Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 12, 2026

VDH: Our Super Bowl Satyricon.

In his vile, obscene “Safaera,” to avoid being censored, Bunny omitted a few of the song’s lyrics about his celebration of exploitative sodomy, fellatio, and anilingus—with misogynistic trashing of his compliant female sexual partners as “hoes.”

(Do woke intersectional feminists weigh in on the side of Bunny’s DEI credentials and sexual fluidity, or do they bristle at Bunny’s “objectification” of women, as he reduces them to mere mindless receptacles of violent and toxic masculinity?).

If Bunny’s purpose was to shock America, then he should have sung his full lyrics of “Safaera” in English, ensuring that his first-time listeners were forced to hear and react to his sick adolescent riffs on breasts, bottoms, phalluses, and vaginas.

Bunny had been previously instructed not to repeat his prior performance-art trashing of ICE and to keep his politicking subtle and coded.

Translated, that meant the NFL had greenlighted some of his obscene references as long as they were relegated to a Spanish-speaking audience only and toned down a bit. But he was not overtly to alienate over half of the NFL’s viewership, who not long ago had voted to stop illegal immigration and millions crashing the border.

Bunny mostly complied, albeit with empty platitudes about hate and love, and reducing the American flag to a status similar to that of the other South and Central American states.

Ricky Martin chimed in with his own incoherent Spanish-language harangue about the American rape of paradise in Hawaii (“They want to take my river and my beach too/They want my neighborhood and grandma to leave”). If Martin’s point was the arrival of too many newcomers, then he might have first reflected on the 10-million uninvited illegal aliens who, during the Biden tenure, stormed America’s southern border.

A writer for the now-defunct sports section of the Washington Post had earlier and ludicrously boasted that the mostly forgotten Colin Kaepernick—the Dylan Mulvaney of the NFL—would be the most relevant figure at the 2026 Super Bowl.

He really was though – everything Kaep set in motion in the twilight of the Obama era was in full display during the halftime show on Sunday.

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

AARON HANSCOM: Sweden and Spain Move in Opposite Directions on Immigration Policy.

“No requirements to become a citizen”? That sounds a lot like what anti-ICE protesters in the U.S. and their supporters advocate. After all, Billie Eilish said at the Grammys that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” One can’t help but wonder if she would agree with ISIS’s claim that Spain is stolen land.

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2026

INDUSTRIAL POWER—FINANCED BY HOUSEHOLDS, ENFORCED BY SILENCE:

The IMF puts China’s 2025 GDP per capita at $13,806 a year — roughly $1,150 a month.

But using China International Capital Corp (CICC) income buckets below, only about ~2.5% of Chinese actually clear that level in monthly income — ~35 million out of ~1.4 billion. Most don’t live anywhere near the “average.”

So when outsiders swoon over the skyline, the mega-bridges, the high-speed rail to end of map, and the factory machine that exports “cheap and good” to the world, keep the base reality in frame:

•~547 million live on < $145/month.

•~1.33 billion earn < $724/month.

In any case, it’s all fun and games, until the CCP begins welding the doors shut:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2026

THIS IS CNN: CNN has lost nearly two-thirds of its viewership since 2016 amid growing fears network is circling the drain.

To be fair, they’re far from the only DNC-MSM institution that’s circling the drain:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2026

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: California is entering the seizure phase of the wealth cycle.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 12th, 2026

February 11, 2026

RIP, JOHN EKDAHL:

Flashbacks: Ekdahl tweeted in 2019, “The left, and I’m not trying to be funny or snarky, takes gun ignorance as a source of pride. They absolutely refuse to learn or educate themselves on what they seek to deny their fellow citizens.”

Ekdahl on Bud Light’s implosion in 2023, “The biggest problem isn’t even the boycott; it’s that they’ve become a cultural punchline. This is now like having an AOL email address or driving a minivan. People avoid it so their buddies don’t rip them. Not sure how you fix that as a brand.”

Ekdahl in October of 2024: “My theory on the great liberal McDonalds freakout is this: Donald Trump is not allowed to have fun. Remember, he is the physical avatar of humanity’s cruelty, evil, and malice. The left has also spent a large amount of time, money, and energy though both media and legal campaigns, targeting his livelihood and even his personal freedom all to ensure that the man can never crack a smile again for the rest of his life. And then he did. While donning an apron and serving fries. They can’t handle it.”

And speaking of the DNC-MSM not being able to handle people having fun, from 2017: Watch A Bunch Of Journalists Freak Out After Being Asked If They Know Anybody Who Drives A Truck. “Which brings us to the simple question about truck ownership from John Ekdahl that drove Acela corridor progressive political journalists into a frenzy on Tuesday night: ‘The top 3 best selling vehicles in America are pick-ups. Question to reporters: do you personally know someone that owns one?’ Rather than answer with a simple ‘no,’ the esteemed members of the most cloistered and provincial class in America–political journalists who live in New York City or Washington, D.C.–reacted by doing their best impersonation of a vampire who had just been dragged into the sunshine and presented with a garlic-adorned crucifix.”

UPDATE: 14 Principled Anti-War Celebrities We Fear May Have Been Kidnapped.

—Ekdahl, Buzzfeed, September 6, 2013.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Clavicular’s cult of ‘looksmaxxing’ speaks to the narcissism of our age.

Don’t you hate it when you’re mid-jestergooning, and a group of foids comes and spikes your cortisol levels? We’ve all been there – and it raises the valid question of whether ignoring the foids while munting and mogging moids is more useful than SMV chadfishing in the club.

If those words are completely incomprehensible to you, that means you are enviably offline. A brief translation: ‘jestergooning’ is a derogatory term for the act of making a woman laugh in an attempt to sleep with her. A ‘foid’ is a woman and a ‘moid’ is a man. To have one’s cortisol levels spiked is to be aggravated and stressed out. To ‘mog’ someone is to intimidate them, usually by way of superior physical attractiveness. ‘SMV’ is an acronym, standing for ‘sexual market value’ (how attractive people find you). ‘Chadfishing’ is a play on ‘catfishing’ – trying to fraudulently convince others you are a ‘chad’, or a desirable male. ‘Munting’, as far as I can tell, has no meaning in this context at all.

The above wordsalad came from a now legendary viral post on X about a 20-year-old online influencer and streamer known as Clavicular (real name Braden Peters). He achieved fame – or, more accurately, infamy and ridicule – for being a ‘looksmaxxer’. That is, a member of the online subculture-come-cult dedicated to making oneself more physically attractive, by any means necessary.

Evergreen:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Ohio State University placed an assistant professor on administrative leave Tuesday after a viral video showed him tackling a person seeking a video interview with E. Gordon Gee, the university’s former president.

In the video of the altercation, the professor, Luke Perez, appears to be trying to prevent two people from asking Gee further questions and filming him. Mike Newman, who told The Chronicle he is an independent documentarian, took a step toward Perez when the professor struck the camera out of his hand and pushed him to the ground. Perez, who teaches in the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, directed a request for comment to university communications.

A university spokesman called the incident “very concerning” and said the “faculty member involved” has been placed on leave. He added that campus police are investigating.

Newman, an Ohio State alumnus, told The Chronicle that his neck and shoulder hurt after the incident and that he went to the emergency room.

Newman and D.J. Byrnes, a journalist who writes a Substack newsletter about Ohio politics, entered Smith Lab in an attempt to interview Gee, who is a paid consultant for the Chase Center. The former West Virginia University president has made headlines recently for defending Les Wexner, a prominent university donor, who had a public relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Late last month, he called attempts to remove Wexner’s name from a building “cancel culture.”

The professor who teaches on civics, culture, and society appeared to do a thorough job of cancelling Newman’s HD camera and microphone:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

UNEXPECTEDLY: Bad Bunny Reportedly Lost Record Slice of Super Bowl Viewers Heading Into Halftime Show.

It looks like a record number of Super Bowl viewers stopped watching once Bad Bunny started his halftime performance on Sunday.

That’s according to a new report from Front Office Sports on Wednesday, with reporter Ryan Glasspiegel explaining on X:

Based on my understanding of the data, Bad Bunny lost more [percentage] of the Super Bowl viewership from the end of the second quarter than has ever happened before.

His conclusion is based on quarter-hour ratings data from Nielsen.

Glasspiegel reported 135.9 million people were watching the NBC and Telemundo broadcasts between 8:00-8:14 p.m. ET on Sunday; that dropped to 128.2 million combined viewers between 8:15-8:29 p.m. That exodus of 7.7 million viewers lined up with the halftime show.

“Bad Bunny’s performance occurred during the latter window,” he explained. “This was a decline of 7% from the game’s peak viewership of 137.9 million in the second quarter, and 5.7% from the immediately preceding quarter-hour.”

The article noted that the audience typically increases for the halftime show during most Super Bowls, but last year’s performance from Kendrick Lamar also took a dip when it shed 4% of viewers who were watching towards the end of the first half.

I clicked over to watch the game recap on the NFL Channel, then clicked back to see what the fuss was about, only to see Mr. Bunny was imitating the Weeknd’s 2021 Super Bowl halftime show, with the Weekend’s maze of lights being replaced by a field of polypropylene sugarcane. I quickly clicked back to the NFL Channel.

 

 

Posted at 4:49 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

DOMINIC GREEN: Say His Name: Rupert Pupkin.

Scorsese’s prince is a pert pup, a quipster on the up and up, but he’s also a triple-plosive time bomb like Travis Bickle (or Jake LaMotta, another human detonator in another Scorsese–De Niro collaboration,1980’s Raging Bull). Scorsese habitually counterpoints the threat of violence with the discharge of humor. The Goodfellas tracking shot through the kitchens of the nightclub leads to a stage-side table and Henny Youngman in full “Take my wife” flow. In Casino, Don Rickles plays a Rickles-like Borscht Belter called Billy Sherbert. In Raging Bull, LaMotta watches real-life straight man Bernie Allen cracking jokes at the Copacabana. LaMotta himself ends up as a small-time comic. His routines resemble the black-and-white futilities of Dustin Hoffman’s reenactment of Lenny Bruce’s monologues in the biopic Lenny (1974).

Like Travis Bickle and Lenny Bruce, Rupert Pupkin is scorched by confusing his transgressive desires with social reality. Thwarted, he reacts by forcing himself onto the screen in the hope that he will impress a young woman and make his mark on the world; in Schopenhauer’s terms, he tries to impose his will on its representation in the world. Scorsese is a lifelong admirer of the dreamlike set pieces in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Archers productions, where, he has said, “the fantasy is more real than the reality.” In The Red Shoes, Moira Shearer’s shoes possess her and dance her to death. In The King of Comedy, Rupert Pupkin is possessed by fame. Our last sight is of the red suit that marks his departure from the real world and his entry into the inverted dreamland where the anonymous becomes famous and the loser becomes king.

Pauline Kael missed the point in her review for the New Yorker in 1983. She complained that De Niro inverted the “bravura” extravagance of his characterizations in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York to make the polite and frustrated Pupkin “a nothing.” Slapstick reminds us that the core of comedy is inversion—of power, of status, of reality. We think fame and money will free us, but Johnny Boy (Mean Streets) and Travis Bickle get shot in the neck. Jimmy Doyle (New York, New York) gets stood up. Jerry Langford eats his TV dinners alone with three TVs and a lap dog. Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, Scorsese has said, are the same “isolated person”: a “nothing” and a “nobody” who dreams big.

But this is not nothing. It is everything. America had always sifted the winners from the losers and called it justice. The modern status economy of images plays the results back in everyone’s face. And the postindustrial economy that took off in the 1980s replicated the fame economy that sorted Americans into a small population of stars and immortals and a mass of ticket-buying “nothings.” When Rupert Pupkin inverts dreams and reality, he performs the loyal American act of chasing his dreams, of getting what you want, at any cost, even if for one night only, like James Cagney at the “top of the world” in White Heat.

Naturally, The King of Comedy bombed at the box office. The critics eventually caught up—two plosive hard k sounds and two cheers for getting it right in the end. Rupert Pupkin’s triumph of delusion previews our culture of self-reflective entertainment, in which show business incites and rewards performative psychosis. Like Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, The King of Comedy told the truth about America. But who goes to the movies for the truth?

Rupert Pupkin, that’s who. And all of us, too—pursuing enlightenment in the dark. When we perceive Pupkin perceiving himself under the TV studio lights, we see ourselves. Our laughter confirms German gagmeister Artie Schopenhauer’s analysis that humor erupts when we realize our ideals do not match our perception. As the FBI waits for him in the shadows, the Hamlet of humor tells the truth in his kiss-off to his first and last audience: “I figure it this way: Better to be a king for a day than a schmuck for a lifetime.”

You might as well laugh.

Jussie Smollett certainly did: The King of MAGA Country.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Knife Horror — Ex-pupil ‘sprayed classmate with substance before knifing two teens in school horror attack.’

A former pupil sprayed a 13-year-old classmate with a substance then stabbed two boys in a school horror attack, police said.

Cops arrested a boy, 13, on suspicion of two attempted murders after he fled the scene at Kingsbury High School in Brent, north west London.

Great moments in hard-hitting tabloid journalism: This London Sun article was written with very short one or two sentence paragraphs, but even so, it takes eight paragraphs before the word “mosque” is mentioned, and over 50 paragraphs before this detail: “Unconfirmed reports suggested the suspect yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ – God is great – as he launched the attack. However, sources stressed that youngsters carrying out such attacks often have a variety of potential motives.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY:

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

LIBERAL AMNESIA IS A SUPERPOWER:

We are all familiar with the liberal tap dance whenever we point out that some awful thing, such as chopping the genitals off of children, is happening.

It’s commonly described as a four-step process:

Step 1: It is not happening.

Step 2: Yeah, it’s happening, but it’s not a big deal

Step 3: It’s a good thing, actually,

Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem.

But actually, it is a five-step process, culminating with the claim that liberals never supported it in the first place. We are approaching that stage among center-left people regarding alphabet ideology, and we are well into step five in the COVID saga. I know many people now arguing that nobody wanted to keep kids out of school, nobody was forced to take the jab, and that nobody was censored for disagreeing with The Science™.

Never happened.

For some reason, I have run across several posts recently arguing that the “fat acceptance” movement was fringe, with nobody in the mainstream fronting for the idea that people could be “healthy at any size,” or that “fatphobia” was the real problem people suffering from obesity faced.

As Daniel Hannan wrote in 2014, “The greatest cultural victory of the Left has been to disregard the Nazi-Soviet Pact:”

To the modern reader, George Orwell’s depiction of how enmity alternates between Eurasia and Eastasia seems far-fetched; but when he published his great novel in 1948, such things were a recent memory. It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated.

Back in the early 2000s, a similar pivot could be seen on the left’s 180-degree turn on the removal of Saddam Hussain. (George Clooney starred in a 1999 movie excoriating Bush #41 for failing to oust Saddam from power):

After (P)resident Biden set a $25 million bounty on Maduro’s head and after months of “No Kings” protests, the left once again pivoted on a dime over his ouster, including members of the (p)resident’s own administration: Kamala Harris Humiliates Herself Condemning Capture of Maduro.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

‘GUNPERSON’ IN A ‘DRESS’ BEHIND CANADA’S DEADLIEST SCHOOL SHOOTING IN DECADES, HORRIFIED TUMBLER RIDGE STUDENTS REVEAL:

High school students barricaded classroom doors with tables and chairs for at least two hours while a shooter — described as a “gunperson” in a “dress” — left nine dead and 25 injured during Canada’s deadliest school shooting in nearly 40 years.

Darian Quist, a 12th-grader, was in his mechanics class Tuesday afternoon when Tumbler Ridge Secondary School students in remote northeastern British Columbia were plunged into lockdown.

“For a while, I didn’t think anything was going on,” he told CBC. “I thought it was just like maybe a ‘Secure and hold’ but once everything starts circulating, we kind of realized something was wrong.”

Quist, his classmates and his teacher were all in the classroom — where they stayed for between two and two and a half hours — before being escorted out by cops. He did not hear the shooter go about their rampage.

Here’s the suspected “gunperson:”

Exit questions:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 11th, 2026

February 10, 2026

PROJECT MÖBIUS LOOP:

Flashback: A Word to the Wise Liberal. “This is a PSA to all male Democrat staffers: If a really hot chick goes on a few dates with you, there’s a 75% chance that she works for James O’Keefe.”

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

IT’S COME TO THIS: Sam Darnold’s insane California tax bill stunningly exceeds Super Bowl winnings.

Sam Darnold’s big Super Bowl win Sunday night actually ended up costing the quarterback money.

Because of California tax laws, the Seahawks star reportedly will owe more than the $178,000 he earned for helping lift Seattle to a 29–13 victory over the Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

According to Sportico, Darnold’s bill to the Golden State will be $249,000 following Seattle’s latest championship.

The outlet stated the sizable check is due to California’s “jock taxes,” which force pro athletes who don’t live in the state to fork over percentages of their yearly income based on the number of days they work in California.

The days have been dubbed “duty days,” and after the Seahawks touched down in NorCal on Feb. 1, Darnold and the rest of his team accumulated eight days total by playing in Santa Clara on Sunday night.

The next Super Bowl will be in the L.A. Rams’ SoFi Stadium, so we’ll be seeing these same articles next year. Sure California is a high-tax state, but just look at the stunning results it delivers for its citizens…

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

PURITANISM: The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Having Fun.

Posted at 8:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

RING BUD LIGHTS ITSELF: ‘Creepy’ Super Bowl ad sparks backlash, viewers vow ‘never’ to buy this popular product.

Super Bowl commercials often spark conversation, but one 2026 ad in particular has caused quite a stir.

The home security company Ring aired a Super Bowl advertisement highlighting the AI-powered Search Party feature. When a pet owner reports their pet missing in the Ring app, Search Party kicks in on participating outdoor Ring cameras, scanning the area for the missing pet.

The commercial presented the feature as a wholesome way to reunite pets with their beloved owners, but many viewers took issue with the implications of Search Party.

“Do you see what I did there? I disguised mass human surveliance [sic] as a puppy search party,” one X user wrote.

Other social media posts slammed the commercial as “creepy as can be,” “concerning” and “invasive.”

“Marketing team at Ring Camera HQ seriously sat around and was like, ‘How do we sell unconstitutional surveillance of our citizens during the Super Bowl?’ And one guy was like “DOGS!’” one person quipped.

Another X user stated that their main takeaway from this year’s Super Bowl commercials was “never buy a Ring camera.”

One wag tweeted yesterday:

To be fair, it wasn’t just the appearance in 2023 of Dylan Mulvaney, it was the words of Bud Light’s (now-former) marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid, attacking her (now-former) customers:

“It’s like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. What does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity,” [Heinerscheid] opined. “It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different. And appeals to women and to men. And representation, isn’t it the heart of evolution?”

She went on: “We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”

This corporate jabber and diversity talk might wow the sisters and woke crowd. It makes many of her actual beer drinkers want to barf.

Born into a high-powered lawyer family with connections extending from Texas to Southern California and the East, she attended Groton, Harvard and then Wharton. Alissa is the ultimate brand manager and Prep-Woke Girlboss.

Alissa talks in fluent psychobabble: the trendy drivel of her finding emotional safe spaces to process her feelings, the listening and empathy, the journey and trials. In this self-scripted narrative, she overcomes uncertainty, hardship and suffering to be the best in her field, catnip for aspiring female managers. She professes to be a beacon, “bringing women along with me and inspiring the next generation of female leaders to keep moving forward and pursue careers in male-dominated industries.”

But does Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president for marketing Bud Light, by far the nation’s biggest beer brand, know her product or her customers? Does she even like them? At least she could pretend.

Speaking of hating their longtime customers, in less than a decade, Jaguar went from depicting the average Jaaaaaag man like this…

….to this, which blew that brand up in spectacular fashion:

And as a result: Jaguar Land Rover designer behind woke rebrand ‘escorted from office.’

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

NOAH ROTHMAN: A Requiem for Communist Cuba’s Apologists.

Sure, communist Cuba has been on the “brink of collapse” before. Who would begrudge prudent observers who hold their passion in reserve as they await further evidence that Havana’s grip on power is starting to loosen? But conditions on the island have deteriorated rapidly following the ouster of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

If Cuba had a geopolitical project in this century that it pursued with anything like the vigor it displayed in its efforts to export Soviet-style communism around the world throughout the Cold War, it was Havana’s efforts to establish a loyal benefactor in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuelan regime. It’s not clear precisely how much of Venezuela’s sanctioned oil exports are no longer making their way to Cuba, but America’s efforts to interdict illicit energy shipments are clearly biting. That and Washington’s successful lobbying of other oil-producing nations, including Mexico, to cut Cuba off have thrown the communist regime into crisis.

In late January, the Financial Times reported that Cuba had less than a single month’s worth of oil in reserve. Already, the country’s energy stockpiles appear to be dwindling. Havana informed international air carriers this week, for example, that it will no longer be able to refuel commercial jets on Cuban tarmacs.

And thus the Doom Goblin comes full circle:

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

DON’T BE STUPID, BE A SCHMARTY: Does Driving a Large, Gas-Powered Truck Make You a Gay Nazi? This Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Thinks So.

Journalists are the worst. Even the ones who don’t cover politics are often incapable of writing normal sentences without flaunting their sneering disdain for normal Americans. For instance, you might not believe us if we told you the Wall Street Journal‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning auto critic recently compared Americans who enjoy large trucks with gas-powered engines to Hermann Göring, the Nazi commander who founded the Gestapo and whose “martial flamboyance” fueled persistent rumors about his sexuality. But that’s exactly what he did.

The opening paragraphs of Dan Neil’s review of Ford’s gas-powered F-250 Super Duty must be seen to be believed. Even then, it’s absurd enough to make you wonder if an editor messed up by uploading the wrong text. Just a totally normal way to start a truck review:

Indeed, there are many examples of “behavior intended to signal elite social status.” In the modern context, few are more obvious than sneering at pickup trucks and the people who drive them. If your job is to write about cars, it’s certainly the most relevant option. Comparing people you don’t like to Nazis is another classic case. Most people would regard it as obnoxious preening, but such is the cost of asserting one’s moral righteousness.

When Rupert Murdoch announced Fox News in 1996, CNN’s Ted Turner compared Murdoch to Hitler, and followed up with an explanation, quoted by the Los Angeles Times [in October of 1996]: “‘The late Führer, the first thing he did, like all dictators, was take over the press and use it to further his agenda. Basically, that is what Rupert Murdoch does with his media.  .  .  .’ The Nazi analogy was too much for the Anti-Defamation League, which rebuked Turner for trivializing the Holocaust. Turner apologized, but that didn’t prevent him from likening Murdoch to ‘the late Führer’ a year later; or, in 2005, comparing the success of Fox News to the rise of Hitler.”

Now one of Murdoch’s newspapers is comparing its potential readers to Herman Goering, which in turn trivializes the Holocaust. Do multiple editors agree with Neil, or did they let his article go to print because they really, really hate him?

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Noam Chomsky’s Lame Excuses for His Years of Friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Back in 2023, Noam Chomsky confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. That too was just an innocent favor, Valeria Chomsky insists.

Regarding the reported transfer of approximately $270,000, I must clarify that these were entirely Noam’s own funds. At the time, Noam had identified inconsistencies in his retirement resources that threatened his economic independence and caused him great distress. Epstein offered technical assistance to resolve this specific situation. On this matter, Epstein acted accordingly, recovering the funds for Noam, in a display of help and very likely as part of a machination to gain greater access to Noam. Epstein acted solely as a financial advisor for this specific matter. To the best of my knowledge, Epstein never had access to our bank or investment accounts.

Now, keep in mind, for just about all his intellectual career, Noam Chomsky has been a furious critic of American capitalism (“a grotesque catastrophe”), the wealthy elites of the U.S., and corporate influence over politics. He has written, “in this world there happen to be huge concentrations of private power that are as close to tyranny and as close to totalitarian as anything humans have devised… The corporations are just as totalitarian as Bolshevism and fascism.”

Recall that Epstein ran a financial management firm that catered to billionaire clients.

So just the longtime friendship with a person who had the public persona of Epstein, never mind his horrific private acts, seems like an abrogation of his stated values. The not-all-that-well hidden revelation that Epstein was a notorious sex trafficker suggests that at best Chomsky was astonishingly oblivious to a man he spent considerable time with… or he didn’t look and didn’t want to know. He was all too happy to believe that his friend was being accused by “publicity seekers or cranks.”

For what it’s worth, some big former fans of Chomsky are disgusted.

Earlier: Ben Sixsmith on “The very strange downfall of Noam Chomsky.” “If you’re younger​​ than ​​35, you might have no idea how much of the internet used to be occupied by people arguing about Noam Chomsky. Left-wingers used to fight with liberals and conservatives at insane length over the merits — or lack thereof — of the ageing linguist and anti-war commentator.” As for Chomsky’s numerous enemies on the right, “These poor souls would have had no idea that all their work undermining Chomsky’s political reputation would become unnecessary when, at a grand old age, the man himself formed a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: The Mandalorian And Grogu – Does Disney Actually Hate This Movie? “This is your first Star Wars feature film in more than half a decade. In fact, let’s not kid ourselves here. It’s basically a Hail Mary pass in the dying seconds of the game, a final chance to tie the score before it’s all over. And it’s been treated more like just another forgettable TV show roll out. [Does Disney] know something we don’t? Do they know that the film sucks and it’s got almost no chance at the box office? So why throw good money after bad?”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026

“THE SUPER BOWL IS A LAGGING INDICATOR OF INDUSTRY HEALTH:”

Our industry spent $100 million on Super Bowl ads to build trust in AI.

We built the opposite.

I need to tell you about a parallel that nobody in that hospitality suite mentioned, although every person in the room was old enough to remember it.

Super Bowl XXXVI. February 2022. Crypto firms bought the ad breaks. Coinbase. FTX. Crypto[.]com. They spent $54 million collectively. The ads were flashy and confident and told 100 million Americans that the future was decentralized and inevitable and worth their money.

FTX collapsed ten months later.

Coinbase spent the following year in court.

Crypto[.]com’s CEO is now spending $70 million on AI domain names.

We spent more than double what crypto spent. I know this because Tech Brew calculated it this morning and my VP of Communications forwarded it to me with no comment. She always adds a comment. The absence was the comment.

Here is what I know that I am not supposed to say.

A lagging indicator means the peak has already happened.

It means the industry already believes in itself more than the public does. It means the money has been spent, the bets have been placed, and the audience — the 130 million people you needed to convince — sat through your pitch and felt nothing but annoyance.

I spent $8 million to learn something that a Harris poll could have told me for free.

Nobody wants what we are selling. Not like this. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But “maybe not ever” is not a phrase that survives a board meeting, so we say “not yet” and buy another ad.

The earnings call is in six weeks. When the analyst asks about brand strategy, I will say the word “awareness” and the word “consideration” and the word “momentum.”

I will not say “warm slop.”

I will not say “lagging indicator.”

I will not mention FTX.

I will not tell them about the sentiment dashboard, or the Slack message, or the eleven CMOs in the suite who watched the needle go red and poured another drink.

We will do this again next year.

In a Forbes column about Super Bowl ads 20 years ago titled “Advertising Vs. Entertaining,” Jack Trout wrote, “What’s the measure of success? Like a movie, it’s how well they are reviewed. The press is an enormous contributor to this phenomenon. Everybody weighs in on what commercials were most popular, leading to adjectives such as charming, hilarious, cute, crisp and funny. Sure, they will occasionally say a commercial is unfunny or silly, but you never read a critic saying, ‘I didn’t see a reason to buy that product anywhere.’ Hey, this is the Super Bowl, and the object is to entertain, not sell.”

Sure your merchandise may not move, or the viewers will passionately hate the new technology, but Don Draper’s successors will enjoy collecting their Clio Awards come springtime, built on your company’s advertising budget.

Posted at 1:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2026
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