David Dubrow

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The Hunt Update: Director Craig Zobel Speaks

August 20, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

(I first wrote about the Blumhouse-produced movie The Hunt here.)

On August 10, 2019, Universal canceled the release of The Hunt, saying:

“While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for The Hunt, after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film. We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film.”

For some of us, it’s mission accomplished. Film dead. Yay!

Not me. I want movies like this to be released. Hollywood has decided to go out of its way to antagonize, contemn, and otherwise express its loathing for everyone to the right of Chairman Mao, and the more that normal people see what an appalling cesspit our show business industry has become, the less they’ll want to fund it. Hollywood has chosen to hate us and call us the enemy. It’s long past time to hate them back. More speech is better.

The director of The Hunt, Craig Zobel, says:

“Our ambition was to poke at both sides of the aisle equally. We seek to entertain and unify, not enrage and divide. It is up to the viewers to decide what their takeaway will be.”

I am not going to call him a liar, but I do get to doubt the sincerity of these good intentions. A casual observer of our media culture would conclude the opposite: that our media class is really quite interested in enraging and dividing rather than entertaining and unifying. It’s possible that Zobel doesn’t pay attention to any news at all and can’t see this. He’s also being disingenuous about the takeaway being up to the viewer. Every piece of art is weighted with the artist’s desire for the viewer to take away a certain idea, feeling, or impression. That The Hunt, a politically-charged piece of satire, is somehow different from all other movies ever made stretches credulity. There’s an agenda here, and to deny that is what enrages and divides us further. It insults our intelligence.

Zobel goes on to say:

“I wanted to make a fun, action thriller that satirized this moment in our culture — where we jump to assume we know someone’s beliefs because of which ‘team’ we think they’re on… and then start shouting at them. This rush to judgment is one of the most relevant problems of our time.”

I don’t disagree. Progressive Hollywood jumps to many assumptions about us hicks in flyover country and often shouts at us. They love to rush to judgment.

And, of course, he treats us to the standard progressive bromide:

“My hope would be that people will reflect on why we are in this moment, where we don’t have any desire to listen to each other. And if I’m lucky some of us will ask each other: how did we get here? And where do we want to go moving forward?”

That we have listened and still don’t find each other’s arguments convincing doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet. The American left has near-total control over mass media, education, news media, and social media. The rest of us don’t have a choice about listening: progressive messaging comes at us from all sides. We still think you’re wrong. About everything. It’s not a question of listening. You’ve got the biggest mouthpiece in human history and yet here you are, wishing we’d just listen. Why can’t you get it through your head that the more you talk, the more we dislike you? We think you’re wrong. You think we’re wrong. Listening isn’t the issue.

Where did you get the idea that you’re the only person who has asked how we got here and where we want to go? I’ve got simple answers to both questions. We got here because we got tired of our betters in entertainment, news media, and education pouring all three of these institutions into the toilet, so we’re pushing back, and you don’t like it. Hence movies like The Hunt. The question answers itself, no? Where we’re going is a cold civil war, where we develop our own versions of the institutions you’ve pissed all over. We can’t destroy them. We can only undermine their pretense to credibility.

It’s this lack of credibility that led to the outrage about the movie’s subject matter to begin with. Three decades ago, The Hunt might have worked as a blackly humorous slasher film. Instead of a Jason Voorhees-type murdering horny teenagers, it’s Democrats hunting Republicans…until the tables are turned. During those slightly less-divided times, we all could have laughed about how dumb and over-the-top it was. But Blumhouse, a famously woke production company, wasn’t in business then. They produced it today. So you’ll have to forgive us for not buying the idea that this is an even-handed satire of both sides, sight unseen. Hollywood doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of our side. You lost our trust, and you won’t get it back for generations.

It’s just a shame Universal pulled it.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: craig zobel, hollywood, the hunt

HiT Piece: The Pitch

May 6, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I wrote a flash fiction piece for Hollywood in Toto just in time for Ramadan:

“You’ve got five minutes to wow me,” Ms. Biedermeyer said, leaning forward with her elbows on the glass table and her fingers steepled in front of her mouth. “Shoot.”

Trying to ignore the sweat prickling across his lower back, Bobby said, “Thank you, Ms. Biedermeyer. I’ve been a big fan of your work since the early 2000’s, and—”

“Time’s a-wasting.” Ms. Biedermeyer tapped the jeweled crystal of her David Yurman classic. “I got a lunch with DuVernay in ten minutes. Chop chop.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Bobby shuffled his papers, cleared his throat, and said, “The show I have in mind is similar to Roy O’Donohue, but it turns the genre conventions on its head, and—”

“Why do we want to have two of the same show on TV?”

“No no no,” he said. “This is different. You see, we start out with a traditional Muslim family instead of a semi-Catholic one.”

Ms. Biedermeyer returned her French tips to their steeple. “And?”

And you’ll have to click through to read the rest!

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: flash fiction, hollywood, hollywood in toto, islam, ray donovan, television

Foreign TV Rocks. Sometimes.

April 11, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Long-form storytelling through the medium of television is, like everything, a mixed bag. Just because you can make a 10-episode miniseries, it doesn’t mean you should, or that your story has enough skeleton to support the meat. When Hollywood isn’t stuffing its preferred political/cultural narrative down the viewer’s throat, it’s producing reboots and sticking electrodes onto ancient, bloated franchises to keep their legs twitching. (This is our fault.) So I’ve gone a little further afield for my video entertainment, focusing on foreign television programs.

La Trêve (The Break) Season One is a series I wholly recommend. A Belgian crime show in French, it takes place in Heiderfeld, a small town in the Ardennes, where a young black soccer player’s body is found on the banks of the nearby river. Yoann Peters, a police detective who has just moved back to Heiderfeld after a 20-year absence, investigates the crime, and we find, as is typically the case in such stories, that there’s a lot more to the town, the murder, and the townsfolk than anyone might think. Yoann Blanc as Peeters does an extraordinary job of portraying a deeply flawed man, making you like and dislike him at the same time. The other performances are likewise excellent, transforming them from a collection of quirky small town characters into actual people with lives and desires and personalities. Is it slow-moving at times? Yes. Does it matter? No. You want to see what these people are up to. You want to get to know them better. And you want to see what happens next. Even if you’re not a fan of crime shows (I’m not), you’ll enjoy Season One.

La Trêve Season Two picks up a few years after the first season in a new town with a new crime and a number of new characters. Peeters is back, of course, because there wouldn’t be a show without him, and he’s tried to move on after the last season’s horrible circumstances. Unfortunately for him, he’s pulled back into police work when an old acquaintance asks him to help her patient: a young man accused of a horrible murder that she’s sure he didn’t do. There’s less whodunit in this season than the first, which leaves room for the show to include more of the side characters, many of which are fringy sorts of reprobates who make the slowly-disintegrating Peeters look like a Carmelite nun by comparison. I enjoyed it as much as the first season, even though it’s not quite as good. A little over halfway through season two they introduce a strange twist that in any other show would seem cheap, and the last minutes of the final episode are a real kick to the gut.

Si No T’hagués Conegut (If I Hadn’t Met You) defies easy categorization. Is it a love story? A science fiction yarn? Both? A Spanish show, set in Barcelona, it posits a neat if not entirely original idea: a man (Eduard) loses his wife and family in a tragic accident, and a mysterious woman gives him a device that allows him to visit alternate universes and times to explore a number of what-if scenarios regarding his past, his family, and his potential culpability in their deaths. The scenery of Catalonia and Barcelona is nice to watch, and I found the difference between Mexican Spanish and Barcelonian Spanish to be a treat to hear. The storytelling was clumsy throughout, however, bludgeoning the viewer with obvious hints, but it kind of makes up for it with pathos. How do you go on when your wife and children are taken from you so suddenly? It’s a nightmare. The science behind it didn’t work well, but that wasn’t the point. The acting was uneven at best, and most of the other characters were likable enough. What makes this show stand out is how incredibly unlikable and irritating the female lead (Elisa) was portrayed. She’s angry and remote and bitter and snappish and entirely disagreeable throughout. It’s clear that she was written that way, but it made it most difficult to sympathize with her. One thing I found is that in the later episodes, when they portray Eduard and Elisa getting intimate, it was uncomfortable to watch, as though I were witnessing a sibling making love. Ew. This one’s a mixed bag. I kind of recommend it, but if you quit a few episodes in, you won’t miss a lot.

Osmosis is a French science fiction show that takes place in Paris. Interesting idea, decent special effects, horrible storytelling. Set a few years from now, when tech companies are assisted by AI, it tells the story of Paul and Esther Vanhove, a sibling pair who are developing an app that purports to find the user his or her soulmate. You get a tattoo, take a nanomachine pill, and the face of your soulmate appears in your mind’s eye. Sounds fascinating, right? The way they do it makes no sense. All of the beta testers’ soulmates apparently live nearby, which was too much of a coincidence to ignore (they should’ve hung a hat on it). The plot only moves forward because of bizarre personal decisions made by the characters. Worse yet, there’s a kind of SpongeBob SquarePants-style of plotting in which certain things happen that should end the show right there and then, but are handwaved later on as no big deal. It’s like when SpongeBob falls into a paper shredder, is completely disassembled, and then pops back to normal an instant later. Funny for a cartoon, not funny here. There’s no resolution at the end, no sense of a story ending. Think of it like an overlong Black Mirror episode: preachy, tedious, and simple-minded.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: foreign tv, hollywood, reviews, television

Endless War

November 28, 2017 by David Dubrow 6 Comments

America’s widening ideological/cultural/political division, what we often call the Culture War, is not going to heal in your lifetime.  It won’t heal in your children’s lifetime, either. Or your grandchildren’s. Simply whining about the divide, whether you’re a politician or a concerned citizen, won’t fix what’s wrong. More communication won’t fix it, either; social media has enabled us to talk to each other for years, and the divide yet widens. In fact, it would be better if we didn’t talk to each other so much, because we’ve used these platforms to spread disunity and tribalism rather than togetherness. The Brotherhood of Man is sundered, not least because we can’t even agree on what a man is, biologically speaking.

This division didn’t happen ex nihilo.

The way that the Culture War has been fought makes ending the conflict impossible. Nobody has the authority to call a truce, and none of the combatants would agree to one in any case. National tragedies like mass shootings, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters no longer result in temporary armistices; instead, we’ve decided to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” That is, we’ve politicized every single aspect of human life, from God to TV to weather to bridge collapses.

By politicizing everything, you criminalize every difference of opinion. You reduce every issue, no matter how complex, into a Manichean proposition of good vs. evil. Brendan Eich learned that to his cost. Masterpiece Cake Shop learned that to their cost. And I learned it also, when Jim Mcleod, proprietor of the horror site Ginger Nuts of Horror, kicked me off the writing staff and called me, a Jewish man, a Nazi for expressing, in my own space, opinions that millions and millions of other people share. If your difference of opinion has been elevated to the status of criminal hate speech, how can you possibly find common ground with people who disagree?

The entertainment class has decided to escalate the Culture War further by expressing, loudly and frequently, its utter contempt and loathing for the other side. That the other side also buys movie tickets and watches television shows is immaterial: what matters is signaling one’s virtue by slandering one’s ideological adversaries. Nobody makes a Hollywood actor call someone a Nazi at gunpoint: these people choose their ideology and they choose the ways in which they express it. You don’t have to go on Twitter and call your customers KKK members because of who they voted for. So is it any wonder that many of us are secretly cheering every disgusting revelation of appalling behavior from Hollywood’s casting couches rather than expressing dismay? Hollywood has set itself up as the political enemy of half the country, not to mention its moral superior. It hates us rubes in flyover country. Why shouldn’t we hate Hollywood back? Why should we forbear the smallest slight, in light of how divided we are? Remember your Shakespeare.

Social media fuels the Culture War with every angry Tweet, every thoughtless Facebook status. We’ve got too much communication going on, not too little. Daily doses of loathing poisons the psyche; it strains the nerves, keeping us on edge. Anger’s easy to kindle, but difficult to maintain; it provides a dopamine-like hit that’s too addictive to quit, but terribly exhausting to endure. This is undeniably detrimental not just to our common culture, but to civilization as a whole. Lacking the Brotherhood of Man, we can no longer come together to repel the Visigoths at the gate, be they Muslim extremists, domestic anarchists, or even the decay of the rule of law. There’s no longer an us or a we. There’s you, there’s me, and there’s fuck you for disagreeing, you Nazi; go die in a fire. The sickening public responses to recent mass shootings and hurricanes and terror attacks have taught us this.

The solution isn’t to lay down your arms and hope the other side does the same. Not when your livelihood’s at stake because you think that gender is a biological constant rather than a social construct. Not when your reputation’s at stake because you believe that the proper response to an armed attack is overwhelming force instead of continued conversation. Not when your life’s at stake because you want to take responsibility for your own personal safety instead of unilaterally disarming. After a victory, we’d all like to lean on our shovels and say, “Well, that’s done.” Well, it’s not done, it’s not over, and you have to keep fighting.

From the ease with which terms like “Nazi” and “racist” are thrown around, with companies signaling their virtuous tolerance in letting deviants into women’s private areas, to the horrific revelations about how the Hollywood sausage is made, we’re seeing with crystal clarity exactly what happens when you let anything slide. That time is over.

If the people in Hollywood hate you so much, don’t enrich them by watching their movies and TV shows. If the inmates at the local college dismissively refer to your hard work and sacrifice as “white privilege,” don’t send your kids there to be indoctrinated in Social Justice claptrap. And if the ideologically-driven news media trots out lie after lie in service to a narrative at odds with your deeply-held ethics, don’t give them your clicks and attention. You can do quite a lot simply by opting out. You can do that at least, can’t you?

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: civilization, culture, culture war, hollywood, politics, social justice, social media

Me Too and You

October 24, 2017 by David Dubrow 2 Comments

There’s more that needs to be said about the disgusting Hollywood sex story starring Harvey Weinstein. If it makes you uncomfortable, remember that your culture’s at stake. Like it or not, Hollywood is a driver of culture, and so far we’ve been content to sit in the back, look out the window, and pay them for the ride. Now that so many sickening revelations have come to light, ranging from pervasive sexual harassment to institutionalized prostitution to outright pedophilia, isn’t it time to kick Hollywood’s horde of Weinsteins out of the car?

Alyssa Milano is a Hollywood actor, which makes her a self-appointed intellectual and moral titan. The Milano-created hashtag #MeToo, like all hashtags, is not only a gigantic waste of time, but is more destructive than helpful. If you’re a woman who’s been sexually harassed or assaulted, you’re apparently supposed to go on social media and write #MeToo to alert the internet that you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted.

The biggest problem with this appalling campaign is that it doesn’t do the one thing that would actually solve a case of harassment or assault: name names. Lacking specificity, #MeToo feeds the horrific beast that today’s feminist movement has been using as a looming shibboleth for about a decade: the myth of toxic masculinity, the notion that men who are not 3rd Wave Feminists are inherently dangerous to all women. Rather than calling out the individual men in their lives who have attacked them, the #MeToo campaigners build up loathing for the male half of the population, cloaking their sexism in a false patina of virtue. The more women who Tweet #MeToo, the more self-created evidence that there’s a problem with all men in Western society. So it’s a cycle that begets itself. The cry of #MeToo is no different from bleating about toxic masculinity, manspreading, mansplaining, and so-called rape culture. #MeToo indicts an entire gender for the actions of individuals, brought to you by a perpetually angry, perpetually victimized cohort that shrieks misogyny at the drop of a fedora.

This is internet slacktivism at its apex. Rather than gathering up the courage to bring a formal accusation of abuse to proper authorities, the #MeToo crowd merely types vague nonsense on a screen, builds a formless monster (with a penis) out of its resentments, and enjoys the warm glow of victimhood, everyone’s favorite path to success. What makes this far, far more dangerous is that sexual harassment and assault have been redefined to include any instance of behavior a sufficiently triggered feminist finds discomfiting. If you’re a man and you’re reading this, it’s likely that there’s a #MeToo post with(out) your name on it.

#MeToo does a horrible disservice to the women who have been assaulted, bravely named names, and brought their attackers to justice.

I don’t know if Alyssa Milano, the perpetrator of this current iteration of the internet lynch mob, has herself been assaulted. I haven’t read too deep into her story, nor do I care to. I do know that the first domino, Harvey Weinstein and his victims, needs to be examined a little more closely, as revolting as the prospect may be.

Anyone who Weinstein has forcibly raped under any circumstances is deserving of sympathy and comfort. As more information about his crimes comes to light, the more our stomachs turn. But what about the starlets who weren’t raped? The ones who were propositioned, made the mental calculus that fucking this Baron Harkonnen-like figure would be worth some measure of career advancement, and took off their panties? Were they abused? Plenty of other women told him no. Weinstein knows what he looks like. His kink must have been the despoiling of beauty. The disgust these women felt for him fueled his lust. That’s the kind of man he was, and that’s the kind of person who, up until recently, made the movies we watched. What are we supposed to think about the women who took cash settlements in exchange for silence, knowing that Weinstein was right then massaging himself at the thought of mounting another young trophy in a hotel room?

So what’s it going to be? Tapping out #MeToo hashtags in the passenger seat while the next Weinstein, sweat dripping down his face from his last casting couch exertion, drives your culture deeper into the abyss? Or are you going to refuse to be preached to by reprobates and stop funding your own culture’s destruction?

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: culture, feminism, hollywood, me too

Hollywood’s Adversarial Attitude Informs Our Indifference

October 16, 2017 by David Dubrow 4 Comments

Dear Hollywood:

It’s horrifying that a loathsome character like Harvey Weinstein, or anyone for that matter, would demand sexual favors from young talent in exchange for career success. We know that Weinstein’s not the only person in Hollywood who does this, and we suspect that he’s the rule rather than the exception. Every time a new story about some degenerate Tinseltown panjandrum’s sexual peccadillos comes to light, our stomachs turn. And under normal circumstances, the vast majority of us would be more than just disgusted over the revelations that powerful people like Harvey Weinstein have made your abasement a gateway to success. We would be sympathetic. We would demand that heads would roll, that Congressional hearings be arranged, that mass firings take place across every studio.

But we’re not. And we won’t.

You see, you asked for our ambivalence. Not in a “she wore a short skirt” sort of way, but for the last few decades the loudest among you have set yourselves up as our betters simply because you stand in front of cameras and recite words that other people have written. You’ve made no secret of your contempt for normal Americans’ mores, values, and traditions, and despite your clear lack of education and ethics, you’ve decided that your career success translates to intellectual/moral superiority, like Rumpelstiltskin’s straw spun into gold. Your endless lectures on climate change, presidential politics, gender differences, the state of American health care, foreign policy, and whatever else that trips your trigger reflect nothing but the tedious, infantile emotionalism that has informed the far left since the 1970’s, and we’re really quite tired of hearing it.

The philandering, coke-sniffing, back-dealing, potted plant-ejaculating lot of you are the worst kind of hypocrites, because unlike normal Americans who try to live by a code of ethics (and occasionally fail), you loudmouth Hollywood types don’t even attempt to uphold your own standards of behavior. Your marriages collapse into horrific public acrimony, your time is spent more inside drug rehab facilities than your multimillion dollar homes, you blindly support the most destructive politics our country has to offer, and yet you continue to demand respect. Why? Because you put on spandex for a comic book movie that caters to the lowest common denominator of our culture: explosive, special effects-laden spectacle. You don’t have to be this way, but you choose to.

We see right through you. You don’t know us, but we know you. So you asked for our indifference to your self-created plight. And when it comes to people like Weinstein, who’s made it an integral part of his career to inject unwelcome politics into what was once an escape, we rejoice in his downfall. The more like him who fall, the better for our culture. You put your politics front and center when all we wanted to do was have fun in front of a screen. What you’ve forgotten is that politics is a battle, and every battle has at least two sides. You’ve set yourselves up as the enemy, so what’re we supposed to do, stop you when you start shooting each other in the back? Of course not. We’re going to watch with smiles on our stupid, cousin-humping, hick faces.

We’re not asking you to come to our side. We’d just like you to remember that without us, you’re little more than a bunch of pretty faces who let themselves be sexed up by reprobates in exchange for money and fame. If there’s a rape culture anywhere in America, its living, beating heart throbs in the middle of Hollywood, and you’re its most ardent enthusiasts.

Our indifferent scorn is the price of choosing political activism.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: culture, harvey weinstein, hollywood, politics

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Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 2:
8-year-old: I wrote the elf a note! I hope he writes back.
Me: What did you write?
8yo: I asked if he has any friends.
Me: What if he says it's none of your business?
8yo: *eyes grow dark and glittering* Then I'll...touch him.
Me: Ah. Mutually assured destruction, then.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 1: My 8-year-old got an Elf on the Shelf the other day. The book it came with tells a story in doggerel about this elf's purpose, which is to spy on the kid and report his doings to Santa Claus, who would then determine if the kid is worthy for Christmas presents this year. The book also said for the kid not to touch him, or the magic would fade, and for the family to give the elf a name. I wanted to name him Stasi. I was outvoted.

Actor Billy Dee Williams calls himself a man or a woman, depending on whim; his character Lando Calrissian is "pansexual," and his writer implies that he'd become intimate with anyone or anything, including, one presumes, a dog, a toaster, or a baby. J.J. Abrams is very concerned about LGBTQ representation in the Star Wars universe. This is Hollywood. This is Star Wars. This is what's important to the people in charge of your cinematic entertainment. Are you not entertained?

The funniest thing on the internet today is the number of people angry over an exercise bike commercial. Public outrage is always funny. Always.

One of the biggest mistakes the United States has ever made since WWII was recruiting for clandestine and federal law enforcement organizations at Ivy League schools. The best talent pools were/are available from local law enforcement and military veterans, with their maturity and, most importantly, field experience. We've been reaping the costs of these terrible decisions for decades, culminating in a hopelessly politicized, sub-competent FBI and CIA.

I love Christmastime, despite being Jewish. The lights, the presents, the spirit of generosity. I do feel left out, however; my neighbors have nice Christmas lights, inflatable Santas, animatronic reindeer that crop the grass, and illuminated Nativity scenes. As Hanukkah isn't a big holiday for Jews, we just don't have those kinds of decorations. However, if someone crafts an inflatable scene of a Jewish guerrilla warrior caving in a Syrian Greek's head with a hammer, I'll buy it and put it in the front yard.

Watching Fauda seasons 1 and 2 again in preparation for season 3 to be broadcast, one hopes, in early 2020. Here's my back-of-the-matchbook review of season 2.

Every day I try to be grateful for what I have, even in the face of the petty frustrations and troubles that pockmark a day spent outside of one's living room, binge-watching Netflix. We live lives of ease in 21st century America, making it enormously difficult to do anything but take one's countless blessings for granted. Holidays like the just-passed Thanksgiving are helpful reminders. There's a reason why people call the attitude of a thankful heart practicing gratitude, not just feeling grateful. You have to practice it. You have to remind yourself of what you have. It's the work of a lifetime.

Held Back: A Recent Conversation.
8-year-old: Oh, and Jamie was there, too. He was in my first grade class two years ago.
Me: Wasn't he held back a year?
8yo: Yeah. It's because he kept going to the bathroom with the door open.
Me: No way!
8yo: And girls saw.
Me: That's not right. They're not going to hold a kid back a whole year over that.
8yo: Well, that's what he told me.
Me: Sounds fishy.
8yo: I believe him.
~fin~

It's right and good to push a raft of politically correct social justice policies on everything else under the sun, but when social justice invades Hollywood, that's just a bridge too far, says Terry Gilliam. Sorry, Terry: you helped make this sandwich. EAT IT.

Well, it makes me feel gross to be coerced into participating in a mentally ill person's sexual hang-ups without my consent, so I guess everyone's unhappy.

Let's hear it for adults taking time out of their day to help kids play team sports! Or...or not, as is the case here. I'd be pretty embarrassed if I was one of the parents, but there may be more to this story than we can see in this video.

They'll be doing Drag Queen Story Hour hosted by Desmond is Amazing in your local Chick-fil-A by 2025 at the latest.

Episode 45 of the Red Pilled America podcast is a disturbing look into a court case that raises the question: can you really tell if someone is lying?

Rob Henderson's piece on luxury beliefs will have you nodding your head over and over again...unless you subscribe to these luxury beliefs, in which case you'll get mad.

I'm late to the #FartGate controversy, as I no longer use social media, but it's a truism that when you have one asshole talking to another, you're going to get fart noises.

I've made the Saturday bread from Flour Water Salt Yeast so often that I've memorized the recipe. It never disappoints. Never. The same recipe works well for pizza, too.

Robert Lopez tells a disquieting story that suggests that there are no safe spaces for literature among the left or right.

The best part of the "Mon Laferte exposing herself story" is the wide variety of digital pasties that online outfits provide her. Flowers, dots, digital artifacts and, in creepy fashion, pure erasure.

Liberty doesn't mean the freedom to do anything you want. The true definition of liberty is the ability to choose the good. Anything less is libertinism.

“I was confused at first and then I started to doubt whether or not I should be offended.” No no, be offended. At everything.

Andrei Serban quits a tenured professorship at Columbia University because the college began to resemble the Communist country he fled from. Everything that's good and decent will be forced out in favor of woke box-checking. Are you not entertained?

Boris Zelkin elucidates a concern and proffers a solution to a problem that almost all parents of young children will have to face.

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