DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
Median Democrat. https://t.co/VBD0qlD5Oz
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) December 10, 2025
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
December 11, 2025
TRIGGERNOMETRY: Jimmy Carr: A Revolution is Coming!
NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: The Dave Barry 2025 Holiday Gift Guide. This year, give the gift of: Huh?
Thus we can assume that the mood in the stable was already pretty tense when the three Wise Men showed up. The New Testament tells us that they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold makes sense as a gift, but we have to wonder about frankincense and myrrh, which according to Google are kinds of tree resin, a “thick, sticky, semi-liquid substance” excreted by conifers. No doubt the thought was sincere, but this does not seem like a super-appropriate gift for a newborn infant. The last thing you want, as a parent, is for your baby to get his hands on a blob of tree goo.
The New Testament does not say how Mary reacted to these gifts, but if I know anything about women, by which I mean my wife, Mary was mortified that she didn’t have any gifts to exchange with the Wise Men, so she pulled Joseph aside and ordered him to go out immediately, find a conifer and bring back some gift resin. She probably also wrapped the gold in different paper and regifted it to the Wise Men. And thus the holiday tradition of exchanging gifts was born.
Thousands of years later, we’re still dealing with the stress of holiday gift-giving — the constant nagging worry that we won’t have enough gifts to retaliate against everybody who will be giving gifts to us. Wouldn’t it be great if you could drop out of this insane holiday competition? Well you can! The trick is to stop trying to give your loved ones thoughtful and appropriate gifts. Instead, you want to give them gifts that are so stupid or inappropriate that they will never want to exchange gifts with you again, and in fact may enter the Federal Witness Protection Program to avoid running that risk.
Where can you find gifts that bad? Right here, that’s where, in my annual Holiday Gift Guide. This is a carefully curated selection of real products that you can actually buy; in fact these products are all 100 percent tax-deductible if you write about them for business purposes in your professional humor Substack. So grab your credit card and prepare to be underwhelmed, because here comes this year’s lineup of gift candidates, starting with:
THE ORIGINAL TOILET MIRROR
Don’t be fooled by copycat toilet mirrors: This is the original toilet mirror, which is a mirror that comes with some adhesive strips so you can mount it on your toilet lid.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
THE TIPPING POINT: Democrat Congressman: Yes, the US Is the ‘Great Satan.’
Democratic Congressman Calls America 'The Great Satan' in Wild Rant https://t.co/Ran8yn47Nx
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) December 10, 2025
In a sane world, propagandists like Dean Obeidallah would try to find somebody a bit less retarded than Hank Johnson to make the moral case to his audience that Orange Man is being bad by killing terrorists, but we now live in a world where it is pretty normal for lefties to describe America as a Nazi country filled with roving bands of white supremacists killing brown people for sport.
Classical allusion in headline:
NOT LOVING IT: McDonald’s Pulls Christmas Advert After Criticism.
The Netherlands’ division of McDonald’s has pulled its Christmas advert following online backlash over its AI-generated content.
The advert, which was titled “the most stressful time of year,” featured a number of AI-generated people who all experience mishaps in the lead up to the festive season, including an exploding Christmas tree and presents falling off roofs.
In an email shared with Newsweek, a spokesperson for McDonald’s Netherlands said: “The commercial was produced for McDonald’s Netherlands, but we have decided to remove our AI-generated Christmas advert.”
What To Know
The advert faced criticism after it was published and quickly went viral online.
Matt Walsh, a conservative political commentator, wrote on X: “It sucks. It’s awful. There’s no artistry. No wit. No charm. No warmth. No humanity. You can tell it’s AI from a million miles away. I hate it. You should hate it. We should relentlessly mock and deride and bully anyone or any company that uses AI like this.”
The visuals are cringe-inducing, and the message is even worse — why is McDonald’s dismissing the Christmas season as “the most terrible time of the year?”
LOLOLOLOL https://t.co/mMFaxofzLJ
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) December 9, 2025
Merrill Markoe, David Letterman’s former longtime girlfriend and producer, who created the format of his classic NBC late night show, said a decade ago that the postmodern irony that Letterman trafficked in throughout the ’80s had become so omnipresent on TV that it was “the language of advertising and corporate P.R. now:”
It is the voice of what [musician Andy Prieboy of the rock group Wall of Voodoo, her longtime companion] calls “Your buddy the corporation.” Everyone’s hip. Everyone’s ironic. Everyone who is selling you something wants you to know they have the same limitations and daily strife that you do. You definitely should be wary when you hear this voice now. It’s not to be trusted. Unless you’re in the market for an aluminum cookware set or an Apple watch.
The new McDonald’s ad begs the question: How long can that style of corporate irony keep twitching away in the advertising world like a long-dead zombie?
In terms of its visuals, this is the second Christmas-themed AI-generated ad by a world mega-corporation that’s bombed. Will advertisers abandon this format in the short-term until AI becomes harder to detect, or at least smoother in its execution? Great Moments in Quality Control: Coca-Cola’s AI ad just ruined Christmas… again.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of AI:
BREAKING: TIME Person of the Year reportedly leaked. pic.twitter.com/oe3okxsXoZ
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) December 10, 2025
If true, Skynet, Hal, and Colossus are all flashing smiles that would make Gordon Gekko proud.
JAMES MAY FINALLY DRIVES THE NEW PORSCHE 911T:
CHANGE:
Preliminary data on births and fertility show that Trump's mass deportation plan is working.
During Sept.-Oct., the number of foreign-born women having children in the U.S. declined in 41 states.
Free substack article here:https://t.co/dkWJeXGItQ pic.twitter.com/I8T18n3uIW
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) December 9, 2025
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Starfleet Academy — What Is This Garbage? “Is it too much to ask to have a Star Trek that was written by and for adults? Because I have to ask, who in this world or the next was this teen drama of a show made for? I mean, anyone with even a vague understanding of Star Trek is going to be completely and utterly appalled by the weapons-grade retardation on display here. And anyone who’s looking for a high school drama about feelings and relationships is going to be instantly put off by the geeky science fiction backdrop. It really does feel like the worst of both worlds.”
DAVID FRUM GETTING AN EARLY JUMP ON NEXT YEAR:
Begun, the stolen-election theories have. https://t.co/uYlJZGBqOZ
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) December 10, 2025
Hey, you know what would really help prevent Trump from stealing 2026? Who are You? Voter ID law and election integrity should be top priority in new Congress. Voters want it, and with good reason.
JIM GERAGHTY: Wait, You’re Telling Me This Person Is Shifting the Overton Window?
Now I see the New York Times has published a long and mostly positive profile of Jennifer Welch, an interior designer and former Bravo reality TV star, who has co-hosted a podcast since 2022. The Times gushes that Welch is “the rare figure who appeals to the mainstream liberal, angers the Fox News viewer and thrills the dirtbag left. As she challenges Democrats from a more progressive stance, a portrait of Kate Moss in the frame behind her, she provides the sensation of watching the Overton window shift in real time.”
Here’s Welch’s take on Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk:
You are an opportunistic grifter who weaponizes your gender to demean women, and you are a walking, talking, breathing example as to why nobody, number one, wants to be a Christian, and number two, wants to be a female hypocrite such as yourself. . . . This woman should be kicked to the curb.
(The Kirk assassination has really brought out the best in people, huh?)
Welch has argued that Trump voters should be banned from eating at Mexican, Chinese, or Indian restaurants, or using the services of gay hairdressers:
I’ve had it with white people that triple Trumped that have the nerve and the audacity to walk into a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, go to a gay hairdresser. . . . White people that triple Trumped should be boycotted, banned from enjoying the best thing that America has to offer, which is multiculturalism. I don’t think you should be able to enjoy anything but Cracker Barrel.
In an October MSNBC appearance, Welch said that Vice President JD Vance “is married to a woman of Indian descent. He has mixed race children. So to all of the MAGA voters out there, if this man will not defend his wife and will not defend his kids, do you think he gives a crap about you or anything to do with you?”
Last month, the London Telegraph gushed, “This sweary ‘wine mom’ is the Democrats’ answer to Joe Rogan:”
Since starting the I’ve Had It Podcast (IHIP) with her best friend Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, Ms Welch’s expletive-laden rants have seen her gain a loyal following of almost four million and frequent Fox News coverage.
She has attacked Donald Trump, calling him a “teeny weeny mushroom c— piece of s— cankles McTaco t-ts”, said JD Vance is a “smokey eye failed drag queen” and likened Stephen Miller to a “Nazi Jew”.
Ms Welch, 51, and Ms Sullivan, 55, start what they boast is “America’s top DEI podcast” by shouting out “patriots, gaytriots, theytriots, blacktriots and browntriots” and telling those who do not support them to “f— off”.
The so-called “wine moms” have now amassed more than 3.8 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, interviewing some of the biggest Democrats in the business, including Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and Zohran Mamdani.
Geraghty writes that “NPR, the U.K. Daily Telegraph, and the The Guardian have also written positive profiles about Welch.” There’s no doubt that she’s getting massive amounts of hype from her fellow leftists, but nothing in the Telegraph’s profile indicates that the left have figured out how to produce podcasts that appeal to men, unlike Rogan, who was a Bernie-supporting leftist until his party shunned him for not toeing the official line on Covid.
YES, THAT’S THE IDEA: Charlotte Sheriff Gripes That Iryna’s Law Is Likely to Overcrowd Jails.
Talk about having your priorities completely out of order. The sheriff for the North Carolina city that became infamous for the race-fueled, deadly stabbing of Iryna Zarutska is angry that so many crimes are occurring in his city, but not for the reason you’d think.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden complained that Iryna’s Law will overcrowd the jails. He said this days after another train stabbing. So it would seem he has no issue with criminals sticking knives into innocent victims, so long as they don’t fill up his jail. Talk about a sheriff unfit for duty. To make the situation even more shameful, the sheriff whined about how many people saw the video of Iryna getting stabbed and acted as if the judges that social media users criticized were more worthy of pity than Iryna.
Sheriff McFadden acted as if Iryna’s grisly death at the hands of serial criminal Decarlos Brown Jr. — simply because she was white — were somehow a plot to make his life difficult. “And we believe that the only reason that this caught national attention is because it was caught on video and it was displayed across the United States, and our local politicians at that time saw it was a political agenda, or they could highlight her as a refugee and not an immigrant,” he griped at a press conference. “This is why they created Iryna’s Law.”
And boy, is he angry that criminals will be sent to jail instead of being allowed to roam free and commit crimes over and over and over. You see, Iryna’s Law imposes stricter penalties for violent offenders and repeat offenders before pre-trial release, in some cases preventing them from pre-trial release altogether.
Sheriff McFadden is the latest leftist to stumble into the world of Fox Butterfield: “‘The Butterfield Effect’ is named in honor of ace New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, the intrepid analyst responsible for such brilliantly headlined stories as ‘More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime,’ and ‘Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction,’ not to mention the poetic 1997 header, ‘Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.’”
I’ll TAKE HEADLINES FROM 1943 FOR $500, ALEX: Porsches Across Russia Suddenly Stop Working.
Hundreds of Porsche cars have stopped working in Russia due to an issue with a satellite-based security system, according to local reports.
Owners reported various issues with their vehicles, including not being able to start the engine, or it shutting down soon after ignition. Others said that they had been locked out of their cars.
The root cause of the issue is not yet known, though a representative for Russia’s largest dealership group told local media that it could be an act of sabotage.
“It’s possible this was done deliberately,” the Rolf spokesperson told the RBC news website, without providing any evidence.
There is no official support for Russian Porsche owners after the German manufacturer suspended commercial operations in the country following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
To be fair, Porsches have a long history of being surprisingly unreliable in Russia: Elefant Tank Destroyer: Ferdinand Porsche’s Epic Fail That Got Its Butt Kicked at Kursk.
HAMAS CAPTURES HOBOKEN! Palestinian Flag-Raising In Hoboken Draws Ire From Mayor-Elect Jabbour.
HOBOKEN, NJ — Hoboken’s next mayor has blasted the current city administration for raising the Palestinian flag in front of City Hall without input from other officials.
As the conflict in Gaza continues, a number of events related to Israel and Palestine have raised controversy around the region.
As Mayor Ravi Bhalla finishes his last full month in office, Mayor-Elect Emily Jabbour blasted his decision to raise the flag on Tuesday.
“Today, we are seeing first-hand the repercussions of decisions made without a larger community conversation, and without any engagement with myself or my council colleagues,” Jabbour said in a social media post on Tuesday afternoon. (See the post below.)
Local resident Audrey Truschke said in response, “The Palestinian flag raising was organized by an informal group of Hoboken residents from diverse backgrounds. City Hall selected the date.
“Mayor-elect Jabbour’s arm-jerk reaction against a basic show of solidarity with a beleaguered people shows that she is out of touch with her constituents, who requested this flag raising. It also suggests that she lacks empathy. I hope she displays better judgment as mayor than she has as mayor-elect in this situation.”
What is an “arm-jerk reaction?” Is she implying something like this?
If only there was a way for mayors to avoid this sort of unnecessary controversy. If only:
Maybe then we should chill with all these flags. Too risky. A USA flag, a NJ flag and maybe the new mayor can initiate a citywide contest to design a Hoboken flag— and that’s it. Nothing else goes up that pole.
— David Brown (@thatDavidBrown) December 9, 2025
December 9, 2025
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Non-Binary Teacher Cites Personal Safety Concerns to Avoid Director’s Child, Sparking Legal Action.
I almost can't believe I'm typing this. A 5th grade gender-nonbinary teacher in Tumwater, WA, did not want to teach the 10-year-old son of a conservative school board member, citing safety concerns. Mx. TJ Thornton requested the school craft a policy to "help mitigate the… pic.twitter.com/1ut6uS8AYX
— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) December 8, 2025
Does the reverse work as well?
ACE OF SPADES: Paramount/Skydance Launches Hostile Takeover Bid for Warner Bros.
David Ellison is reportedly trying to induce Trump to block the Netflix buyout by promising that if he gets hold of Warner Bros. — and its failing “news” channel CNN — he’ll remake CNN into a fair and balanced network.
Paramount CEO David Ellison assured Trump officials that if the government OKs his company’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) he would overhaul the president’s media arch nemesis — CNN.
Netflix announced last Friday it reached a deal to acquire Warner and HBO properties for $72 billion – but Paramount immediately launched a hostile counterbid, taking its case directly to shareholders.
The Netflix-WBD merger is facing a stiff challenge from Paramount, whose majority shareholder is the billionaire Donald Trump ally, Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
On Monday, Paramount made its move, offering $77.9 billion in all-cash and urging Warner shareholders to reject the Netflix deal.
On a recent visit to Washington, DC, Ellison’s son David told Trump’s team he would impose sweeping changes at CNN if he purchased its parent company WBD, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
David’s father Larry discussed firing hosts like Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar – figures Trump dislikes – with White House officials during takeover bid talks last month, the Guardian reported.
Is that true? No idea. I do know that if you really were making this offer you would want to do it privately, not publicly, with the Wall Street Journal notified. Because the president isn’t supposed to approve or nix mergers based on his personal or political self-interest. By making this supposed offer so public, it basically stops Trump from even considering taking the alleged “deal.”
It could be that Netflix, not Ellison, is pushing this story out there to pressure Trump to approve their own bid.
Leftwing movie review[er] Grace Randolf claimed that Warner Discovery shareholders are faced with two repellent options — accept Netlix’s deal and “kill the theater business,” or accept Ellison’s deal and (horrors!) put two movie studios under the control of a “conservative” man friendly to Trump.
Quelle horreur! Wait until Randolf that the movie industry only exists today because it was created by and under the control of conservative men for the first 60 years or so of the industry’s lifespan.
COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STRUGGLE SESSION CONCLUDES: CBS News has picked Tony Dokoupil as ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor: source.
New @PuckNews: Tony Doukopil will be next anchor of CBS Evening News. @tonydokoupil
Bari Weiss & Tom Cibrowski expected to make announcement tomorrow.
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) December 9, 2025
According to the London Independent, their fellow lefties across the big pond at CBS are not happy: CBS News staff grouse over ‘mediocre’ Tony Dokoupil getting ‘Evening News’ gig: ‘It’s an insult.’
Many staffers at CBS News are not thrilled with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss tapping Tony Dokoupil as the next anchor of the network’s flagship nightly news broadcast, describing the CBS Mornings host as a “mediocre straight white man” who only got the job because his views align with Weiss’ pro-Israel stance.
“It’s an insult to the storied news giants who came before him,” one CBS News reporter told The Independent.
Well, I certainly hope so, given how in thrall to the institutional left those “giants” were for about 70 years or so.
Flashback to October of last year: CBS Rebukes [Dokoupil] Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates.
FASTER, PLEASE: Going Hypersonic: A Look at the Record-setting X-15.
JUST DON’T MENTION THE WAR:
talking about free speech in america vs. europe is like "in germany you can be jailed for making fun of politicians," and europeans responding with a one-off story about a guy 'arrested for critiquing trump' who… actually planted a pipe bomb or threatened to shoot up a school.
— Mike Solana (@micsolana) December 9, 2025
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY:
“Actually, DEI was designed to benefit white men” is a headline that would never make it through the editorial process at any halfway-honest paper. Embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/dmN0aSVOUy
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) December 5, 2025
IT IS TIME FOR US TO DO WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING. AND THAT TIME IS EVERY DAY:
Truly, she is the Alben W. Barkley of our time https://t.co/wZLXdV8w63
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 9, 2025
JIM GERAGHTY: Hollywood Only Has Itself to Blame for Industry Woes.
Speaking of superhero blockbusters, we should take a moment to stare in amazement at how Disney has managed to take not one but two of the all-time most popular franchises, a pair of toy- and merchandise-selling golden geese, and run both of them into the ground. There was a time not that long ago — 2019, when Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame was released — when it looked like the Marvel superhero movies and the Star Wars films would make billions, year after year, for the foreseeable future.
Chalk it up to the “M-She-U,” or the retirement of popular characters and actors, or the rapid proliferation of Marvel shows on Disney Plus, but the magic is gone; there’s nowhere near the sense of a Marvel movie being a must-see as there was before the Covid-19 interruption.
Your mileage may vary, but I actually feel like Marvel has enjoyed a comeback in quality this year with Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. By the standards of other movies, they did okay; Thunderbolts is the 12th highest-grossing movie of 2025 with $190 million in the domestic box office, and Fantastic Four ranks 7th at $274 million. But by the standards of previous Marvel movies, they’re flops.
Star Wars hasn’t released a movie in theaters since before the pandemic. In May, we will get The Mandalorian and Grogu, featuring characters from a Disney Plus television show that was beloved by fans for about two seasons, then bizarrely careened off the rails in its third. Again, your mileage may vary, but the trailer for the forthcoming movie looks astonishingly “meh” for a Star Wars movie.
Finally, this complaint is the most nebulous, but I feel like the entire storytelling culture of Hollywood’s creative class is broken. This tweet from Riley Hale spoke to me:
Hollywood removed the hero’s journey, masculinity, redemption, sacrifice, and beauty standards in 2025, then wondered why global box office fell 18 percent and no film cracked $1 billion. . . . The same industry that spent a decade lecturing audiences on “problematic” tropes now releases 400 movies a year that nobody wants to watch. They didn’t just kill the blockbuster. They sterilized the entire reason humans ever told stories in the first place.
I notice that Amazon’s Reacher was one of the biggest streaming hits of the year, and in a lot of ways, it’s an “old-fashioned” show. A big burly hero, played with a lot of charm by Alan Ritchson, gets ensnared in a mystery and constantly runs into thugs and villains who look at the 6’3”, 240-pound former military police investigator Jack Reacher and think, “Oh yeah, I can take this guy in a fistfight.” As you can imagine, it almost never goes well for them.
So, yes, Hollywood and the movie business have a lot of problems. But one of the biggest and most glaring ones is that they stopped making movies that people enjoy watching.
Marvel and Star Wars at Disney, and Star Trek at Paramount, are reminders of how badly the producers of these originally male-oriented franchises absolutely hate their core audiences with a white-hot passion…
…And then they feign cluelessness when the feeling is mutual:
IT’S A MIXED UP, MUDDLED UP, SHOOK UP WORLD, EXCEPT FOR LOLA: Netflix Mocked For Film About Trans-Identifying Coal Miner Fighting The Patriarchy.