CHRISTIAN TOTO: Woke Barbie Bait and Switch in the Works?

It’s not hard to read between the lines. Director/co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig often uses her work to explore gender issues, from “Lady Bird” to “Little Women.” The early previews suggest she did it again.

None of this shares if the movie is good, bad or indifferent. We’ll have to wait until July 21 to find out.

Yet the message discipline for “Barbie’s” marketing team has been nothing short of outstanding. Most potential movie goers won’t read the quotes from Ferrell, Gerwig or Nef. They’ll be too busy sharing the cute clips and frothy trailers on social media.

If “Barbie” is the first woke blockbuster, it’ll be partly thanks to a bait-and-switch press push.

A boffo opening weekend does not a blockbuster make. That takes a lot of positive word of mouth and repeat ticket buyers, and neither of those will show up if the film is a woke disaster. Barbie is also benefiting from the novelty of theater attendees who want to see it the same day as Christopher Nolen’s tough and grim Oppenheimer: What is Barbenheimer? Inside the Double Feature Mania.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Texas bill requiring all schools to have armed security goes into effect this fall.

JOSH BARRO: The Kennedys Were Always Bad.

If you’re going to have dynastic politics, you should have dynasties built around good families who share positive traits, like sobriety, thrift, and public-spiritedness. You know, families like the Romneys. The Kennedys are the opposite of this — they are a cadre of reckless, womanizing, substance-abusing mediocrities of middling IQ, who have produced a staggering array of displays of bad judgment and poor character over the decades, often leading to the deaths of themselves or others. I would not get in a car driven by a member of this family, let alone let them run the government.

You are surely aware of how RFK Jr.’s uncle Ted killed a woman. After a party on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard in 1969, Ted drove his car off a bridge, leaving his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne in the car to die and waiting hours to report the accident to authorities. It’s less likely you know that RFK Jr.’s brother, Joe Kennedy II, also caused a serious car accident near the beach, in his case on Nantucket in 1973. He was driving a Jeep-like vehicle with four seats but seven passengers — “people were hanging all over, some were standing up,” one witness would later tell a court — which he overturned, injuring several of them, including his brother David. Unlike Ted, he didn’t kill anyone, but one of his passengers, Pam Kelley, was paralyzed from the chest down. Joe II was convicted of negligent driving and fined $100. Later, he would be elected to six terms in Congress.

Another one of RFK Jr.’s brothers, Michael — who had served as campaign manager to both Ted and Joe II — died in a ski crash at Aspen Mountain in 1997. Why did he crash into a tree? Because he and two of his other siblings were playing a game of ski football. As the New York Times reported, this was a tradition in Robert Sr.’s branch of the Kennedy family — a dumbass, dangerous thing they’d been doing for decades[.]

And the hits just keep on coming: RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Yes, the Kennedy family is bad. But RFK Jr. says the New York Post story is wrong:

The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 15, 2023

W. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Watergate’s ‘Gift of the Gods:’ The Surprise Disclosure of Nixon’s Tapes, 50 Years On.

The conventional storyline of the Watergate scandal is that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, through their dogged reporting for the Washington Post, uncovered evidence that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.

A more accurate, less mythical interpretation is that the president’s fall was triggered not by newspaper reporters but by a mostly anonymous former White House aide who, 50 years ago, reluctantly told investigators that Nixon had secretly recorded most of his conversations at the White House. The disclosure by Alexander Butterfield in mid-July 1973 altered the complexion and dynamics of Watergate, shifting the scandal to a monthslong drama to pry the tapes from Nixon’s possession.

Butterfield’s surprise revelation about the White House tapes was, according to the late Stanley I. Kutler, Watergate’s preeminent historian, “the gift of the gods.”

Read the whole thing.

QUELLE HORREUR! Cycling’s Governing Body Bars Trans Athletes from Women’s Races.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported in 2019: Motorcyclist Who Identifies As Bicyclist Sets Cycling World Record.

LAZY LEADERSHIP: Eric Adams Blames Media — Again — of Creating Perception NYC is a Dangerous Place.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams basically admitted Wednesday morning that his “mission” is to make people forget about the crime that’s plaguing the city — without actually doing anything about said rising crime. Makes sense for a far-left activist. Diversion and deflection is what they’re good at.

“[M]y mission is to move people from what they felt to what they’re feeling,” Adams said. “And no one can take away the fact this city is humming.”

What does that even mean? In what way is it “humming?” Typically when you say something is “humming,” you’re implying that things are going along smoothly with no issue. That’s simply not the case in Adams’ NYC.

Adams also blamed the media for reporting about “the most horrific events that may happen throughout the previous day” and its contribution to the perception that New York City is dangerous.

You know why? Because it is.

And while the New York Post inexplicably tried to play defense for the crime plaguing the city, their reported stats didn’t do them any favors.

If you’re a Democrat mayor of the media capital of the planet – the New Yorker claimed in March that the city has “a hundred and sixteen” community newspapers – and crime is on the rise, you don’t get to blame newspapers for doing their job, especially when your predecessors knew a thing or two about reducing the problem.

SONNY BUNCH: Tom Cruise, the Living Manifestation of Kino.

Late-stage Mission: Impossible movies are absolutely perfect pop art confections, and Dead Reckoning: Part One is no exception. Imagine The Fast and the Furious series, but good: headlined by a genuine star, featuring coherently shot set pieces, and looking like they exist in something like the real world instead of a CGI-composited bag of garbage. I’m glad Tom Cruise is making them and I’m glad they are resounding successes; theaters need evangelists like Cruise if they are to survive.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sad to see Cruise’s complete absorption into franchise fare over which he has near-total control. Since Edge of Tomorrow, he’s been in precisely one non-franchise feature (American Made); the movie he’s shooting with SpaceX isn’t likely to be that different from the recent Mission: Impossible films.

Such is the way of the world, I suppose; all of Hollywood has been consumed by intellectual property. Perhaps it’s just one final way that Tom Cruise truly is the living manifestation of American cinema.

The latest Mission: Impossible film is also Critical Drinker approved. He compares it to the new Indiana Jones movie, except that the elements that are disastrous in Harrison Ford’s film — the stunts, the age of the lead, his female costar, and the McGuffin — all work in the latest M:I.

DISPATCHES FROM THE STERLING-COOPER AD AGENCY: Is Christina Hendricks the latest Ozempic tragedy?

NO WORD YET IF CHRISTOPHER NOLAN HAS HIRED A PAIR OF B-29s TO DISTRIBUTE THEM TO THEATERS: The Oppenheimer 70mm Film Reel Weighs 600 Pounds and is 11 Miles Long.

RIP: Corvette Legend Reeves Callaway Dead at 75.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Peak Farce Edition.

RON DESANTIS DELIVERS STRONG PERFORMANCE IN TUCKER CARLSON INTERVIEW, THROWS SHADE AT NEWSOM:

Speaking of our porous southern border, DeSantis said he’d call a national emergency on day one and use all the forces at his command to stop the tsunami.

The two also spoke about the threat from China–“at the end of the day, what the CCP respects is hard power,” DeSantis said, adding that Joe Biden is projecting the opposite.

They also talked at length about COVID, energy, Russia, cocaine in the White House, digital currency, parents’ rights, Hunter’s laptop, the economy, and more.

But DeSantis didn’t leave without taking a shot at his cross-country rival, California Governor Gavin Newsom. Should President Biden somehow step out of the race, DeSantis is prepared:

I’m fully prepared to have a Florida-California showdown and let the people choose what’s the better vision for the United States of America, because I’m very confident that the freedom in Florida is what more people would choose rather than the public defecation on the streets of San Francisco. 

That cracked Tucker up.

To me, DeSantis seemed at ease, spoke knowledgeably about the issues, laughed frequently, and didn’t seem awkward at all. That is not an endorsement or an expression of any preference in the GOP presidential primaries, it’s just my opinion about his performance at this event.

Exit quote:

Killer answer, but especially on the necessity of preparation. "You can't wait two years to get your people in place," DeSantis says, if you want to fight the bureaucracy. That's absolutely right. https://t.co/eqtO3j59qR

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 14, 2023

FUNNY, THAT: And Just Like That, It’s No Longer an Insurrection.

.@Timcast cracks up when he notices that Rolling Stone is referring to Jan 6 as “protests” now that they are in the position of defending Ray Epps. pic.twitter.com/5BKhJOY2co

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 13, 2023

KAMALA: “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and REDUCE POPULATION, more of our children can breath clean air and drink clean water.”

WHAT DID THE VP JUST SAY?

KAMALA HARRIS: “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breath clean air and drink clean water.” pic.twitter.com/MbMiDx9Xoc

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 14, 2023

Did she mean “reduce pollution“??

If so, what a Freudian slip!!

Considering the administration is in many ways Obama’s third term, his former “science” “czar,” John Holdren flashes his best Dr. Strangelove smile:  “Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—better known as the ‘science czar’—has been a longtime prophet of environmental catastrophes. Never discouraged but never right. And thanks to resourceful bloggers, you can read excerpts from a hard-to-find book co-authored by Holdren in the late 1970s, called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, online. In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.”

OUT ON A LIMB: Disney’s problem isn’t just that it is woke; it is creatively dead.

Look at this controversy: everybody is focused on the wokeness; fine, whatever. Just as important is that Disney can’t come up with anything but a remake of a movie of which they are apparently ASHAMED. They declare Snow White to be toxic but are too creatively bankrupt to come up with anything but a race-swapped Snow White with an empowerment message that Princes are unnecessary appendages to a strong Latina woman.

Geez. If you dislike Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, make a different movie. You have billions of dollars, after all. But instead, Disney wants to live off the legacy of “white supremacy” while decrying it.

It’s like Ben and Jerry’s wanting everybody else to return “stolen land” but hanging on to its own in order to crank out cash, only worse. Ben and Jerry’s actually has an edible product; Disney is recycling what it claims to be its own trash.

That isn’t just hypocrisy, but pathetic.

Hollywood isn’t incapable of coming up with good stories, and good stories don’t even have to be complicated. Tom Cruise (whose religious beliefs seem utterly bizarre to me, but so what?) knows how to make a good movie. Disney? It recycles its own IP, injects idiotic political messages (Indiana Jones is a pathetic old man who will be upstaged by a personality-free girl boss), and begs you to part with your cash.

I wouldn’t even stream it if I could. Sounds awful, as does every Disney movie of late, and the box office receipts reflect that.

As Spinal Tap’s legendary manager Ian Faith would say, I wouldn’t say that Disney’s audience is shrinking, but I would say it’s becoming…more selective. And Disney will employ plenty of fanbaiting to insult those who point out the corporation’s obsession with sexism, racialism and grooming.

SAN FRANCISCO HAS PASSED DETROIT IN DECLINE, NOW MORPHING INTO GOTHAM CITY: SF business owner patrols neighborhood with imitation gun, ski mask to scare off thieves.

UPDATE: Masked San Francisco Car Break-In Vigilante Arrested, Unmasked.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden stumbles up stairs of Air Force One leaving Finland.

WHERE, HUNTER, FAT? Sorry Democrats, Hunter Biden Is Absolutely on the Ballot in 2024.

An investigation into who left cocaine at the White House wound down this week with the Secret Service throwing up its hands in defeat having failed to identify the culprit. It brought President Biden’s scandal-plagued son is back into the headlines, something that’s become a regular occurrence. There was the laptop filled with pictures of Hunter smoking crack and having sex with prostitutes, then a sweetheart plea deal over tax evasion and a gun charge, and the daughter he fathered out of wedlock who he barred from using his name and whom his father, the President, refuses to acknowledge.

And then there was the phone call he made extorting a Chinese business partner while Joe Biden was vice president. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter wrote.

How much of a liability is Hunter to his father’s 2024 chances?

The Democrats like to cast Hunter as a distraction from his father’s record. But they are deluding themselves. Hunter isn’t just a liability due to his proximity to the President. He’s proof of the double standard at the core of Biden’s career, which might be summed up as, “For my friends, mercy; for my enemies, the law.”

And given his corruption, the (p)resident perceives himself as having many enemies: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Real Photo Disqualified From Photography Contest For Being AI.

A genuine picture taken on an iPhone was thrown out of a photography competition after the judges suspected that it was generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Suzi Dougherty had captured a striking photo of her son with two smartly-dressed mannequins in an intriguing pose while visiting a Gucci exhibition. Happy with her creation, she entered it into a photo competition.

Dougherty didn’t think much more of it until a friend showed her an Instagram post declaring her photo ineligible because the competition’s organizers suspected it to be an AI image.

“I wouldn’t even know how to do an AI photo,” Dougherty tells The Guardian. “I’m just getting my head around ChatGPT.”

There will be much more of this — and the reverse — going forward. (The photo looks like a chavs meets psychedelia remake of The Shining. Which AI will probably generate as well eventually.)

UNEXPECTEDLY: Veteran feds cry foul on White House cocaine probe: ‘This is a cover-up.’

The conclusion of an 11-day Secret Service probe that failed to find which White House staff member or visitor left cocaine in the West Wing looks like a whitewash, former federal investigators told The Post Thursday.

“This is a cover-up. How can they say they have no leads?” one ex-agent said. “It is a restricted area and they have a log book, you don’t have to be Columbo to figure out who was there.

“Suppose it was anthrax,” the same person raged. “Would they have the same answer?”

“We have a tale of two countries,” another former fed said. “They identified hundreds of people who were in the Capitol building on Jan. 6 after an extensive investigation, but they don’t know who left something in an 8 x 10 room in the White House?”

The Secret Service concluded its inquiry Thursday without identifying a suspect, citing “a lack of physical evidence” after FBI forensic testing yielded no fingerprints and insufficient DNA evidence.

In accordance with the prophecy: DC Police Say They May Never Discover Who Left Bag Of Cocaine Labeled ‘Property Of H. Biden’ At White House.

—The Babylon Bee, one week ago.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Journalists Stop By Shelter To Inform Trafficked Children They Are A QAnon Conspiracy.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Disney’s “awokening” the reason it refused to release ‘Sound of Freedom’ for five years?

VIDEO ON IMPLOSION EXPLODES ONLINE: Detailed video showing how Titan sub imploded and killed five men on board becomes YouTube sensation and is watched by 5M people in just 11 days.

HEY, WHEN DID FOX BUTTERFIELD JOIN CNN? California has spent billions to fight homelessness. The problem has gotten worse.

CNN is far from the first outlet to Butterfield homelessness in California. In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

Funny how that keeps happening when spending goes through the roof on homelessness or the unhoused, or whatever the Orwellian term du jour is this week.

ROGER KIMBALL: Milan Kundera’s ‘transcendental buffoonery.’

I was just leaving France when I got the news that that the Czech novelist Milan Kundera had died, aged ninety-four. He had emigrated to Paris in 1975, when he was forty-six, a refugee from the crackdown in Prague following the Russian obliteration of the Prague Spring in 1968. He died in his adopted city on July 11, full of honors but also, or so it seems to me, largely forgotten.

I had not been following Kundera’s work for many years. But there was a moment, in the 1980s, when he was the talk of the posh, intellectual literary town. I wrote a longish essay about him for the New Criterion in 1986. I draw on that work here.

Kundera was in his late thirties when he published his first novel, The Joke, in Prague in 1967. The book traces the fortunes and amours of a young student, Ludvik, after his exasperatingly patriotic girlfriend decides to show the authorities a postcard he had written her as a joke: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.” As a result of this whimsy, Ludvik finds himself expelled from the Communist Party and the university, and is eventually conscripted to work in the mines for several years.

The Soviets and their satellite states really perfected cancel culture: