Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

March 15, 2026

AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES MEL BROOKS: Bernie Sanders*-backed Senate hopeful backtracks on apology for ‘Nazi skull’ tattoo insisting it’s an ’eminently reasonable skull-and-crossbones.’

A Democrat running for Senate in Maine who previously apologized for a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol is now defending the design as nothing more than a skull-and-crossbones.

Graham Platner, who hopes to run against incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, was mired in scandal last year when it was revealed he has a tattoo on his chest resembling the Nazi ‘Totenkopf’ or ‘death’s head’ symbol adopted by Hitler’s SS.

He has since had it altered to resemble some kind of animal.

At first Platner apologized, saying he didn’t realize the symbol was associated with Nazism, and promised he’d get it removed.

But in an interview this week with news blog Zeteo, Platner pushed back, defending the tattoo as merely a ‘skull-and-crossbones’ and ‘an eminently reasonable thing’.

At the beginning of the month, I wrote that perhaps Platner should deploy the Mel Brooks crisis PR handbook. The 1963 comedy album, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks at the Canne Film Festival kicked off thusly (audio available at the Wayback Machine):

CARL REINER: Sir, sir, you’re wearing your bathing suit, I noticed.

BROOKS: Yes, yes.

REINER: And as you scratched your head, I noticed a little “SS” tattooed under your arm. What does that mean?

MEL BROOKS: Oh, oh, oh, well, wait! That’s the Simon Says!  Umm, umm, Simon Says, we played that on the beach. I’m the captain of the Simon Says team! And that’s where we get SS from! I’m serious about the game, I love it, and so I had myself tattooed, “Simon Says!”

I didn’t expect for Platner to do exactly that. 

* Bernie Sanders, you say? Kevin Williamson, call your office: Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nationalism and Socialism.

You too, Chris Matthews! Chris Matthews compares Bernie’s likely victory in Nevada to the Nazis conquering France in 1940.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN VICTIMHOOD: Rachel Zegler Claims She Grew Up Without Latina Beauty Icons in Media — Reality Tells a Very Different Story.

Zegler was born in 2001, meaning her teenage years would roughly span 2014 to 2020.

By that point, Latina representation in entertainment and beauty media had already been widespread for more than two decades.

Some of the most recognizable Latina actresses and pop culture icons during that era included:

  • Jennifer Lopez, a global superstar who appeared on countless magazine covers including Vogue, People, and Harper’s Bazaar while also leading major Hollywood films.
  • Salma Hayek, the Oscar-nominated star of Frida and longtime beauty and fashion icon.
  • Jessica Alba, one of Hollywood’s biggest actresses of the 2000s with films like Fantastic Four and Sin City.
  • Eva Longoria, the face of Desperate Housewives and twice named Maxim’s No. 1 “Hot 100” woman.
  • Penélope Cruz, an Oscar-winning actress and longtime ambassador for the global beauty brand L’Oréal.
  • Rosario Dawson, known for major roles in Men in Black II and Sin City.
  • Michelle Rodriguez, a longtime star of the Fast & Furious series and numerous action films.
  • America Ferrera, who became a breakout television star in Ugly Betty in 2006.

Meanwhile, Latina representation in the modeling and beauty industry was also highly visible.

Dolores Del Río, Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino), Rita Moreno (born Rosa Dolores Alverío Marcano), Raquel Welch (born Jo Raquel Tejada), Lynda Carter, and Sofia Vergara would like a word here as well.

Posted at 6:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

“BIRDS FLY FREE, THE [AIR MOBILITY COMMAND] DOESN’T:”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

SASHA STONE: How the Oscars Made Everyone Hate Them.

Nothing gets better clicks and views than hating on the Oscars. It’s an annual ritual by now, as the wealthy and privileged parade about in their finery, an entire ecosystem is dedicated to dunking on them. It seems to be almost a sadistic pleasure by now. The more embarrassing the Oscars are, the better to dig in with a knife and fork.

Most people who watch on Sunday night will be hate-watching. Either because they can’t stand the movies on offer, or they can’t stand the celebrities who have become too political of late to tolerate. It’s a thousand Vanessa Redgraves and no Paddy Chayefskys.

Read the whole thing.

Related:

 

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

GRAUNIAD DECLARES WAR ON LOCAL BAKERY! A corner of north London where food has become a battleground in the Israel-Gaza war.

The cafe itself has existed since the 1980s, proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage, and has long attracted a small but loyal clientele. In recent years, however, a number of predators have appeared on its doorstep. Costa Coffee arrived a decade ago. Starbucks and Greggs followed soon after. Then, a few weeks ago, on the site of the former corner shop two doors down, came a new branch of the upmarket bakery, Gail’s.

Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence. In recent years, however, as the brand has expanded to almost 200 shops across the UK, its presence has become increasingly contested. Critics accuse it of accelerating gentrification and squeezing out smaller outlets. Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.

The night before it was due to open, Gail’s was daubed with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and “fuck Bain Capital” were written on its walls. To date, no arrests have been made. A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews has described it as “part of a wider trend to try to drive Jews out of wider civil society” (Gail’s was founded by an Israeli baker in the 1990s). The local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign made it clear it had no involvement. It should scarcely require saying that Mahmoud, a mild-mannered man in his 60s, had nothing to do with it. “We compete with them legally,” he says. Mahmoud believes rivals seek to dominate the local trade, “but our cappuccino is £2.95 and theirs is £4.50. That’s how we compete.”

And so somehow these two north London cafes, from two entirely separate worlds, with what we have to assume are two almost entirely separate clienteles, have found themselves on the frontline of a war. A deeply asymmetric war, defined by gross imbalances in power and resources and platforms, but a war nonetheless, and one that simultaneously feels more distant and more local than ever.

Show us on the doll where the Jewish bakery touched you:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

WAKE-UP CALL FOR A SLEEPING GIANT: Review: Mobilize: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III by Shyam Sankar and Madeline Hart.

With the Cold War’s end, the triumphant West indulged in what Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently called “dangerous delusions.” The United States and its compatriots believed that every nation would eventually become a liberal democracy, that trade and commerce would be liberalizing forces, and that “international law” and not military force would be the final arbitrator.

All of these beliefs have been proven false. China and Russia and their allies in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere don’t want to join the family of nations. Rather, they want to tear down the American-led global order. While the United States and its allies pretended that the basic rules of geopolitics didn’t exist, their enemies knew otherwise.

The West was outsourcing a key component of national power—manufacturing—that China wholeheartedly embraced. Beijing made itself the “factory of the world” using its industrial power to gain leverage over huge swaths of the globe, the United States included. And that leverage comes with a steep cost.

While we believed that manufacturing and tech could be separated, China was busy building. By some estimates, China now has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity that America possesses. In 2024 alone, it’s estimated that one Chinese firm built more ships by tonnage than the United States has in the eight decades since World War II. We now find ourselves in a place where, according to most war games, this country would run out of key munitions in a war with China in mere weeks, perhaps even days.

The Allies won World War II thanks to America’s fabled “Arsenal of Democracy.” We outproduced the Axis powers, fielding munitions and weapons that were essential to a hard-fought victory. In 1943, Joseph Stalin acknowledged as much, toasting “American production, without which this war would have been lost.”

The victors of that war knew something that future generations in the West would tragically forget: Industrial power wins wars.

Related: War Factories: YouTube Documentary Series Explores How the Allies’ Assembly Lines Pulverized the Axis.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

ROGER SIMON: What US Taking Kargh Island Will Mean.

U.S. Marines taking control of Kargh Island, from which Iran exports 90% of the oil products that dominate its economy, might not end the war altogether—there will still be outliers; Iran is a big place—but it would go a long way towards doing so.

It would virtually put the already-wobbling mullahs out of business and have myriad ramifications, from quickly lowering oil prices and inflation with it for the world, not to mention making Donald Trump a hero as we head into the November elections, thus driving the Democrats crazy.

No wonder many of them want Iran to win, covertly or overtly. For others, the self-described “liberals,” it must be more than a little disconcerting for them not to engage in full-throated condemnation of a regime led by sadistic misogynists who murder wounded protestors in their hospital beds. Supporting freedom was always their self-image.

Be that as it may, at this moment it looks as if it is full steam ahead, figuratively and literally, for the invasion of Kargh. The U.. S. force, featuring the USS Tripoli, left Japan March 14 and should reach the island by late March, just before President Trump is scheduled to meet with President Xi in Beijing. A squadron of F-35B Lightning IIs that are capable of vertical takeoffs will doubtless be in the vicinity sooner.

“Just before President Trump is scheduled to meet with President Xi in Beijing,” huh? Why, it’s as if: Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

SUCKING IN THE SEVENTIES:

Tweet concludes, “‘Why don’t we know this? Why does no major book teach it?!’ Well, now — THAT’S a damn good question.”

To answer that question, let’s explore a similar one:

Hollywood has actually made two films on this topic — and both times, their directors, industry superstars Sidney Lumet in 1988, and Robert Redford in 2012, made the most sympathetic characters the bad guys setting the bombs. Why, it’s as if:

UPDATE: George MF Washington from 2023 on Hollywood’s change of worldview: When the Bad Guys Became the Good Guys.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Tucker Carlson Claims He’s the Subject of Criminal Probe Over Iran.

Tucker Carlson claims the CIA is preparing a criminal referral against him to the Department of Justice. For what, exactly? Well, according to Tucker, it’s for talking to people in Iran before the war started.

“So the other day I found out that the CIA is preparing some kind of criminal referral against me, a crime report, to the Department of Justice on the basis of a supposed crime I committed,” Carlson said in a video posted to X. “What’s that crime? Well, talking to people in Iran before the war.”

The potential charge, according to Tucker, is a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which would classify him as an agent of a foreign power.

“They read my texts,” he alleged. “So the crime under consideration apparently would be the Foreign Agent Act or something like that, acting as an agent of a foreign power.”

Despite this, Tucker insists he’s not losing sleep over it. “I don’t expect this to go anywhere,” he said. “I’m not too worried about an actual criminal case against me for a bunch of reasons. One, I’m not an agent of a foreign power, unlike a lot of people commenting on U.S. politics and global affairs. I have only one loyalty, and that’s the United States, and have never acted against it.”

More here: Did Tucker Carlson Just Get Caught Giving the Iranian Regime Intelligence?

 

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: Meta Glasses Send Nude, Bathroom Photos Unknowingly to Kenyan Workers for Review.

Meta Glasses sends video and audio recordings to human reviewers in Nairobi, Kenya, according to a recent investigative journalism report from Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish outlet. This includes sensitive recordings of naked bodies, bathroom activities, and unblurred bank card numbers. “In a large office complex, long rows of employees sit in front of computer screens,” Svenska Dagbladet reports. Thousands of people work at this center for a Meta subcontractor, Sama. They review the images and audio sent across the world by often unsuspecting users of Meta’s innovative VR Glasses.

The investigation included interviews with workers at the data annotation center who have all signed non-disclosure agreements and thus are speaking anonymously to the journalists.

“We see everything – from living rooms to naked bodies,” one worker said. “Meta has that type of content in its databases. People can record themselves in the wrong way and not even know what they are recording. They are real people like you and me.”

* * * * * * * *

This report comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing multiple lawsuits alleging failures to keep children safe on his social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook.

Flashback to 2019: Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats:

Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.

The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained — only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said.

Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said Tuesday.

As Christine Rosen of Commentary wrote that year in an article titled “What Is To Be Done About Facebook?” This is a standard pattern for Facebook when caught: “From the company’s earliest days, Facebook’s leaders have adopted a remarkably consistent approach to the exposure of problems and missteps: a mercenary variation of the ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ strategy. Any time the company does something irresponsible or privacy-violating, Zuckerberg issues an apology on Facebook and Sandberg appears on television programs to reassure an anxious world that Facebook will do better. As Zeynep Tufekci observed in Wired: ‘By 2008, Zuckerberg had written only four posts on Facebook’s blog: Every single one of them was an apology or an attempt to explain a decision that had upset users.’”

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

 

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE ART IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: Sweden charges Greta Thunberg for blockading oil port.

—The BBC, July 6th*, 2023.

Chaser:

Earlier: Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn’t We Be Celebrating?

* Greta found a new grift after October 7th of that year: Israeli official slams Greta Thunberg after she backs Palestinians in Gaza.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

NEO: One movie after another.

The Oscars are tomorrow, and about a week ago I watched the first half hour of the movie One Battle After Another, nominated for Best Picture and several other awards. I was visiting a friend who lives at one of those large complexes for older people, and they show a movie for free every week. She wanted to take a look at that one, and so I went too.

But after a half hour of the movie we both left.

Simply put, it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. Let me count the ways in which it was bad – no, maybe that’s impossible, because it was awful in every way. Its terribleness was absolutely astonishing.

Earlier: ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable.

And from the Critical Drinker:

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

IT’S THE DEMOGRAPHY, STUPID:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

Tweet continues, “You do get he’s basically walking on water. Making every elected hack, bureaucrat and diplomat of the last 40 years or so look like dithering incompetent fools, when they weren’t actively and despicably enabling said dictatorships, that is. Could it all go wrong? Yeah. But for the first time since Ronald Reagan blew up the Soviet Union, someone’s trying.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related thoughts here. “If the public realizes you can actually solve problems, there will be more pressure to do that — rather than just manage them endlessly.”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM M-SNOW:

But Democrats with lavaliers and Chyrons already took us down this route 14 years ago: Mark Steyn: Racist dog whistles and the men who hear them.

And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who “appear to be” racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use “Chicago” as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O’Donnell pronounced “golf” a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was “working to earn a spot on the PGA tour,” O’Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word “golf” is subliminally associated with “Tiger Woods,” and the word “Tiger” is not-so-subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc, etc. So by using the word “golf” you’re sending a racist dog whistle that Obama is a sex addict who reverses over fire hydrants.

Last year, MSNBC considered Sydney Sweeney’s jeans a racist dog whistle: MSNBC Goes Full Racist, Attacking Sydney Sweeney Ad Campaign.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 15th, 2026

March 14, 2026

“PROGRESSIVES” AGAINST PROGRESS:

 

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 14th, 2026

LIEL LEIBOVITZ: ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable.

Walking out of One Battle After Another, I realized that the cavalry wasn’t coming. [Paul Thomas] Anderson is just another mindless mediocrity now, thinking first about party lines and only then, if at all, about truth and beauty. It’s all over.

Which, hallelujah, is very good news.

Because if you know anything about the history of Hollywood, you know that great thrusts of creativity and daring come only when the industry drives itself to the brink of extinction. In the late 1950s, for example, terrified by the ascent of TV, studios made a bevy of utterly forgettable spectaculars they hoped would draw people to the theaters. None did. The golden age was over. But slowly, slowly, working in smaller outfits and taking greater risks, a new generation of outsiders started telling the kinds of stories the Old Hollywood would’ve never approved of. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and their cohorts delivered films that were far more raw and daring and impactful than anything we’d ever seen before, giving American cinema another, brighter golden age.

Now that even the greats have fallen, now that even Paul Thomas Anderson seems interested more in purring for his fellow progressives than in making interesting movies, now that even DiCaprio is relegated to delivering lines about respecting another character’s “they/them” gender pronouns, it should be crystal clear that Hollywood has once again driven itself to total moral, artistic, and creative ruin. How lucky are we: Somewhere out there, I bet, some young punk feels liberated and called to make Hollywood great again.

Hollywood has been here before of course, issuing ridiculous slop when they believed the cultural revolution was nigh that suddenly looks very silly once the dust clears: Mystery Seventies Theater 3000.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 14th, 2026

DID THEY REALLY SAY THIS? CNN Issues Incredible Statement About Their Horrible Week of False Stories:

Earlier:

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 14th, 2026

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Has the Media Been Responsible for America Losing Wars?

The White House statement goes into specifics to answer the charges, closing by saying that “No amount of CNN hackery will change that.”

In short? Unlike 1968 and Walter Cronkite’s attack on LBJ’s Vietnam policy, President Trump is not sitting back and allowing today’s media – CNN in this case – to paint its own anti-media picture of the Trump Iran/Middle East policy.

Time has moved on. As is said often enough in this corner: Stay tuned.

What unfolds between the media and the Trump administration when it comes to the coverage of American policy in Iran and the larger Middle East remains to be seen.

In his 1977 book, It Didn’t Start with Watergate, Victor Lasky wrote:

By the time Lyndon Johnson left office, his administration was under bitter attack by the media and its subsidiary organizations. Thus in 1968 the journalism society Sigma Delta Chi had this to say: “The Credibility Gap, which has reached awesome proportions under the Johnson Administration, continued to be a grave handicap. Secrecy, lies, half-truths, deception—this was the daily fare.”

In turn there were those who felt that the press had its own credibility problems. Douglas Cater, special assistant to President Johnson, suggested that too often newsmen presumed an expertise they quite obviously didn’t have.

“I’m concerned about the little demigods of TV who make an instant analysis of complicated events,” said Cater. “There should be bounds on what TV men do, so much of which is delivered with flippant abandon.”

Cater, of course, was and is of the liberal persuasion. His remarks concerning “instant analysis” were generally overlooked at the time. A year or so later Vice President Spiro Agnew used the same phrase in condemning television coverage of presidential speeches—and all hell broke loose. The reaction ran true to form. The liberals claimed the remarks augured—in the words of the International Press Institute in Zürich—“the most serious threat to the freedom of information in the Western world.” And commentators like Walter Cronkite agreed.

But down in Texas the former President wondered out loud whether “Ted” Agnew had been politic in saying what he did. It wasn’t that Citizen Johnson disagreed with what was said. Shortly after the 1968 election he had sought to warn the Vice President-elect about the antagonistic nature of the media.

“Young man,” he had told Agnew, “we have in this country two big television networks, NBC and CBS. We have two news magazines, Newsweek and Time. We have two wire services, AP and UPI. We have two pollsters, Gallup and Harris. We have two big newspapers—the Washington Post and The New York Times. They’re all so damned big they think they own the country. But, young man, don’t get any ideas about fighting. . . .”

Well, Agnew got precisely that idea and came out swinging. 

And how. Not surprisingly, so has the Trump administration. And why not? The DNC-MSM never punched back when (P)resident Biden routinely insulted them. Why should they expect anything less from the current administration?

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

WHEN BILL MAHER IS THE VOICE OF SANITY:

That puts Maher one up on David Letterman:

In now a famous “You Tube” moment, Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel, went on Letterman to be the recipient of the host’s rude and sophomoric antics. As the segment shifted into high gear, O’Reilly asked Letterman a pointed and direct question: “Do you want the United States to win in Iraq?”

To the surprise of no one but his sycophants, Letterman could not or would not answer the question. When pressed by O’Reilly to answer, the best he could do was to play to his mostly left-leaning audience for cheap debating points and say, “It’s not easy for me because I’m thoughtful.”

As I asked back then, how thoughtful do you need to be? it’s an A or B question: Do you want the US to win, or Al Qaeda, the Baathists, and Iran? Letterman, who, [40] years ago, was once the master of postmodern irony, became its unintentional victim as he unwittingly echoed Jack Benny’s classic gag when he retorted to a fictional mugger shouting ‘Your money or life, pal!’ on his old radio show: ‘I’m thinking it over!’”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 14th, 2026
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »