RIP: Jim Abrahams, ‘Airplane!,’ ‘Naked Gun’ and ‘Hot Shots!’ Master of Mirth, Dies at 80.

Jim Abrahams, the writer-director who with brothers Jerry and David Zucker turned the comedy genre on its ear with such zany efforts as Airplane!, Police Squad! and The Naked Gun films, died Tuesday. He was 80.

Abrahams died of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, his son Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter.

The trio made their first mainstream impression by writing the sketch-filled Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), directed by John Landis in his prelude to Animal House, and they also combined for Top Secret! (1984), starring a young Val Kilmer, and Ruthless People (1986), featuring Bette Midler and Danny DeVito.

Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!, published late last year, is an absolutely hilarious oral history of ZAZ began their career, and made their epic comedy film whose riffs are still being quoted nearly 45 years after its release.

WATCHING LEFTIST NARRATIVES BEING DESTROYED IN REAL TIME: Scott Jennings Schools CNN By Pointing Out News Reported by CNN. Note carefully the dates on these two tweets:

Surrounded by people bemoaning Elon Musk’s very existence and the fact that he owns Twitter/X, Jennings pointed out that Twitter/X is the most ideologically diverse source of news available. Both Democrats and Republicans rely on Twitter for news at essentially the same rate. Before Musk bought Twitter it was a Democrat ghetto.

Elon Musk is winning, even if his popularity ratings are down.

He's remade X/Twitter in his image… Turning it from a Democratic bastion to one that is far more evenly divided (& friendlier to the GOP).

Moreover, Musk's wealth has ballooned in ways that are tough to imagine. pic.twitter.com/CobSoYuiaY

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) November 19, 2024

We know that because CNN reported it. Harry Enten–another treasure at CNN because he breaks down public opinion polling well and in a very entertaining way–went through the numbers for all to see.

This, being inconvenient to the Narrative™ that the left wants to impose, created outrage on the panel. Scott was spewing misinformation!

When Scott Jennings pointed out X is more ideologically balanced after @elonmusk bought the platform, Cari Champion and the host, Audie Cornish, asked what the source was for that reporting.

Jennings said it was from CNN.

"It's not accurate and you know it," Champion replied. pic.twitter.com/Hwh3RFDjBC

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) November 26, 2024

This exemplifies both the bubble that liberals live in AND how that bubble gets created and maintained. No matter how the facts are laid out, the Authority™ of Journalisming entitles the practitioners of that dark art to dismiss reality and create a new one.

That was the beauty of Twitter pre-Musk. It was an ideological bubble dominated by liberal activists, maintained by censors, in which inconvenient facts were never acknowledged. Now that the ideological bubble was popped, it is an abomination that must be destroyed.

Notice also that the panel simultaneously decried the influence of billionaires in the abstract–as if news organizations aren’t often owned by billionaires (NYT, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Facebook, LinkedIn, The Atlantic… have all been or are currently owned by billionaires in whole or in part, and billionaires subsidize specialized news on topics of interest at newspapers and the Associated Press)–but then turn around and express happiness at the idea of Bill Gates owning news sources.

It’s not the principle that bothers them but the ideology. Only leftists should speak because the left is the reality to them.

Similarly, as Steve noted in the last hour, this is what happens when a leftist who previously nattered on about the horrors of “Project 2025” is actually on a panel with one of its authors:

The left has such a huge problem with Project 2025 that they can't even explain why…

WATCH this leftist absolutely panic when Piers Morgan gives him a chance to ask @KevinRobertsTX (president of @Heritage) whatever he wants about it…

This is GOLD. 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/IcuoZy5l4I

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) November 26, 2024

After 3 minutes, the leftist is given another chance to confront @KevinRobertsTX about Project 2025…

He rambles, then Roberts gets the entire panel to laugh at him.

This is incredible. 🤣🤣🤣

All the left knew was "Project 2025 bad" …and they had nothing to back it up. pic.twitter.com/yLYAQUBNj8

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) November 26, 2024

OLD AND BUSTED: Daniel Craig Is James Bond.

The New Hotness? Daniel Craig Is Sgt. Rock! Is James Bond Star Daniel Craig Entering DC’s Superhero Universe? Here’s What We Know.

James Bond actor Daniel Craig is reportedly in talks to star in a DC Studios adaptation of Sgt Rock. The project is being directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who had earlier collaborated with Craig for Queer. It seems that this is the project Guadagnino is set to direct next, before taking on Lionsgate’s American Psycho reboot. Sources say the screenplay for Sgt. Rock, written by Challengers and Queer scribe Justin Kuritzkes, is in solid shape, reported Deadline.

The report added that no deals have been finalized between DC Studios, Craig, and Guadagnino yet. However, Sgt. Rock is shaping up to be another major project for the Safran-Gunn slate, joining the likes of Superman, which is set to launch DC’s new Gods and Monsters Phase One; the Supergirl movie; and the animated series Creature Commandos, which debuts on Max on December 5.

Details about the script remain under wraps, and it’s unclear which specific Sgt. Rock storyline the new film will be based on. The character, Sgt. Franklin John Rock, was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert and first appeared in 1959 in Our Army at War. He’s depicted as a World War II infantry soldier, and his popularity surged in 1977 when he was given his own comic series, which ran until July 1988. Sgt. Rock is known for his extraordinary combat skills, including taking down German planes with a submachine gun, throwing grenades with precision, and excelling as a street fighter. With a calm demeanor, he also possesses a “Combat Antenna” that allows him to sense incoming enemy attacks.

This is the Sgt. Rock I remember from the comic books in the 1970s:

I’m not sure if the most emo James Bond ever is quite up to the task of portraying him.

NEWS YOU CAN USE FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD How to Talk to Your Racist MAGA Uncle This Thanksgiving (Video):

THE REDSKINS ARE BACK, BABY! Well, at least their logo is: Washington Commanders Agree To Un-Cancel Redskins Logo.

Washington Commanders managing partner Josh Harris and the NFL Commanders ownership group have agreed to un-cancel the Redskins (the iconic Blackfoot chief logo) history.

In a post on Facebook by Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the Congressman wrote that “The censorship of the former Commanders logo was a classic case of woke gone wrong. I applaud the Commanders & the NFL for their commitment to never censor the logo again.”

“And for working with the [Walter ‘Blackie’] Wetzel family to restore the logo to a place of prominence and honor to benefit Indian Country,” he added mentioning the “Native American artist who used Blackfoot chief John Two Guns White Calf as the inspiration for the logo the NFL team used for almost 50 years.”

In 2020, the team announced it was removing Redskins from its name and two years later announced the national professional football team would be called the Washington Commanders.

The name change came about from pressure from the cancel culture mob following the death of George Floyd and those who claimed that the term was racist and offensive to Native Americans.

More fallout from the woke revolution of 2020, where back on planet earth that year: Poll: Less Than 30 Percent Of Americans Say Redskins Should Change Their Name.

However, much like Kamala Harris’s craziness the previous year, team Biden couldn’t or wouldn’t risk alienating their ultra-woke core constituency; in 2020, CNN broadcast a photo supplied by the Biden campaign with the Redskins’ logo Photoshopped out of Hunter Biden’s ski cap in a 1970s-era photo with where he was being held by Joe. “[Joseph Wulfsohn of Fox News] reported that the Biden campaign has now admitted editing the photo and blamed it on copyright concerns. According to a CNN source cited by Washingtonian magazine, ‘We received this picture and many others from the Biden campaign, and any additional inquiries should be sent their way. Future airings will include the original photo.’”

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE BIRTHRIGHT: The rage of the entitled overclass.

The collective mental breakdown among self-styled progressives since Donald Trump’s re-election has been quite the sight to behold. The subsequent declaration by many that they will leave X, in protest of that platform’s supposed descent into fascism, has made matters all the more entertaining. What a glorious outpouring of self-importance and self-righteousness, combined with an utter lack of self-awareness.

Though such tantrums are amusing, the spectacle has also been appalling. This has been a grim cocktail of piety, sanctimony and belligerence, with rancour and malice thrown in, too. If the cleavage between remote, moneyed liberals and normal people was laid bare by the US election result, the fall-out since has made the gap appear all the more cavernous.

We should have been prepared for this behaviour, of course. We witnessed such sneering petulance from the entitled overclass back in 2016, the year that saw Trump first elected as US president, and also the year a majority of the British public voted to leave the European Union.

Up to then, the elites had silently become ever-more detached from the lower orders, regarding them with increasing disdain. This antipathy suddenly erupted in spectacular fashion. They had grown so accustomed to getting their way that they just couldn’t process or accept that, for once, their demands had not been met.

In America in 2016, there was rage and grief. ‘You’re awake by the way’, said MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, in a clip widely circulated from that fateful night in November. ‘You’re not having a terrible, terrible dream. Also, you’re not dead, and you haven’t gone to hell’, she continued. ‘This is your life now.’

Eight years later, the DNC-MSM are taking his reelection even worse: Axios CEO Beclowns Himself Defending Journalisming.

Did you know that journalisming is “hard, really hard?”

That is the message that Jim VanderHai, the CEO and founder of Axios, made to the National Press Club as he was honored for being a Serious Journalist™.

The best part of this sanctimonious rant is when he uses Qatari-funded Al Jazeera as an exemplar of a media outlet that does real truth-seeking reporting without fear or favor. https://t.co/AIeOH5Ga9W

— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) November 25, 2024

In principle, I like the idea of there being professional journalists who spend most of their waking hours chasing down news and information. After all, the division of labor exists for a reason. Specialization increases productivity, and theoretically, people who specialize in a task increases productivity by orders of magnitude.

Yes, but. Modern journalists, with few exceptions, suck eggs. They are ideological propagandists; most are lazy and self-satisfied, and their concept of the job is to schmooze with sources and repeat what they are told. They don’t report without fear or favor–they serve the same function as Pravda.

If you were on Twitter/X you had a MUCH better sense of the reality on the ground. The downside of X is that you have to wade through a lot more noise to detect the signal, but at least the signal you discovered was likely true. Reading the Pravda media led you to have a totally distorted view of reality.

And then there’s the journalist who believes that Pravda is far too conservative and right wing: Nate Silver Wonders Why Taylor Lorenz Won’t Post Her Age or Birthdate (and She Actually Posts Her Age).

The infantile woman who outed LibsofTikTok’s name and place of business is complaining about someone “directing online hate” towards her.

White lefties have been in a bubble of privilege so long and subscribe to a political philosophy — or, more accurately, a political cope — that says they are owed even more privileges.

They melt down and scream when they don’t get the privileges they believe they’re entitled to, so many people have coddled them these past ten years and granted these privileges, thinking, wrongly, that it was easier to give baby their ba-ba than to stand up to them.

They were wrong. Giving in to these entitled terrorists’ demands only encouraged, get this, more terrorism, and has led to more and more extravagant demands of privilege and deference.

But people are now pushing back. And the coddled, privileged lefties are melting down even more crazily now, because they’ve become so accustomed to getting their own way when they crime, scream, and stamp their feet.

But this 71-year-old woman, whose car was hit by an uninsured Millennial who then fled the scene, isn’t having it.

Uninsured Kamala voter hits a car and then has an emotional breakdown when asked for her insurance. pic.twitter.com/IO5aDSQVlK

— Adam Francisco (@adamfrancisco_) November 23, 2024

* * * * * * * *

As Halperin said, we’re headed for the greatest mental health crisis in American history. We’re going to see a huge escalation in nervous breakdowns and bursts of leftwing violence as we tell them “no.”

For some, this will be an extinction burst, and they will begin comporting themselves to the New Rules.

For others: They’ll pick up a gun or axe and kill their families or maybe themselves.

It’s going to get a little choppy.

Perhaps literally so, alas: Here’s VDH from last year on “Left-Wing Violence Chic.”

UPDATE:

Heh, indeed. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, here’s a flashback to June of 2014: Brendan Eich was only the beginning.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

GREAT MOMENTS IN BACKSCRATCHING: News outlets push pro-union stories while taking undisclosed cash from organized labor.

A trio of liberal publications has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from teachers unions over the past couple of years, a fact that is not disclosed in their positive coverage of those same unions.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE DEATH OF THE GROWN-UP:

As the College Fix reported on November 5th: Coloring, puppets, crafts: Elite universities prep students for election results.

“In recognition of these stressful times all McCourt community members are welcome to gather. . . in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day,” Jacelyn Clevenger, student engagement director, wrote in an email.

There will be a “Legos Station,” “Milk and Cookies,” and tea and cocoa, according to the email.

“I wanted to ask Clevenger why college and graduate students needed milk and cookies to recover from their stress—and how being coddled in college might someday affect American diplomacy—but she didn’t respond to my calls or emails,” reporter Francesca Block wrote.

This is not the only elite university where the nation’s best can confront their stress with preschool-level activities.

Students at Harvard University can hang out with “Sunshine” a puppet today, thanks to the divinity school. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech students can “find [their] flow” today with “therapy dogs” and a “collaborative art project.”

In 1975, original Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O’Donoghue, an alumni of National Lampoon, which began out of the Harvard Lampoon, famously told Lorne Michaels that he wouldn’t lower himself to contribute to sketches featuring Jim Henson’s Muppets because “I won’t write for felt!” On November 5th, Harvard believed their students were so cossetted and emotionally frail that they’d need a puppet to survive the likely election results. So much for pretending that you’ll be the reincarnation of the French Resistance if Trump won his second term:

FINALLY:

The Department of Justice has concluded that prosecuting a president-elect is unconstitutional. https://t.co/2iA8s5wxpK

— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 25, 2024

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Colin Wright: Why Was This Groundbreaking Study on DEI Silenced?

In a stunning series of events, two leading media organizations—The New York Times and Bloomberg—abruptly shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) pedagogy. The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with Rutgers University, found that certain DEI practices could induce hostility, increase authoritarian tendencies, and foster agreement with extreme rhetoric. With billions of dollars invested annually in these initiatives, the public has a right to know if such programs—heralded as effective moral solutions to bigotry and hate—might instead be fueling the very problems they claim to solve. The decision to withhold coverage raises serious questions about transparency, editorial independence, and the growing influence of ideological biases in the media.

The NCRI study investigated the psychological effects of DEI pedagogy, specifically training programs that draw heavily from texts like Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. The findings were unsettling, though perhaps not surprising to longstanding opponents of such programs. Through carefully controlled experiments, the researchers demonstrated that exposure to anti-oppressive (i.e., anti-racist) rhetoric—common in many DEI initiatives—consistently amplified perceptions of bias where none existed. Participants were more likely to see prejudice in neutral scenarios and to support punitive actions against imagined offenders. These effects were not marginal; hostility and punitive tendencies increased by double-digit percentages across multiple measures. Perhaps most troubling, the study revealed a chilling convergence with authoritarian attitudes, suggesting that such training is fostering not empathy, but coercion and control.

Read the whole thing. Details also available within a Twitter thread if you prefer that format:

Evergreen:

86-YEAR OLD DIRECTOR TO 120-YEAR OLD INDUSTRY: Please Keep Hiring Me to Spend Your Money! Gladiator II director Ridley Scott compares Denzel Washington’s character to Trump: ‘A clever gangster.’

Ridley Scott, the director of “Gladiator II,” said during an interview that Denzel Washington’s character in the movie, Marcinus, was similar to President-elect Trump.

“[Macrinus] was a prisoner of war — probably at a North African state — and actually was taken to Rome probably as a gladiator. Survived. Got free. Got into the business of maybe making wine and bread. He evolved into a very rich merchant selling s— to the Roman armies — food, oil, wine, cloth, weapons, everything. He maybe had a million men spread around Europe. So he was a billionaire at the time, so why wouldn’t he [have ambitions toward the throne]? ‘Why not me?’ He’s also a gangster — very close to Trump. A clever gangster. He creates chaos and from chaos he can evolve,” Scott told The Hollywood Reporter.

I’m so old, I can remember when comparing an American president to a gangster was the highest compliment: Quote of the Day: Obama Should ‘Go Gangsta.’ CNN columnist Roland Martin urges the president to unleash his inner Al Capone.

NOAH ROTHMAN: Where Have All the Lefties Gone?

The Washington Post lost a quarter million subscribers after the outfit, which restyled itself an anti-Trump publication in the latter half of the past decade, declined to endorse Donald Trump’s opponent in 2024. What seemed at the time like an act of protest might have been a leading indicator of consumer preferences.

In the wake of the election — one that generated far less engagement with conventional news outlets than previous elections had — left-leaning cable news ventures have seen their ratings collapse. “MSNBC and CNN have shed hundreds of thousands of viewers while Fox News viewership has skyrocketed after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election,” The Wrap reported. “That was also the case for NYTimes.com,” Digiday.com reporters wrote of the paper of record’s online presence, “which had about 29.4 million site visits on Nov. 5 and 33 million visits on Nov. 6 2024, compared to 36 million visits on Nov. 3 and 61 million visits on Nov. 4 2020.”

Some attribute the general decline in media consumption to the phenomenon of “news avoidance,” but other factors suggest that it might just as easily be ascribed to reality avoidance. What factors? Take, for example, the staggering increase in the number of users signing up for Bluesky, the consciously left-wing platform meant to compete with X.

In past presidential elections, when the DNC-MSM’s candidate lost, the left paid some lip service to either doing their job better, even if it came with a certain amount of “Gorillas in the Mist”-style condescension while they pretended try to make sense of those strange primitive creatures living in flyover country. In 2004 columnists, talk show hosts and network presidents responded with some sense of “where did we go wrong, and how can we understand all those people who didn’t vote for our guy?” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman wrote that “The ‘Media Party’ is over,” on the MSNBC Website, on January 13, 2005:

A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don’t mean the Democrats. I’m talking about the “mainstream media,” which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush’s Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox’s canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying  journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history.

* * * * * * * *

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.

Back in late 2004, Rush Limbaugh had lots of fun playing an interview that Tina Brown (who now has a Substack called Fresh Hell, among other endeavors) had on her little-seen CNBC show with David Westin, then the president of ABC News, who said that the media needed to send the equivalent of foreign correspondents to the Red States, to witness firsthand how these strange people in the hinterlands live out their exotic day-to-day existences, and why they rejected the suave and debonair John Kerry for that hayseed George W. Bush:

WESTIN: I think we don’t do that enough, and I’m not just talking religious communities. I’m talking all sorts of communities across the country. I think that… You understand this, Tina, living in New York or in Los Angeles, we have busy jobs. We go into the office every day. We tend to socialize with the same people, or the same types of people, and I think it’s terribly important for journalists to get out whether it’s overseas or domestically and try to understand.

As Rush quipped, paraphrasing Westin, “We need more foreign correspondents in Alabama! We need more foreign correspondents north of Palm Beach County in Florida! We need embeds to go to church, find out what’s going on with these holy rollers! Ah, folks, you can’t know how much I love this.”

Also in November of 2004 after the election was concluded, when Brian Williams replaced Tom Brokaw, then-NBC president Jeff Zucker (who later imploded at CNN in 2022) attempted to sell Williams to the public, by proclaiming to USA Today that “No one understands this NASCAR nation more than Brian.” (Incidentally, the beginning of 2004 was when a Zucker-approved flamboyant New York real estate developer called Donald Trump debuted as the host of a business-themed reality TV show on NBC, The Apprentice.)

Four years later of course, having finally reached the end zone once again, the media loved nothing more than spiking the football hard in the faces of those red staters bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. That was the era of Newsweek declaring on its cover that “We Are All Socialists Now,” NPR promoting James Carville’s new book titled, 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation, and Sam Tanenhaus, then the New York Times book review editor, publishing a book titled The Death of Conservatism.

But today, the media are awash in disappointment: They’ve had over four years of having to first pretend that Biden wasn’t undergoing a significant cognitive decline, when it was obvious to everyone not in the bubble that he was not up for the job. Then they had to prop up one of the worst candidates for the presidency, likely knowing she faced an uphill battle being dropped in at the last moment to replace Biden. Then when her “joy” and “brat summer” messaging failed to resonate, they had to amplify her argumentum ad Hitlerum.

And their thanks for their service in November?

NEW Axios CEO melts down over @elonmusk telling 𝕏 users “You are the media now” — mounts passionate defense of dying legacy media:

"My message to Elon Musk is b*llshit. You're not the media!"

The MSNBC panel applauds:

“Social media people lying every day, every hour, every… pic.twitter.com/SBwgI9hFfC

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 25, 2024

But Vandehei is wrong. In his contribution to the Michael Walsh-edited recent book Against the Corporate Media, Glenn wrote that during the early days of the Blogosphere, “many people got involved because being a publisher, or a reporter, or a pundit—previously available only to those with powerful institutional resources behind them—was now within the reach of pretty much anybody. A.J. Liebling said that freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one. Once the blog revolution struck, that was everybody.” And while I think it’s better to not be within the walled garden of Twitter, even under Musk’s management, Vandehei knows it’s impossible to put the genie back in the bottle for old media.

No wonder the grandees of the legacy media would rather crawl into the silo and pretend that Bluesky is Twitter, circa 2019-2020, as Taylor Lorenz does, and they have their own private clubhouse where anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders can be shown the door.

I hope it was all worth it for them.

UPDATE: Watch: Axios Founder Melts Like Wicked Witch of the West Over Elon’s Five-Word Description of the Media.

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: The View Hosts Issue Four Legal Notes in One Broadcast.

The hosts had to issue a couple of other notes regarding Trump’s new AG pick, Pam Bondi, and former GOP congressman George Santos. According to ABC, the show is No. 1 among daytime broadcast talk shows in households and total viewers, and it has seen a healthy increase in viewership postelection. Will so many legal notes at least call into question the credibility of the hosts?

America’s Newspaper of Record is succinct: Sunny Hostin Forced To Read Legal Notice Acknowledging Nothing Said On ‘The View’ In Its Entire History Has Ever Been Remotely True.

YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE*: Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says he’s willing to go to jail to protect illegal immigrants.

“Trump’s new border czar, Tom Homan, has said that he is willing to arrest leaders like yourself for standing in the way of these policies that they want to enact. Would you be willing to go to jail for these things?” Sallinger asked.

* No, they really are:

Your terms are acceptable. https://t.co/5zuZwhxyPd

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 24, 2024

BOMB CANADA: THE CASE FOR WAR. Journalist Ezra Levant arrested while reporting on ‘Free Palestine’ rally for ‘breach of the peace.’

I was arrested two hours ago, handcuffed, searched and jailed for “causing a disturbance”.

I was just released moments ago.

I wasn’t causing a disturbance — I was standing by myself on a public sidewalk, silently filming a grotesque pro-Hamas mannequin in a Jewish neighbourhood… https://t.co/xWs0ZgrBeW

— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) November 24, 2024

WHEN YOU’RE A DEMOCRAT WHO’S LOST THE ECONOMIST…: Woodrow Wilson’s reputation continues to decline.

How will Joe Biden and Donald Trump be remembered a century from now? Presidential legacies change over time. For decades, Woodrow Wilson, America’s president from 1913-21 who died 100 years ago, enjoyed a reputation as an enlightened internationalist. He established the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission; he backed the creation of the League of Nations, a precursor to the UN, and was a staunch advocate for democracy abroad. In 1948 Arthur Schlesinger senior, a historian at Harvard, asked 55 other historians to rank the presidents in order of greatness: Wilson came fourth, behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.

More recently Wilson has been downgraded, with his racism and sexism eclipsing his accomplishments. In 2020 Princeton stripped his name from its public-affairs school; Washington, DC’s biggest high school did the same in 2022. In “Woodrow Wilson”, Christopher Cox, a Republican who served in Congress for eight terms before running the Securities and Exchange Commission, offers a doggedly researched and soberly told story of American progress—and the president who stood in its way.

A Democrat and the first president from the South since the civil war, Wilson opposed constitutional amendments that extended citizenship and voting rights to all, arguing that it “put the negroes upon a footing of civil equality with the whites”. He allowed the white supremacists he chose for his cabinet to resegregate the federal workforce.

Still though, Wilson will always have David Frum: There’s No Defending Woodrow Wilson.

Frum’s article, “Uncancel Woodrow Wilson,” appears in the March 2024 issue of the Atlantic. How perverse a choice is it to write on this now? Consider that the last thing the magazine published was a special issue dedicated to the topic “If Trump Wins,” warning of peril to the American system and the civil liberties of our people from a man who would come to the Oval Office with a dictatorial temperament and contempt for the constraints of our Constitution. Frum himself contributed a screed against the menace of such a president:

If he wins the election, Trump will commit the first crime of his second term at noon on Inauguration Day: His oath to defend the Constitution of the United States will be a perjury. A second Trump term would instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War. . . . For his own survival, he would have to destroy the rule of law.

How terrible to contemplate a president who loathes the Constitution and is bent on permanently subverting it. And worse, imagine one who might win the job without a popular majority at his back, owing to an opposition divided by a third-party challenge:

If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time.

If the nation indeed stands at such a precipice, you and I might think it the worst possible occasion to laud Woodrow Wilson. But you and I are not David Frum.

Yet another thing each of us can be thankful for this week.

REPORT: Donald Trump to kick transgender troops out of US military.

Donald Trump is planning an executive order that would lead to the removal of all transgender members of the US military, defence sources say.

The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20. There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve.

It would also lead to a ban on trans people joining the military and would come at a time when almost all branches of the American armed forces are failing to meet recruitment targets.

Trump, 78, has railed against “woke” practices in the military, saying that some high-ranking officers are often more interested in diversity, equity and inclusion than planning to fight.

The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.

“These people will be forced out at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” a source familiar with Trump’s plans said. “Only the Marine Corps is hitting its numbers for recruitment and some people who will be affected are in very senior positions.”

According to the Pentagon, privacy policies make it difficult to measure the number of active duty trans people, but about 2,200 service members had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021, when Trump’s first ban was lifted.

There are about 1.3 million active duty personnel in the military.

There are believed to be thousands of other personnel who identify as transgender.

Related:

You cannot argue with this logic. He’s 100% correct. And he’s going to be perfect as Secretary of Defense and that is why they hate this pick so much. pic.twitter.com/8dBdhlMOYk

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 14, 2024

More: Kurt Schlichter: SecDef Pete Hegseth Will Be a Welcome Injection of Vitamin I (Infantry).

As Glenn wrote in the New York Post, Trump’s first days in office should be a massive case of shock and awe: “It won’t all pass, of course, but much of it probably will — and the legislative fights will keep Democrats too busy to attack elsewhere. Given Trump’s deal-making style, some of these bills may even carve off key Democratic constituencies, encouraging division among his foes.”

OUT ON A LIMB: Jaguar and Volvo’s ads are both terrible. We’ve beaten the Jag ad to (a quite well-deserved) death, so let’s quote from Neal Pollack’s look at the Volvo ad, which was also the subject of a (slightly less) spirited debate on Twitter this past week:

On the other end of the cultural spectrum, you have Volvo, a company that’s doing quite well and is still making cars that people actually want to buy. Recently they put out a nearly four-minute-long ad, shot by the cinematographer of Interstellar and Oppenheimer. I first saw this ad at a Volvo launch in southern California this week and instantly proclaimed it “horseshit.” Apparently, I was alone in my opinion, because the internet went berserk for this thing. But I stand firm.

In this ad, you see a very Euro man and woman in a Scandinavian-designed apartment. They have learned they are pregnant — and the man is telling his mother over the phone that he’s scared. We then see the child’s entire life flash before us, told in short bursts, including melodramatic fights with her parents, the heartbreak of young love and what appears to be a pungent semi-career of partying hard in Ibiza.

Finally, nearly three minutes into the mini-movie, we see the pregnant mother crossing the street with some groceries. Some gal who we haven’t yet seen is noodling down the street in her Volvo. As the mother enters the crosswalk, the Volvo’s extraordinary AI safety features engage, braking just in time to avoid hitting the mother, thereby preserving the unborn child’s future of rolling on molly while dancing to a Roger Sanchez set live at Pacha.

We see the words: “Sometimes the moments that never happen matter the most.”

How profound!

This ad is ridiculous and manipulative and contains all the elements of modern storytelling I despise the most: voiceover, dark, grainy lighting and, most of all, a non-linear narrative. It does highlight Volvo’s longtime signature selling point: top-of-the-market safety features. But it does so in the most pretentious way possible — and hides the actual car until the end of the movie.

People loved this mini-movie, but to the conservatives who think this is an “anti-woke” model: this family only has one kid and they live in Europe. And also, the car is electric. As for the non-ideological people who are responding to the excess sentiment, well, there’s no accounting for taste. I guess we all want to feel safe.

At the beginning of the video, the parents-to-be live in an environmentally-friendly tiny apartment with Bauhaus-style tubular steel chairs and pootle their electro- Volvo around what is likely meant to represent an EU-approved “15-Minute City.” In addition to “preserving the unborn child’s future of rolling on molly while dancing to a Roger Sanchez set live at Pacha,” as Pollack wrote above, it’s a pretty safe bet that she’s going to grow up to become Julia, whether it’s Orwell’s version, or Obama’s. But at least the people in the video are recognizable as some species of humans, rather than a cross between the extras from Mike Myers’ Sprockets sketches and the cast of Teletubbies. In the (hopefully) waning days of the uber-woke, perhaps we should be thankful for small favors.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: What Modern Socialists Don’t Want You To Know About Hitler.

I sat down with historian, sociologist, and author Dr. Rainer Zitelmann to learn about the misunderstood economic philosophy of Adolf Hitler and the true meaning of national socialism. Drawing from his book “Hitler’s National Socialism,” Rainer explains how Hitler’s economic policies blended the planned economy of Stalin’s Soviet Union with social Darwinist beliefs, attempting to harness the benefits of competition toward the single-minded objectives of the state. We explore the key differences between national socialism, fascism, and communism, and why many people today fail to grasp the lessons of 20th-century totalitarian regimes. While the battle between capitalism and socialism continues, Rainer highlights historical case studies in East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Venezuela, Vietnam, and China, proving that economic freedom is the key to human flourishing.

Via Dennis of Small Dead Animals, who notes, “Zitelmann chats on Dad Saves America about the appalling and consistent lack of understanding of Adolf Hitler’s concept of National Socialism. One idea that just won’t die for the left is the spurious notion that Hitler was an advocate of capitalism, despite his advocacy of four year plans and strict government control over the economy.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Stanford expert on ‘lying and technology’ accused of lying about technology.

On Nov. 1, Jeff Hancock, a well-known and oft-cited researcher who leads the Bay Area school’s Social Media Lab, filed an expert declaration in a Minnesota court case over the state’s new ban on political deepfakes. Republicans have sued to block the ban, arguing it’s an unconstitutional limit on free speech. Hancock defended the law in his declaration, explaining how artificial intelligence makes it easier to fabricate videos and discussed deepfakes’ psychological impacts. But he seems to have made an ironic mistake.

EMPEROR ZOOLANDER FIDDLES: Watch: Pro-Hamas Simps Destroy Montreal While Justin Trudeau Dances at a Taylor Swift Concert.

Related: This is the way.

Notice Calgary has had no riots.

That's because when the pro-Hama shitbags set up at University of Calgary they were evicted by force within a day.

When the pro-Hamas shitbags blocked a road last week, they were forcefully removed in less than an hour.

Quit trying to indulge… https://t.co/QokMhYo5UE

— Cory Morgan (@CoryBMorgan) November 23, 2024

GRAVY TRAIN DERAILS AT MSNBC: Top Anchors Face Huge Pay Cut After Comcast Severs Ties With Left-Wing Network.

Comcast is finally cutting ties with MSNBC, the media conglomerate announced Wednesday. That’s bad news for the exorbitantly compensated and increasingly unhinged personalities who call the left-wing network home (for now). MSNBC and other declining television assets—but not the reality TV powerhouse Bravo—will be spun off into a new publicly traded company by the end of next year. That means MSNBC will soon be divorced from the ostensibly more serious and less overtly partisan NBC News, which routinely shares reportage, fact-checking (if you can call it that), and contributors with its sister network. Comcast brass on Wednesday told MSNBC staffers that  the network’s name and peacock logo might not survive the breakup. The outrageously inflated salaries of the network’s top anchors almost definitely won’t.

The move suggests Comcast executives can no longer justify to shareholders the enormous incomes of “star” hosts such as Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, and Joy Reid. MSNBC and other Comcast-owned cable networks continue to make money, but those profits have declined substantially in recent years. That explains why executives and investors are eager to rid themselves of the “declining assets.” Comcast’s stock price rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after news of the decision was leaked to the press. MSNBC’s hosts have had a good run, earning sizable fortunes preaching partisan hysteria to a dwindling audience of elderly viewers. In the week following this year’s election, the network drew just 65,000 primetime viewers in the coveted 25-54 age demographic, less than 10 percent of total viewers.

So what happened to cable TV division of the DNC-MSM? Man who hosts podcasts that can run over three hours is unusually succinct: Joe Rogan’s brutal five-word explanation for why liberal media is ‘hemorrhaging’ audiences.

Joe Rogan has claimed liberal media outlets are hemorrhaging readers due to Americans no longer trusting them.

Rogan, 57, had been speaking about a recent op-ed from Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, adding: ‘you’re not accurate, you’re delusional.’

Bezos had published the opinion piece, titled ‘The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media’, in late October.

In it, Bezos said: ‘It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility.

‘Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.‘

The comedian and UFC commentator said Bezos’ observations seem to be playing out across the media landscape.
He said: ‘I was just reading something about CNN’s ratings and MSNBC’s ratings post-election. All these left-wing kooks on YouTube are hemorrhaging subscribers.

‘Where people go, ‘you guys are out of touch, you’re not accurate, you’re delusional’.’

‘People are speaking with their subscriptions and they’re speaking with their purchasing of the Washington Post and their purchasing of the New York Times.’

At the 1992 Republican convention, Washington Post employee Ginny Carroll wore a button that said “Yeah, I’m in the Media, Screw You!” Finally, enough angry readers and viewers have returned the favor.

QED: Doom Spiral: The Liberal Washington Post is on Track to Lose a Whopping $77 Million This Year.

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER: Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Is a Teachers’ Union Fave.

Hard to believe, but Donald Trump on Friday night nominated a favorite of teachers union chief Randi Weingarten as his Labor Secretary. Why would Mr. Trump want to empower labor bosses who oppose his economic agenda and spent masses to defeat him?

Mr. Trump’s regrettable choice is Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Ms. Weingarten on Thursday tweeted her support for the freshman Republican. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, has also been pulling for her. In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said she’ll work toward “historic cooperation between Business and Labor.” But Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has backed union giveaways like the Pro Act, which are not “cooperation.”

Another potentially bad pick: Trump picks Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as nation’s next surgeon general.

What could go wrong?

Janette Nesheiwat endorsed masks for children, promoted COVID vaccination for all age groups, and approved of censorship by social media companies. pic.twitter.com/8UHq7B4YLk

— TechJudge (@techjudge) November 23, 2024

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: How a Series of Selfies Led to a Killer’s Conviction.

A series of selfies taken by a murderer helped a prosecution build a damning case against him and put the killer behind bars.

On Wednesday, Jose Ibarra was found guilty of the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.

Riley was murdered while she was out for a run at the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia on the morning of February 22, 2024. During the trial, prosecutors argued that Ibarra killed Riley after she fought off his attempt to rape her.

Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was convicted on three counts of felony murder and counts of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, and “peeping Tom” (in a separate incident earlier that day).

Last week, FBI Special Agent Jamie Hipkiss took the stand and showed the court numerous selfies taken on Ibarra’s phone that showed him wearing the same clothes as the suspect seen in surveillance footage on the day of Riley’s death.

It’s 21st century America in a nutshell: cellphone addiction, moral narcissism, and while photography Website PetaPixel apparently doesn’t want to mention this to upset their more delicate readers, an incredibly violent illegal immigrant, but then they’re far from alone regarding that last detail:

I’m not sure what’s worse. Joe Biden apologizing for calling Laken Riley’s killer an illegal alien or Jonathan Capehart all but demanding he do so. https://t.co/CsMgVxNqTF

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 20, 2024