HOW IT STARTED: Ron DeSantis loses again to Disney.

—Young adult Website* Vox.com, April 20th.

How it’s going: Disney CEO Bob Iger Plans to ‘Quiet the Noise’ in Culture War.

—NRO, yesterday.

* Classical reference.

ORWELL WOULD LOATHE TODAY’S LEFT:

SUNLIGHT IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT:

In a shocking turn of events, Community Notes are more trustworthy than Randi Weingarten. https://t.co/t6wHpnKeEc pic.twitter.com/FuHGTDxaMf

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) September 20, 2023

Details here: Texas teacher fired for reading graphic adaptation of Diary of Anne Frank — headlines are deceiving.

This controversy isn’t even a new one. Other school boards have complained about this version. Why? Well, because the word vagina is used, Anne mentions she asked a friend to look at each other’s breasts, and she talks about menstruation. She also doesn’t approve of her father’s marriage, apparently. None of this is shocking stuff for a girl who received a diary on her 13th birthday and becomes curious about her body and growing up. She wrote about these things in her diary. Her father was given Anne’s diary upon her death and he worked to organize the papers and get the diary published. He didn’t include the more controversial material. He had editorial control of the manuscript.

* * * * * * * *

I’m a reader. I don’t like book bans. It’s an individual’s choice whether to read a book or not. In the case of school assignments, it’s different. Young children have no business reading soft porn in classrooms. Teachers have to use discretion, as do school boards. I’m coming down on the side of letting eighth graders read the graphic adaption. Anne Frank was 14 when she wrote this. Eighth grade students are 13-14 years old. Anne was their age when she wrote it. It isn’t some pervy adult writer trying to indoctrinate children.

According to some reports, the teacher asked for a discussion on molestation. That’s a bridge too far. She should have known better. She showed poor judgement.

Indeed.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN GASLIGHTING YOUR INTERVIEWEES:

THIS IS THE WAY🔥. The media is the enemy of the people and deserve to be clowned and exposed! https://t.co/jX6Q6xJJDV

— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) September 20, 2023

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The NSFW chatbot app hooking Gen Z on AI boyfriends.

Over the summer, the ChatGPT-powered platform Janitor AI burst onto the scene, its sudden popularity fueled by TikTok videos and Reddit posts of people engaging in sexual roleplay with the platform’s plethora of user-generated bot personalities.

The fictionalized personas range from handsome anime crushes to busty furry characters. Users create elaborate prompts directing how the bots should behave. One made-up personality is Arius, a “quiet ghost” from the 1800s who will only tell you how he died if you are his lover. He dislikes hell, ouija boards, and meth, and likes being around you because it “makes him feel alive again.”

“‘You’re so f**king hot,’ he muttered, kissing along her neck again,” reads one conversation with a “himbo werewolf boyfriend” named Milo Grayson. “I could fill you with my seed again and again.”

It’s the kind of material that’s testing the limits of major AI platforms and forcing them to decide how much they want to police the use of their technology as demand for it explodes. OpenAI, which has been proactive in cracking down on “not safe for work” content, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Janitor AI’s owners in July.

That spurred Janitor AI creator Jan Zoltkowski to decide to build his own large language model. He began pitching investors on the idea, initially with the help of “pharma bro” and convicted felon Martin Shkreli.

The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.

THE SENATE DRESS CODE IS NOT THE ISSUE:

Much like how an entire kindergarten class must accommodate one problem child who refuses to do his work unless his own special conditions are met, we are being misled once again under the guise of a dress code. The Senatorial dress code is not the issue. The issue is the ongoing deception by John Fetterman, his family, his office and the media who will go to the lengths of bullying their own colleagues should they dare report on the accurate nature of Fetterman’s abilities. NBC reporter Dasha Burns interviewed Fetterman during his campaign and was labeled an “ableist” by Fetterman’s wife Gisele, who said Burns’s truthful representation of John Fetterman was “appalling.”

The question is simple: can John Fetterman perform basic tasks, such as showing up to vote (he shouts his vote through a doorway) or putting on a suit like a healthy, functioning adult, without work restrictions, as his campaign promised back in October? If he can’t do these things, then why did his campaign, aided by a willing media, tell the voters of Pennsylvania that he could? Does John Fetterman require in-home assistance to perform even basic tasks, like feeding or dressing himself? Is he able to tie a tie?

Related: Fetterman Nation. Schlub-wear is comfy, but maybe put on a suit now and then.

FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN! Man Ticketed Seven Times for Flying Anti-Biden Flag Scores Huge Victory Over Town.

[Ross] Brunet, a construction contractor, routinely worked on the island of Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The island had in place an ordinance that barred displays that the community deemed obscene.

According to NBC News, the flags read, “F*** Biden” and “f*** you for voting for him.”

From 2021 to 2022, Brunet flew three flags in total from his work truck — two of which were aimed at Biden and another that called for breast cancer awareness, The Independent reported.

He was given a total of seven citations.

The Tulane First Amendment Law Clinic filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of Brunet in federal court.

In the lawsuit, attorneys for Brunet argued he was cited out of an attempt by the community to stifle his free speech.

The suit prevailed, and not only will Brunet receive a settlement of $40,000 but Grand Isle has also agreed to rescind the ordinance.

Grand Isle will also pay Brunet’s legal fees.

Needless to say, if the same messages were anti-Trump, anti-Bush or anti-DeSantis oriented, Brunet would be feted by the left for his righteous protests against the Establishment.

MICHAEL WALSH: First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce.

To us veteran Boomers, who have watched the children of the Left marching, singing, sloganeering, protesting, advocating, whining, whinging, stamping, stomping, shrieking, and generally carrying on like spoiled two-year-olds raised by Marxist nannies for more than half a century, there’s nothing new under the sun. Back in the Sixties when this sort of European-style political demonstration was new, the whole thing ended in tragedy at Kent State in May of 1970, when the flower children learned the hard way that you shouldn’t throw rocks at guys with guns. Today, the truth of Marx’s dictum — history repeats, first time as tragedy, second time as farce — continues in the impotent tantrums of those who would Just Stop Oil.

Aye, there’s the farce.

Alas, some grownups have refused to spank their children and in fact facilitate their mental and emotional breakdowns by indulging them. This week is “Climate Week,” which coincides with the opening of the increasingly fascistic U.N. — what was once an international organization run by the victorious World War II powers has now degenerated into a Third World grievance fest — during which the world’s Makers will again be browbeaten by the far more numerous Takers. Having first posited a counter-factual (the existence of “climate change”), they have proceeded to act on it as if it were real, offering all sorts of crackpot and cockamamie “solutions” that include a regression to sunshine and windmills, but pointedly do not include nuclear power, which gives their Luddite game away: they are opposed to anything that actually works and in favor of archaic and inadequate tech that history has long passed by. They are, in short, opposed to anything that makes your life easier and in favor of anything that makes you suffer.

Read the whole thing.

KILLING AMERICA: The Democrat Party Gets Fully Exposed In Mark Levin’s Astonishing Bestseller.

QUESTION ASKED: Does John Fetterman Really Want to Be a Senator?

Fetterman doesn’t want to be judged by his wardrobe. Okay. Let’s look at his record since joining the Senate.

So far in his Senate career, Fetterman has missed 33.4 percent of the Senate votes. He is the chamber’s second-most absent member, behind Dianne Feinstein of California, who has missed 46.3 percent of the votes this session. Much of Fetterman’s absence was during his six-week stay at Walter Reed Medical Center in treatment for clinical depression — he missed 85 percent of the votes in February and March. But not all of it was from that time period; Fetterman also missed 13 percent of the votes from July to September.

On July 19, he missed a vote to require the president to consult Congress before withdrawing from NATO. On July 11, he missed a confirmation vote on Xochitl Torres Small to be deputy secretary of Agriculture. And two days later, he missed confirmation votes for Kalpana Kotagal to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and David M. Uhlmann to be assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Confirmation votes like those are not the most exciting, dramatic, or consequential tasks of a senator, but they are part of the job. I would have figured that a guy who missed so many votes out of the gate would have tried to avoid missing many more for the rest of the session. The U.S. Senate has a lot of “state work periods” in which lawmakers aren’t in session, and the chamber rarely holds floor votes before Monday night or after Thursday evening. It’s not like Fetterman has the commuting challenges of senators from Hawaii, Alaska, or the West Coast.

In that New York Times interview in July, Fetterman did not sound like he was enjoying his new life as a senator. He told the paper that he thinks the Senate has “a fixation on a lot of dumb s***. Bad performance art is really what it gets down to.”

Exit quote: “Put Fetterman in a suit, where he can’t show off the arm tattoos, and he’s just a really tall, really big, bald senator.”

In accordance with the prophecy: Fetterman Prepares For Senate Job With New Dress Hoodie.

BIDEN’S DEFENDERS ARE BLOWING SMOKE:

The interview ended after [James] Risen cast himself as a fearless journalist whose exoneration of Biden should have special weight because he had written one of the first articles, back in 2015 for the New York Times, addressing Hunter’s dealings in the Ukraine. I’m familiar with his piece and told him it reflected the problem with so much mainstream reporting on Hunter’s position on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma: It noted the company’s shady history but dug no deeper as it regurgitated spin concocted by the company, Hunter, and his team.

While we now know that Hunter was paid the princely sum of $83,000 per month for his service, I reminded Risen that he simply quoted a Burisma spokesperson who said Hunter’s pay was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions. I also pointed out that he merely quoted a Burisma spokesperson who suggested Hunter was brought on to help with “strong corporate governance and transparency.” This seems fanciful on its face. As Lee Fang reported this week for RealClearInvestigations, emails from Hunter’s laptop show his employment was connected to lobbying efforts in Washington and access to his father.

In response, Risen said he refused to be “insulted,” and hung up the phone.

Read the whole thing.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE A-BOMB: For filmmakers, ‘Oppenheimer’s’ $900M-plus haul is an important moment for Hollywood and theaters.

Hopes were always high for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” The studio knew the film was great, and commercial. But no one in the industry expected that a long, talky, R-rated drama released at the height of the summer movie season would earn over $900 million at the box office.

After an early screening, “ Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve said he knew he’d just seen “a masterpiece.” He even remembered saying that it would be a big success.

“But where it is right now has blown the roof off of my projection,” Villeneuve told The Associated Press. “It’s a three-hour movie about people talking about nuclear physics.”

Based on a book co-written by a pair of far left former Nation editors, to boot.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA GERMANY: WTF, Braun?

This time the malefactor is Braun, which makes stylish products that overpromise and underdeliver, all at a price that will break the bank for ordinary folks like you and me.

Budweiser got into hot beer over its decision to use the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to advertise its beer, so Braun had to go one better.

It is using a post-op trans-“man” posing shirtless while using a Braun shaver to get that silky smooth skin which she sacrificed by taking testosterone.

BRAUN 🪒 features a transgender biological female with double mastectomy scars in their new shaving advert for their men’s shaving range. pic.twitter.com/TYD01CEkdl

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) September 19, 2023

Braun was started in 1921 in Frankfurt, Germany. To paraphrase Mark Steyn, you can take the brand out of Weimar, but you can’t take the Weimar out of the brand.

DNC-MSM START TO NOTICE THE (P)RESIDENT IS A DESICCATED CABBAGE: Flashing Red Lights: CBS Airs Story on Voters Being Concerned About Biden’s Age.

Monday’s CBS Mornings decided to do its best David Ignatius impression by providing their liberal viewership with what could only be described as flashing emergency lights in the form of CBS’s latest polling showing that not only did former President Trump have a one-point national lead over President Biden, but it showed only 34 percent of voters believed Biden could finish a second term (which would end in 2028).

The chyron tried to cloak the issue in a both-sides problem given Trump was only three years younger and would also be an octogenarian if he were to receive another term (which he’d be limited to given he served from 2017-2021): “Age a Concern in Presidential Race; CBS News Poll Shows Voters Concerned About Candidates’ Ages”.

So if Biden is being eased out, who will replace him? Ted Cruz’s Prediction on How Michelle Obama Could Be the Democratic Nominee Makes a Scary Amount of Sense.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Oakland restaurants say they’re on the brink of extinction.

IT’S STATUE REMOVAL SEASON AGAIN – GEORGE WASHINGTON ON THE LIST:

If New York City were truly committed to “repairing the harms” done by dead people who lived by a different code, City Council would get rid of the George Washington Bridge (the GW) and the Lincoln Tunnel. Lincoln didn’t free the slaves, after all. AND, the Frederick Douglass statue was already torn down. They were compatriots.

Give them time; they’ll be renamed eventually.

THE JOURNOLIST IS HOPPING: Ray Epps Charged with a Single Misdemeanor for Ringleading January 6th Breach, For Which He Has Worked Out a Plea Deal; Media Pretends This Disproves “Conspiracy Theories” That He’s a Fed, Rather Than Confirming Them.

THE MASTERS OF DISASTER: Destroyer of California Newsom Hails Destroyer of America Biden.

The Daily Caller reported Monday that Newsom sat down with CNN propagandist Dana Bash to declare his undying love for Old Joe and The Cackler. It’s unclear what game Newsom is playing at this point, but it may be that he is presenting himself as the insider, the loyalist, who will be a safe choice (as opposed to the renegade Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) for the political elites if they decide that they can’t keep up the Biden charade any longer, that Kamala is never going to cut it on the big stage, and that Michelle Obama just can’t be persuaded to become her husband’s new mouthpiece.

Bash asked Newsom if voters had any “reason to be concerned” about Old Joe’s advanced age; she didn’t say anything about Biden’s even more advanced incapacity, but Newsom did his best to address both Old Joe’s age and his ability. “Voters have every right to be concerned,” Newsom began generously, and then audaciously invoked the sainted father of the party’s current bad-boy outsider: “I remember Bobby Kennedy said it best, what the world needs are the qualities of youth, not a time of life, but a state of mind. A quality of imagination.”

Was Newsom saying with a straight face that the dementia-addled Biden’s “state of mind” reflected “the qualities of youth”? Why, yes. Newsom himself had the “quality of imagination” necessary to construct a fictional Biden for Dana Bash’s witless leftist audience. He continued with rising enthusiasm, “I couldn’t imagine three years ago that this president could accomplish so much in such a short period of time. I mean that.” Of course. If an open Southern border, international humiliation in the Afghanistan withdrawal, and ever-rising gas prices and overall inflation were the goal, then Old Joe has done a bang-up job indeed.

Of course, they’re far from alone in wanting to further wreck the economy: RFK Jr. Is a Crazy Left-Winger.

RIP: Sammy Ash, the US gear retail legend who gave the Tube Screamer its name, dies aged 65.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: A Kansas City mom was shot in the chest by car thieves. Now, she is suing Hyundai.

BLESS HIS HEART: Howard Stern Proudly Declares He’s ‘Woke, Motherf*cker!’

Howard Stern says critics calling him “woke” are actually paying him a compliment.

Stern discussed the topic on the Monday edition of The Howard Stern Show. Stern played a clip from a fan’s YouTube video in which the fan stated that he’s a big fan of Stern but said the radio host had gone “woke.”

“I hear that a lot that I’m not good anymore because I’m woke,” Stern said.

“By the way, I kind of take that as a compliment, that I’m woke. I’ll tell you how I feel about it. To me the opposite of woke, is being asleep. And if woke means I can’t get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or I’m for the vaccine, dude call me woke as you fucking want,” Stern declared.

“I’m not for stupidity, you know. I ran out Friday morning. I was over at CVS. Thank you, CVS. I went over there 9 a.m. and got myself that new vaccine for Covid. Fucking science. This fucking country is so great,” Stern celebrated.

Stern says he loves being woke.

Exit question: What Happened to Howard Stern?

UPDATE: Howard Stern’s Criticism of Lauren Boebert May Be the Biggest Self-Awareness Failure in History.

(Updated and bumped.)

¡NO PASARÁN!: The Important Russell Brand Detail that “Innocent Until Proven Guilty“ People Are Missing.

As Utah’s Jim Ballard joins the conservatives accused by — anonymous — women of sexual harassment, an important detail with regards to Russell (@rustyrockets) Brand that at least some “innocent until proven guilty“ people seem to be missing:

The extreme sexualization that we have gone through since the Left came to power in the 1960s along with — this is much rarely mentioned — the Left’s concurrent weaponization of its (unarguably pleasurable) consequences.

Society has become highly sexualized, including in high school, and now, even at a younger age (drag queen shows, anyone?), and then we wonder that women and men alike, not to mention boys and girls alike (as mentioned, below the age of 16), start engaging in this pursuit of pleasure.

Then, the height of hypocrisy: The left’s Drama Queens for whom it used to be a melodrama that sex wasn’t open and free, now start using the loosening of morals as another melodrama, although of course only or mainly against conservatives.

In the Left’s worldview, Deserving Dreamers (male or female) constantly need to be defended against or join the fight against Despicable Deplorables.

Thus, #metoo was basically a weapon against Donald Trump — even though the #left knew it would invariably have to sacrifice some foot soldiers (a movie producer, a senator, etc) in the process. Later, it was Judge Kavanaugh…

Insofar as none of these females filed any accusations within a year — or even within 10 years — of the occurrences, I consider Russell Brand nothing but innocent.

Silicon Valley disagrees, alas: YouTube Demonetizes Russell Brand Over Alleged Sexual Misconduct From Decade Ago.

BLOCKBUSTER NEWS! Ryan got his wish! Vanna White extends Wheel of Fortune contract with ‘substantial pay increase.’

BOMB CANADA: THE CASE FOR WAR. Canada’s bans on children’s classics reveals the authoritarianism behind woke censorship.

Ronald Reagan famously said the most terrifying sentence in the English language was “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Maybe that’s why, anytime I hear the word “ministry” — that is, when it refers to a government department rather than a religious congregation — my hackles raise, both as a person and as an artist. So, when I read that the Ontario Ministry of Education has issued a “decree,” I knew it was going to be yet another example of soulless bureaucracy invading creativity and freedom. And indeed it was.

As reported in the Post Millennial, the Ontario Ministry of Education has decided that “all books available to students are [to be] inclusive” and in line with the notion of “equity.” The Peel District School Board took this to their dark, bureaucratic heart, and decided to remove books such as The Diary of Anne Frank, the Harry Potter series, and — quelle horreur — Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s probably useless to ask why Carle’s classic and beloved children’s book would be one of the choices. Perhaps the caterpillar’s eating habits, which lead him to become rather big, encourage fat-shaming.

After the various complaints as well as criticism from Ontario Education Minister, the Peel District School Board reversed the decision, but refused to accept any culpability. After all, they were just following orders as laid out by the Ontario Ministry of Education. And to be fair, given how vague the guidelines were, maybe the librarians shouldn’t be blamed. They were instructed to sift through all of the books published prior to 2008, and determine if there was anything offensive or unpleasant in them, based on an ideology that is deliberately constructed to find everything offensive.

You went full Fahrenheit 451, Ontario. Never go full Fahrenheit 451:

“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator.”

—Captain Beatty, fireman Guy Montag’s boss, in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, 1953.

As Ryan Holiday noted in a 2015 New York Observer article titled “The Real Reason We Need to Stop Trying to Protect Everyone’s Feelings,” “In the 50th anniversary edition, Bradbury includes a short afterword where he gives his thoughts on current culture. Almost as if he is speaking directly about the events above, he wrote: ‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’”

(Classical reference in headline.)

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden short-circuits during UN speech then gets in a fight with his teleprompter … and loses (watch).

Biden says he wants to work with China on "accelerating the climate crisis" pic.twitter.com/EWxRdvyuew

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 19, 2023

Why oh why can’t his handlers get the adrenochrome dosage right on road trips?