Category: Frankly, My Dear

The “W” Word

You’re a decade or two late to the party, Ben – but thanks for showing up.

For Ben’s next assignment: Picture the hard working civil servants who authorize the project funding at the Department of Global Affairs.

Don’t Let The Door Hit You…

As someone who could never stand Stephen Colbert’s overtly partisan, sanctimonious political cheerleading for more than a couple of seconds, I don’t think that any new void is being created by his departure; there was nothing but a void to begin with.

Among those sorry to see Colbert go is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a frequent guest. Johnny Carson used to book scientists, but Tyson notes wryly that not many TV hosts do these days.

Brehm saw Colbert make himself into a sort of moral authority and lean into the social justice camp of progressive Catholics: “He is playing up that moral quality by standing up for American moral values like freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and he’s doing it with a Catholic jargon, with Catholic language.”

Cry Me A River

I assume his political and cultural views are pretty similar to his old man’s, so I’m surprised he didn’t cancel the US tour out of spite. I had no idea he even had musical talent in the first place, and even if I did I doubt I’d be rushing to get show tickets.

Kiefer Sutherland is the latest artist to be struck down by the so-called ‘Blue Dot Fever,’ cancelling his upcoming U.S. tour over poor ticket sales.

Sutherland has been playing shows overseas in support of his new album, Grey, and posting videos documenting his experience to social media.

Embrace Hollywood!

“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore

I’ll admit, I missed big by predicting something “delightfully sordid.” Instead, we got something unpleasantly sordid: The final nail in the coffin for the Netflix bid [for Warner Bros] was almost certainly board member Susan Rice’s ill-timed appearance on a podcast hosted by Preet Bharara on February 20, where she promised “accountability” for Trump administration wrongdoers once the Democrats took office. This was interpreted by MAGA’s most agitated online voices as a promise of lawfare against the administration — the irony of complaining about this is apparently completely lost upon them — and led to Laura Loomer loudly demanding the former national security adviser resign her position on the board of Netflix.

Since Loomer has Trump’s ear, that meant that Trump himself began to instantly parrot Loomer’s line, demanding Rice resign from Netflix or “pay the consequences.” That put Netflix in an impossible position — they were not going to earn the eternal wrath of progressives by caving to Trump and firing Rice, not for a bid they were going to have extreme difficulty getting Trump’s approval on anyway. So they have bowed to the inevitable and cut their losses.

Gradually, Then Suddenly

Now, factor in the crash coming to vacation condos in Mexico.

New Rules

@HansMahncke


This is remarkable to watch on multiple levels. There is the diplomatic dimension, where an American Under Secretary of State is not supposed to call a spade a spade. But when the people demanding deference to those outdated conventions are the very same elites who fear their own citizens and suppress them through increasingly tyrannical censorship, they have forfeited any claim to courtesy. You can almost picture German elites getting whiplash just from reading it.

Then there is the tactical side of it. Sarah Rodgers knows perfectly well that what she is saying is not permitted speech in Germany. That is precisely why she says it so bluntly and forcefully, almost daring the German government to react. The point is the opposite of subtle persuasion (that did not work). Instead, she’s inviting the German government to lash out at her, which would make their repression even more visible and self-incriminating.

There is also a deeper historical message embedded in this. The United States did not sacrifice blood and treasure to liberate Germany after World War II so that it could quietly slide back into old authoritarian habits under a different pretext. And if it insists on doing so, it should not assume American indulgence or silence. That era is over.

“Die mad, Eurotrash.”

This is personal to me because I’ve spent a substantial part of my life doing the jobs that Europeans would not do. From November 1988 to April 1991, with a multi-month tangent to the Persian Gulf War, I was part of NATO in what was then West Germany. It’s always great to have people tell me how important NATO is when I was part of it, and they weren’t, but let’s put that aside. I was there at the end of the Cold War. We were still doing things like having REFORGER exercises and going out on alerts at 3 a.m., where we would shiver in our assembly areas knowing that if the balloon really went up, our role was to die in place so the locals could continue to consume strudel and bitch about Ronald Reagan.

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