Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

December 2, 2024

NBC NEWS: Biden’s Lying About Pardoning Hunter Was Part of the Plan. As Charles Cooke writes:

In case you missed the key line, I’ll print it again:

They said it was decided at the time that he would publicly say he would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table.

Astonishing.

Karol Markowicz adds:

Ben Domenech writes: Hunter’s pardon is the legacy of Joe Biden’s weakness.

Democrats and their media cogs will write this off as the action of a loving father. But it isn’t. It’s doing the same thing that these partisans have always done — give Hunter Biden a pass, treating him like he’s a dysfunctional teenager instead of a pompous fifty-four-year-old prick whose day job is as a corrupt artist and night job is “sober-ish” in the mid-Atlantic sense. The Big Guy is cut from the same hypocritical cloth. He won’t even meet his granddaughter — I have. She’s lovely and polite — and I gave her a fruit snack. Joe should try it sometime.

Love sometimes requires you to be tough, to require honorable consequences, especially in the face of addiction of all forms. But Joe Biden is not tough or honorable. He just wears the aviators to make him look like he is. No one ever really bought it — and now we know for sure.

It’s also the legacy of a media that cheerfully defended Biden for years: Straight-FAFO! Scott Jennings Takes CNN Panelist Apart for Claiming Biden Didn’t Lie About Hunter Pardon.

Former Hillary flack Karen Finney’s smirks and eye-rolls during this segment are telling, as he reminds her, “You don’t have to defend this. He’s leaving office. You don’t have to defend it. You don’t have to die on this hill. You can say this is wrong, because everybody knows that it is. It’s wrong.” Jennings asks, “Are you fine with the lying? Are you fine with him sitting before the election all year and lying to the American people? Are you fine with the lying about it?”

Yes, the entire DNC-MSM decided it’s perfectly fine with Biden’s lying, even as he’s headed out the door, and in their enabling of it over the last five years, ever since began his presidential run.

Exit quote:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 2nd, 2024

December 1, 2024

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY, COMRADES: New York Times describes women as “non-transgender women:” The New York Times’ erasure of biological women is the latest sign of its ideological capture.

The New York Times once had a reputation for being unafraid to air a wide range of different opinions, even for challenging the views of the so-called “progressive” Left. No longer. And the ideological capture of the publication is beginning to show even in the language its journalists and editors use.

In a recent piece on transgender athletes, it managed to use three words when one would have done. The story goes like this: the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the main governing body for college sports in the United States, has ruled on trans-identified volleyball players and testosterone levels. But the NYT chose a bizarre form of language to report the already extraordinary fact that a biological male with four times the level of testosterone as a biological woman is allowed to compete in women’s sport. It described women as “non-transgender women”.

It’s the latest sign that the publication remains under the cosh of blue-fringed ideologues who consider feelings to be more important than facts. And more so, who prioritise a miniscule population of trans-identified males over half the population of the planet.

Feminist campaigners against gender ideology who object to the erasure of women immediately hit out when the story was posted on X. One of those was the tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who, as an out lesbian since the early 1980s, has done more to fight for the rights of women than most in her field.

“NYT- you stink,” she posted. “We are women, not NOT TRANSGENDER WOMEN. Just WOMEN will do in the future.”

Related: “To prevent the ‘not-un’ formulation,  Orwell suggest memorizing this phrase: ‘a not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.’ For their part, the ‘not transgender woman’ crowd might buy a can of spray paint and find a retaining wall for their writing. That’s the level they’re on.”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

SONNY BUNCH: Wicked: Part One Review.

I did not care much for Wicked: Part One—I’m desperately tired of movies being one half of one movie, particularly when said movie has a run time of 160 minutes—but Ariana Grande delivers one of the best performances of the year as Glinda. Yes, it’s largely one note, that note being “ditzy blonde consumed by self-absorption.” But she hits that note like she’s Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl: Grande is raucously funny and charming within it, and Glinda’s moments of growth—as when she sees behind Elphaba’s rock-like façade and acknowledges the girl’s suffering—are both genuine and heartfelt. There’s conflict within the heart of this ditz, and she conveys it clearly with her eyes.

I’ve seen folks suggest that this movie is a satisfying whole rather than an unsatisfying half of a whole that’s nevertheless the same runtime as the Broadway musical. This is perplexing, as virtually every subplot—including the hamhanded metaphor about animal oppression that implicitly compares talking goats to Jews in Nazi Germany and the desperately dull relationship between Nessarose and a Munchkin with a crush on Glinda—goes completely unresolved.

Thankfully, all of my questions will be answered: Regardless of my exhaustion, the movie will likely be a monstrous hit with audiences and Oscar voters alike. The audience I saw it with seemed enraptured; it laughed and sniffled at all the right moments. It’s not for me, but you’ll know if it’s for you. Please don’t let my peevish nature dissuade you defying the gravity of my disapproval.

Related: “Is This the Craziest Trigger Warning Yet?”, Christian Toto asks of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC):

The story touches on friendship, feeling different from your peers and, of course, flying monkeys.

The BBFC fears the film, which is crushing the box office competition, might trigger select audiences.

Why?

“…seeing beloved characters being mistreated, especially when Elphaba’s skin-colour is used to demonise her as the ‘Wicked Witch’, may be upsetting and poignant for some audiences.”

Yes, that’s a key point of the original show and the movie. Should we avoid stories that are “upsetting” and/or “poignant?” That might leave out, well, most content.

Wait until the BBFC discovers the Incredible Hulk, Zoe Saldaña’s Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy, and some of Capt. Kirk’s interstellar trysts. Speaking of which:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Did Biden Make His Anti-Semitism Official?

[A] few months later shortly after the book his the bookstore shelves, [Reagan advisor Martin] Anderson was watching TV news coverage of Reagan getting off the helicopter on the White House lawn and approaching a bank of microphones for some brief but rare comments to the media about something, and lo and behold! Reagan was clutching a copy of Anderson’s book under his arm, with the title plainly visible for the cameras and easy to make out. It was visible in photos that appeared in newspapers. Anderson took this as a much better boost for the book than a dust jacket blurb. And Anderson knew it was no coincidence or happenstance.

This story came back to me over the weekend with the photos of Joe Biden emerging from a Nantucket bookstore holding in plain sight the book he purchased: Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017.  Khalidi is a former spokesperson for the PLO, defender of Hamas terrorism, and a vicious anti-Semite, full stop. He is also an emeritus professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, naturally.

It is quite possible that in his senile state Biden isn’t actually replicating Reagan’s deliberate act of promoting a book with an implicit presidential endorsement. But you’d think that aides, or his super-smart son Hunter, who was with him, would have made him keep it in a bag. Deliberate or not, it is revealing.

The pre-2020 Biden, who spent his entire adult life obsessed with ultimately winning the White House would of course have known the value of a presidential endorsement of a book, and had seen his former (and current) boss posing prominently in 2008 on the campaign trail with Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, in a deliberate foreshadowing of the “fundamental transformation” to come, which garnered his fellow leftist massive amounts of free publicity.

But this is the Trunalimunumaprzure-era Biden we’re talking about today. The fact that Khalidi’s book is upside down lends credence to it quickly being stuck in the (p)resident’s hand for a photo-op, to signal to the far left that the empty husk of a man serving out his final days isn’t “Genocide Joe,” or at the very least, the people actually running the country are supportive of their fight against Israel.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

DO THE WORK, BUT DON’T GET COCKY JUST YET: Steve Bannon: Maga can rule for 50 years and Farage will be PM.

When I meet him at his house in Arizona (one of several he owns across the US) at 7am on Wednesday last week, his 71st birthday, he doesn’t seem like someone who has won. For Bannon, beating the Democrats was just the start. Now comes the struggle against dissenting elements in the Republican Party.

“We are so close,” he tells me. “We just need to see this through.”

Trump may have won the presidency, but to enact the sweeping changes he wants to make — chief among them destroying the administrative state and deporting millions of undocumented migrants — he needs to move fast, with the support of his party.

If they manage this, Bannon tells me more than once, the Maga Republicans can rule for half a century. “If we deliver now, it’s upon us. They’ve given President Trump that. If he delivers on the economics of this … we’re going to govern for 50 years. It’s all there for us to lose.”

We’ve seen similar post-election gloating from the other side, which often looks quite misguided in retrospect. QED: James Carville Angles For ’40 More Years.’

—NPR, May 7th, 2009.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

STEVE KRAKAUER: Why Trump Won, and the Establishment Lost.

Then there’s the trans ad. You know it — it became a centerpiece of the Trump campaign, and a storyline since the election over whether it truly had a tangible impact in moving votes toward the GOP candidate. It was based on reporting, interestingly enough, from CNN’s Andy Kaczynski, that even Erin Burnett was shocked about when she heard it spelled out for her for the first time on-air.

But the ad itself is worth exploring as the conclusion here to wrap up the answer for our friend Aaron. “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” is both true, and a jarring statement. She’s there in her own words about it. And not just prisoners, but for detained illegal immigrants — connecting the issue to a core concern of voters, and the border crisis. It’s — to use a term that was popularized and then abandoned by Kamala’s VP pick who literally no one will remember in two years — weird.

But the kicker is the end: “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” Sure, if you use they/them pronouns, you’re definitely turned off by the ad. But that’s such an infinitesimal percentage of Americans, it resonates broadly. And most importantly, it has a double meaning. Yes, it’s about the obscure trans issue itself. But it’s also about Kamala being for “them” — the establishment, the elite, the people that don’t understand the everyday American and their plight. Trump… is for “you.” That’s easy. And it’s extremely effective.

And most importantly, it resonates because Kamala never had an effective counter. She couldn’t — she was installed as the nominee by “them.” She was for “unity”…with “them.” And she had the personality that was for “them” too.

We’ll see if Democrats take lessons from the 2024 drubbing. But the corporate press should understand that they were “them” in this election too. And if they want to re-establish any semblance of trust that has eroded over the past decade, they need to be seen as for “you,” not “them.”

Read the whole thing. As we’ve been seeing throughout November the DNC-MSM are showing no signs of learning from their mistakes during the election cycle. QED: Here’s a CNN Host Reacting to Tom Homan’s Promise to Dem Lawbreakers. (‘Make That a GIF Right Now!’)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: George Clooney Is Super Angry at Barack Obama, And I’m Just Loving It.

“We are not going to win in November with this president”, he declared. Biden, 82, heeded that advice 11 days later, ceding his campaign to Vice President Harris. And the minute Kamala’s historic bid for the White House came up short, Clooney started taking heat! “Since I’m in a deep depression and feel like lashing out at someone, what’s the plan now, George Clooney?” One of his many same-party critics writes on social media. “It’s all George Clooney’s fault!”

Meanwhile, Trump supporters gleefully taunted the uber-liberal star.

“Trump should not forget to thank Hollywood celebrities – especially George Clooney”, cracked one poster.

A political mole told RadarOnline.com it was Obama who urged Clooney to call for Biden – his own vice president – to end his sputtering campaign, fearing the fallout if he did it himself.

“Obama and Clooney have been tight for years, and George became Barack’s surrogate in leading the charge for Joe to step away”, explained the source. “Barack knew he would look like a traitor if he publicly called for Joe to be cut loose. And now, he’s trying to walk away from it all.

“George feels duped and vows he’s not going to be anyone’s political water boy anymore.”

Pass the popcorn.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

2001: A VOICE RECOGNITION ODYSSEY:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Dec 1st, 2024

November 30, 2024

THE CASE FOR — AND AGAINST — GLADIATOR II: 

When TikTok and Instagram turn men thinking about the Roman Empire into a meme, the historian’s job isn’t to list off the names of consuls and emperors or the years in which battles took place; it’s to use that as a chance to see Rome as a mirror for the present. People who lived long ago operated according to principles that were not our own, but the choices they made and the worlds they built show us something essential about what humanity can be. If we don’t engage thoughtfully with them, we’re doing them and us a disservice.

Whatever its flaws as a film or as a description of the past, Gladiator II accomplishes that task. If you’re paying attention, despite the copious gore, Denzel Washington having the time of his life as a scenery-chewing villain, and of course the sharks, you’ll leave the movie with a far deeper grasp of Rome as it actually was. People really did live and die on the sands of the Colosseum. Some benefited from that. Others suffered. While some will surely hate it for this, Gladiator II is surprisingly ambivalent about the Roman Empire. So are most of the people who spend their lives researching and writing about Rome. That’s not because they, or the movie, lack a perspective, but because knowing Rome—really knowing it—requires us to grapple with both spilt blood and gorgeous marble.

I’m willing to concede that Gladiator II has a richer and more detailed subtext than the first Gladiator movie, in which the hero’s quest to restore the Roman republic serves as the equivalent of the “MacGuffin” that drove so many Hitchcock movies. But having first seen Gladiator II on the big screen in Fort Worth yesterday afternoon, and then watching the original Gladiator purely because it was on TV back in the hotel room last night, it was obvious that the first Gladiator works so much better as a movie.

It has Russell Crowe, whom the film would make into a superstar, and he’s surrounded by a cast of colorful and dissipated old Brits – Oliver Reed, David Hemmings, and Richard Harris (okay, technically an Irishman). Again, as with Hitchcock’s frequent casting of Jimmy Stewart and Carry Grant, these actors bring all of the baggage they’ve accumulated through all the old movies we’ve seen them in, which acts as a sort cinematic shorthand. In Gladiator II,  with the exception of Connie Nielsen, whom we remember from the first Gladiator, and Denzel Washington, who brings his own superstar presence to the Gladiator II cast, none of the actors in the new film have anywhere near the sort of gravitas that grounded the original.

In the first movie, Ridley Scott only uses obvious CGI to create sweeping wide shots of Rome, or the large establishing shots of the Colosseum. In the sequel, Scott’s use of CGI feels incredibly self-indulgent, with phony looking sea battles, and unrealistic and occasionally sheer fantasy animals for the gladiators to fight. Then there’s what the denizens of the TV Tropes Website call an “anachronism stew,” where Scott depicts a Rome with outdoor coffee bars, paper newspapers, in the first battle scene, trebuchets.

If Gladiator II existed as an individual film, it would be a pretty good 21st century updating of the venerable “swords and sandals” genre which Hollywood and Italy have been churning out for decades and decades. Unfortunately, it has to serve as sequel to one of Scott’s best films – and on that level, I’m forced to give it a reluctant thumbs down.

UPDATE: Gladiator II: This time, it’s hokey. “Gladiator was a worthy heir to classics such as Ben-Hur; the sequel belongs in a category that includes 2 Fast 2 Furious. Mostly it’s a vehicle for Pascal to glower defiantly at the emperors and for Mescal to take his shirt off. Not that I’m complaining. No movie can be all that bad when it features Denzel Washington, in this case as the villainous slave trader Macrinus. Washington is not simply chewing the scenery here. He is rubbing the scenery tenderly in a blend of aromatic spices, slathering it in its own juices, and wolfing it down with a honey glaze. Whatever this screenplay had to offer, Washington gave.”

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2024

THE WORLD IS HEALING: LA Times Appoints Scott Jennings to Editorial Board.

I have been a fan of Scott Jennings on CNN since I first saw that Scott Jennings was on CNN.

I’ve made no secret of that since I wrote pieces about him and used his video clips all the time. Every day, he is the sole voice of reason on panels dominated by lefties whose idea of argumentation amounts to scoffing at others. It’s a treat to watch because Scott is unflappable, brings the goods, and is the one person who relies on reason and facts.

Most of us in his situation would get frustrated; I know I would because I would make the mistake of thinking that my audience was the people in the room and not the people watching the debate. No matter how reasonable or even obvious Scott’s arguments are, the people sitting at the table will never acknowledge that Scott has a point.

It’s always five against one. But Scott, as the one, always gets the better of it because the five are usually peddling talking points, not persuasive arguments.

This gets us to this: the owner of The Los Angeles Times–an extraordinarily liberal paper that has been roiled by controversy over the owner’s diktat that the paper not endorse in the presidential race–has decided to bring Scott on as an editorial board member.

Read on, as David Strom of Hot Air quotes Oliver Darcy, formerly of CNN, having a swarmy meltdown over L.A. Times owner Pat Soon-Shiong hiring Jennings. But Soon-Shiong may have far better known subscribers’ heads exploding as well. In 2005, when the LA. Times’ previous owner hired a pre-TDS Jonah Goldberg and dropped lefty Robert Scheer, Barbra Streisand had a near-aneurysm in response:

I am delighted to be in the Los Angeles Times and I’m deeply flattered by the opportunity. I would be saddened if Streisand were right in her claim that my presence will hurt the paper or if her insinuation that she somehow speaks for the larger community were true.

But Streisand is adamant. She writes, “The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity, but demands it. Your decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community.”

She continues: “It seems that your new leadership, especially Publisher Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with your readers and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your Op-Ed pages may have increased, in firing Scheer and hiring columnists such as Jonah Goldberg, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted.”

Babs and “the Desirable”

So, taking Streisand seriously, we must ask: Is she on crack?

Robert Scheer may be the greatest writer since homo sapiens first scribbled on cave walls, but no serious person can believe that his views test the elasticity of Streisand’s “paradigms.” He reinforces them, he ladles concrete on them. Scheer confirms all of her biases and reaffirms all of her ill-considered views. Put aside the fact that both Scheer and Streisand are committed leftists who share almost identical views on most major issues. Scheer served as an informal adviser to Ms. Streisand on at least one occasion–when she delivered a speech to Harvard. Streisand, who recently called for President Bush’s impeachment, threw a book party for Scheer when his last anti-Bush book came out, and she regularly links to his articles on her always amusing website.

And even if you suspect I don’t have the intellectual firepower to burn toast, it’s hard to see how my views wouldn’t put just a bit of spring in her paradigm. Indeed, it’s doubtful that Scheer would even take the time to tell her that “gamuts” cannot be “diluted” or that if you are going to pronounce upon “principals of journalistic integrity” with Olympian pomposity, you might take an extra moment or two to spell “principles” correctly. Otherwise, when she writes that the Times is stepping away “from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants” it sounds like she’s saying we should back away slowly from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and other journalistic “dictators.” “Have that accountant beaten! He’s acting like an editor!”

Here’s hoping Jennings will have a similar metaphorical effect on the L.A. Times’ remaining leftist subscribers:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2024

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Donald Trump the Long-Awaited Messiah of the Band ‘Rush’ Era?

A lot of us who went to those concerts so many years ago have noticed something kind of odd. After years of hoping and waiting for a government in this country that might understand and respect the power and full constitutional rights of the individual, we’ve been seeing something that looks a lot like a Rush concert at … MAGA rallies. We have a president-elect who says that if you like your lightbulbs and your gas-powered car, and if you want to keep them, you can. And you can dance along with your president, too. And he is assembling a Cabinet of dissidents who don’t believe that we need to be beholden to what has come before.

At the end of “2112,” the Elder Race of Man returns to overthrow the oppressive totalitarian Priests of the Temple of Syrinx, apparently to usher in an era of freedom, individualism and the right to dissent. So much of what we hear in “2112” — the final fall of the expert-driven bureaucrats — might actually happen in Washington in January 2025. So many Rush fans and others who suffered through the loss of individual freedom in the Obama era and in the Biden post-COVID, DEI, Green New Deal era and had a taste of freedom from 2017-2021 are now legitimately asking: Is Donald Trump the longed-for messiah we’ve been waiting for?

Heh. Fly by night, step into the limelight, roll up the power windows on your red Barchetta and read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2024

JALOPNIK WISHES MILLIONS OF TEXANS A HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Beaver Fever: Writer’s Ridiculous Rant Against Beloved Buc-ee’s Fuels Readers’ Roadside Rage.

Buc-ee’s are popping up all over America. It’s to the point that the beaver-emblazoned beacon is becoming a roadside attraction in its own right. Why? Convenience and cleanliness — the giant gas stations are known for having massive, ultra-clean restrooms. There’s also every kind of snack, sandwich and soft drink you could ever want all under one roof. It’s no surprise then that a Trump-hating writer for Jalopnik (yep, we never heard if it either) would call these shrines to roadside comfort and capitalism, a ‘sickness’.

Read on.

They really do pay their employees quite well:

The European mind cannot comprehend the wonders of Buc-ee’s.

Flashback: Episode Five of the Babylon Bee’s series from 2022 devoted to a California couple moving to Texas, where Steve and Timpani discover that you can immanentize the eschaton:

 

Related: America Thrives at the Interstate Exit. Buc-ee’s is about as pure a distillation of American capitalism as there has ever been.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2024

BREAKING NEWS FROM 2008: Peggy Noonan’s Downfall.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan during a recent conversation with journalist Bari Weiss made some startling revelations.

Noonan calls herself a conservative and was once a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. But like most mainstream conservative commentators of that era, Noonan abandoned both her conservative and journalistic principles to devolve into a rabid hater of President Trump.

She believed the hoaxes against President Trump, particularly the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. When she was proven wrong, instead of accepting her mistake, she claimed she didn’t “know what to think of Trump/Russia” and wasn’t “satisfied we’ll ever fully understand it.”

In such cases, there are no greys. Trump was cleared by probers despite their deep bias against him and their lack of basis for the investigation. But Noonan purposefully tried to leave the door open by feigning confusion instead of admitting this obvious fact.

Noonan’s recent utterances proved how deeply she erred while covering Trump. But the sanctimonious seldom possess self-awareness, hence Noonan bragged about her mistake because she thought she was following journalistic ethics.

“Noonan calls herself a conservative,” but as Scott Johnson of Power Line wrote in August of 2020, she “all but endorsed Obama” in 2008, and during the 2020 election cycle praised first Kamala Harris (“The daughter of East Bay professors grew up to become an excellent performer of politics,”) and then as Conrad Black observed in September of 2020, “Noonan’s decision to go full-metal-jacket for Joe Biden in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday opens a new flank in the Democratic assault on the incumbent president.”

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2024

November 29, 2024

WELL, THIS CERTAINLY COUNTS AS “THINK DIFFERENT” IN THE AD WORLD IN 2024: Apple Releases Shocking Pro-Family Christmas Ad.

Apple released a pro-family ad reflecting on the joys of fatherhood to kick off the Christmas season after Jaguar’s recent ad was accused of peddling wokeness:

The ad is shot mainly through the eyes of a loving father who struggles with hearing loss. It traces back over memories of his young daughter throughout her childhood, but they are muffled in sound because of his handicap.

In present day while the family is exchanging gifts around the Christmas tree, his daughter, whom he watched grow up, receives a guitar and begins to sing and play “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Once again, the father only detects muted notes as she strums. But then his wife hands him a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2 that have a hearing aid feature. Suddenly, his daughter’s voice and the music become crystal clear. The old memories of his daughter that were previously dulled by his disability become vibrant.

The father sheds a tear as he listens to his child, presumably for the first time, with new aural acuity.

Many reactions on X were stunned at the wholesome, life-affirming ad from Apple, a company that has engaged in wokeness over the years. In its 2022 spring software update, Apple added a new emoji depicting a pregnant man, wading into the ever-escalating culture war debate about transgender issues. One takeaway after the 2024 presidential election has been that voters rejected Democrats’ focus on gender ideology while they neglected kitchen-table issues such as inflation and border security.

Going forward, with, hopefully, the woke era winding down, I’ll be genuinely curious what style and tone of advertising wins out during Trump’s second term.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2024

THE CRITICAL DRINKER ON WICKED: “I Can’t Believe I’m Reviewing This Movie” (Video).

Posted at 4:51 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2024

JUST NBC THE CORRUPTION! MSNBC Says It Was ‘Unaware’ of Harris Campaign Contributions to Al Sharpton Nonprofit—But Won’t Say Whether It’s Taking Action.

MSNBC was “unaware” that Kamala Harris’s campaign paid Al Sharpton’s nonprofit $500,000 shortly before Harris sat for a softball interview with the cable host, a network spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon.

He wouldn’t say, though, whether the left-wing network is taking any action against Sharpton for a move that appears to violate network policy. Other network hosts like Joe Scarborough have been publicly reprimanded for their failure to disclose making, rather than receiving, political donations.

The Harris campaign made a $250,000 contribution to Sharpton’s National Action Network on Sept. 5 and another on Oct. 1, just weeks before Sharpton conducted a favorable interview with the Democratic nominee, the Free Beacon reported.

Sharpton did not inform MSNBC viewers of the contributions during the segment, nor did he inform network brass, a network spokesman said.

“MSNBC was unaware of the donations made to the National Action Network,” the spokesman said. He declined to say whether the network would take any action, indicating that it does not comment on “personnel matters.”

Comcast will offload Sharpton once they offload MSNBC in the coming year: MSNBC staffers ‘in a panic’ as NBC parent Comcast plans to spin off channel — and possibly change its name. In the meantime, they’ll keep paying his protection money: “Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming: suit.”

As John Podhoretz tweets:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2024

November 28, 2024

BE HONEST, YOU WOULD BE TOO, IF YOU SUDDENLY HAD TO GO BACK TO WORK AFTER A FOUR YEAR LONG VACATION: White House reporters already ‘exhausted’ by second Trump administration.

The White House press corps is already “exhausted” at the outset of the second Trump administration.

“Anybody who went through it the last time remembers how nonstop it was. It ends up kind of becoming all-consuming and taking over your life. It wears you down,” New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker told Vanity Fair Wednesday, adding that “you have to expect that covering a big story is, by definition, taxing because it’s important.”

Reporters commented on how President-elect Donald Trump was already kicking off a hectic news cycle with his rapid policy and cabinet nomination announcements.

“Everybody’s exhausted, and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” Baker said.

Good. As Glenn wrote in the New York Post last week, “Not all FDR’s ideas were good ones — in fact many were downright terrible. But his assault on all fronts kept his opposition off balance and let him remake the nation. I suspect Donald Trump may have something similar in mind.”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 28th, 2024

FINALLY: Hitler Responds to the new Jaguar Ad.

I always thought of Hitler as much more of a VW and Porsche man — I’m surprised to see him take such an interest in Jags. Incidentally, we already know that the answer to his last query — the answer is yes, but with a key edit and some careful zooming-in on some of the shots, because Jag’s ad men really weren’t going to go all the way and risk putting their necks on the chopping block, to paraphrase Jim Treacher:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 28th, 2024

INCOMING NIH DIRECTOR JAY BHATTACHARYA ON THE HARM OF COVID LOCKDOWNS:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 28th, 2024
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