Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

May 30, 2026

IT’S MEL BROOKS’ WORLD; WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT:

Not to be confused with the other Mel Brooks production this year: Don’t Be Stupid, Be a Schmarty: The Party With the Nazi Tattoo.

 

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

TEDDY ROOSEVELT: MANLY MAN: “The theorists today who say masculinity is a social construction often give the impression that there’s nothing to it; society waves a wand and a nerd is made manly. No, it takes effort to become manly, as Teddy Roosevelt says. The more manliness is constructed, the more effort it takes.”

To the point where:

Marco Rubio, are you up to the challenge?!

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

PRATT SUMMER:

And yet curiously, Pratt’s carbon footprint is much, much lower than Hannah’s preferred candidate:

 

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

RIP: Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars Editor, Dies at 80.

Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both “Star Wars” and “Return of the Jedi.” On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin — otherwise known as the iconic “trench run” sequence near the end of the film. For “Return of the Jedi,” Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham, with George citing her as responsible for the “dying and crying” scenes to Time.

That “dying and crying” is pretty significant in “Return of the Jedi,” a film that hinges its third act not on a massive battle (though there’s plenty of space action, too), but on a father sacrificing himself because his son believes he’s not beyond redemption. In general, Marcia has been credited as, in some respects, the heart of the “Star Wars” franchise, working tirelessly to ensure that moments like Han Solo’s grand return to the Rebellion at the end of the original film landed with emotional impact for the audience.

Flashback: Marcia Lucas, the ‘secret weapon’ behind the original Star Wars. And Raiders of the Lost Ark: “‘[Marcia] was instrumental in changing the ending of Raiders, in which Indiana delivers the ark to Washington. Marion is nowhere to be seen, presumably stranded on an island with a submarine and a lot of melted Nazis. Marcia watched the rough cut in silence and then levelled the boom. She said there was no emotional resolution to the ending, because the girl disappears. ‘Everyone was feeling really good until she said that,’ Dunham recalls. ‘It was one of those, ‘Oh no we lost sight of that.’ ‘ Spielberg reshot the scene in downtown San Francisco, having Marion wait for Indiana on the steps on the government building. Marcia, once again, had come to the rescue.’”

UPDATE: Absolutely spot-on:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

AMERICA’S GOT TALENT:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

REPRESSIVE TOLERANCE:

“Remember Vince Vaughn had to apologize for shaking a president’s hand? When Ellen did for sitting next to one?”

Ellen DeGeneres endured a struggle session after cheerfully sitting next to Dubya in Jerry Jones’ skybox at Cowboys Stadium in 2019, only for the Kamala campaign to later aggressively seek his endorsement late in the 2024 election cycle.

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll on May 30th, 2026

May 29, 2026

PRATT SUMMER:

Evergreen: Mollie Hemingway notes that “You’re not just having a debate with an opponent, but your most hostile and most rabid opponent:” 

Tweet continues, “If you understand that you’re not just having a debate with an opponent, but your most hostile and most rabid opponent; if you understand that they are propaganda and then you go into it, I think that’s one thing. If you’re just treating them like you still have this 1960s view of what the media are, that’s when you’re going to get in trouble.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

NAPALM GIRL: Witnesses in Nick Ut’s Defamation Trial Against Netflix Include ‘Napalm Girl’ Herself.

The film claims that Nghe was paid a miserly $20 by the Chief of Photos in Saigon, Horst Faas, for taking arguably the greatest news photo of all time. Miss Tu, who was in the AP office when the negative arrived, says she witnessed an excited Ut handing the film over to the darkroom technician, Jackson Ishizaki.

Not only that, but Miss Tu says she was the only person in AP who paid local stringers. She kept a record of all such payments, which were sent over to AP’s New York office. In her sworn testimony, Miss Tu dismisses the claims made in the documentary and also says that Faas would never have paid such a paltry amount for a photo like Napalm Girl.

Other testimonies include those by Peter Arnett and Fox Butterfield, who were also present and involved on that fateful day over 50 years ago. As well as the sworn statements, the filings also focus on Carl Robinson, the photo editor at the center of The Stringer who says he was the one who switched the credit on the behest of Horst Faas.

“Carl Robinson opposed publication of the photograph in 1972 and harbored longstanding resentment concerning the impact of the image and the broader consequences of the Vietnam War,” Ut’s lawyers James Hornstein and Martin Pradel argue.

“The submissions further state that Carl Robinson’s wife and family were Vietnamese and that the family suffered significant consequences after the fall of Saigon. The filings argue that Carl Robinson later directed bitterness and hostility toward Nick Ut.”

As Joseph Campbell, who has been writing about the “Napalm Girl” photo for years concluded last November, after attending a screening of The Stringer: More Likely Than Not, Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Don’t Take Medical Advice from Jill Biden.

Jill Biden, the former first lady and assisted caregiver to the president, has a memoir coming out next month. The publicity tour kicked off this week with a series of interviews and published excerpts. It’s safe to say the esteemed doctor maintains her abiding faith in the American public’s capacity to consume utter bullshit.

For example, Jill recalled how “frightened” she was watching her husband ramble on about beating Medicare on the CNN debate stage. “I had never, ever, seen Joe like that—before or since,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Is that so? In the book, which purports to “set the record straight,” Jill recalls her first interaction with Joe as he walked off the debate stage. He wanted to know if he had “really f—ed up,” and she agreed that he had. Granted, I don’t have the ex-first lady’s medical background, but that seems like a harsh way to speak to a loved one who might be having a stroke. Unless she’s lying, which she is.

Jill did not appear to be deathly worried about Joe’s health when she joined him after the debate and told supporters how proud she was that he “answered every question” and “knew all the facts.” She could have taken him to see a real doctor. Instead they made an appearance at a local Waffle House, where Jill looked on in terror as reporters asked Joe about his performance.

Elsewhere in the book, Jill describes being worried that Sleepy Joe had accidentally “drugged” himself with sleeping pills or cough syrup. That she presents this as a plausible scenario does little to dispel concerns that the president’s brain was not functioning and she knew all along.

As Jim Geraghty adds. “When every second counts, you don’t keep the president suffering an ongoing stroke up on the stage, waiting until the end of the debate and hoping for the best. What Jill Biden is unwittingly declaring in this implausible nearly-two-years-late spin is, ‘I thought my husband was suffering a medical emergency that risked permanent brain damage and possibly death, but I concluded that finishing the debate was more important.’”

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

POUNCING AND SEIZING SPOTTED:

Exit question: Does James Talarico Realize He’s Running to Represent Texas?

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

MICHAEL BARONE: California Dreamin’ Ends with, ultimately, Empty Reservoirs and Homeless Tents.

Back in 2011, high-speed rail officials sought advice from SNCF, the French rail operator. But the firm withdrew from California in favor of “less politically dysfunctional” Morocco, where it helped complete a high-speed system in seven years.

California in its golden years made the movie “Casablanca.” Today, Casablanca is better at building public works than California. The state that within six months completed two major bridges across the San Francisco Bay can’t properly route phone calls in Tuolumne County.

Taking a workable system and making it fail requires a particular talent. Reading between the lines, one sees little among California’s well-paid public-sector union ranks of the pride I once noticed in a state employee years ago. Instead, there is an eagerness to extract still more from the state’s private-sector success — SEIU is pushing a supposedly onetime wealth tax on the very rich to boost current employees’ benefits — and a complacent indifference to whether the work actually serves its intended beneficiaries.

Will the politicians astride this rot pay a price? Harris was the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, and Newsom leads in polls for the nomination in 2028. But a countertrend may be visible in the theoretically nonpartisan June 2 primary for mayor of LA. The (sparse) polling shows LA Mayor Karen Bass way below the 50% needed to win reelection next week, and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt overtaking the left-wing council member initially expected to be her chief challenger.

Pratt’s house was burned down in the January 2025 Pacific Palisades fire, which struck as Bass (despite promising in 2002 to take no foreign trips) was headed to the inauguration of the president of Ghana. Pratt’s cheeky ads lampoon Bass’s left-wing policies, which have produced empty reservoirs and streets full of angry, drug-addicted homeless people.

Empty reservoirs and acres of homeless tents — that’s what California’s once-proud public sector has been producing.

As Glenn wrote yesterday at his Substack, “Why don’t Democrats like Spencer Pratt? Because he’s standing up for normal things, and the political system in L.A., as dominated by Democrats and their satraps for decades, has made a point of not delivering those normal things.”

Butt Bass has won the coveted endorsement of, err, Jane Fonda:

Unexpectedly!

From 2020: Karen Bass’s Long March from Communist Fringe to Biden’s VP Shortlist.

UPDATE: “She’s caught the Pratt.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is Kimmel’s Pratt Assault Start of New Late-Night War?

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became the first late-night show to take on the upstart candidate head on. It’s surprising that Kimmel and co. have mostly held their fire up until this point.

Pratt isn’t a traditional Republican. Nor does he mention ideology when promoting his efforts to replace L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. He still seeks to upend California’s Democratic dominance, and that’s a bridge too far for a progressive activist like Kimmel.

“Then you get a guy who is on a reality show, who’s on a lot of reality shows. His profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows, and his house burns down, and even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn’t believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down.”

Exit questions:

Earlier, from Glenn: Bringing Back Normality: And striking fear into Democrats.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

BERICHTE AUS DER BILDUNGSAPOKALYPSE:

Original tweet deleted, but not before the Wayback machine saved a copy:

Posted at 12:30 am by Ed Driscoll on May 29th, 2026

May 28, 2026

PRATT SUMMER:

UPDATE: The memes are fun, but don’t get cocky:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 28th, 2026

SPIELBERG: SOULLESS AI SHOULD NEVER HAVE FINAL SAY IN FILM-MAKING.

He admitted, however, that he does envision a future where AI could help “save us a lot of legwork” by undertaking tasks such as scouting locations.

But the Jurassic Park director said he never wanted it to take things a step further and advise on how to make movies.

“Don’t tell me how to write my dialogue for this character,” he said, adding: “Don’t tell me where the camera has to go. And also, don’t tell me what the set should look like, unless AI is simply a tool in a large tool chest of the production designer.

“Use AI as a tool, but do not use AI as the final word on anything creative. That’s where I draw the line.”

That’s nice, but I guarantee AI is already being used to design sets and costumes. There was an article in Medium two and a half years ago that AI was being used to storyboard movies and TV shows. In late 2024, The Ankler explored how AI storyboards are changing how scripts are pitched. While a superstar director like Spielberg has final say on how his shots are blocked, all the way to the final cut of his movie, so many preproduction choices are being made by AI that Hollywood is likely becoming just about as cybernetic in the integration of humans and technology as the Six Million Dollar Man was in the 1970s.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 28th, 2026

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Dame Helen Mirren, 80, called ‘evil Zionist bitch’ by anti-Israel nut in sick attack on the street.

The 80-year-old was accosted while she was walking in the East London neighborhood of Tower Hill with her husband, Taylor Hackford, 81, on Wednesday night, according to the clip shared by London & UK Street News.

“There is Helen Mirren, the avowed Zionist. You said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust,” the yob shouted, referring to the actress’s 2023 remarks about the Jewish state.

“F–k off,” Hackford, an acclaimed, Oscar-winning film director, shouted back.

“You’re an evil Zionist b—h,” the agitator yelled.

In yesterday’s Commentary newsletter, Abe Greenwald explored: “Zionism, After the Fact.”

A number of Israel-supporters have noted that the terms “Zionism” and “Zionist” are, from a present-day perspective, confusing or even insulting. As Zionism refers to a belief and a movement that sought to establish a modern Jewish homeland, does it make sense still to speak of Zionists when that homeland has existed for more than 75 years?

Coleman Hughes remarked in a recent episode of his podcast that it makes as much sense to declare oneself a Zionist today as it would to self-describe as an abolitionist. The State of Israel is a long-established fact, and American slavery has long been abolished. In this reading, perhaps the term Zionism is an anachronism that’s intended to cast a shadow of impermanence or erasure over the Jewish state.

I think Hughes makes a powerful point in comparing the relevance of Zionism and abolitionism. But it’s equally illuminating to contrast the two.

Read the whole thing, which is online here.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I think Taylor Hackford sums up things beautifully.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 28th, 2026

THE RARE MIRACLE OF ORDER:

We live in a world of daily miracles: Walk up to an automated teller machine almost anywhere in the world, insert a card, type four digits, and a small mechanism dispenses cash that you are entitled to draw against an account managed by a bank you have never visited, operating under a legal framework you have never read, denominated in a currency issued by a central authority you have never met. We are so used to such comforts that we simply regard them as background infrastructure that exists without ever really thinking about it. Personally, I consider every trip to the supermarket as a veritable miracle. No matter the time or season, I get fresh fruit and vegetables, and all of it for a comparably small fraction of my salary.

Boris Yeltsin considered a Houston Texas supermarket a veritable miracle as well; when he visited one in 1989, he knew the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War: When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 28th, 2026

WAIT, SO IT’S POSSIBLE TO HAVE THE APPEARANCE OF A FUNCTIONAL CITY? CLEARLY THAT’S…

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on May 28th, 2026
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