Politics is Downstream From Culture

[GURPS]

There is no evidence that discretionary spending amendments would lead to underfunding. Sen. Pat Toomey, who is the one offering the amendment, has made clear that’s not the case. Stewart either is misinformed or is just making excuses for the fact that he’s trying to pin all the blame on the bill being stalled on Republicans and not Sen. Chuck Schumer for breaking his word.

It’s also a little rich to see Stewart, who has spent his entire career elevating his brand, very often using political issues to do so, take a shot at someone else along those lines. Right now, the comedian hosts a failing TV show on one of the streaming services, and if anyone has seen their profile raised by this battle, it’s been Stewart himself. Whether that’s his motivation, I won’t speculate on, but you’d wish he would at least operate in good faith about the problems with the bill.

WATCH: Jon Stewart and Jack Posobiec Clash Outside the Capitol Building

redstate.com

 

[GURPS]

On Hulu, a notice in front of the R-rated movie says: “CONTENT WARNING: This film contains flashing lights, themes of trauma, and an unlikable female protagonist. Viewer discretion advised.” “Not Okay” stars Zoey Deutch as a villainous, pathologically ruthless internet fame-seeker. It premiered Friday, July 29, on Hulu.









Here’s the movie’s synopsis: “Not Okay” follows Danni Sanders (Deutch), an aimless aspiring writer with no friends, no romantic prospects and — worst of all — no followers, who fakes an Instagram-friendly trip to Paris in the hopes of boosting her social media clout. When a terrifying incident strikes the City of Lights, Danni unwittingly falls into a lie bigger than she ever imagined. She “returns” a hero, even striking up an unlikely friendship with Rowan (Mia Isaac), a school-shooting survivor dedicated to societal change, and scooping up the man of her dreams, Colin (Dylan O’Brien). As an influencer and advocate, Danni finally has the life and audience she always wanted. But it’s only a matter of time before the façade cracks, and she learns the hard way that the internet loves a takedown.

Alongside Deutch, Isaac and O’Brien, the film also stars Embeth Davidtz, Nadia Alexander, Tia Dionne Hodge, Negin Farsad, Karan Soni and Dash Perry.

Brad Weston and Caroline Jaczko serve as producers of the film, from Disney’s Searchlight Pictures.

Hulu’s ‘Not Okay’ Ironic Content Warning About ‘Unlikable Female Protagonist’ Causes Confusion

Hulu's tongue-in-cheek warning that original movie "Not Okay" has "an unlikable female protagonist" has generated confusion.

variety.com

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Take Paige Spirinac’s Straight Man Test — If You Fail, You Passed​

“Picking the low hanging fruit again eh Paige??” one follower tweeted in reply to her post. “Disagree. I feel like my fruit is actually quite perky,” she responded.

Most replies noted that it was impossible to see past her chest, which means those followers passed our Straight Man Test. The weirdest response simply read “bonk” after way too many replies to count.

“It’s really sad to see such a beautiful woman feel the need to show off her chest for attention. Severe insecurity is my guess,” read the caption of the quoted tweet. Another suggested all female sports stars are tramps, which actually made me laugh.

 

[LightRoasted]

For your consideration ...

All I see are two pillows.

 

[OccamsRazor]

This just screams "Respect me for my accomplishments, not just my looks."

 

[stgislander]

She's no Hannah Palmer or Sophia Bevarly, but she's knows what she's doing.

 

[OccamsRazor]

"Ma'am, you may not be a whore but, you are certainly wearing a whore's uniform!"

- Dave Chapelle

 

[GURPS]

 

[Kyle]

Discount, smug, version of George Carlin.

 

[GURPS]

Pop diva Katharine McPhee: ‘I blame every single one of you woke voters’ for soaring crime in California​

In one Instagram story in which she shared information about a mugging of an elderly man in upscale Beverly Hills, McPhee wrote “This is literally my worry and thought every time I go out now. We need @rickcarusola…What’s this world coming to?…@streetpeopleofbeverlyhills…I blame every single woke vote. Seniors getting beat up in while walking. Keep voting for this. What a sad state this city is in.”


McPhee, 38, is backing Republican-turned-Democrat Rick Caruso. a wealthy businessman and philanthropist running on a law-and-order platform for Los Angeles mayor over rival Karen Bass, the far-left congresswoman and potential Joe Biden 2020 running mate who is backed by the Democrat establishment.

Celebrities in the entertainment sector have to walk on eggshells when even mildly dissenting from the liberal narrative, especially an association with a quasi-Republican.

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

OnlyFans Model Charged With Stabbing Boyfriend To Death​

On Wednesday, the Hawaii Police Department assisted in taking Clenney into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service.

The model, who goes by Courtney Tailor online, was “arrested on the strength of an arrest warrant issued by Miami-Dade County, Florida, for the offense of murder in the second-degree with a deadly weapon,” a press release from the department said.

“Clenney is being held at the Hawai’i Police Department’s East Hawai’i Detention Center pending her initial court appearance in Hilo District Court, tentatively scheduled for Thursday, August 11, 2022,” authorities added. “She will eventually be extradited to Florida.”

 

[GURPS]

Latest ‘Predator’ Installment Forces Lefty Trends Into A Centuries-Old Setting​

Instead of a steady plot and character progression, the movie’s action sequences are too spaced out and disconnected to allow for any coherent buildup. Similarly, Naru transitions from a young apprentice practicing with her hatchet to a Comanche version of John Wick, dispatching opponents left and right with perfect ease — all in the span of 10 minutes.

However, the movie’s real problem is its heavy-handed feminist, anti-colonial message. While there’s nothing wrong with mixing up the formula and creating something unique, the characters and story still need to adhere to the logic of the world contained within the film. Even in a fantastical situation, they need to be at least halfway believable. Instead, “Prey” childishly plugs modern-day progressive sensibilities three centuries into the past.

The film’s protagonist defies traditional gender roles by challenging the apparent hunter-gatherer patriarchy. And the antagonists, including the space alien, are dimwitted sexists with absolutely no redeeming qualities. The action plays out predictably, as the antagonists fall to the hands of a woman who finally learns to unleash her inner strength. The female empowerment on display is quite literal, and anyone who questions it is a bigoted troglodyte.

What’s disappointing is that the film really didn’t have to work out this way. In the early scenes, there was reason to think that Naru was strong yet fallible. The audience could relate to her struggle as well as her development and eventual triumph. Her personal trajectory was a mix of circumstance and personal will, and her death was always a possibility.

 

[GURPS]

Wifelike​

In a better movie, the perversity would be the point. Maybe it is in this one, too; it’s hard to tell when William’s obtuse case is the audience’s only consistent window into the practice of doling out companions. Wifelike certainly isn’t shy about sexuality early on, and though the sex scenes between William and Meredith are more softcore silliness than genuine provocation, Meredith does have a funny moment to herself: When exploring the possibility of self-pleasure, she gets an “access denied” message from her central processing system.

That moment is a stand-in for the whole movie, which is most interesting when it leaves Meredith to her own devices. She starts to figure out her own point of view through strange sci-fi touches like her “dream mode,” which allows her to select scenarios for a simulation of human sleep. Meredith also starts out speaking in the third person, only gradually accessing enough sense of self to make first-person statements — a neat idea, though kind of an odd programming wrinkle for such a vastly advanced system.

There’s an amusing moment where Meredith must process a waiver in order to cook William some health-threatening bacon, but sometimes Meredith needs to be taught terms that a computer would probably be able to look up seamlessly. What’s the utility of that slower learning curve, for either a grieving widower or a horny loser? Like the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, the movie itself sometimes appears uncertain about the exact hows and whys of the process that makes companions.

As Meredith’s consciousness expands, she’s drawn into the conflict between William’s company and the anti-companion forces, uncovering buried secrets, hidden memories, and so on. This tension would be tighter if Jonathan Rhys Meyers didn’t play William as such a morose creep from the beginning. After 30 minutes or so, Wifelike proceeds with the sinking feeling that writer-director James Bird intends to peel back layers of male decorousness to reveal the entitlement and control underneath. But these qualities are as visible as the skimpy lingerie that the companions all seem to have on hand as accessories.

 

[GURPS]

A post-racial world: The Last White Man, by Mohsin Hamid, reviewed​

Calm eventually settles when the world’s population turns brown and white people become a distant memory

Where the book is most affecting is in its deft depiction of the personal: Oona’s and Anders’s deepening intimacy, the shifting dynamics with their parents and its poignant portrayal of loss. Both characters have already lost one parent, and Oona is mourning the recent death of her twin brother from an overdose. In what may be the most moving deathbed scene since Ivan Ilyich, we watch as Anders’s father – the titular last white man – approaches dying as a final act of fathering. ‘We have come to disavow our own mortality,’ Hamid lamented in a Spectator books podcast. In a secular society, fiction is one of our few means of enquiry into how to live and die well.

After a period of unrest, a kind of calm settles once the majority of the population in The Last White Man has darkened. At the end of the book, Hamid fast-forwards to a time when whiteness is a distant memory, inviting readers to imagine the possibility of a post-racial world. With paragraphs often made up of one long sentence, the narrative is propelled by the cadence of commas. While it may not seem an obvious beach read, at a slim 180 pages of text, The Last White Man can be savoured in a single, thought-provoking sitting.






like brown people NEVER Attacked anyone else

 

[GURPS]

Bulwark says the problem with anti-anti-Trumpers is they’ll never tell you to vote for the Democrat​

Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review Online, recently saw himself pop up in The Bulwark. Now National Review isn’t exactly a MAGA bulletin, having devoted an entire issue to “The Case Against Trump.” But in Jim Swift’s view, McLaughlin is an anti-anti-Trump writer. The difference between him and The Bulwark’s crew? He’d never tell you to vote for the Democrat.





Swift takes exception to McLaughin writing of Liz Cheney, “She threw away her career in an act of noble self-sacrifice that descended into monomania and bad political judgment.” That excerpt reads:

The problem with Dan McLaughlin and many of the other anti-anti-Trump writers is any workable strategy seemingly never involves defeating Republicans by voting for Democrats. It’s only unworkable because guys like Dan want to keep their patina of good conservative intact and not tell people, hey, Maryland Republicans voted for a nutjob? You should vote for a Democrat, even if their policies are not your cup of tea.
That’s it. That’s the divide. Folks like Dan and his cohorts will never say: Vote for the Democrat. We will. I guess that makes us less conservative by comparison, but maybe you can write in people in D.C. or NYC just to prove to readers you’re a “true conservative.”

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Progressives Making Stories Meaningless​

 

[GURPS]

American Occupation​

Gandhi said to the British, you’ve been a guest in our house for too long, it is time for you to leave. He borrowed the line from Oliver Cromwell, and it’s a good one. The left has occupied the high places for too long, promoting dogma even as the occasions for their complaint have decreased (what position is closed to people of color, or women? Inclusion in all levels of the workforce; preference in higher education, a seat in the cockpit, in the Oval Office, in a movie’s cast, or admission to an elite school+? And yet the vehemence of their protests has increased, progressing into blacklisting and even rioting by those claiming to represent “the oppressed.”

Old-time physicians used to speak of the disease “declaring itself.” History teaches that one omnipresent aspect of a coup is acts of reprisal staged by agents provocateurs of the revolutionaries, and blamed on supporters of the legitimate government. It would be a historical anomaly if we were not to see such between now and the midterm elections.

For the disease has declared itself, and we are not now in a culture war, but a nascent coup, with its usual cast of characters. The Bolshevists could have been defeated by a company of soldiers in the suburbs of Moscow, Hitler stopped at Czechoslovakia, and the current horrors confronted at the Minneapolis police station or a meeting of the San Francisco school board. But those tragedies, and our current tragedies, were not just allowed but encouraged to run their course.