Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 8, 2024

SPRINGTIME FOR NETFLIX: Netflix’s new WWII series is New York Times* approved: Hitler and the Nazis Review: Building a Case for Alarm. Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.

Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”

Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away.

As the conclusion of this series of quotes on the Weimar Republic from early in the series’ second of six episodes demonstrates:

BENJAMIN CARTER HETT, Author, The Death of Democracy:

Hitler comes out of prison into a Germany which is really politically much less favorable terrain for him than it had been in the crisis year of 1923. Hitler was really a crisis politician; he needed a crisis to be able to get oxygen. By late 1924, when he comes out, things have stabilized: The economy is doing better. The political system is sort of settling down.

ANNE BERG, Professor, University of Pennsylvania:

Between 1924 and 1929, this period is kind of often described as the golden age of the Weimar Republic. The good life slips into view, even if it isn’t quite reachable for the majority of people.

CHRISTIAN GOESCHEL, Author, Mussolini and Hitler:

The Weimar Republic was a progressive liberal democracy.

BERG:

We have relative political stability. We also have a thriving cultural sphere; filmmakers, [and] cabaret.

LISA PINE, Author, Hitler’s ‘National Community:’

We think about abstract and expressionist artists, the Bauhaus architectural movement. Germany was becoming more accepted in the international arena, so she wasn’t a pariah anymore. And so there’s this kind of quite liberating and modernizing aspect to the 1920s. Women were able to vote for the first time.

TIFFANY N. FLORVIL, Professor, University of New Mexico:

There were sex reform movements with individuals like Magnus Hirschfeld, who did studies about homosexuality and was conducting some of the first transgender surgeries in the Weimar Republic. And so you see all of this dynamism emerging. But on the other hand, the Nazi Party, Hitler in particular, recognizes that there are so many German citizens that are distrustful of this fledgling democracy that is supposed to be this new beacon of hope, but it rather is a beacon of disillusionment for many.

HETT:

Outside of Berlin, large numbers of Germans are living in small communities, rural communities where the artistic experimentation, the innovation, the sexual experimentation of Weimar Berlin is utterly foreign to them. And indeed, they are somewhat hostile to it.

BERG:

It’s a group of people who feel shunned. So, if we want to make a contemporary analogy, we can see the sort of forgotten people in America, there is a sense that the system has dealt them a bad hand, and Hitler kind of taps into a fundamental disillusionment with the Weimar Republic. And this is the concept that he will return to repeatedly, even after he is in power.

Hey, if we’re going to go full Godwin, what about these recent headlines?

Or as Tom Wolfe has written:

The Great Depression of the 1930s gave our version of this new breed, the intellectual, plenty of material to get wholesomely indignant about. For a change, America did look dreadful. But even then things weren’t as blissfully vile as they were in Europe, the birthplace of the intellectual. Europe, after all, now had the Depression plus fascism. The solution was what became the specialty of our colonial intellectuals: the adjectival catch-up. Europe had real fascism? Well, we had “social fascism.” And what was that? That was the name Left intellectuals gave to Roosevelt’s New Deal. Roosevelt’s “reforms” merely masked the fascism whose dark night would soon descend upon America.

“Fascism” was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini’s Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler’s Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism’s standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, “Nazi” was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. European Marxists successfully put over the idea that Nazism was the brutal, decadent last gasp of “capitalism.”

* If only the New York Times had gotten Hitler right when he was actually in power. Or as Ann Althouse wrote in October: In 1922, The New York Times published its first article about Adolf Hitler. The reporter, Cyril Brown, was aware of his subject’s anti-Jewish animus but he wasn’t buying it.

‘Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded,’ Brown wrote, ‘and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers.’ Two years later, the Times published another news item on the future architect of the Holocaust: ‘Hitler Tamed by Prison.’ The Austrian activist, the piece said, ‘looked a much sadder and wiser man,’ and ‘his behavior during his imprisonment convinced the authorities that [he] was no longer to be feared.’

If only the Gray Lady was still heeding that alarm. Also from October: Why has the New York Times hired a Hitler sympathizer?

Adolf Hitler is back in vogue at the New York Times. I never thought I’d live to see the day.

Until now, the very nice liberals who run the newspaper were probably quite relieved that the world had mostly forgotten about that time in the 1930s, when it had a Nazi-loving Berlin bureau chief called Guido Enderis. Among his many failings, Enderis wrote a puff piece about chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, calling him ‘an outstanding go-getter’. But the New York Times leadership kept him on, despite complaints from colleagues, because they considered his high-ranking sources in the Nazi Party too good to lose.

Of course, this is not to say the New York Times editors and the family that owns it are now or ever have been Nazi supporters. Rather, it shows that despite all the protestations of moral virtue and speaking truth to power – and other tired, self-aggrandising journalistic clichés – at its heart, the Gray Lady answers only to its own agenda, which has consistently been focussed on keeping proximity to power.

Today, keeping proximity to power means serving the new master in elite circles: radical woke ideology. The fact that this ideology is a petri dish for anti-Semitism, as we have seen with the outrageous support across the West for the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, does not seem to matter.

This is why the news this week that the New York Times has rehired a Palestinian freelancer who has praised Hitler on social media was shocking but not surprising. In fact, anyone who is aware of what has been happening to American journalism will know that this is the inevitable, even logical, outcome of the thorough radicalisation of the once respected newspaper, and of the industry as a whole.

In the worldview the New York Times has adopted, no white person, Jews very much included, can ever be anything other than an oppressor or an ‘ally’. And no brown or black person can ever be anything other than a victim or a heroic freedom fighter. That’s it. No other details matter.

That the grown-ups who work at the world’s most famous newspaper are willing to adopt such a childish moral framework is startling, I grant you. But they have. And this Hitler episode is just the latest evidence in a long trail.

Exit quote: “Someone should call James Bennet and Donald McNeil Jr to ask how they feel about Mr [Soliman] Hijjy’s continued work for the paper.”

And if only the Gray Lady had gotten Stalin right when he was concurrently in power: How The New York Times Helped Hide Stalin’s Mass Murders in Ukraine.

Or when he had died in 1953: Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State.

And don’t get them started about all of the sex in the swinging Soviet Union.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

MARK JUDGE: I Can’t Let Go of My UPS Box.

The mailbox saved my life in 2018. I was swept up in a political hit when a high school friend of mine was nominated to the Supreme Court. Extortionists, psychotics, the media and Congress called for my head. The Washington Post slimed me, even if they couldn’t find me. My only known address, wrote Marc Fisher, was “a UPS box in Georgetown.” Fisher also noted that I was “a rebel” who was “outspoken, profane, sometimes boorish, but also surpassingly loyal to his friends.” Up your ass, Marc.

During the height of the fall 2018 insanity I drove by to pick up my mail. Out front was a reporter with a camera. She was casually pacing up and down the sidewalk, waiting. Waiting for me. I slowly parked in front of the store and just watched her. I was her prey, and just feet away. I silently drove away. It was several weeks before I picked up my mail. There was a stack of it, and I didn’t know what I would find—death threats? I was relieved to see it was mostly normal stuff. It lifted my soul to see several issues of The New Criterion and DownBeat. There was also a marriage proposal. Civilization might survive after all.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

PULITZER INCOMING: Spokane Reporter OUTRAGED That Kids Are Riding Their Scooters on the Street.

Still though, think of the possibilities!

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

RIP: William Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut who shot iconic ‘Earthrise’ photo, killed in plane crash at age 90.

The plane, a vintage Air Force T-34 Mentor owned by Anders, went down into the waters off the San Juan Islands, according to flight data and FAA records obtained by FOX 13 Seattle.

* * * * * * * *

Anders snapped the iconic 1968 “Earthrise” photo of the Earth in December 1968 while on Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission.

The Air Force veteran spent 26 years working for the government, including as the executive secretary for the National Aeronautics and Space Council and as the lead commissioner for all nuclear and non-nuclear power for the five-member Atomic Energy Commission.

From me last year, First to the Moon: Documentary Commemorates Apollo 8, First Flight to Leave Earth Orbit. “As Charles Murry and Catherine Bly Cox wrote in their brilliant 1989 book Apollo, it can be argued that [Apollo 8] was an even more historic mission than [Apollo 11,] the first manned moon landing: ‎’Reflecting on it years later, Mike Collins wondered whether the most historic moment in the Apollo Program might have occurred not on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men on the moon, but at 9:41 A.M. C.S.T., December 21, 1968. On that morning, Collins was CapCom. If it hadn’t been for a bone spur requiring surgery the preceding July, Collins would have been up there himself—he had been a crew member on Apollo 8 until the surgery had made him lose too much training time. Collins had been reassigned to a later mission, Apollo 11.'”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Washington Post’s new chief to staff: “Your audience has halved; people are not reading your stuff.”

More than half a century ago, ABC Sports assigned Howard Cosell, the Stephen A. Smith of his day, to be part of the broadcast team for its brand-new Monday Night Football program. A family friend and football fanatic thought Cosell was ruining the broadcasts and complained to ABC. The response? We’re inundated with complaints. Cosell will be gone soon.

But ABC kept Cosell and Monday Night Football flourished. So began the movement to color commentators who make the games about themselves. Bill Walton was the reductio ad absurdum of that unfortunate development.

This episode in media history came to mind when I read that the Washington Post’s new CEO and publisher, William Lewis, told Post staffers that the paper needs a fast turnaround because it’s losing huge amounts of money ($77 million in the past year) and has lost half of its audience.

There are similarities between the two episodes. In both cases, a media mainstay has bucked the desire of a big chunk of its audience — ABC by imposing a blowhard on football fans; the Post by eschewing objective journalism and becoming a hyper-partisan left-liberal organ. In both cases, the media mainstay didn’t yield to consumer pressure. ABC stuck with Cosell. The Post has persisted with its badly slanted journalism.

But there’s also a big difference. ABC got away with, and indeed prospered from, its decision to stick with Cosell. The Post, as its CEO admits, is suffering.

Sports fans, it seems, are willing to tolerate annoying announcers in order to watch the games they love. News consumers have no incentive to tolerate organs that openly favor ideologies they don’t like.

It’s true, of course, that there are important reasons for the Post’s woes in addition to its decision to discard objectivity in reporting. The media landscape has changed to the detriment of all newspapers.

But when a large bloc of longtime readers who don’t share the Post’s biases becomes too disgusted with a paper to keep reading it, that’s a big problem for the paper.

Read the whole thing, though I’m not sure if Howard Cosell is the most appropriate angle to frame the Post’s myriad woes. In the last decade of mass media, when there still only three commercial television networks, Roone Arledge’s decision to have three announcers in the booth, one of them being Cosell, helped to make Monday Night Football a ratings powerhouse for ABC, the first step in turning that network from a perennial third-place loser into, beginning in 1976, the number one watched channel in America for about the next five years.

Cosell became so big that in 1975, the network had the staggeringly ill-advised idea to build a weekend variety show around him, which is why for its first couple of seasons, what we now call Saturday Night Live was simply “NBC’s Saturday Night.” The classic “Not Ready for Primetime Players” tag about the show’s original cast was invented by original-SNL writer Herb Sargent to lampoon Cosell’s troupe being dubbed the “Primetime Players.”

Cosell was also smart enough to parody himself and ride the gravy train. He’d complain bitterly about “the jockocracy” of athletes turned sportscasters whom he believed lacked his own skills. And then he’d eagerly host every ridiculous Battle of the Network Stars episode that ABC wanted to air. Given how wokeness kills comedy, it’s difficult to imagine someone having the same mercurial talent that Cosell had – at least before it all came crashing down for him, and ABC sentenced him to television Siberia for his last years in a variety of backwater shows.

Because there are now so many sports-themed TV channels and Websites, it’s likely impossible for someone to become as dominant a figure in the media as Cosell was in the 1970s — though I’m sure every sportswriter at the Post thinks he’ll be the next celebrity sports announcer.

But Mirengoff is likely right that “even if Trump loses, the Post won’t reform. Its hyper-partisan reporters will continue on their current path,” based on this article at the Wrap: Washington Post Publisher Pitches His ‘Leadership’ and ‘Humility,’ Denies Pressuring Editor to Drop Story.

The Washington Post’s new publisher, Will Lewis, sent a conciliatory memo to staff Friday (shared with TheWrap) after Lewis sparked deep concerns from both inside and outside his newsroom this week with announcements of leadership changes and a restructuring of the newsroom. The Post also issued a statement disputing some of the coverage from other outlets it’s received this week.

The statement also defends Lewis from criticism of his journalistic integrity, noting, “As a highly experienced Publisher, and an ex Editor and Editor-in-Chief, William is very clear about the lines that should not be crossed and his track record attests to that.”

Whether that is the case will likely remain in dispute following NPR reporting this week how Lewis offered its media reporter David Folkenflik an exclusive interview in order to spike a story about Lewis’ involvement in the United Kingdom’s phone hacking scandal.

“In some quieter moments this week, I have been reflecting on leadership styles, trust and humility,” Lewis wrote in his own statement, before going on to write about broad ideals including leadership, authenticity and integrity.

He shared two emails he’d received from colleagues this week, with one slightly critical but kindly supportive, while the other expressed complete support despite the “disenchantment” of others.

The executive then got to the point, writing, “So, time for some humility from me. I need to improve how well I listen and how well I communicate so that we all agree more clearly where urgent improvements are needed and why.”

I hope this is a brilliant case of misdirection on Lewis’s part. Because otherwise, this sounds like more of the same therapeutic language that doomed Dean Baquet and other editors dealing with their crybully staffs in 2020.

Further thoughts on the collapse of the Post, its efforts to rebuild, how wokeness guarantees a boring newspaper, and the role of the MSM as the Democrats’ palace guard at the Commentary podcast from John Podhoretz, Eli Lake, Abe Greenwald, and Seth Mandel.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

ROBOCOP SMILES: Suspect apprehended following police standoff, highway closure.

[Granbury, TX homeowner Jane] Gilbreath said she watched as the SWAT team deployed drones to break the back window of the truck.

“When they broke the window, they shot tear gas in. He didn’t give himself up. He only exited the truck because they shot tear gas through the truck window, and then they were able to apprehend him from that,” she said.

One of the drones, Gilbreath said, was also equipped with cameras and was told by the GPD officers that the driver was “high.”

“Even when he was sitting in his truck, the drone with the camera could see him and he was smoking a crack pipe,” she said.

The suspect was identified as 63-year-old Barry Harrell out of Fort Worth, the news release reports. Harrell is charged with possession of cocaine, evading arrest in a motor vehicle, tampering with evidence and accident involving damage.

Perhaps the Granbury drone can teach the Denver drones how it’s done: Denver police say DRONES will respond to 911 calls instead of cops after city defunded the force by millions.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

IF TRUE, NO WONDER THE FBI AND NASHVILLE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSING HER MANIFESTO: Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Wrote Three Pages in Journal About ‘My Imaginary Penis.’

Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a biological female who identified as a transgender male at the time of her March 27, 2023 attack, wrote a three-page journal entry titled “My Imaginary Penis” that was included in the writings recovered from her vehicle.

The Tennessee Star confirmed on Wednesday it obtained nearly four dozen pages of Hale’s writings from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation, including the March 11, 2023 entry discussing her desire to have a male anatomy.

Hale’s diary or journal entry begins with the title “My Imaginary Penis” and includes a crude drawing.

“My penis exists in my head. I swear to god I’m a male,” wrote Hale in the diary or journal recovered by police. She then wrote about her desire to have a penis for the purpose of heterosexual sex with a woman.

While the entry is sexually explicit in nature, Hale also wrote about her experience using the name Aiden, which she began using during her transition. Hale explained that using the name on a job application for a delivery position resulted in issues with the company’s background check.

She also described being raised a girl as “torture.” She claimed she feared “being called a dyke or a f*****” during high school before feeling liberated in college and eventually learning about transgenderism in her early 20s.

We covered earlier excerpts from Hale’s manifesto back in November. Will the whole thing ever actually be released by the authorities?

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

FOUR YEARS AGO THIS WEEK: The New York Times published Tom Cotton’s editorial on June 3rd, 2020, and the repercussions continue to this day. From Noah Rothman, then-with Commentary, the next day: The New York Times and the Vanguard of the Incognizant.

“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” The senator has advocated extraordinary measures involving the domestic deployment of uniformed soldiers for several days—as we’ve witnessed mass protests in American cities during the day and wanton violence, rioting, and looting by night. This exhortation is not new for him, but the venue in which it was placed—the New York Times opinion page—inspired a frenzied revolt from within the journalistic institution that published him. More remarkable, the aggrieved staffers and writers at the Times generally declined to issue a counterargument. They simply declared Cotton’s arguments anathema and sought to wield whatever power they could muster to see them banished.

One by one, New York Times staffers added their voices to a coordinated campaign of shame directed squarely at the paper’s management. “Running this puts Black [New York Times] staff in danger,” wrote technology reporter Taylor Lorenz, writers Caity Weaver and Jacey Fortin, climate reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, book critic Parul Sehgal, graphics assistant Simone Landon, reporter Katherine Rosman, styles desk editor Lindsey Underwood, culture writer Jenna Wortham, contributor Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and columnists Kara Swisher and Charlie Warzel. The News Guild of New York soon chimed in with a statement: “[Cotton’s] message undermines the journalistic work of our members, puts our black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence,” the Guild affirmed in what was billed as a “response to a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent.”

As I wrote back then (and the rest of this post continues in the original post’s tense), as a result of their staff’s meltdown over the Cotton op-ed, the New York Times, already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series, promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more. Or as Tina Lowe writes at the Washington Examiner, “New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission — just don’t criticize a celebrity:”

A newspaper, beyond its moral purpose to tell the truth, is functionally a business. To turn a profit, it must balance journalistic integrity with revenue from subscribers and advertisers. Thus, it came as absolutely no surprise when the New York Times fired Alison Roman, the up-and-coming chef who irked professional celebrity Chrissy Teigen with a rude remark in an interview that was falsely smeared as racist and subsequently piled onto by Teigen.

* * * * * * * *

As you may recall from a long day ago, after the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all sharing the same copypasta bullying their bosses: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”

* * * * * * *

Publishing the opinions of the Taliban wasn’t a bridge too far for the staff, and employees claiming that destroying property isn’t violence on national television isn’t a bridge too far for the management. But a sitting United States senator’s opinion that’s shared by the majority of the electorate is, and as a result, journalism will suffer in the future.

The bitter babies at the New York Times wanted less speech, and they got it. They’ll now publish fewer op-eds overall. There is a wholly illiberal war on the free press, and its primary aggressors aren’t in the White House or corrupt police stations. It’s being waged from within the inside.

Bari Weiss, one of the saner voices at the Times, responded to her colleagues’ collective primal scream in a Twitter thread earlier today:

Naturally, as this Mediaite headline notes: NY Times ‘Civil War’: Opinion Writer Bari Weiss Gets Buried By Colleagues for Tweeting Her Takes on Newsroom Friction After Cotton Op-Ed.

In 2015, Ashe Schow, then with the Washington Examiner wrote, “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”

The Gray Lady is finding out, good and hard.

Meanwhile, Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor threatens violence against Weiss, in a since-deleted tweet:

As William F. Buckley famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

HOW IT STARTED: Briahna Joy Gray rolls eyes at October 7 survivor, disrespects rape victims.

Briahna Joy Gray, a political [commentator] and Bernie Sander’s former press secretary during his 2020 presidential campaign, was slammed online this week for her treatment of an Israeli hostage family member during an interview with The Hill on Tuesday.

Yarden Gonen, the sister of Romi Gonen, who was abducted by Hamas on October 7, told The Hill in an exclusive published on Tuesday that her sister had made a final call to their mother before being abducted from the Nova Festival.

While Yarden was attempting to garner attention for her captive sister, Joy, also part of the broadcast, garnered the attention of social media users after she rolled her eyes. At the same time, Yarden pleaded with her that she believed women who were made victims of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7.

How it’s going:

Here’s the moment in question where Gray drops the mask:

Well, one of the moments, at least: ‘I Hope Someone Drops A Bomb On This Entire Building:’ Hamas Defender Briahna Joy Gray Lashes Out After Hostile Reception.

At an event in early May titled “Debate: Israel’s War on Hamas is a Just War,” political commentator Briahna Joy Gray reacted to the harsh reception from the audience she got for her pro-Hamas arguments, reportedly saying, “It’s disgusting. I hope someone drops a bomb on this entire building.”

Gray, cohost of The Hill’s Rising and former National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, shared the stage with moderator Konstantin Kisin and fellow panelists Michael Moynihan, Eli Lake, and Jake Klein.

During the debate, Gray insisted that the terrorist group Hamas, whose members have stated they intend to kill every Jew on the planet, has no interest in killing all the Jews in Israel, only wishing to establish a state “like what we have here in the United States.”

“When Hamas is talking about eliminating Israel, it’s not talking about killing all the Jews … it’s about eliminating the idea of a Jewish state, ending a Jewish state, ending an ethno-national state, having a state or like what we have in the United States of America,” Gray claimed.

At the Washington Free Beacon, Andrew Stiles jokingly asked on Wednesday if Gray “might be a secret neocon?”

After denouncing the summit audience as “racist” and “disgusting,” Gray told Kisin she hoped “someone [would] drop a bomb on this entire building,” according to the New Republic. The Israel hater’s private enthusiasm for airstrikes on her political opponents is (potentially) at odds with her public opposition to dropping bombs on terrorists. Nevertheless, the Washington Free Beacon was pleased to learn that Gray’s impulse after losing a debate was to unleash overwhelming military force on her enemies.

The first step on the road to recovery is admitting you love war.

And thus, The Hill meets Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”

Exit quote:

Related:

Posted at 7:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Biden: Slip Slidin’ Away.

President Biden “shows signs of slipping,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Journalists Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes—no conservatives—spoke to 45 people who have met with the president and noticed his mental and physical decline. They recount, in detail, several meetings over the past year where Biden has been forgetful, confused, and out of it. The president, Linskey and Hughes report, “appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.”

No kidding.

You don’t need the [Wall Street] Journal to tell you that Biden is diminished. You need only to open your eyes. Go over Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report into Biden’s unauthorized removal of classified documents. Review Biden’s Oval Office meltdown after Hur released his findings. Watch Biden try to sit at a D-Day commemoration in France on Thursday.

Or read, if you dare, the transcript of Time magazine correspondent Massimo Calabresi and editor in chief Sam Jacobs’s recent interview of Biden. It appeared the same day as Linskey and Hughes’s story.

This is the interview where Biden says—twice—that Russia invaded Russia. Where, immediately after saying, “I’m not going to comment,” Biden says that “there is every reason” to believe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war against Hamas for political gain. Then Biden says that the 19 percent increase in prices since he became president is due to “shrinkflation” and that he could “take” the Time reporter who asks about his advanced age.

The weirdest moment comes when the reporters ask Biden to describe his second-term agenda. That’s what we in the biz call a “softball question.” And here—excuse the long excerpt, but it is necessary to grasp the full absurdity and danger of having this man continue to serve as president—is Joe Biden’s response:

* * * * * * * *

In any other era, the White House, congressional Democrats, and the national Democratic Party would be in full-blown panic at the president’s physical, mental, and political condition. But because we live in the era of Trump, Biden’s allies have continued to deflect and downplay the deleterious effects of his age, his enduring unpopularity, and his haphazard, too-little, too-late, incompetent, and iatrogenic policymaking.

Culminating in this moment, featuring the leader of the free world attending the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France:

Of course, if you believe Politico, Biden was as vigorous on Thursday as the men who emerged from the landing craft in 1944: Time to Play ‘Biden Campaign Press Release or Politico Playbook Headline?’

As for the rest of us, Byron York adds: Biden’s losing battle with the age issue.

Addressing the Democratic defense, the political reporter Olivia Nuzzi wrote, “The problem with this, of course, is that the Joe Biden the world observes in his public appearances resembles more closely the Joe Biden described by the Wall Street Journal than by the Democrats who claim he is secretly sharp as a tack.”

That is the obvious truth. Just go to the videos. You don’t have to go back decades, to when Biden was in the Senate, or even 10 years ago, when he was vice president. Just look at Biden at the beginning of his presidency, just three years ago. There is substantial decline taking place. It is not reversible. It is part of life for many people who live past 80 years of age. Yes, it happens at different times to different people, but the point is, it is happening to Biden right now.

The timing of the Journal article preceding Biden’s appearance at Normandy makes that all the more obvious. And his writers cribbing from Reagan’s classic Normandy speech in 1984 just makes the side-by-side comparison between the two presidents’ deliveries that much more obvious and painful for Biden:

Or as the Toni Williams writes at the Victory Girls Website: Pointe Du Hoc — Biden’s Sad Echo.

Posted at 7:15 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 8th, 2024

June 6, 2024

OLD AND BUSTED: Dead People Voting For Democrats.

The New Hotness? Dead People Winning Elections! Dead Democrat Congressman Wins Primary.

A late Democratic congressman secured his party’s nomination for another term in office on Tuesday, despite his passing six weeks ago at the age of 65.

Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey succeeded his late father in representing the Garden State’s 10th Congressional District.

He had formally submitted his candidacy for re-election prior to his untimely death from a heart attack on April 24, as reported by The Hill.

Help us Obi-Wan Torricelli, you’re our only hope!

Posted at 2:36 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2024

AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: ‘Throw Everything That Democracy Has At This Man:’ MSNBC Analyst Suggests Silencing Trump To ‘Protect Voters.’

The New York Times’ Mara Gay on Wednesday seemed to suggest that Judge Juan Merchan should maintain his gag order on former President Donald Trump to safeguard voters.

Trump’s gag order, imposed by Merchan, bars the former president from making public statements regarding witnesses, prosecutors other than the district attorney, court staff and jurors, as well as family members of the staff, district attorney or judge. Gay on “Deadline: White House” appeared to imply during a conversation about the necessity of the gag order that it protects both the jurors who convicted Trump as well as American voters.

“You have to protect jurors, you have to protect voters,” Gay said. “And if we can’t do those two things in this moment, you can’t ask people to participate in democracy or to trust the process. So, this is a moment to throw everything that democracy has at this man.”

In accordance with the prophecy:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2024

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Awkward moment Jill Biden appears to tell Joe not to sit at D-Day ceremony, but he does anyway.

President Biden was spotted awkwardly fumbling for his seat as other dignitaries remained standing during a poignant D-Day commemoration ceremony in France on Thursday.

The 81-year-old could be seen grasping for his chair in the middle of the stage — despite his wife, first lady Jill Biden, and French President Emmanuel Macron remaining upright beside him.

Yesterday, The Hill reported, “White House fires back at Wall Street Journal over Biden story” — the story headlined “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping.”  Then today’s videos drop of just another day at the office for Sundown Joe:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2024

DAN RATHER SAYS*, “GOOD LUCK GETTING THAT, DON!” Why CBS News’ Lesley Stahl Owes Trump a Massive Apology.

In 2020, CBS News’ Lesley Stahl interviewed then-President Trump when the Hunter Biden laptop was revealed to the world. The device was filled with sexual debauchery, drug use, and the blueprint for the Biden family influence-peddling operation that was damning for the Democrats’ hopes of retaking the White House. The liberal media and Silicon Valley knew that too, which is why they buried the story and censored The New York Post, who first reported on the laptop, from posting on their social media accounts for days.

* * * * * * * *

The attack line was predictable: the laptop was Russian disinformation. Conservative media knew it was authentic. It would take months for the rest of the establishment media to confirm what half the nation knew already. With Hunter Biden’s gun trial underway, the laptop has been made a key piece of evidence by the government. So, is Russian disinformation no longer there? Trump said Biden was engulfed in scandal when he was interviewed by Stahl, who dismissed the notion. She wouldn’t let Trump discuss the laptop, saying it couldn’t be verified. Stahl owes Trump an apology, and the media owes the rest of us the same treatment for lying. I know—we shouldn’t hold our breath. No one has apologized for the Russian collusion hoax—why should this be any different?

Video of Stahl as the perfect Democratic Party operative with a lavalier at above link. Michael Shellenberger adds that Stahl could have verified the laptop before interviewing Trump if she wanted to — but that would be doing actual journalism, instead of creating a “gotcha” moment when interviewing a Republican president running for reelection:

* Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric, and Scott Pelley concur.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2024

JIM GERAGHTY: The ‘Gayest’ Star Wars? Hollywood Creativity Falters.

The math is complicated, but the gist is that, while the Star Wars movies make a ton of money in ticket sales, they also cost a ton to make, and Disney spends a ton on marketing them, even though they have the best built-in audience imaginable. It adds up to a much thinner profit margin than the general public would expect, although Disney does make additional money through merchandising, theme parks, video games, etc.

That Forbes article notes that, over time, the Star Wars movies’ revenue has declined at the box office. In fact, we haven’t had a new Star Wars movie released in theaters since 2019, and the viewership for the television series appears to be declining over time, too. Last year I wrote that perhaps the increasingly frequent Disney+ shows were oversaturating the fanbase. Or perhaps Star Wars is best enjoyed on the big screen.

Hearing yet another cheerful declaration that the latest offering is “the gayest,” my reaction is that the modern creative class in Hollywood isn’t that creative. We keep getting told that a new character is a triumph for “representation,” and yet the overwhelming majority of those characters come and go with a yawn. Making a character gay or lesbian or trans or any other “identity” doesn’t make them inherently interesting or compelling.

In fact, I’d argue that when characters are created with “representation” in mind, they’re just about destined to be boring because they aren’t allowed to be too flawed. If, for example, you make your television series’ first and usually only gay character a kleptomaniac, someone out there will loudly complain that your series is portraying gays as kleptomaniacs. Any character who is offering “representation” must therefore be nice and safe and pleasant and unlikely to offend or bother any potential viewer. The characters become symbols, not evocations of a flesh-and-blood human being.

Geraghty’s take that “the modern creative class in Hollywood isn’t that creative” is certainly borne out by the Critical Drinker’s look at The Acolyte’s first episode. I’ve got a bad feeling about this…:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 6th, 2024

June 5, 2024

TRUMP HAS SLIGHT EDGE ON BIDEN IN SWING STATE OF MICHIGAN, POST-VERDICT POLL SHOWS.

Former President Donald Trump is ahead of President Biden in Michigan by the narrowest of margins, a 2024 election poll released Tuesday showed.

Trump holds a 0.6 point lead over Biden, with the presumptive Republican nominee garnering 48.2% support to the incumbent’s 47.6% backing in a head-to-head matchup, according to the Mitchell-Michigan News Source Poll.

The 77-year-old former president’s advantage increased slightly – to 1.2 percentage points – when third-party candidates were included in the survey.

Insert the obligatory reminder to eschew all forms of cockiness here, but if true, this is astonishing, since so much of the administration’s anti-Zionism (read: anti-Semitism) is driven by attempting to prop up Biden in Michigan.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM?

As Christian Toto notes: The Acolyte – Woke, Wobbly and Steeped in Feminism. “It’s all an imitation, an attempt to recreate a fabled universe and the passion it once stoked.”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

ACE: Axios (Politico for Kidz): Propaganda Media Now Scrambling for Survival.

[T]he Washington Post is taking all of its SJW/activist basketcases and labeling them “service and social media journalism” (the “service” being “servicing leftwing activism”) and attempting to wall that off into an Animal House asylum.

The (giggle) reporters are complaining about trifling bullshit, like that they’re finding out about this by email on a Sunday night. “That’s not how a well-functioning newsroom operates,” one sniffs. Well, a well-functioning newsroom also doesn’t lose half of its readership in three years due to extreme and unembarrassed leftwing hackery.

Whenever bad employees are fired, they start complaining about how the firing was done. When Gail Simone — a leftwing hack who got a job at DC comics by ginning up a feminist outrage mob against them– blew off her editor for six months and refused to answer his many, many phone calls, he fired her by email.

She then activated her “army of cat-ladies” on Twitter and shrieked that she had been disrespected by being fired (by a man!) over email.

Well, asshole, you refused to answer any of his phone calls. How was he supposed to get the word to you?

So now we have unqualified SJWs #Triggered that there are going to be changes — and firings, of course — due to them losing the company $77 million in one year alone, and of course they are attempting to change the subject to the form of communication used.

BTW, the Post’s management explained the reason for the Sunday night email — media companies were getting ready to run their own scoop on the changes, and they were forced to send out a quickie email so that the employees wouldn’t hear about it from other “news” outlets.

If they hadn’t rushed out this quickie email, the SJWs would be complaining, “A well-functioning news room does not allow its employees to be blindsided by news about their own workplace from a competitor!”

This is a very low and callow mode of argumentation. People who are unacquainted with the concepts of accepting criticism and attempting to do better always immediately claim that the criticism is being offered out of bad faith and in an inappropriate form. They do this to change the subject from their failings to your failings in noting their failings.

The CEO said “it’s not great” that the new leadership is white and “penisy,” as Megyn Kelly mocked them, but vowed he’d do better in the future.

Once he gets done firing the DEI hires.

No, just kidding, they won’t do that. Anything but that.

….Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be “significant opportunities” within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, “It was an iterative, messy process, which I don’t want to go into the details of.”

At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post.

Players on a team with a three-year losing record demand to know if the newly hired coaches come from a “different culture” than the last batch of losers.

Read the whole thing.

Related: WaPo Reporter Upset That ‘Now We Have Four White Men Running the Newsroom.’

Plus advice from the Grauniad:

 

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

JIM TREACHER: Why Is Alec Baldwin Forgiven But Louis CK Isn’t?

The only time you’ve seen Louie on TV in the past seven years is if you happened to flip over to Animal Planet at 3:30 in the morning.

In the meantime, what has his SNL colleague Alec Baldwin been up to?

Well, there was this.

Baldwin shot a woman on the set of a movie, and next month he’ll stand trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Which makes it the perfect time to announce his latest project!

Hey, remember when Mike Brady shot somebody?

That’s right: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin are doing a TLC reality show, which is set to premiere in 2025. If he’s not in jail, I guess? I don’t know how that works.

That’s the question that Fox News anchor Kennedy is asking in the London Daily Mail: Will Alec Baldwin’s fake-Spanish baby-factory Hilaria drag their seven bambinos to meet him in JAIL to film this revolting new reality show?

As Kennedy rhetorically asks, “You know who won’t have their own family reality show? Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer and young mom who Baldwin accidentally shot and killed on the set of ‘Rust’ in 2021.”

Posted at 5:52 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

HOW THE MONOCULTURE MADE SUPER SIZE ME:

If the filmmaker didn’t face serious health repercussions, Spurlock’s film would be dead on arrival. A five pound weight gain and some heartburn just wouldn’t cut it.

But here crafty Spurlock delivers again.

Not only does he gain 25 pounds, but he engages in all kinds of theatrics including throwing up on camera, and reporting troubling symptoms such as chest palpitations and difficulty breathing.

Spurlock’s doctors express horror at how his experiment has affected his blood tests. Most dramatically, they declare that it seems as though his liver had been flooded by alcohol.

Here’s how one doctor put it:

The results for your liver are obscene beyond anything I would have thought. You know that movie [Leaving Las Vegas]—Nicolas Cage? Pickled his liver during the course of a few weeks in Las Vegas. I never would have thought you could do the same thing with a high-fat diet.

Bloodwork that evokes Nic Cage at his booziest? Now that’s what I call high stakes!

Spurlock’s recipe worked.

* * * * * * * *

In 2017, Spurlock figured the #MeToo movement was coming for him. So in a preemptive move, the he released an open letter where he admitted to many incidents of sexual misconduct, including repeated infidelities and the sexual harassment of an assistant. He also notes a one-night-stand. He regarded it as consensual, but he women he was with accused him of rape.

The letter included a detail that reflected on his private and professional life. As Spurlock questions what drove him to behave so badly, he asks, “Is it because I’ve consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven’t been sober for more than a week in 30 years.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, filmmaker Phelim McAleer wonders if that’s what explains why his liver resembled that of an alcoholic:

Mr. Spurlock’s 2017 confession contradicts what he said in his 2004 documentary. “Any alcohol use?” the doctor asks at the outset. “Now? None,” he replies. In explaining his experiment, he says: “I can only eat things that are for sale over the counter at McDonald’s—water included.”

Would that revelation spur the monoculture to finally disavow the project it had done so much to champion?

As Ted Balaker goes on to write in his Substack column, of course not. Ed Morrissey adds:

When Nick Gillespie offered a shorter but still pointed criticism of Super Size Me last week, some commenters on social media took swipes at him for waiting until Spurlock died. The truth is that many of these criticisms have been circulating about that documentary for years and even came up at the film’s release, including criticisms of overdramatization and questions about whether Spurlock deliberately manipulated his intake for maximum impact. Those criticisms got buried by the same Eight Percenters* that Ted discusses here.

When Spurlock died late last month, we linked to James Glassman’s 2004 review of Super Size Me. The general public knew nothing of Spurlock’s alcoholism when his faux-documentary debuted, but Glassman was astute enough to smell a rat.

Incidentally, here’s Gillespie’s Reason TV retrospective from last week on Spurlock:

* “Only about eight percent of America is progressive, yet the biggest brands so often tailor their material for that demographic,” Balaker wrote last month, in a Substack column that asks (and answers) the question, “Why is Late Night Comedy One-Party Territory?”

Posted at 5:36 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

JIM GERAGHTY: What Did the President Know, and How Long Did He Remember It?

On the menu today: Way back in June 2022, I wrote, “I think the single most predictable ‘bombshell’ of the coming years is that sometime in 2025, someone like Bob Woodward or Robert Costa will publish a book with a title like Perpetual Crisis: Inside the Biden White House, and we will ‘learn’ something like, ‘the president’s official health report said he was in fine shape for his age. But behind the scenes, Jill Biden, Ron Klain, and Susan Rice were deeply concerned the president’s health was rapidly declining, and that he would soon be unable to perform his duties.’” This morning, the Wall Street Journal takes us another half-step toward that minimally shocking revelation, interviewing more than 45 sources and offering a grim portrait of President Biden behind the scenes: forgetful, mumbling, increasingly reliant on notes to remember basic facts, and seemingly oblivious to his own administration’s policies and decisions. The assessment from some sources that Biden has some good days and some not-so-good days reminds our Luther Ray Abel of visits to family in nursing homes throughout his childhood and early adulthood. It’s as bad as you fear, Americans, because all of us with experience with elderly relatives know that over time, the good days become rarer, and the bad days become more frequent.

Put another way, Biden’s never going to be as young and sharp-minded as he was yesterday.

If the Journal is shocked by how Biden behaves behind the scenes:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024

SHOCKER: Anthony Fauci tells Congress he’s ‘not aware’ of studies that support social distancing rules that colleges imposed.

Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci told a House committee that he’s unware of studies that supported social distancing rules that were in turn used by many American colleges and universities during the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci was asked about social distancing by a Republican staffer during a closed-door hearing, according to the Daily Mail.

”Do you recall when discussions regarding, kind of, the at-least-a-6-foot threshold began?” the staffer asked.

”You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared,” Fauci responded.

Fauci then said he “was not aware of studies” that supported the 6-foot rule, noting “that would be a very difficult study to do.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, almost every American college and university implemented social distancing requirements.

Having been exposed as someone who believes that “when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullshit and they get vaccinated,” naturally, Fauci is furious: Dr. Fauci: ‘Level of Vitriol’ During Hearings Was ‘Quite Unfortunate.’ Really, Doc?

Posted at 10:55 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 5th, 2024
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