RAVING AND DROOLING: BMG Splits With Roger Waters Over Pink Floyd Co-Founder’s Comments on Israel.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
January 30, 2024
NOBODY CARRIES WATER FOR JOE BIDEN LIKE AXIOS! Behind the Curtain: Biden’s Middle East moonshot.
President Biden plans to keep pushing a grand bargain in the Middle East for the days after the war in Gaza — with the hope it could happen before the election, despite Israel’s opposition, U.S. officials tell us.
The plan: Israel gets normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, in exchange for agreeing to an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state — and allowing the Palestinian Authority to have a role in post-Hamas Gaza.
Moonshot, huh? In a nod to JFK, Biden pushing ‘moonshot’ to fight cancer.
That was the Houston Chronicle in 2022. As Glenn noted back then, it was more plagiarism of Richard Nixon, than a nod to JFK:
Nixon over 50 years ago: “I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.”
The War on Cancer, like the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, was an expensive failure. Of course, to be fair, our government hasn’t even won an actual war in years.
Biden’s “moonshot” actually began at the tail end of the Obama years: “‘Moonshot’ to cure cancer relies on outmoded view of disease,” the New York Times noted on January 18th, 2016:
Recently a group of 15 cancer researchers cut short a meeting at the Food and Drug Administration. The reason: They had been invited to Vice President Joe Biden’s office to discuss his “moonshot” to cure cancer.
“We had no idea what was coming,” said Dr. George D. Demetri, director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard and a professor of medicine at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
It turned out the vice president was out of town that day, but his staff wanted to know: What could Biden do in his remaining year in office, and over the long term, to advance cancer research and ultimately cure the disease?
The idea that a concerted government push can lead to a “cure” for cancer is nearly a half-century old, stretching back to President Richard Nixon’s failed “War on Cancer.”
The latest, which President Barack Obama formalized in his State of the Union address last week, has a deeply emotional tinge.
Biden’s son Beau died of brain cancer in May, and the vice president’s very public mourning and call for a “national commitment to end cancer as we know it” as he announced his decision not to run for president has moved and captivated Washington.
Biden’s focus has already made some meaningful difference: He negotiated with Republican congressional leaders a $264 million increase in funding for the National Cancer Institute, the largest in a decade for an agency that has been squeezed by static budgets in recent years.
But the chances of reaching a moment of victory, as the analogy “moonshot” suggests, seem entirely unrealistic.
Curiously, this cynical ABC News journalist is worried that Joe’s original moonshot may never get off the launch pad: Joy Behar: Climate Change Could Prevent Joe Biden From Curing Cancer.
Of course, those “moonshots” are not to be confused with another space-based analogy that often orbits around Joe and his boss thanks to political columnists looking to relaunch ’50s-era metaphors — the “Sputnik moment:”
● The [Spy] Balloon Really Was a ‘Sputnik Moment.’
—Noah Rothman, Commentary, February 13th, 2023.
● April of 2022 had seen another Sputnik moment, courtesy of Bloomberg.com: The Chip Shortage Was Supposed to Be a ‘Sputnik Moment.’ What Happened?
● Yet another Sputnik moment for Biden in late 2021:
Incredible. This has all the elements of a Sputnik moment: https://t.co/I6mNZoCNye
— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) October 16, 2021
And for Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, covering multiple presidents over the decades, it’s been Sputniks all the way down since 2000.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: NYU Professor Tells Students of Hamas Atrocities: ‘We Know It’s Not True.’
THE HORROR, THE HORROR: This Poor Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Had Its Headlights Ripped Out Of Its Face.
This Poor Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Had Its Headlights Ripped Out Of Its Face https://t.co/qG9XcuckuY pic.twitter.com/7ZBN12qRph
— Jalopnik (@Jalopnik) January 24, 2024
“The Taycan is a pretty pricey car, and this will probably be a pricey fix. In Porsche’s official factory parts catalog the front fenders are each around $500 while the fender liners are upwards of $200, not to mention all of the assorted other bits that will need to be replaced. The headlights, meanwhile, can cost between $2,000 and $4,500 depending on which ones they were, and that’s before adding in the cost of labor and other necessary parts.”
RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME:
Shot: Rep. Cori Bush Doubling Down on ‘Defund the Police’ Despite Requests From Fellow Progressives.
—Legal Insurrection, February 10th, 2022.
Chaser:
As RedState reported on Monday, a House Democrat is currently under criminal investigation for the misuse of government funds under the guise of paying for “security” services. Heavy speculation revolved around that Democrat being Rep. Cori Bush, and that has now been confirmed.
—Confirmed: House Democrat Being Criminally Investigated Is ‘Squad’ Member Cori Bush, RedState, today.
And speaking of “Riots for thee, but not for me!”
In less than 30 seconds…
Cori Bush: “I’m going to make sure I have security.”
Also Cori Bush: “And defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police.”pic.twitter.com/yDgo0wviG2— Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) August 5, 2021
Related: “He claims he can summon tornadoes at will, cause earthquakes with his hate, and conduct blood rituals to bring ruin upon his enemies. An intergalactic master of psychic self-defense born 109 trillion years ago, his days, he says, are now spent tending to his crops and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracies. Nathaniel Davis III also happens to be Rep. Cori Bush’s (D., Mo.) close friend and her highest-paid private security guard.”
(Classical reference in headline.)
KINSLEY GAFFE: E. Jean Carroll Delivered the Sound Bite That Could Win Trump the Election.
Rachel Maddow asks E. Jean Carroll what she's going to do with "Trump's money" to help "women's rights."
Carroll says she and Maddow will "go shopping, get completely new wardrobes, new shoes…Rachel, what do you want, penthouse?"
Her lawyer nervously says "that's a joke": pic.twitter.com/5LAx5xU5Uy
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 30, 2024
“As Megyn Kelly commented, this sort of stuff only helps Trump. You could argue that Carroll gave Trump an in-kind contribution of equal worth to the former president’s 2024 election effort. The man is worth many times more than the judgment, Jean. Please stop acting like you financially broke this man. The women of The View took a victory lap as if this would impact his march to the White House in any way.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband’s Work, Complaint Alleges. “The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record.”
January 29, 2024
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD SEALS THE DEAL FOR TRUMP: Trump Promises If Elected He Will Ban Taylor Swift From Football Games.
WILLIAM SHATNER BEAMS DOWN SCATHING REBUKE AGAINST EUROPEAN UNION’S TARGETING OF STAR TREK:
Presentism at work yet again. Why start at Trek? Isn’t it better to start at the beginning and redo foundation material such as the Magna Carta, religious writings, works of Shakespeare before worrying about a silly TV show opening that reflects social commentary of the time? If people are offended by 6 seconds of dialogue recorded in 1966 without a modicum of understanding of the social issues at the time there’s bigger issues that they need to deal with first – like educating themselves.
To provide more context, the European Institute for Gender Equality is behind this latest display of stupidity. The agency released a document recommending changes to various phrases and terms to supposedly make them more inclusive.
The phrase, made famous by Captain Kirk (William Shatner), has a red cross next to it in a 61-page toolkit on gender-sensitive communication.
EU agency the European Institute for Gender Equality calls it an example of “where women may be subject to invisibility or omission”.
World War One phrase “no man’s land” should be “unclaimed territory”, they say.
World War One?! Why is the EU already airbrushing away the first salvo of what it dubbed “The European Civil War” in 2012?
ARS TECHNICA INADVERTENTLY PRAISES MASTERS OF THE AIR:
World War Blech
After two episodes, I feel I’ve seen everything Masters has to offer: a dead-serious window into the world of B-17 Flying Fortress pilots, wholly lacking any irony or sense of self-awareness. There’s no winking and nodding to the audience, no joking around, no historic interviews with salt-and-pepper veterans to humanize the cast. The only thing allowed here is wall-to-wall jingoistic patriotism—the kind where there’s no room for anything except God, the United States of America, and bombing the crap out of the enemy. And pining wistfully for that special girl waiting at home.
I thought the first two episodes of Masters of the Air (currently streaming on Apple TV) were okay, akin to the 1960s TV series 12 O’Clock High, with infinitely more high-tech special effects, but without the steely-eyed gravitas of actors who were actually around during WWII. But after such high praise as Ars Technica offers above, I will likely tune in for more.
WHY MICHAEL JACKSON AND PRINCE HATED EACH OTHER: THE FEUD OVER “WE ARE THE WORLD:”
Prince couldn’t bring himself to do it. That was partly because of his natural shyness: the infamously withdrawn and perfectionist star was reluctant to squeeze into a booth with a-listers such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
A bigger problem, though, was We Are The World itself – an avalanche of naff co-written by Richie and Prince’s nemesis, Michael Jackson. The best Prince would do was offer to lay down a solo – provided he could do so on his own. “I don’t need him to f______ play guitar!” retorted We Are The World producer and Jackson collaborator Quincy Jones.
In the Eighties, the Jacko-Prince feud somehow flew under the radar. However, it is front and centre of a new Netflix documentary about the making of We Are The World. The Greatest Night in Pop doesn’t shy away from Prince and his non-involvement in the sessions. Singer Sheila E reveals to Netflix that she was invited because the producers hoped she would encourage Prince, with whom she had recorded extensively, to tag along.
“It was getting late, and I was looking forward to singing one of the verses,” she tells the filmmakers. “But they kept asking, ‘Well, do you think you can get Prince here?’ And I’m like, wow. This is weird. and I just started feeling like I’m being used because they want Prince to show up and the longer they keep me, maybe Prince will show up.”
Prince didn’t like We Are The World, describing it as “horrible”. He had an even bigger dislike of Jackson – a hatred so embittered Prince couldn’t bring himself to express his sympathies after Jackson’s shock death in June 2009, aged just 50.
The feeling was mutual, no doubt inspiring a classic case of media one-upmanship in the late 1980s:
Larry Stessel [Epic Records executive]:
Michael called me one day and said, “I want to have a nickname, like ‘The Boss’ or ‘The King.’” I said, “Well, Bruce Springsteen is ‘The Boss,’ and Elvis Presley is ‘The King.’ You can’t be the King because you’ll never live it down. The press will rip you apart.” But Michael would not let this go. He hired his own personal publicist, Bob Jones. And one day, Bob issued a press release announcing that Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. Michael went rogue on us. And sure enough, he got slammed. Everyone laughed.
Likely with one five foot two exception, of course.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Watch: Nancy Pelosi Loses It as Protesters Storm Her Property, Tells Them to ‘Go Back to China.’
JIM TREACHER: Happy Anniversary, Jussie!
Cast your mind back, dear reader, to this date a full five years ago: January 29, 2019.
Joe Biden is assumed to be planning a presidential run at the age of 76. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese sets you back $3.89. Sports Illustrated still exists, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an unstoppable critical and box-office phenomenon, and Taylor Swift is dating some British actor nobody knows or cares much about. You’ve never heard of COVID-19, or Disney Plus, or “WAP.”
A simpler time.
And on this date, in the middle of the coldest Chicago night in decades, a very famous actor named Jussie Smollett goes out for a sandwich and is attacked on the street by a couple of guys wearing red baseball hats. The vicious right-wing thugs splatter him with bleach and tie a clothesline around his neck while screaming, “You’re that [N-word] [F-word] from [FOX soap opera] Empire” and “This is MAGA country.”
It’s a deeply disturbing assault that definitely isn’t complete caca del toro.
The reaction among our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters is rapid and fierce:
Between Jussie, AOC at the height of her personal Green Nude Eel monomania and the left’s collective joyless monomania over Trump’s real and imagined excesses, future generations will look back at 2019 as one of America’s last innocent years, along the lines of 1940 prior to December 7th; 1963 prior to November 22nd; and 2001 prior to September 11th. Looking back at the media’s freakout over Jussie reminds us that at least we got one last full year of collective fun before everything went completely pear-shaped in March of 2020.
ANDREW FERGUSON: Where the Rubber Soul Meets the Road.
Hey you! Beatles fans! I want a show of hands. How many of you believe that the following story—it comes from Philip Norman’s new biography, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle—has the faintest scintilla of a possibility of being somewhere close to a simulacrum of a story that might, conceivably, be within a hundred bazillion miles of an event that actually happened?
The year is 1971 or ’72, it’s not quite clear. The Beatles have well and truly broken up. George Harrison’s marriage to his first wife Pattie is dying from indifference, and Eric Clapton, perhaps Harrison’s closest friend, has loudly declared his undying love for her.
So here’s what Harrison does, goes the story: He sets out two guitars and amplifiers in the cavernous foyer of his Gothic mansion outside London and invites Clapton to visit, ostensibly for a gentlemanly chin wag. Instead, the unsuspecting suitor is challenged to a duel by the cuckolded Beatle—a “rock ‘n’ roll version of the ‘pistols at dawn’ a wronged Victorian husband would have demanded—in this case, guitars after dusk.” According to Norman.
On through the night the two guitar gods raged! “Clearly a duel for Pattie,” Norman calls it. Fiery licks rent the midnight air! Harrison, knowing Clapton’s superior skill, plied his rival with brandy and kept himself to only tea, or so the story goes. At last, the night far spent, the two men laid down arms, exhausted. And yet, Norman goes on, “no winner was declared and George never mentioned the episode afterward.”
Yeah, I don’t believe it either.
I bet that even Norman suspects the reason George (and Clapton) never mentioned the episode: It didn’t happen. It’s much too melodramatic, reeks too much of after-the-fact wish fulfillment, carries the air of an imagination malformed by 1940s and ’50s moviegoing—as indeed it probably was. The genealogy of the story, which Norman doesn’t bother to trace for his readers, leads back to the great and greatly bibulous actor John Hurt, a drinking buddy of Harrison’s who described the duel to Pattie Harrison but insisted he was the only witness.
Harrison talked up the brilliance of Clapton’s solo phrasing during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions (as highlighted in Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary). He let Clapton contribute much of the lead guitar work on his first solo album, All Things Must Pass. Clapton’s band Derek and the Dominoes were the house band for that album. Clapton and his then-current solo band backed up Harrison on his only tour of Japan in 1991. So yeah, guitar duels over Pattie very likely never happened.
Even this popular meme in guitar forums is false, alas, considering when Clapton gave Harrison one of his 1950s-era Gibson Les Pauls:
AS ALWAYS, LIFE IN THE 21st CENTURY IMITATES MONTY PYTHON: Homeless found living in furnished caves in California highlight ongoing state crisis.
California caves dug out by people experiencing homelessness* has the community and city officials concerned for the safety of those living underneath the Tuolumne River. The discovery also brings to the forefront the state’s ongoing crisis with unhoused people.
The Modesto Police Department, the Tuolumne River Trust, and Operation 9-2-99, a volunteer river clean-up organization, worked together to clean up approximately 7,600 pounds of trash from the caves and the surrounding areas, according to local outlet CBS13.
The caves, which are located about 20 feet below street level, can be entered by a makeshift staircase that was built onto the hillside.
Residents who live in the area have expressed concerns over the safety of the unhoused people living in the cave that should be considered unfit for anyone to live in.
“If one of these were to collapse, it would be devastating,” said Tracy Rojas, a homeowner that lives near the caves, told CBS13 in an interview. “This whole thing would come down and go into the water.”
And alas, Graham Chapman as the colonel isn’t going to come along to remind the state of how silly it’s become:
* Or how silly USA Today has become, for that matter: No, It’s Not ‘People Experiencing Homelessness.’
YOU DON’T HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE, YOU JUST HAVE TO FALL IN LINE:
Shot: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Condemns ‘Shameful’ Biden Admin.
Reacting to the news, Cortez wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, “Shameful. The Biden Admin can no longer reconcile their professed concern for Palestinians and human rights while also single-handedly vetoing the UN’s call for ceasefire and sidestepping the entire US Congress to unconditionally back the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.”
—Newsweek, December 10th.
Chaser: Ocasio-Cortez: Biden The ‘Strongest’ Democrat Option To Face Trump In 2024.
—The Daily Wire, yesterday.
(Classical reference in headline.)
MARK JUDGE: Billy Bragg, You Broke My Heart.
Bragg was brilliant. He sang socialist anthems of course, but also tender love songs. He was very funny and relatable. I interviewed him after the show and the story was published. I still remember the title: “Billy Bragg: Unafraid of the S-Word.” The “S-Word” was, you guessed it, socialism. No matter how anyone might mock, belittle or threaten him, Bragg was not going to back down. He wasn’t afraid of a word.
Now in 2024 Billy Bragg is very much afraid of words. On TV he claimed we should censor “words that are abusive.” Note: Bragg was not talking about the civil language we use in our everyday lives. He was specifically responding to the question of artistic freedom. He was specifically referring to the great books of British author Roald Dahl.
Next Target: The Word of God
As many critics have I observed, when you start to censor Roald Dahl and other artists the next step can very easily be the Bible. The Bible is a hugely offensive book to those who don’t want to hear the truth. Indeed the Bible used to enrage me around the time I was interviewing Billy Bragg in the 1980s. I was a young left-winger and libertine and the searing truth of the gospels drove me crazy. I couldn’t handle the truth.
However, the suggestion that the Bible should be censored would have sent me and my friends, as well as Billy Bragg, into a rage. Bragg often told me how he was inspired by punk rock, whose prevailing ethic (other than loud music) was a total resistance to censorship.
That was Bragg in the 1980s, when western leftists paid lip service to not just free speech, but freedom itself. Sadly, in the 21st century, as Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
OLD AND BUSTED: “America First.”
The new hotness? Watch: Ilhan Omar Rips the Mask Off and Pledges Her Allegience to Somalia in Disturbing Video.
QUESTION ASKED:
Jan 28, 1986: the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster took place. #80s I will always remember where I was when I watched it happen. Do you remember where you were when it happened? pic.twitter.com/C7Tnbj3fRE
— Old School 80s (@OldSchool80s) January 28, 2024
THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Protesters hurl soup at Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in Paris.
It’s enough to wipe the smile off her face.
A pair of climate-change activists hurled pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa on Sunday at the Louvre Museum in Paris as onlookers gasped, shocking new video shows.
“What is more important?” the crazed activists shouted in French. “Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?”
The two nuts are members of the activist group called “Riposte Alimetaire,” or Food Response, which issued a statement saying the stunt was meant to highlight the need to protect the environment.
No it isn’t. As Don Surber wrote last year: It is the painting they protest, not the oil.
We call this the cancel culture without realizing the accuracy of the phrase. The communists or whatever you wish to call the elitists and their brain-washed masses are turning the founding fathers of our constitutional republic into villains because that makes it easier to replace the God-given rights enumerated and protected by the Constitution with nonsense about the right to abortion and transgendering.
Perhaps there is a blowback.
The Daily Caller reported, “A leaked scene from the new film Tár went viral on social media on Thursday, largely as a result of the inherently anti-woke scripting from Todd Field.
“The scene shows leading lady Cate Blanchett’s character sitting at a piano with a young musician, seemingly in front of a class of students, as he completely misses whatever point she is trying to make about the power of music (or so one can assume without the full context of the storyline).
“‘Nowadays, white, male, cis composers, just not my thing,’ the young student says to her of Bach, one of the greatest and most famed composers of all time.
“‘Don’t be so eager to be offended,’ Blanchett’s character says back — not in a cruel or aggressive way, but seemingly as a way of pushing the young student to expand his mindset to accommodate Bach. ‘The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.’
“As the scene goes on, the script calls out the hypocrisy and history of music as it relates to the modern woke cultural movement. ‘If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours,’ Blanchett continues.”
***
The problem with her “so can yours” argument is that they are untalented. All they have is their gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on.
They seek entitlement because they have no merit. They can only destroy — with cans of soup.
Related: The Taliban: an apology. “But today’s conversation about statues is not an argument about slavery or colonialism or even minorities more generally. It is an argument about historical objects, and what you do with them as values change. Values always change, and have done so for generations. But over the years, we’ve learned that our commitment to liberalism and free speech was outmoded. We won the battle over ourselves, and learned to see that the Afghan dogmatism that we wrote off as medieval was, in fact, the future.”
LOST IN A ROMAN WILDERNESS OF PAIN, AND ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE, ALL THE CHILDREN ARE INSANE, WAITING FOR THE SUMMER RAIN: Democrat Marianne Williamson considers ending presidential run.
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia was written by Kate Manne, a feminist philosophy expert and author of two other books about misogyny and “male privilege,” respectively. Prospect magazine named her one of “the world’s 50 top thinkers” in 2019 alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Greta Thunberg. She self-identifies as a “small fat,” as opposed to a “large fat,” “superfat,” or “infinifat,” and other terms from the “fat studies” lexicon you didn’t know existed.
Manne could have written an interesting book challenging the conventional wisdom that being fat is bad for your health. Most scientists seem to agree that it is, but if the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything it’s that so-called scientific experts don’t really know what they’re talking about and are prone to make authoritative pronouncements for purely political reasons. Manne cites other studies that found the relationship between fatness and health to be more “complicated” than we think, and there’s probably some truth to that.
Unshrinking is not that book. It is simply another data point supporting the argument that academic elites have lost their damn minds, starting with the James Baldwin epigraph and trigger warning about “frank descriptions of fatphobia in its intersections with racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, etc.” Further reading reveals that fatphobia also intersects with classism, ageism, colorism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. It’s bigotry all the way down.
Flashback: obesity: Michael Fumento on COVID’s Third Rail.
The very same thinking prevails regarding the obesity-COVID link, notwithstanding that even Saint Anthony Fauci has often made it. Declared a February 2021 article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, “. . . questions remain about the quantitative risk of the association between fatness [and COVID].” It uses a common term in shame-shaming literature, “fatphobia.” That means if you disagree, you’re mentally ill.
“‘Unjust And Unethical’ Fatness Being Called A Risk Factor For Coronavirus – Kiwi Fat Studies Scholar,” is the headline of an article in a New Zealand commercial publication. “This insidious move of taking responsibility away from governments and putting it onto individuals [is ridiculous],” insists our scholar. “To say that your health is solely a matter of your own choice and your own personal responsibility, and therefore if you become ill or if you die, it’s your fault [doesn’t make sense].”
Yet shame has always been an effective tool in encouraging good behaviors and discouraging bad ones. I was a critic of the “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” pseudoscience (and was therefore accused of being paid by Big Tobacco), yet I’ll be the first to admit that it apparently served its purpose by shaming smokers in changing the message from “your smoking will kill you” to “your smoking will kill others.” The percentage of Americans smoking plummeted during and after the campaign, and I have no other explanation other than that “Smoking shaming” worked—an outcome I’m happy about, despite the underhanded method.
But smokers were much in the minority, whereas obese and overweight people are very much in the majority. Moreover, given that American journalists aren’t required to be fit like members of the military, there’s no reason to think that American journalists are any less fat than their target audience. They’re writing for themselves.
QED:
