Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

March 4, 2025

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: So The Oscars Happened, I Guess… (Video.) “There was an almost tangible feeling of unease this year, like they were some unproductive employee that knows their boss is watching their every move and is desperate not to attract any more attention to themselves. And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that, because they 100% deserve this. They got too big for their boots, they overestimated their own importance and cultural power, and now they’re learning the hard way that they serve us not the other way around. A few more years of this and they might just learn their place at last.”

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

BEN DOMENECH: Donald Trump in the Oval.

The tenor of this administration, the second time around, is that there is no time for sunshine soldiers. The gadflies and hangers-on are on the sidelines. Trump has surrounded himself with people who understand the tasks for which they’ve signed up.

“I’ve been here for four years under great pressure,” Trump says. “But one of the big things is that if you think about it, when I was first elected, I had two jobs: to run the country and to survive. And it was vicious.”

Trump confronted an unprecedented attempt not just to bar him legally from running again, but to bankrupt and ruin him. This brings to mind another president: Richard Nixon. After the election of 1960, widely considered to be stolen by John F. Kennedy, Nixon walked away — as he did after Watergate, when he was facing impeachment. For a politician who commands a similar coalition, with a similar list of enemies, what lessons does the 45th and 47th President take from the 37th?

“So Richard Nixon was a different kind of a guy, and he was a tough cookie, and he was very smart,” replies Trump. “People don’t realize how smart he was, but he made one bad decision. He didn’t fight. I spoke to his family. They say he regretted that until the day he died. He didn’t fight.”

Trump and Nixon were in contact throughout the 1980s, talking about football and politics. In a note from 1987, the former president addressed the future one with a comment from Pat Nixon, his wife: “As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”

Three decades later, Trump would learn a lot about the nature of political enemies in Washington. “He had a lot. I might have had more,” Trump says of Nixon. “Don’t forget, I went through two impeachments and probably eighty indictments.” He shakes his head as he recites the litany and gazes at the desk. “I went through a lot, but I tried not to… I just put my head down and just did it.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

BYRON YORK: For Democrats, what is to be done?

A new Axios report says some are planning to disrupt the speech, walking out at strategic moments: “Criticism of transgender kids was brought up as a line in the sand that could trigger members to storm out,” Axios noted. Others have talked about bringing noisemakers or props, such as empty egg cartons.

It’s hard to believe Democrats will actually do that. Are they really that dumb? Who knows?

As for Pelosi, the former speaker is urging fellow Democrats not to follow her example. She wants them to behave during the speech so that they can’t be criticized for disrupting the president. “Any demonstration of disagreement, whether it’s visual or whatever — just let him stew in his own juice,” Pelosi told the Washington Post. “Don’t be any grist for the mill to say this was inappropriate.”

It’s hard not to laugh at the woman who, while sitting in the most visible spot in the House chamber before millions of viewers, tore up the president’s speech and waved the torn paper in the air, now advises her fellow Democrats to show restraint. The bottom line is we don’t know what Democrats will do. They might not know themselves.

Related: Top Democrats humiliated as their attempt at edgy social media videos revealed as heavily scripted DC stunt.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

MUST FLEE TV: Oscar Ratings Tank with 18 Million Viewers — Third Lowest Ever.

So, in less than a decade, a show that was once something that unified our culture around our shared love of movies and had not dipped below 32 million viewers since 1974, is now unable to attract even 20 million viewers.

The only good news out of Sunday’s Academy Award show is that, at least in my opinion, the correct film took home Best Picture. I loved Anora and was pleased to see its creator, Sean Baker, break a record for personal Oscar wins for a single movie: Picture, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Director. Anora’s knock-out star, Mikey Madison, also went home with some well-deserved gold. She was nothing short of a revelation.

What’s more, Conan O’Brien was a good choice to host. He is nowhere near as toxic or divisive as Jimmy Kimmel.

Nevertheless, it might be too late to woo Normal People back. The show, as far as a telecast goes, has always been pretty awful and overlong. We were willing to put up with that, though, because we loved movies and the movies seemed to love us.

Those days are long over.

As Andrew Klavan tells Megyn Kelly, “I called it the ‘Screw You America Oscars.’ You know, it was like this kind of defiant final gasp of a dying art form. We’re not here to entertain you, we’re here to show you our virtue and how superior it is to your everyday Trumpian ideas of patriotism and marriage and love and prosperity. We’re going to show you how much wiser and higher in our virtue we are than you. We’re making movies that nobody sees about issues no one cares about and we’re going to celebrate those movies as if they were Casablanca and The Godfather.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

MULTIPLICITY: Musk, Sen. Lee: Who’s Writing Dems’ ‘Puppet’ Script?

Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, exposed word-for-word messaging from Democrat leaders in opposition to President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night.

“Who is writing the words that the puppets speak? That’s the real question,” Musk posted to X, responding to coordinated messaging from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

Lee, after years of former President Joe Biden being called a puppet for behind-the-scenes puppet masters, noted there could be someone other than them running the party messaging.

“It’s almost like someone’s telling Democrats what to say,” Lee wrote.

Musk and Lee shared a composite of the videos of identical messaging.

In 2018, the left were incensed when “Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script,” as the New York Times reported:

On local news stations across the United States last month, dozens of anchors gave the same speech to their combined millions of viewers.

It included a warning about fake news, a promise to report fairly and accurately and a request that viewers go to the station’s website and comment “if you believe our coverage is unfair.”

It may not have seemed strange to individual viewers. But Timothy Burke, the video director at Deadspin, had read a report last month from CNN, which quoted local station anchors who were uncomfortable with the speech.

Mr. Burke tracked down the stations and found when each had aired what he called a “forced read.”

Then he stitched together the various broadcasts to create a supercut of anchors eerily echoing the same lines:

It seems safe to say that the “resistance” left of 2025 won’t have a similar reaction to today’s response to Trump.

UPDATE: Senate Democrats Suffer Humiliating Messaging Disaster. “And on it goes. I’m not going to keep looking because it’s clear that most, if not all, of the Senate Democrats decided to join in on the astroturf campaign. Who thought this was a good idea? Did they really think we wouldn’t notice? Do they realize how silly this makes them look?”

Posted at 12:47 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

“AMERICAN STATE-BUILDING EFFORTS FAILED BECAUSE THE PEOPLE PLANNING THEM TRULY BELIEVED THAT INSIDE EVERY AFGHAN TRIBESMAN THERE IS A BISEXUAL SEATTLE LIBTARD LONGING TO BREAK FREE:”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 4th, 2025

March 3, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN LEFTIST SCHIZOPHRENIA: Bay Area workers, students take part in Day Without Immigrants protests.

People across the United States are staying home from work or school Monday in a Day Without Immigrants protest against the ongoing federal immigration crackdown.

Organizers are hoping to show the economic power of the immigrant community, and students at Overfelt High School in San Jose are expected to participate in the planned nationwide call for boycotts and protests.

Still though, not all immigrants are welcome by today’s far left, who are once again partying like it’s 1859:

Last month Michael Moore railed against the deportation of migrants who might be curing cancer or stopping SMOD:

Progressive filmmaker and activist Michael Moore on Tuesday wrote a lengthy blog post warning that by deporting illegal immigrants, America may be missing out on the next equivalent of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs or one that will save the world from a killer asteroid.

Moore’s piece, “Our Muslim Boy Wonder,” used Jobs’ origins as the son of a Syrian migrant to critique the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.

“Who’s really being removed by ICE tonight?” Moore asked. “The child who would’ve discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The 9th grade nerd who would’ve stopped that asteroid (sic) that’s gonna hit us in 2032? Do we care?”

Over to you, Rep. Velazquez. Why do you want to deport an African-American who builds spacecraft, electric cars, communication networks, and social media Websites?

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

JEFF DUNETZ ON ANDREW BREITBART: I Still Miss My Friend And Mentor.

My goal is to try to weaponize the American people, try to weaponize the conservative movement, try to weaponize the underground conservative Hollywood movement, to weaponize as many people in the center-right country to try to rectify a generation-plus long problem that has been absolute media bias, absolute media used by the Democratic Party as a tool to defeat conservatives. –Andrew Breitbart

It’s hard to believe that Andrew Breitbart’s giant heart gave out thirteen years ago, March 1, 2012. Despite the passage of time since he passed away, the fire and passion he injected into everyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting and working with him is still burning in my heart.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

OLD AND BUSTED: “Skynet Smiles.”

The New Hotness? Skynet Fisks!

Posted at 8:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

IT’S LONG OVERDUE; RIGOR MORTIS SET IN DECADES AGO: An Obit for Journalism.

The year 2024 began with grim news for the news. The Los Angeles Times laid off 115 staffers in January, triggering doomsday conclusions about journalism’s future. Media experts who had worked hard to save the industry seemed ready to admit that the end was near. As one longtime observer noted, “It may finally be time to give up on old journalism and its legacy industry. . . . The old news industry has failed at adapting to the internet and every one of their would-be saviors—from tablets to paywalls to programmatic ads to consolidation to billionaires—has failed them.”

That generalization is correct. The Los Angeles Times layoffs represent the failure of the billionaire business model, one of the media industry’s last great hopes. When billionaire and biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the West Coast newspaper in 2018, hoping to preserve it, he joined Jeff Bezos (who bought the Washington Post in 2013) and Marc Benioff (Time in 2018) as would-be benevolent stewards, happy to write off modest losses to keep the public informed. But Time also recently announced staff cuts, while the Post laid off 240 people last year. The L.A. layoffs just confirmed the failure of the model.

For the news business, it is the latest, and perhaps the last, sign of systemic collapse. Earlier strategies—paywalls, merging with e-commerce, membership models, digital platforms, foundation and philanthropic funding—all failed to rescue individual publications, much less the entire industry. Those few investors or donors who do remain tend to care more about their special agendas than about journalism per se. Hopes for maintaining the press as it once existed have vanished.

“The media is melting down, and neither billionaires nor journalists can seem to stop it,” writes The Hollywood Reporter. “Journalism may never again make money,” states the Washington Post. “Is American journalism headed toward an ‘extinction-level event’?” asks The Atlantic. Indeed, an obituary for the American press is overdue. And it turns out that the death of journalistic objectivity has been both cause and effect.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Chuck Todd: Now We Can Call Biden ‘Craven’ For Running — In 2020.

Interesting, and not just in the Now you tell us sense that Mark Hemingway flagged today — and for good reason.

Outgoing NBC anchor Chuck Todd and former Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt look back on the absolute disaster around Joe Biden and the upcoming accountability in both the Democrat Party and the media. Todd and Schmidt even get around to discussing the upcoming Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson quasi-exposé Original Sin, which bases the scandal of the 2024 campaign on the idea that the decision to run for a second term.

Nonsense, Todd argues. The actual original sin is that Biden ran at all, and not just in the context of his cognitive decline. Todd points out that the Hunter Biden trial made it clear that the Biden family knew damned well that Biden’s children all had substance-abuse issues, and still decided to drag the family out into a national campaign anyway. Todd calls that decision a “craven” attempt to pursue Biden’s personal ambition of nearly 50 years without considering the damage it would do, not just to the country but to the people Biden supposedly cared about.

And that’s an angle that we haven’t heard, or at least not much:

Flashback to July: NBC host Chuck Todd makes explosive claim Biden cabinet secretary told him TWO YEARS ago that Joe ‘can’t run again.’

And to July of 2023: NBC’s Chuck Todd Worries GOP Will Accuse Biden With or Without Evidence. “This is the same Todd who had no problem allowing Russia collusion hoaxer Adam Schiff to accuse then-President Donald Trump of working with the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential election. Even though at the time, every honest person with common sense knew that was a fringe conspiracy theory.”

And to April of 2022: MSNBC’S Chuck Todd Snaps at Guest Over Criticism of Hunter Biden Media Coverage: ‘That’s the Laziest Attack.’

And from February of 2022: LOL: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell Says ‘We’re Not Democrats, We’re Journalists!’

The lone Republican on the panel, Danielle Pletka, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, finally had a chance to weigh in. “I think President Trump’s judgment on Russia and on Putin has not been awesome. I think Mike Pompeo misspoke,” Pletka said briefly before being cut off by Mitchell who took issue with what she said. “He said it several times,” Mitchell claimed.

Pletka replied: “I know Andrea, but I don’t think that’s what he believes.” Then the entire panel erupted and started shouting at Pletka as Todd failed to do his job as the “moderator.”

Clearly flustered from being shouted at and not allowed to get a word in, Pletka put her foot down: “Hang on. First of all, there are four of you and one of me. I’m the only Republican sitting here. Hang on a second.”

Mitchell did not like being outed as a Democrat even though she outs herself every day on national television, including numerous times on the panel moments before.

She snapped back: “We’re not Republicans or Democrats, we’re journalists.” Todd then followed up gesturing towards Mitchell, Welker, and himself “well, three of us are.”

The truth is none of them are. They have proven time and again that they are leftist hacks who are disguised as journalists.

Indeed. Finally, here’s Todd, the former operative for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) at the beginning of March of 2020, before Fauci and Birx ordered their lockdowns: Coronavirus Can Be to Trump Like Iran Hostages Were to Carter.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: British nuclear weapons can protect Canada against Trump, says Trudeau party candidate.

Canada should seek closer ties with Britain because its nuclear weapons can help protect the country against Donald Trump, a female politician running to replace Justin Trudeau has said.

Chrystia Freeland, the former deputy prime minister under Mr Trudeau, said that Mr Trump is “clearly threatening our sovereignty” with his campaign to absorb Canada as the 51st state of America.

In order to “guarantee our security”, Ms Freeland said she would build closer security partnerships with European Nato allies and “I would be sure that France and Britain were there, who possess nuclear weapons”.

Someone’s taking Jonah Goldberg’s classic 2002 headline, “Bomb Canada, the Case for War” just a bit too seriously.

Still though, if Canada is doing this sort of saber-rattling, this might be an extremely good time for a preemptive first strike…

UPDATE: To paraphrase The Simpsons’ Nelson Muntz, gotta bomb somebody! In February 2022, Freeland’s target was nuking the Freedom Truckers: “Canadian banks have begun freezing the accounts of people linked to the trucker protests in Canada and the federal government is promising to take more accounts offline in coming days in an attempt to clear demonstrators from Ottawa, which has been occupied for nearly a month. On February 17, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a press conference that financial institutions have started freezing accounts and canceling credit cards in accordance with the Emergencies Act, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked earlier this week.”

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

SETH MANDEL: The Oscars and the Plight of the ‘Good Jew.’

Last night’s Oscars ceremony honored the film No Other Land with an award, but the acceptance speeches unwittingly paid homage to an old classic, the 1966 big-screen adaptation of A Man For All Seasons. “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world,” Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More famously says upon the realization that his friend betrayed him for the reward of being appointed attorney general for Wales. “But for Wales?”

No Other Land is about an illicit Palestinian settlement built on land designated for Israeli military training. The film takes the perspective of Palestinian settlers. Accepting the award for best documentary feature were two of the directors, a Palestinian named Basel Adra and an Israeli named Yuval Abraham.

Adra spoke entirely of Israeli wickedness and the virtue of Palestinians “resist[ing]” it. Abraham, playing the “good Jew,” joined his friend and colleague in bashing Israel, though he added a token call for the Israeli hostages to be returned. It would be condescending to praise an Israeli for saying literally the bare minimum on behalf of Israeli hostages, so I’ll leave that to others who had even lower expectations for Abraham.

Matt Walsh gleefully points out that while No Other Land was “the highest grossing Oscar-nominated documentary of 2024” – his documentary actually made bank:

[No Other Land] grossed $420,000 in the US, but the Oscar nominated bit is an important qualifier, because of course our documentary Am I Racist? grossed more than 25 times more than the highest grossing Oscar nominated documentary. So put it put into more perspective, our film grossed four times as much on the first day of release, than this movie did in its whole theatrical run, and we weren’t even on the short list. Nobody saw this movie, it had no cultural impact at all — like none — but it won because it had the right politics. So that’s how it goes, and  just pointing it out, that’s all. Just little disclaimer there,  a little qualifier when you hear about the “highest grossing Oscar nominated documentary.”

Plus some more fun with Julianne Hough’s woke, rote “land acknowledgement:”

Posted at 8:16 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

FINALLY: #OscarsSoLame: Hollywood Appeals to Middle-American Normies with a Land Acknowledgment.

The Academy Awards featured a brief land acknowledgment during the ceremony Sunday night that drew scorn on social media.

Actress Julianne Hough gave recognition to three Native American tribes in a 15-second segment during the 97th annual Oscars ceremony.

“We gather in celebration of the Oscars on the ancestral lands of the Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash peoples, the traditional caretakers of this water and land. We honor and pay our respects to indigenous communities here and around the world,” Hough said early in the Hollywood awards show.

The short clip was roasted across social media platform X shortly after it aired.

“Performative nonsense. Give the land back if you’re so woke,” Sen. Josh Hawley’s communications director, Abigail Jackson, wrote.

Washington Examiner contributor Brad Polumbo exclaimed, “i repeat: give it back or shut the f— up!”

“Do the named indigenous groups ever have to acknowledge who they took the land from?” Libertas Institute President Connor Boyack asked.

“WHHHYYY” former Democratic campaign strategist Evan Barker wrote.

Marine Corps veteran Rick Swift remarked, “Will she be giving up her home?”

Related: ‘Racist’ transgender best actress nominee Karla Sofia Gascon’s miserable evening at Oscars revealed.

Karla Sofia Gascón had a lonely night at the Oscars after she was accused of being a racist over social media posts targeting Muslims and George Floyd.

The Emilia Perez star – the first trans woman to be nominated for an acting Oscar – was once considered a front-runner to win Best Actress, but was shunned by Netflix and her co-stars after the posts emerged.

It was unclear if the Spanish actress, 52, would show up at the event, as Netflix had pulled the plug on many of her pre-awards appearances after the scandal.

But Gascón did show up, alongside her daughter, agent, a ‘concerned’ Netflix publicist and private security, The New York Times reported.

She was photographed interacting with co-star Selena Gomez in the audience after the show started, but did not walk the red carpet or pose with anyone from her film.

Gascón did reportedly share a warm moment with Best Actor winner Adrian Brody at the bar, but was kept from speaking to any press by the Netflix publicist.

‘Gascón was jovial and interested in chatting,’ the NYT reported. ‘But before she could get out any answer, the Netflix publicist shut down any more conversation and moved the reporter away from Gascón.’

Why are leftist-monopoly industries such cesspits of transphobia?

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

CHUCK DEVORE: The predictable outcome of California’s green energy policies has arrived and it’s a disaster.

Back when I served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010, California ranked seventh or eighth in the nation for electricity costs. At the time, the Democratic majority in Sacramento was pushing bill after bill mandating greater reliance on renewable energy, assuring everyone that these policies would make us look like “geniuses” when the price of fossil fuels inevitably soared.

I warned that these laws, regulations and subsidies would instead drive up electricity costs for Californians, making the grid less reliable and California’s economy less competitive.

Now, two decades later, the results are in. In 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that California had the second-highest electricity prices in the nation for the second year running, behind only Hawaii. The Golden State’s misguided energy policies have steadily increased the price of electricity as green energy mandates, grid instability and regulatory burdens have taken their toll. Meanwhile, states with more balanced energy policies — natural gas, coal and nuclear power — have fared far better.

What’s worse, California’s natural advantage in AI will be lost to Texas and other low-cost energy states. California’s industrial electricity prices averaged 21.98 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 vs. 6.26 in Texas, a whopping 251% price premium that no electricity-hungry AI installation or server farm operator is going to pay.

Meanwhile, in Joe Biden’s backyard: Delaware Residents See Surging Electric Bills as State Pushes Green Mandates.

Delaware consumers have faced soaring electricity prices this winter—something experts and lawmakers are warning is a harbinger of more dramatic price hikes as the state implements aggressive green energy policies.

According to electric bills reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon and local news reports, electric bills have skyrocketed by hundreds of dollars and—in some cases—by as much as 350 percent in recent months.

Leigh Rieley, a Washington, D.C., resident who owns a fixer-upper house with her husband in their hometown in southeast Delaware, shared her recent electric bills with the Free Beacon. In January, Rieley and her husband saw a staggering month-over-month price hike of 359 percent.

“We were very surprised to see it go from like 90 bucks to nearly 400 and, we’re not in it—no one is using the house,” she told the Free Beacon. Rieley’s neighbors and nearby family have experienced identical price shocks, she said. Another resident, Maria Cordona, told Delaware Online that her January bill was over $1,200.

The unexpected price increases in Delaware come as the state experiences extremely low temperatures and as it continues to enforce green energy power production mandates. In 2021, the state passed rules forcing 40 percent of power production to be green by 2035 despite being one of the most fossil-fuel-dependent states in the country.

“Green” mandates can be seen as a form of tax, and as Delaware’s favorite son liked to remind voters, paying higher taxes is a patriotic act. Do it for Scranton Joe, Delaware!

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

SHORT AQUA NET STOCKS IF TRUE: Jimmy Johnson embarks on life without football after retiring from Fox.

There’s no roadmap from a blackboard in the Arkansas football office where this all started for Jimmy Johnson six decades ago — no roadmap through six decades of games and teams and various jobs to the phone call he made a few days ago to Fox Sports executives.

But there he was having decided his second, or maybe third or fourth, football act was over. He was retiring from public life.

“I’m done,” he told Fox officials.

They asked him to take more time to decide, then suggested considering a smaller TV role. Maybe a half-dozen cross-country trips for their Sunday studio show next season. Less, if he wanted.

“No, I’m 100 percent sure, I’m done,” Jimmy said. “I’m retiring for good this time.”

Maybe it’s not a big deal. Jimmy was saying as much now from his Islamorada home. Someone will take his seat on TV next season and the games will look the same as always.

In 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama portentously boasted that upon winning his party’s nomination, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” This is the moment when the hole in the ozone layer above the Fox Sports studio begins to heal as well.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

REPORT: Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid went on antisemitic ‘rant’ about COVID, former staffer claims.

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid went “on a vile antisemitic rant,” in which she blamed Orthodox Jews for the spread of COVID-19 in New York City, a former production assistant at the network claims.

In the summer of 2020, the lefty former “TheReidOut” host allegedly ripped Orthodox Jews, saying they “only care about themselves” and are “in their own bubble,” and accused the group of reckless behavior during the opandemic, according to the PA.

The ex-PA, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she is speaking out now that Reid’s been axed because “people should know what her character is.”

“They’re the reason why COVID is spreading across New York,” the former staffer claimed Reid said unchallenged during a morning conference call. “They don’t care about COVID or spreading it to others.”

“I was shocked she called out a group and generalized them,” said the ex-PA, who is Jewish, who said it was even more shocking that the “other people on the call went along with it as if it’s a normal thing to say.”

About 20 people from the production team were on the call, she recalled.

“No one called her out [saying] ‘Maybe we shouldn’t generalize.’ Imagine if you said that about any other group of people – even if it were true – saying that any other group didn’t care about COVID?

Why would the former PA be “shocked,” when she worked for a network that also employs Al Sharpton?

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: The Wellbeing Of Burglars.

Lifted from the comments, an illustration of progressive ethics. Or, How dare you defend your home and loved ones from sociopathic intruders with long criminal histories:

The bill’s sponsor, Rick Chavez Zbur, claims, “The bill’s goal is to prevent wannabe vigilantes… from provoking violence and then claiming self-defense after the fact.” Which suggests that finding intruders in your home, or breaking into your home, intent on thievery and God knows what else, is somehow not in itself an obvious provocation. Or a basis for vigorous self-defence.

Instead, the bill would oblige homeowners to “retreat” wherever possible, thereby reducing the risk of “force likely to cause death or great bodily injury” to the burglar or burglars, whose wellbeing is apparently a matter of great importance, if only to progressive lawmakers. This restriction is framed as a “safety” measure, albeit one that prioritises the safety of the criminal, who will presumably be enabled to continue his trajectory of repeated home invasion, but with reduced resistance and ever greater boldness.

But remember, wokeness is just about being compassionate.

Well yes. And for that, we look to the opposite coast: Bizarro Boston: Dem Mayor Offers Condolences to Family of Man Shot While Allegedly Trying to Stab Others.

Posted at 12:33 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2025

March 2, 2025

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  ‘The Internet? Bah!’ Remembering 1995, the year of the world wide web.

Skeptics scoffed that the “massive seething monument to human expression” was little more than a fad. No contrarian was more insistent than Clifford Stoll, an astronomer who in 1995 brought out the book, “Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway.” It makes for entertaining reading — if mostly for its jaw-dropping assortment of misguided predictions. Stoll, who said he been online for years, wrote, for example:

  • “Video-on-demand, that killer application of communications, will remain a dream.”
  • “I don’t believe that phone books, newspapers, magazines, or corner video stores will disappear as computer networks spread. Nor do I think that my telephone will merge with my computer, to become some sort of information appliance.”
  • “What will the electronic book look like? Some sort of miniature laptop computer, I’d guess. We’ll download selections and page through them electronically. Try reading electronic books. They’re awful.”

Stoll previewed his book in an essay in Newsweek on Feb. 27, 1995, that has become something of a cult classic, which is frequently rediscovered online. The essay, in which Stoll dismissed the online world as a “most trendy and oversold community,” appeared beneath the headline, “The Internet? Bah!”

This is history repeating, of course. In 1977, Creative Computing magazine reprinted a speech by Arthur C. Clarke to ATT and MIT at the “Convocation on Communications in Celebration of the Centennial of the Telephone,” in which he said:

Man is the communicating animal;  he demands news, information, entertainment, almost as much as food. In fact, as a functioning human being, he can survive much longer without food — even without water! — than without information, as experiments in sensory deprivation have shown. This is a truly astonishing fact; one could construct a whole philosophy around it.

So any major advance in communications capability that can be conceived can be realized in practice, and that same advance will come into widespread use just as soon as it is practicable. Often sooner; the public can’t wait for “state of the art” to settle down. Remember the first clumsy phonographs, radios, tape recorders? And would you believe the date of the first music broadcast? It was barely a year after the invention of the telephone! On April 2, 1877, a “telegraphic harmony” apparatus in Philadelphia sent “Yankee Doodle” to sixteen loudspeakers — well, soft-speakers — in New York’s Steinway Hall. Alexander Graham Bell was in the audience, and one would like to know if he complimented the promoter — his now forgotten rival, Elisha Gray, who got to the Patent Office just those fatal few hours too late…

Gray was not the only one to be caught out by the momentum of events. When news of the telephone reached England through Cyrus Field’s undersea telegraphic cable, the chief engineer of the Post Office was asked whether this new Yankee invention would be of any practical value. He gave the forthright reply: “No, sir. The Americans have need of the telephone — but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

The telephone? Bah!

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2025

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Can White Men Finally Stop Complaining? For 50 years, we’ve been hearing from men who feel threatened by the gains of women and minorities. Now that the manosphere is in charge, the victim mentality has to go.

The manosphere won. Bro podcasters top the charts. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg declares his company needs more “masculine energy.” Elon Musk shares a post saying only “high-status males” should run the country. The White House kills diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, and so do multiple companies, from Target to McDonalds.

OK, men, so will you finally quit complaining?

In 2021, Joe Rogan famously said, “It will eventually get to straight white men are not allowed to talk…It will be, ‘You’re not allowed to go outside’…I’m not joking. It really will get there, it’s that crazy.” But Rogan’s complaint is actually an old one that has exploded as a rallying cry every decade or so for more than 50 years. White guys have blamed others for their job losses, educational failures, economic problems and drug addictions.

Somebody else is always at fault. The mighty white guy, it turns out, is quite the delicate flower.

“The white male is the most persecuted person in the United States,” a retired marketing executive declared in a Newsweek cover story in 1993. The magazine cataloged a litany of white men’s gripes: a culture that demonized them, diversity programs run amok, women and Black people getting jobs that were rightfully theirs. “This is a weird moment to be a white man,” it reported. “Suddenly white American males are surrounded by feminists, multiculturalists, P.C. policepersons, affirmative-action employers…all of them saying the same thing: You’ve been a bad boy.”

Sound familiar?

Racism and sexism are as old as time. But the “oppressed white man” trope is a relatively modern invention, with roots in the civil-rights and women’s-rights victories of the 1960s. Protests and lawsuits followed, with aggrieved white men turning the language of civil rights on its head. “Talk about rights; we’ve got no rights!” a crowd of white Detroit police officers chanted in 1975, protesting a court ruling in favor of the department’s relatively few Black and female officers.

The TV character Archie Bunker, the oppressed white guy’s avatar, captured that spirit in a 1974 “All in the Family” episode, when he complained about a female colleague whose pay was equal to his: “What’s the point of a man working hard all his life, trying to get someplace, if all he’s gonna do is wind up equal?!”

The Wall Street Journal has apparently decided to boldly go where Pinch Sulzberger of the New York Times went before in the mid-1990s.

Interesting choice of artwork to accompany Joanne Lipman’s article, though. Archie Bunker was a leftist Hollywood parody of the typical Nixon voter in 1970 created by Norman Lear. Michael Douglas’ William Foster, aka “D-FENS” of Falling Down was a leftist Hollywood parody of the typical Reagan/Bush voter by Joel Schumacher and his writer, Ebbe Row Smith. Rogan, Zuckerburg and Musk were all staunch Obama voters until he tried to make a power grab for Silicon Valley in his third term.

Exit quote:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2025

IT CHRONICLES WHAT HAPPENED IN 1972 — But September 5 Is About Our Social Media Present.

When the full extent of the resources needed to shoot that 160-page script became clear, Fehlbaum, Binder and the producers slipped into a funk. Who would give them the money for a project that big? And there was no plausible way to make it smaller. It all seemed like the end, games over, medal unclaimed.

But they hadn’t counted on the man known as Mase.

Geoffrey Mason, as he is more formally known, was not the kind of person who was going to make Swiss auteur dreams come true. Heck, he wasn’t even the kind of person who knew any Swiss auteurs. Mason, now 83, spends his days working as a sports producer from his home in Naples, Florida. He had been a young television producer that 1972 day, just past his 30th birthday, manning the ABC Sports control room for what was supposed to be a competition-lite 24 hours. He liked yachting and finding the right angle for diving competitions. Global terrorism? That was less his world.

Then the attack happened. Mason found himself thrust to the center of the news stage; the world was literally watching every choice he made. In 22 hours, he and his ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge changed the way Americans thought about sports coverage, terrorism and a half-dozen other realms. “I didn’t know anything about Hollywood when Tim and Philipp called a few years ago,” Mason says. “But they seemed like smart guys, so I told them what happened.”

As he talked about the on-the-spot improvisations and charged decisions — this essentially was livestreaming long before cable news and YouTube — the filmmakers realized they had their golden ticket. “It was such a rush,” says Binder. “They were inventing this as they went along, with all this adrenaline, and we all felt the same listening to Geoff.”

Adds Fehlbaum: “There was something very compelling about a decision made on the spot about what they would show.” A new, reined-in approach seemed apt.

Read the whole thing; the film is a must-see, and is currently streaming for free for those who subscribe to Paramount+.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2025

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S THE GELL-MANN AMNESIA EFFECT!

 

As the late Michael Crichton wrote:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

Regarding Nixon himself, whom SNL spent the entire second half of the 1970s absolutely savaging, as the late Zhou Enlai never said, the outcome of the French Revolution? Too early to say.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2025
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