"These people who control every branch of government are so triggered by someone singing in Spanish for 20 minutes, they need to create their own safe space alternative halftime show, where Trad Bunny over here is singing songs about how he can't even enjoy sitting in a truck and drinking beer because he knows that somewhere out there, there's a trans person."
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
It's no secret that America is fascinated with cults and their scamming, grifting leaders. Viewers flock to TV series like Wild Wild Country, The Vow and Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, and elevate con artists like the Tinder swindler and Elizabeth Holmes as antiheroes who've found loopholes in American society and business. Paddison tells Harris' story from its beginning in upstate New York, at the time a hotbed of self-proclaimed seers and prophets, including Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.
Recently, the Trump administration faced a similar situation. After Donald Trump purported to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, the jazz musician Chuck Redd withdrew from a planned Christmas Eve concert. The administration's response was somehow both more authoritarian and comic than the one in the movie. The Kennedy Center's president, Richard Grenell, announced that the Center intends to sue Redd for his impudence. Grennell's letter threatening legal action depicts Redd as a sad loser suffering "dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support" and "lagging" attendance whose withdrawal, paradoxically, is "very costly to a non-profit Arts institution."
Before I turn to either, I'm going to anticipate something that will be said in the dialogue with Helen Lewis, where she talked about one of our challenges in the face of the way modern media works is to keep rediscovering old truths. And so I wanna open this show this week by talking about an old truth. If you've been reading in the news, you [may have] seen that the NATO alliance is under even more intense pressure than ever before.
Everybody strives to live an active lifestyle. It may be a brisk walk or a hot yoga class, but nevertheless exercise is a focus for a large part of society. When media was established, this necessity grew exponentially, creating jobs for the experts in this field, also known as influencers. Fitness gurus have ruled the centuries in the media. From the famous Billy Banks in the 90s to 2020's Blogilates, the workout saga has only been on the rise.
Between @benshapiro and Candace Owens, Ben is right, he declared at the time. If Owens just disagreed with him on Israel, I would be on her side. But that's not all she does. She repeatedly said over the top anti-semitic tropes. She was trying to get fired from Daily Wire. Congrats, mission accomplished!
In the age of MAGA, ideological lines that once distinguished left from right have blurred. Republicans who said they were willing to die for the market now support a president who tells the government to buy up shares in the private sector. ( Bernie Sanders approves.) The right has also embraced cancel culture, a progressive trend it recently despised. But conservatives aren't the only ones emulating the other side.
In 2019, Gillis was hired and promptly fired by "Saturday Night Live" after clips of the comedian using slurs on his podcast surfaced. It was a move that easily could have derailed a young comic's career. Instead, whether purposefully or not, Gillis rode a wave of anti-cancel culture backlash to become one of the biggest standups in the country.
The book begins with the parents of Catt Greene (an avatar for Kraus) as they start a family and strive to attain the American Dream. Catt's family circumstances remain precarious, and bright-but-bullied Catt is going off the rails by the time she reaches her teens. The family's abrupt decision to emigrate to New Zealand reroutes her from what increasingly feels like a foregone dead-end.
When I was a 20-year-old undergraduate student at Cambridge University, I was plastered all over the national press for making a tweet about white people. It has not turned out to be a big deal for my life or career, but at the time it felt monumental: racist hate mail was sent to my college for months; the Conservative MP Bob Blackman called for my prosecution; and tabloid journalists turned up at my home and harassed my mother
The director's voice breaks the fourth wall with as much subtlety as a character waking up to say that everything was merely a dream. The moment is jarring, and implies that everything that happened on-screen until then shouldn't be taken too seriously. Some critics have interpreted the ending as a glib last-minute twist that threatens to neutralize the story's potency and dismisses the seriousness of the movie's premise.
Googling my name had turned up an essay, written in the aftermath of Kirk's brutal murder, in which I discussed being on the Charlie Kirk Turning Point USA Professor Watchlist.In that essay, I unequivocally condemned the September 10 murder (as I condemn all violence and the American gun fetish) and I expressed heartfelt sorrow for the victim's family and friends. The last sentence of the last paragraph summed up my feelings: "Everything about this moment is heartbreaking." Apparently, the "higher ups" felt I had not used the right language and could not be certified a trustworthy citizen.
Language policing. Cancel culture. Victimhood contests and cultural grievances. Despite attacking the left for partaking in such practices, there's an emerging set of individuals on the right who have became exactly what they've criticized. Meet the woke right. Thank you, President Trump, for ending a scourge that's plagued our nation for far too long. We've gotten rid of the woke. Woke no longer. Just kidding. The truth is, wokeness is actually alive and well.
Tara-Jean is confused, then frightened, as Cass crowds into her, getting almost nose-to-nose as she searches the young star's face for something that will explain Tara-Jean's stratospheric success and her own failure. "Our faces were so close that her eyes looked like one giant copper eye," Cass recalls. "There were green flecks inside that copper eye. Was that the mark of fate?"
The latest picture from beloved director Luca Guadagnino follows a Yale professor, Alma (Roberts), as she gets caught in the middle of a sexual assault allegation that her favorite student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), launches against her closest male colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield). After the Hunt is intended to be a thought-provoking film that debates the existence of cancel culture and the way today's thick political climate affects how we view identity and claims of misconduct.
I am no stranger to cancel culture. I was cancelled after 9/11 simply for being Middle Eastern, as Arab terrorists were behind the attacks on the twin towers. This is despite the fact that I am not Arab, nor am I, contrary to popular opinion, a terrorist. In certain circles there have been calls to boycott my UK tour Namaste, a show in which I try to explore the nuances of the complex geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
Rather than restoring academic freedom, the Trump administration has tried to force private universities into accepting commissars to oversee whom they admit and what they teach. President Donald Trump decried the many civil and criminal cases against him and his supporters. Instead of ending lawfare, the president is publicly jawboning his attorney general into prosecuting his political antagonists, such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York State Attorney General Letitia James, even when the underlying evidence seems weak.
For the longest time, I've been imploring people to share the risk, defend people in trouble who are outgunned by the media. The point being, even though you incur risk defending them, it's being shared, and that's how you beat the woke. Well, these a**hats never did that, Gutfeld said after showing images of Stelter, Kimmel, and Hayes. They sided with the mob at every turn, and they even came after us over and over. And now they desperately fake a heroic stance, swarming around a celebrity already designated by their industry as a defender of democracy, an anti-Trump icon.
While the interview began on a calm note, things quickly became heated after Lemon was asked about his involuntary departure from CNN a few years ago. After Lemon remarked, I don't believe in canceling people, Morgan questioned, Do you feel you were a victim of cancel culture at CNN? Um, I probably, answered Lemon. Probably yes. I'm sure that I was a victim of cancel culture.
In the days since Charlie Kirk's shooting, a level of performative concern about limiting speech critical of the slain conservative has spread far and wide. It's led to normally critical liberal pundits, like Ezra Klein, celebrating Kirk's life and work, while others have been fired for merely bringing attention to things Kirk has said via direct quote. This hypervigilant policing of speech critical of Kirk reveals hypocrisy on all sides.
Christopher Rufo took six months to contradict his own advice. In February, the conservative activist wrote that social-media posts "should no longer be grounds for automatic social and professional annihilation." This view won't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Rufo's long crusade against left-wing cancel culture. By August, however, he had emulated his enemies, arousing outrage over a journalist's old tweets. The episode demonstrates not just his own hypocrisy but also why campaigns against unwelcome speech should always be resisted.
