, ‘on the other side of the argument,’ that’s a threat to all of us. And we have to be clear and forthright in condemning them.”

The former president also took it as an opportunity to criticize President Donald Trump and his administration’s handling of the aftermath of the assassination.

“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’, enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of us,” Obama said. “But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.”

Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, and Joe Biden could not be reached for comment. Not to mention Barry himself:

 

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Charlie Kirk Did It All the Right Way.

He was a conservative willing to wade into controversial territory. But he was always guided by the idea that debate is the great clarifier and that, in a democratic society, persuasion is the primary means of political change. He set up tables on campus. He debated his opponents. And he believed he could win through the ballot box.

Kirk’s death, and the subsequent reaction to it by the radical Left, underscored the arguments he had made during his time on the stage. For nearly ten years, Kirk had argued that transgender ideology, especially when paired with experimental medical procedures, would result in disaster. From the reports now emerging, it appears likely that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was radicalized online into anti-fascist and transgender politics. In their most extreme forms, both lines of thinking advocate a nihilistic embrace of violence—the antithesis of Kirk’s approach.

In fact, when he was murdered, Kirk was answering a question about the relationship between transgenderism and mass shootings, a phenomenon that seems to have accelerated in recent years. Kirk sought to engage his opponents in debate; his killer, quite possibly inspired by the trans-radical movement, sought to end that debate with a bullet.

The reaction to Kirk’s death by the mainstream Left has been equally troubling. Thousands of Americans, including students, professors, and even active-duty military members, have publicly cheered his assassination. Some have called for further violence against conservatives. Though I have covered left-wing radical movements for years, I was surprised by the number of people in the “helping professions,” including teachers and doctors, who embraced violent rhetoric.

How should conservatives respond? First, by drawing a line that Kirk himself exemplified: debate is healthy; violence is unacceptable. I’m glad to see that some institutions have terminated the employment of those who cheered on Kirk’s murder.

Kirk wanted to debate, and the left wants to end conversations — by any means necessary, to coin a phrase.

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

JOE CONCHA: Dark days: The young Left increasingly embraces assassination culture.

A father of two was murdered in Manhattan last December. And some either joked about it or tried to justify the killer’s motive.

A father of two was murdered in Utah last week. And according to polls and studies, far too many people say it was justified because they disagreed with him.

The country has headed to a very dark place.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE ON THE RISE IN THE US: A TIMELINE OF KEY INCIDENTS

Will social media and gaming dehumanize so many more young adults that we’re embarking into a terrifying cycle of violence and hatred with no remorse?

Can we ever recover?

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 17th, 2025

September 16, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Never wear anything that panics the cat.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025

IN DEFENSE OF KAREN ATTIAH. Sort Of:

On October 7, 2023, as terrorists raped and pillaged Israelis, Attiah reposted tweets justifying the unfolding massacre:

“What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”

“Liberation, self-determination, and peace for all oppressed + colonized people,” with a meme that read “That’s my politics.”

About white women, Attiah has said that they are “lucky” black women are “just calling them ‘Karens.’ And not calling for revenge.” She followed up: “Indeed, black revenge is one of America’s greatest fears.”

About the writer Maureen Dowd and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Attiah wrote that they formed an “axis of shevil” with Donald Trump.

After the Post declined to endorse Kamala Harris, Attiah wrote: “Today has been an absolute stab in the back. What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line. . . ”

My point is that it’s not as if The Washington Post found out this past week that Attiah held views far outside the mainstream, or acted unprofessionally, including toward her own colleagues. It seems that they kept her around for these views.

Given all this, she could have reasonably expected that her Bluesky post about Kirk wouldn’t draw the ire of her bosses. And that expectation would have been entirely in keeping with her past conduct, and the culture her bosses allowed to persist.

She could have left earlier, with much more than a Substack as her reward:

Posted at 9:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025

GEORGE CLOONEY, CLOSET CONSERVATIVE? The Anti-Communist Film Festival: Hail, Caesar!

 Since I announced the Anti-Communist Film Festival last month, the response has been fantastic. Conservatives understand that a film festival showcasing some of the great anti-communist movies can be a powerful – and fun – inoculation against a poisonous false god.

What’s also been surprising is how many anti-communist movies there are. I’ve heard from people not only in the United States but with ties to Cuba, China, and the old Soviet Union. I’ve also heard from directors and actors in Hollywood. We’re planning the festival for fall 2026 if we can raise the money for it and attract a sponsor or two.

We also want the festival to have not only serious films, but fun ones. We want it to be a party that entertains and brings people together. That’s why I think a great addition to the lineup would be Hail, Caesar! Hail, Caesar! produced and directed in 2016 by Joel and Ethan Cohen, delves into the deepest question of our time – the question of God and our place in the universe. It also makes communists look like absolute idiots.

It makes for a nice double-feature with 1999’s Three Kings, in which Clooney made the case for the Iraq War.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Chaser: S.E. Cupp: Slamming Media Is ‘Dangerous,’ Fox News Is Like a Dictator’s Tool.

—NewsBusters, December 26th, 2017.

● Hangover:

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The mainstream media’s hostility towards Christianity is no secret. But a new book explores why the liberal elite is only suspicious when conservatives invoke religion. Now, the book is called “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.”

The author, S.E. Cupp, joins me now.

Right there, my blurb, your book.

S.E. CUPP, AUTHOR, “LOSING OUR RELIGION”: I know! Right on the front.

—Transcript from Hannity, Fox News, April 28, 2010.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025

DOG DAY AFTERNOON: ABC’s Gutman: Alleged Kirk Assassin’s Texts With Trans Lover Were ‘Intimate,’ ‘Touching.’

On Tuesday’s ABC News Special Report about Utah County officials formally announcing charges against the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder, chief national correspondent Matt Gutman expressed affinity for the suspect and admiration for his love story with a trans person, gushing the text messages released by authorities were “lovingly” stated, “very intimate,” and “very touching.”

Gutman was reporting from the site of the press conference when he told World News Tonight anchor David Muir something “that stood out” was “those text messages” between the suspect and his roommate/lover.

“I don’t know if we have seen an alleged murder with such specific text messages about the alleged murder weapon, where it was hidden, how it was placed, what was on it, but also it was very touching in a way that I think many of us didn’t expect,” Gutman declared.

But, wait, there was more: “A very intimate portrait into this relationship between the suspect’s roommate and the suspect himself, with him repeatedly calling his roommate, who is transitioning, calling him ‘my love’ and ‘I want to protect you, my love.’”

Related:

Posted at 6:54 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025

QUESTION ASKED: Does Pam Bondi know what free speech is?

Katie Miller, hosting Bondi on the Katie Miller Pod, said that Kirk’s murder last week was what happened when college campuses don’t take action against or expel students who harass conservative speakers. Using anti-Semitism as an example of left-wing campus “hate speech,” Bondi claimed in reply: “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”

Does the Attorney General know that “hate speech” is protected under the Constitution? She continued: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, and that’s across the aisle.”

If this all gives you flashbacks to the days of social-justice warrior campus protests (“keep your hate speech off this campus!”) you’re not alone. Bondi didn’t elaborate on exactly what she meant by “targeting anyone with hate speech.” Did she mean people gloating over Kirk’s death, saying he deserved to die for his beliefs? That’s certainly hateful and disgusting, but is it illegal? Not in America.

Bondi’s fudge, whether it was purely idiotic or a more sinister attempt to roll back speech rights, expresses an outlook totally at odds with Kirk’s: he didn’t believe in hate speech. The idea that words can be dangerous is antithetical to his belief in dialogue and open debate.

As Christopher Rufo notes:

Still though, consider what the near-universal condemnation of Bondi implies:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 16th, 2025
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