LAST CALL FOR LATE NIGHT:

In July, CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the top-rated network entry in the genre. Extenuating factors — the host’s criticism of his network’s $16 million acquiescence to Donald Trump; a CBS boss, George Cheeks, possibly looking to curry favor with his new corporate overlord, the bottom line-minded David Ellison, whose company recently merged with CBS parent Paramount Global; and the show’s inability to find a digital foothold — may have all contributed to the decision.

Late night supporters jump on these factors: The more you see Colbert’s demise coming from these variables, the less you have to worry about the rest of the landscape. But it’s hard to shake the sense that far from being a lone sheep who strayed, Colbert may be a lemming leading the genre off a cliff.

Late night may be dying, some say, and we’d be better off with acceptance than denial. “I believe when the last of these current guys exits the stage for whatever reason, that will be that,” says Doug Herzog, the longtime head of Comedy Central and one of the creators of The Daily Show. “There won’t be a successor to [Jimmy]Fallon or [Jimmy] Kimmel or another late night show in its place. Networks will call it a day.”

And:

In September, late night TV turns 71, ancient by television standards and, until recently, not infirm — one of American pop culture’s most durable inventions and exports. Hundreds of shows and tens of thousands of hours have aired after primetime, offering a good hang and a genial laugh to ease us from waking worry into sleep.

“The world is crazy, and we need someone to either make sense of it or find a way to laugh at it,” says veteran sitcom producer Andrew Susskind, whose father, David, hosted his own long-running syndicated talk show. “That’s always been late night’s appeal. It’s timeless.”

David Susskind could be a warm jovial host; his 1970 segment titled “My Son the Success!” which featured Mel Brooks, David Steinberg, George Segal, and Dan Greenburg, the author of the then-recent book, How to Be a Jewish Mother, is one of the funniest segments of live television ever made. But Susskind’s cranky 1966 appearance on Firing Line with William F. Buckley is a reminder that Hollywood has hated half the country for many decades before Trump rode down the golden escalator and upended the left’s media-political monopoly.

Considering how Buckley has been praised in Sam Tanenhaus’ recent doorstop of a biography, it highlights how Trump could be seen in the future as well when the dust settles.

FASTER, PLEASE: Netanyahu: Israel ‘Has No Choice But To Finish The Job’ And Defeat Hamas In Gaza.

SUCKING IN THE SEVENTIES:

Rupar’s tweet states, “Trump mentions NYC, Baltimore, and Oakland, says ‘they’re so far gone,’ and adds, ‘this will go further. We’ll starting very strongly with DC.’”

Regarding New York, Democrats have explicitly pined for the New York of the 1970s. Twenty years ago, when Mike Bloomberg was still its mayor and had carried over most of Rudy Guiliani’s broken windows police methods, Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal wrote:

The actor John Leguizamo: New York in the ’70s “was funky and gritty and showed the world how a metropolis could be dark and apocalyptic and yet fecund.” Fran Lebowitz, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair: The city “was a wreck; it was going bankrupt. And it was pretty lawless; everything was illegal, but no laws were enforced. It was a city for city-dwellers, not tourists, the way it is now.” Laurie Anderson, a well-known New York artist and performer, admits the ’70s were considered “the dark ages” but “there was great music and everyone was broke.”

More recently, thanks to 2025-era Democrats: Yep, Mamdani Will Be NYC’s Next Mayor.

I love the original versions of Death Wish and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but I wouldn’t wish that era of Fun City on anyone. Curiously though in 2025, many governing leftists would let their cities rot even further than let the Bad Orange Man take credit for helping clean them up.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton slammed as ‘big-time loser’ as top Dems issue ‘bonkers’ response to Trump DC crackdown: “Clinton, who famously lost the 2016 election to Trump, slammed the president for the move. ‘As you listen to an unhinged Trump try to justify deploying the National Guard in DC, here’s reality: Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low.'”

Or perhaps, not: DC police commander placed on leave over ‘deliberately’ falsifying crime data. 

JOHN NOLTE: There’s Only One Way Hollywood Can Survive AI — Great Screenwriting.

“Dream Machine’s latest tool, Modify Video, was launched in June. Instead of generating new footage, it redraws what’s already there.” All you have to do is load up a clip or photo. Then you “describe what you want changed, and the system reimagines the scene: A hoodie becomes a superhero cape, a sunny street turns snowy, a person transforms into a talking banana or a medieval knight.”

And now the most terrifying part…

“No green screen, no VFX team, no code. ‘Just ask,’ the company’s website says.”

Just ask.

As of now, with limited computer power, the AI-generated “clips max out around 10 seconds… But as Jain points out, ‘The average shot in a movie is only eight seconds.’”

The company’s ultimate goal is to create a “world of fully personalized entertainment, generated on demand… where  two hours of video can be generated for every human every day.”

That will happen, and it will be the end of Hollywood as we know it. No more studios. No more VFX studios. No more actors. No more composers. No more massive crew of people handling sound, electric, food, lighting, and cameras. No more best boys. No more gaffers. No more distribution bottleneck.

Anyone with a vision will soon be able to bring that vision to life for the price of an Internet connection (which they already pay for).

As Nolte writes, “So, if what happened to the music industry is about to happen to Hollywood, what can Hollywood do to protect itself? Writing. Hollywood can only survive in a world where everyone can do what it does through great writing.”

In 2018, at the height of superhero movie mania, John Podhoretz wrote: Invasion of the CGI. It Came From the Computer. It Ate the Movies.

Truth to tell, if CGI and all the tools of digital filmmaking had been available as the motion picture became the dominant medium of the first half of the 20th century, realistic cinematic storytelling might never have evolved at all. The ability to thrill and captivate through the creation of alternate worlds and alternate realities is so seductive, both for audiences and moviemakers, that it would have been hard to resist. Indeed, the very earliest surviving films, by the French director Georges Méliès, are dominated not by story but by visual and cinematic tricks. They were made in the 1890s.

Look. I’m 56. I’ve been going to the movies for 50 years now. And as for me, I don’t need a medium that has returned to its infancy, especially since there’s a chance I might be returned to my own infancy soon enough. I need a plot. (No, not a cemetery plot.)

In his 1988 book, An Empire of Their Own, Neil Gabler’s look at Hollywood’s original moguls, Gabler wrote that Adolph Zukor, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures was among the first of the studio owners to realize that great screenwriting was the key to the industry’s future:

He came to realize that the movies only seemed like novelties because they had been treated like novelties. He sensed that their potential was much greater. How he arrived at this conclusion he never really said, like most things in Zukor’s life, it was probably less the result of inspiration than of rumination. But by 1908 he perceived “that these short films, one-reelers or less, didn’t give me the feeling that this was something that was going to be permanent.” Permanence would come only by attracting the middle-class as well as the working-class audience, and one could attract the middle-class audience only by exhibiting longer and better films—by, in a sense, imitating the middle-class forms of the novel and legitimate theater. That was precisely what Zukor was now recommending.

Almost 120 years later, great screenwriting is still the key to the industry’s future – if it wants one. Based on the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike immediately after the pandemic of 2020 wound down in California and the mass of stillborn product released since, the verdict is still out on whether or not the patient actually wants to live.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Vigilante Justice: Trump Dresses Up As Bat And Patrols Streets Of DC.

Following increased incidents of assaults and other crimes perpetrated in the nation’s capital, reports began to surface of sightings of a “Bat-Trump” terrorizing criminals and stopping them in their tracks.

“I’m not the hero D.C. deserves, but the one it needs right now,” Trump told reporters when asked about his moonlighting as a vigilante crimefighter. “I was watching what these thugs have been doing to this beautiful city, and I thought, ‘Why not take care of this problem myself?’ I’ve got billions of dollars to spend on gadgets and vehicles, I’ve got a high-tech underground headquarters here at the White House… and, let’s face it, I’m a strong guy. Very strong. So I’ve been spending my nights swinging around and beating up criminals. You should see the looks on their faces. They’re scared, believe me.”

Is Trump Batman? Just ask him:

ONCE AGAIN, DEMOCRATS ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF AN 80/20 ISSUE: Far-left group protests Trump making DC safe from crime, claims president is trying to provoke violence. 

And of course, the DNC-MSM are arguing that DC is the safest city in the world:

Here’s a direct quote from the DC police union chairman: “We completely agree with the President that crime in the District of Columbia is out of control and something needs to be done with it."

But NYT reporters think the problem is “nonexistent.” https://t.co/6fdTewBdSs

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 11, 2025

🚨NEW: MSNBC Contrib Eddie Glaude *RAGES* over Trump's DC crime crackdown🚨

"I’m trying to hold my temper."

"He’s going to undermine the democratic process in the district!"@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/yOCi7VAFWR

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) August 11, 2025

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: In Lieu Of Dystopian Sci-Fi Movie, American Just Watching News From England.

Experts are warning Americans that if changes aren’t made soon, their own country could suffer the same fate. “It shouldn’t be hard,” said one local expert. “We just have to look at what the UK is doing and then do the opposite. Sounds like a no-brainer.”

Sadly, that’s been true for quite some time now.

HEY, SOMEBODY’S CAMPAIGNING FOR THE DC CITY COUNCIL!

THIS IS REAL 🔴

Iranians main water expert Mohsen Arbabian:

U.S. and Israel are manipulating the weather by redirecting rain clouds away from Iran to deliberately trigger drought. pic.twitter.com/JO2jgwjo5y

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 1, 2025

Has he tried calling Kate Bush for some help?

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Teach the Holocaust — without mentioning Jews — says NEA.

SOCIALISTS IN SOFT FOCUS: CNN’s Dana Bash Squees Over Bernie Sanders.

On CNN, Dana Bash demonstrated what passes for an “interview” of prominent elected liberal on State of the Union. Her chat with Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders had all the tone and gravitas of a celebrity interview, right down to the theater venue most commonly associated with movie stars.

In the latest episode of an ongoing genre, Bash followed Sanders to West Virginia, his most recent stop on his traveling soapbox Fighting Oligarchy tour. There were the obligatory mentions of Sanders speaking before a packed venue in a red state (albeit no mention of his bourgeoisie travel arrangements and no utterance of the word “socialism”).

Which seems odd, since throughout its history CNN has never met a socialist it didn’t embrace. And throughout his history, Bernie has been similarly smitten with the word “oligarchy:”

😂
pic.twitter.com/pQCzmRMrah

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2025

Curiously, as long as Bernie were in charge, Emmanuel Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism would suit him just fine.

Exit question:

Has he bought a fourth home yet https://t.co/8TGujL1vpC

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) August 11, 2025

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND:

● Vigilante Tube passengers face arrest over ‘assault’ of naked man on the Tube after they took law into their hands when he dropped his trousers on packed carriage.

—The London Daily Mail today.

● Police tell shopkeeper to take down sign calling thieves ‘scumbags.’

—The London Times, Friday.

● Anti-abortion campaigner faces third police investigation for silent prayer.

—The London Telegraph, Saturday.

● Every single ‘Palestine Action supporter’ at central London protest released after police make over 500 arrests.

—GB News, Thursday.

TRUMP FEDERALIZING DC POLICE, DEPLOYING NATIONAL GUARD IN CAPITAL CRIME CRACKDOWN.

OH, THAT OIKOPHOBIA:

A common feature of the ruling class in the west is there extreme hatred of their own people.

Sadly, the British gave up their guns. Americans, don’t make that mistake. https://t.co/wm2IBgbJgM

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) August 11, 2025

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE:

As someone who’s been involved in politics in one way or another for 15-20 years, depending on how you want to count it, I cannot tell you how weird it is that the Democratic Party is now the party of the elderly https://t.co/mGq9EP76PX

— Carl Paulus (@CarlPaulus) August 10, 2025

RIP: Bobby Whitlock, Derek and the Dominos founder, dies at 77.

Bobby Whitlock, the musician who co-founded Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton, has died, according to his manager. He was 77.

Whitlock died Sunday morning of cancer, manager Carol Kaye confirmed to CBS News. He was surrounded by his family in Texas, Kaye said.

The singer-songwriter was a keyboard player and vocalist for Derek and the Domino, the rock band best known for its 1971 album, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.”

Whitlock was the second vocalist on numerous songs on the Layla album. In 2000, he told an interviewer that he wanted something akin to Sam and Dave’s call and response style-of singing:

That was my idea — that’s what I figured out how to — I was kind of a fire under Eric’s ass as far as it was, vocally, ’cause he wasn’t real secure with his vocals. His first album, as a matter of fact — we did the “Eric Clapton” album, with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends — but Delaney sang all the songs and Eric just came up back behind him and sang exactly what Delaney had sang. Delaney put everything, all the vocals down and Eric came back behind and just put ’em down, exactly like (sings softly): “I’m lovin’ you, lovin’ me, it’s all the same!” Eric was real insecure vocally. He’s more secure now, but he ain’t Otis Redding, but I mean, he’s a good singer. But I put a fire under his ass, and it was an option that I took, just to — our band was open — we didn’t want no chicks, and no horn players, we wanted a four-piece rock ‘n roll band, and we did it, and I chose to it like Sam and Dave. He’d (Eric) do a verse, I’d do a verse, we’d do one together, we’d do the things together, I was doing harmonies and all that, so that’s how that all came to light.

Arguably, Layla was Clapton’s finest moment as an artist, and he couldn’t have done it with Whitlock:

“Thorn Tree in the Garden,” which serves as a reflective acoustic coda for the album’s epic title song, is sung entirely by Whitlock:

JOSH HAMMER: America Must Never Apologize for Dropping the Bombs on Japan.

Critics often portray Truman’s decision as an act of monstrous brutality — a flex of raw military might by a sadistic and trigger-happy superpower. But such characterizations, drenched in presentist moral narcissism, do a grave disservice to the reality on the ground and the countless lives Truman undoubtedly saved. They are also a grave disservice to the memory of all those killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Carlson and his fellow ultra-pacifists should visit Pearl Harbor and stand over the sunken USS Arizona, the final resting place of more than 900 sailors and marines. One can still see and smell the oil leaking from the ships, all these decades later; it is an extraordinary experience.

Shocking sensory intakes aside, the sober reality is that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no matter how morbid and macabre, were strategically and morally correct.

When Truman authorized the use of the atomic bombs, he faced a truly appalling alternative: a full-scale land invasion of Japan. Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, had projected American and Japanese casualties potentially reaching as high as a million lives each. The Imperial Japanese, steeped in a kamikaze warrior ethos, had proven time and again — at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and elsewhere — that they would fight to the last man, woman and child. Schoolchildren were being trained to attack American troops with sharpened bamboo sticks. Fighting to the death was not mere speculation; it was core Imperial Japanese doctrine.

If the A-bombs weren’t dropped, VDH notes that there was another horrific option available to the US, either in addition to a massed invasion of Japan, or instead of it.  Curtis LeMay was ready to firebomb many more Japanese cities with a combination of his fleet of B-29s and the bombers sitting idle in Europe after VE-Day. (Fast-forward to the 44:00 minute mark if this YouTube clip doesn’t automatically start there):

IT’S (D)IFFERENT: NBC’s Kristen Welker Lets JB Pritzker Pontificate on Texas Redistricting, Unchallenged.

NBC: Every group that grades the fairness of congressional maps gives Illinois an F and says it's a "perfect model of everything that can go wrong with redistricting." Aren't you a big hypocrite?

PRITZKER: "Democracy is at stake!" pic.twitter.com/g9NrY0VDDG

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 10, 2025

Yes, Kristen Welker asked a Democrat a facially uncomfortable question. Quick, give her a Pulitzer! What is most notable from this exchange is that which is missing therein. In order to find that, we are compelled to examine the (D)ifference between this question and similar questions asked of Republicans.

The slight twitch at the start of the question on Illinois’ map betrays a discomfort that Pritzker is never made to feel otherwise. This is so because Welker simply allows him to exhaust his talking point set pieces on Texas’ redistricting, without ever substantially pressing him on the issue or the hypocrisy of his outrage.

Welker does not interrupt Pritzker or cut him off mid-sentence in order to rebut his arguments or force him to respond to her specific framing of the question. There is no “to put a fine point on it” and pointing the pen at Pritzker. Both of these would’ve come the second a Republican had rebutted her follow-up with “what they’re saying I’m doing is a distraction.”

As Joe Concha tweets, “The fact that Welker should even receive praise for asking the most obvious question to Pritzker regarding his blatant hypocrisy around gerrymanding tells you the state of media today. Question is — how did Pritzker do so many interviews to this point without anyone seriously challenging him?”

UPDATE: Chicago Is So Gerrymandered Its Main Airport Is Parking Backlogged Planes in Two Different Congressional Districts.

JD VANCE DROPS A RUSSIAGATE TRUTH BOMB:

Speaking with host Maria Bartiromo, Vance made it clear he wants accountability—but only where the law is truly broken. His remarks come amid growing evidence of serious abuses of power during the lead-up to and early days of the Trump administration.

“I absolutely want to see indictments, Maria. Look, of course, you’ve got to have the law follow the facts here. You don’t just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law,” Vance said. He acknowledged that legal standards must be upheld, but emphasized that the revelations brought forward by Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel in recent weeks leave little doubt about widespread misconduct.

Read the whole thing.

THE NOT-SO-FINAL COUNTDOWN: Must-See Flashback: CBS News Predicts Florida to Be UNDERWATER from Global Warming.

THE RETURN OF THE MOST EVIL POLITICAL ATTACK EVER: Dems in Full Freakout Mode Over ‘They/Them’ Ads.

CNN issued the ominous warning yesterday: “Republicans reprise anti-transgender ‘Kamala is for they/them’ ads for the midterms.”

Why, how dare those Republicans double-down on a successful political campaign! That’s not fair.

CNN, of course, is carrying the left’s water with both arms:

Trump allies spent tens of millions of dollars airing an ad highlighting 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ one-time commitment that detained immigrants would have access to treatment associated with gender transition as was required by federal law, including surgical care. The ad’s tagline mocked the pronouns used by non-binary individuals, saying “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”

Widely cited by strategists in both parties as having shaped the campaign, that ad is now being mimicked in North Carolina and another competitive Senate contest in Georgia. Trans and gender identity issues have also come up in this year’s race for Virginia governor.

There’s nothing in CNN’s article that’s a literal, outward lie. Trump’s allies really did spend millions on “they/them” political ads. It happened: We all saw it.

But their reporting is about as “truthful” as a PR pro’s creative writing.

It’s basic human psychology: When reality is too difficult to accept, we invent an alternative. What the heart wants, the heart gets.

The truth, of course, is that Donald Trump returned to the White House and won the popular vote for many reasons — and yes, among those reasons was backlash to the Pronoun Police. The trans debate was certainly part of it.

But it wasn’t the main part.

Every Super Bowl wrap-up focuses on endless video replays of the One Big Play that wins the game, rather than all of the planning and hard work beginning in training camp to get the team into position to both get to the Super Bowl and win it, so no wonder CNN would focus on the “They/Them” slogan. In this case though, it’s a reminder that no matter what, Democrats aren’t going to back away from their most toxic positions, lest they risk angering their base on social media:

JUST IN 🚨 Nancy Pelosi: "We are hoping that we can have gender-affirming care for our trans kids" pic.twitter.com/aXYeRQQeYD

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) August 7, 2025

HOWARD STERN DISAPPEARED YEARS AGO:

Howard didn’t stop being great because he went to satellite. He stopped being universal.

The second shift came with the money. And, look, good for him. A $500 million contract? That’s the American dream. But once you’re that rich, the money changes you. And more importantly, it changes the show.

Howard built his empire by fighting – Station managers, executives, politicians, rival hosts. He was the underdog, the guy being censored, fined, harassed, and punished for daring to speak his mind.

But once he became the highest-paid broadcaster in history, there was no more fight. He had won. He didn’t have a boss anymore. He was the boss. And with no one to battle, there was no more friction, and no more fire.

Suddenly, the guy who once ranted about bureaucracy, bad management and corporate nonsense was no longer punching up. He was the system. And his show, once anarchic and unpredictable, became safe. Soft. Comfortable.

Worse, it became celebrity-driven. Where once Howard roasted celebrities and cut through their fake personas, now he courted them. The guy who once ridiculed Hollywood phoniness was now sipping wine with Jimmy Kimmel and kissing up to Ellen DeGeneres.

Then Trump broke his brain. If the move to Sirius dulled Stern’s edge, Trump annihilated it.

The guy who made his name being the most politically incorrect man in media suddenly became a scold. A hall monitor. A voice of sanitized, elite-approved opinion. The man who used to mock everyone and everything was now in lockstep with the Manhattan elite he used to detest.

And it wasn’t just Trump he turned on, it was us. The listeners. The regular, blue-collar, lunch-pail Americans who rode with him for decades. He didn’t merely oppose Trump politically – fine, that’s his right – he condescended to and insulted the millions of people who supported him.

This 2022 Daily Mail headline neatly sums up the late stage career path of the Sirius-XM version of Stern: Germaphobe Howard Stern leaves his ‘apocalypse bunker’ for FIRST time in two years for A-list dinner with Jennifer Aniston, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Hamm — and admits he’s ‘been afraid of catching COVID.’

Related: Julie Burchill asks: Is Hollywood’s woke era ending? “When that wily old fox the tax-avoiding Mick Jagger allegedly said ‘My heart is Labour but my money is Conservative’ he was being honest in a way most pop stars (see the financial behaviour of U2) would never dare to, lest their fans turn on them. Entertainers follow the path they do because they want attention and they want to be rich. If they really cared about making things better for people, they’d have trained to become nurses or firefighters. Still, celebrity Democrats could learn a lesson from Republicans like [Dean] Cain and [Sydney] Sweeney, who don’t see the non-famous as Deplorables put on earth to be preached at.”

GENOCIDE INVERSION:

“Genocide inversion,” and why Western progressives literally had to tear down with their very fingernails pictures of Israeli babies being held hostage—because it contradicted their whole view of themselves as good people.

I learned something a while back from a scientist I… https://t.co/DBkygziuVJ

— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) August 9, 2025

THE NEW NOSTALGIA: Longing for authenticity, Gen Z is romanticizing a pre-Internet era they never knew.

Recently, my office manager showed me the technology he and his friends used to “watch” the football on: Ceefax. The football score would load on a television screen via the changing of a single digit. They would spend the afternoon just sitting on the sofa, waiting for the digit to change (or not). I felt envious of this.

Why? If anything, this is clearly a case where an experience has improved exponentially. And yet I’m captivated by the sense of mystery: if they weren’t watching the game or reading the updates, what were they doing? What were they occupying their thoughts with?

The reality might be that they were bored, another scarce experience in a connected age. At least, if bored, they would have entertained themselves with internal rather than external resources. It doesn’t even matter if that was really the case—it is precisely because this experience is unknowable that it is compelling to me. I am haunted by the feeling that spending so much time on our phones has stolen something human and vital from our lives.

It is of course true that each era experiences a crisis about the new wave of tech destroying people’s souls—when it wasn’t the Internet, it was TV, or the radio, or the printing press, even papyrus scrolls, and nostalgia is common across every generation. But I don’t think any previous generations were ever so down on their own era, in such large numbers, to the point they’d erase its major salient feature. We feel nostalgic for a world that can’t be brought back. As Donald Trump said, now “everything is computer”.

Ironically, my nostalgia for a pre-Internet age is being fed by the Internet itself: the machine constantly feeding me clips of the past, footage of young people operating decades ago where everything seems refreshingly unobserved and carefree.

Don Draper smiles, ponders if we would bring back slide projectors:

Or perhaps collect back-issues of Condé Nast publications: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glamour. “Condé Nast was a kind of revolving door of the twentieth century’s elite—they all wanted to be part of its highbrow/lowbrow scene. Today, one can just turn to Instagram, where algorithms deliver up reels and photos of those analog days. ‘Everything’s computer,’ said Donald Trump, this past March, not long into his second presidential term. Four decades ago, GQ’s Trump cover story, written by Carter, resulted in a bump in circulation numbers—and led, in turn, as Grynbaum recounts, to Newhouse’s idea for a book: what became The Art of the Deal, published by Condé’s Random House. Now, as AI accelerates during the second Trump presidency, many young people yearn for a pre-Internet existence—the kind found in Condé’s magazines.”

RESISTANCE TRAINING: This Radical Left-Wing Journalist Is Buffing Up To Smash the Patriarchy.

Karen Attiah, the Israel-hating Washington Post opinion columnist best known for celebrating the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, remains at the Jeff Bezos-owned publication for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. New leadership at the Post has tried to encourage its left-wing activist employees to resign or accept buyouts to leave the paper. Meanwhile, Attiah has routinely accused her fellow employees of subverting democracy and promoting white supremacy.

When she isn’t writing columns attacking Republicans for trying to reimpose racial segregation, getting denounced for threatening to exact violent “revenge” on white women, or accusing Texas governor Greg Abbott of having “slave-catcher energy,” Attiah branches out into other fields.

She launched a “Resistance Summer School” earlier this year after her alma mater, Columbia University, canceled the class she was scheduled to teach on “Race and Journalism.” It resembles an online reeducation camp for anxious liberals—mostly Boomer white women, by the looks of it—who are eager to put in the “intellectual and emotional labor of building a liberated future.” Subjects include “The History of Race” and “Global Anti-Semitism,” not to mention informal lectures on how to look fierce.

“We’re teaching the resistance and we’re gonna look cute!” Attiah said in a recent Instagram video. “The world is falling apart but mwah, mwah, mwah, look at our lip gloss.”

Attiah has also been hitting the gym and bulking up. Her stated fitness goals include becoming “hotter and more lethal” as well as building “legs strong enough to crush men’s hopes and dreams.” Her most recent Post column is about what she learned after gaining 20 pounds of muscle in 3 years.

On the flip side, it’s good to see that even committed leftists don’t believe the crazy stuff their side has been saying about fitness in recent years:

● ‘Fascist fitness:’ how the far right is recruiting with online gym groups.

—The Grauniad, March 6^th, 2022.

● MSNBC opinion article ridiculed for warning about ‘fascist fitness.’

—Fox News, March 23^rd, 2022.

● The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness.

—Time magazine, December 28^th, 2022.

● According to MSNBC, if you exercise and work out, you’re a Nazi.

—The Washington Examiner, July 11^th, 2023.

SPOILER ALERT: HE WON’T. Erik Wemple Should Call Out His New York Times Colleagues for Their Lies.

Last year, Georgetown University held a symposium about the state of journalism. When asked what the main issue facing the press is, Wemple, a panel member, offered an honest answer: Journalists need to learn how to apologize when they make mistakes. Wemple further commented:

News organizations, when they put out these big stories, they pour their souls into these pieces, and when they turn out to be [expletive] up, they can never, ever—it takes them forever to come to grips with it. So people on the outside say, “Well, why can’t you just admit this is wrong?” No, no! We sweated over this, we edited this five times, it went through fifteen layers, we lawyered it. And it’s just like there is this emotional attachment to the work, and when news organizations drag their heels— take the [fake] gang rape story with Rolling Stone at UVA, it took them months or years [to admit it was false]. They finally had to commission an investigation, I think that is what is common to most media crises. It’s not just the first mistake. It’s the refusal and the stubborn resistance to change or to correct. … Editors [will say] ‘Well, you know, if we make a mistake we correct it.’ And that’s just not often the case.

Wemple is one of the few mainstream media reporters who has admitted that Russiagate is and always was a scam. It will be fascinating to see if he challenges his new colleagues at the Times about their appalling lies about Russiagate. He might even think about asking David Enrich when I can expect that follow-up conversation about the Times and their ridiculous Kavanaugh coverage.

Russiagate, the Covington Catholic kids, Brett Kavanaugh, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the conservatives who sounded the alarm about Joe Biden’s health years ago and were mocked. The kid who dressed up in face paint for the Kanas City Chiefs and was accused of using blackface is yet another example of the long dishonorable list of journalistic abuse at the Times. Kathy Scruggs had enough of a conscience that the Richard Jewell story haunted her for the rest of her life. “She was never at peace or at rest with this story,” Tony Kiss, one of her coworkers, once wrote. “It haunted her until her last breath. It crushed her like a junebug on the sidewalk.”

Read the whole thing.