I'm probably projecting, but I sometimes think you can see the effect of social media in people's faces, like it's carved out this sense of bitter humourlessness and removed any trace of joy from their expressions.

the girl guides in the UK just kicked out all their trans members specifically bc they were threatened with a lawsuit from a rowling-funded group

absolutely infuriated at having to see or hear anything having to do with the harry potter shit again. wallowed through a damn decade of that stupid british people crap. harry potter themed pub crawls and adults talking about "their comfort series" and here we are right back. we live in hell

My 3yo was reading The Free Press when he turned to me, gravely, and asked: "Daddy, why won't the media show support for the nice orange man's war with Iran?" And when I told him, "they want to, but they've been silenced by the woke mob at Oberlin and Brown," he started crying.

Well, this looks like a valuable use of a viewer's time. (Or would be if we heard a high piercing whirring sound before Kirn is levitated into an alien spacecraft.)

Another bad Matt. (Taibbi, Yglesias, Walsh...)

Shapiro is near the front of the 2012 field. thehill.com/homenews/cam...

My take on the Oscars broadcast is that it all seemed rather...perfunctory. Also, all those interviews with Conan O'Brien about the pressures of being the Oscar host and there he was doing his usual self-deprecating marionette shtick. (And that pre-taped coda was a misfire embarrassment.)

Sounds like the Coalition of the Unwilling outnumbers the Coalition of the Willing about 12-0.

Cancel culture took out so many father figures that only those who larp as old men are left.

When Matt Taibbi lost his podcast partner & soul bro Walter Kirn in a surly divorce, a vacant spot opened. Diving deep into the grifter dumpster, he has dredged up Michael Tracey to make podcast magic. Yes, the grubby beardo who once claimed a 78 year old Maxine Waters went Cobra Kai on him.

Finished copies of our first major reissue project: THE RITZ OF THE BAYOU by Nancy Lemann! New Orleans Book fest, attendees and pre-orders get it first! For everyone else, available wherever books are sold on April 7th. Order yours: www.hubcity.org/ritzofthebayou

This sorta shit is truly the ownership and leadership of the NYT behaving at their most disgusting and morally bankrupt

Is Nellie Bowles the worst writer in America?

Markwayne Mullin looks and sounds like some backwoods ding-dong that Raylan Givens has to throw in his car trunk on JUSTIFIED

ROOSTER (terrible title), yet another college campus dramedy to toss on the pile, this one starring Steve Carell, following in the loafers of Bob Odenkirk in LUCKY HANK (another terrible title).

I'm trying to figure out which documentary I'm less interested in seeing, the one about Seymour Hersh that came out on Netflix or the upcoming one about Lorne Michaels that will debut only in theaters for a target audience of ghosts and dust bunnies.

I just viewed the Epstein files. A few things are clear: 1. Trump’s name is all over them. 2. The DOJ is breaking the law and denying the victims justice. 3. A single 3-hour viewing was not enough time. I will be back. If you have questions, let me know in the comments.

They are still writing thousands of words about him being a serious man who prostitutes himself and so forth, when for damn near fifteen years I’ve shown you left, right, and sideways he’s a clown without an original thought in his head.

When it comes to covid restrictions & masking, Kirn is a higher caliber, lower cal version of Joe Rogan still crabbing six years later, "The restaurants were closed, the comedy clubs were closed..." Only with Kirn it's 'the mean flight attendant who chastised me for letting my mask slip,' bwah.

I was Walter Kirn's editor for UP IN THE AIR and three other books by him. He was terrifically smart and talented and I enjoyed working with him. But we parted ways and by degrees he has drifted into a very strange space, like he caught some mind virus from RFK Jr. I've seen him on Fox and it's wha?

Maybe Walter could whip up a wacky laff-fest sequel devoted to the 2026 measles outbreak. Now that he's no longer podcasting with Matt Taibbi he has more creative "quality time" available.

Mandelson, even reduced, had more power than Andrew ever did. It is a big goddamn deal.

Great archive @LRB debate from 2002 on 'War on Terror' Interesting to be reminded of similarities between then & now regarding Euro-American militarism How Tariq Ali was remarkably prescient & how Hitchens was such a disgraceful propagandist www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

I recognize one's a better writer than the other but I miss Elizabeth Wurtzel more than I miss David Foster Wallace.

I realized what bugs me about David Foster Wallace's famous putdown of John Updike, apart from being glib, reductive, etc. It shouldn't read as Updike is "just a penis with a thesaurus," but the reverse. A thesaurus with a penis. That makes much more sense. DFW should have flipped the phrase.

I can't steel myself to listen to Ben Shapiro and his whiny rat-a-tat voice on The New Yorker podcast, hosted by Broadway legend Hal Linden.* If only there was an AI summation somewhere I could tap that would supply the salient "high points," if any. *[needs fact checking--ed.]

It appears that the Matt Taibbi-Walter Kirn podcast breakup or trial separation wasn't mutual and amicable. Basically, Kirn got blindsided by Taibbi and was left with a bitter taste in his mouth, one that no amount of oral rinse can swish away. Another beautiful bromance, kaput.

The only ass America is kicking is its own. www.city-journal.org/article/ben-...

"Thank-you-very-much" (Elvis Presley voice)

I can't locate the Bauer interview on YouTube so perhaps Daum pulled it.

Maybe I'm jaded or naive* but I actually expected HEATED RIVALRY to be a lot hottier considering how much everybody was carrying on about it. *neither

"Woody Allen is mentioned 7000 times in the Epstein files. Is that, like, a lot?" (George Costanza voice)

BBC radio thinks a photo of Prince Andrew with an unknown woman is more newsworthy than revelations of tens of thousands of pounds from Epstein to the then deputy prime minister’s partner, seriously?

Lord Peter Mandelson was sent money directly from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as early as 2003, according to new files released by US government The files record three payments in 2003/4 from Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts of $25,000 each, all mentioning Mandelson www.ft.com/content/1728...

Won't somebody think of the poor billionaires whose bottled water isn't always perfectly chilled? www.city-journal.org/article/inhe...

City-Journal both-sidesing Minneapolis is an admission of retreat and defeat from the moth-ridden MAGA punditocracy. Also it's tricky pulling a both-sides argument when one side is in imperial trooper paramilitary gear and the other's in flannel & down coats. www.city-journal.org/article/minn...

Kirn’s Rockefeller book is one of the worst I’ve ever read. It offends me. ‘I fell for Tom Ripley. I’m also a lapsed religious zealot with no real beliefs, up to & including a strange attachment to barely post-adolescent women. How could I have fallen for such a con? We’ll never know!’

Walter “I Really Thought He Was a Rockefeller!” Kirn.

I'm not one of those 'Cancel My Subscription' guys but Megyn Kelly's latest hate spew about Alex Pretti may be the Final Straw. If she wants to star in a remake of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS that's her prerogative, but SiriusXM's platforming her is beyond the pale.

I once kicked somebody out of the castle for being disparaging about Kylie Minogue, but I feel I was well within my rights, though Harper's declined to accept my account of the incident. Which is why I refused to sign that pompous Harper's Letter about cancel culture (also I wasn't asked).

Recall that Thomas Chatterton Williams once chucked somebody out of his chateau for badmouthing Bari Weiss.

William 'the Conqueror' Stancil >>> Walter 'Weasel Words' Kirn.

Season three of SHETLAND confirms that Calder and Tosh are the two worst detectives on TV, spending more time driving around and tepidly interviewing witnesses than cracking through the evidence. The rope, Watson, the rope is the key to this case, while they make their rounds like social workers.

After half-apathetically watching several recent YouTube videos, I have come to the irreversible conclusion that ‘body language experts’ are all bullshit artists. Especially when they’re analyzing celebrities at red carpet events, where nobody looks/feels natural and comfortable in their skin.

this is legitimately an insane thing to think when looking at your child

John Podhoretz claimed today on the Commentary Magazine podcast (the Mickey Mouse Club for leftover neocons) that Bari Weiss was being subjected to "psychotic abuse," which somehow tied into the controversy over a pronoun scene in LANDMAN, his mind once again working in mysterious ways.

Ana Kasparian is a hard one to figure. I mean, we already have a Megyn Kelly.

In case you missed it, understandably distracted by the ensuing chaos, here be my review of Patti Smith's latest memoir. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

The Jack Daniels sign in the mockup of the CBS anchor floor is a signifier. Jack Daniels & co have been slammed hard by Canadian boycotts of American whiskeys, etc...this is Bari Weiss's (or some ding-a=ling underling's) brain-o idea to help rally American boozers to support the home team.