Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, September 21, 2025 and National Chai Day, the spicy, sweet, milky, and restorative tea sold everywhere in India. You used to get it on trains for a few rupees in a handmade clay cup, which imparted an earthy flavor to the tea, but now they use plastic or paper. Here’s a video of a special chai, described on YouTube this way:
Pulled chai made by a tea seller, or “chai wallah”. Here’s how masala chai is made at the famous Krishna’s Tea Stall. Ingredients include black tea, fresh whole milk, water, black peppercorns, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom. Unlike many milky teas, which are brewed in water with milk later added, traditional masala chai is often brewed directly in the milk.
I’m not sure where Krishna’s Tea Stall is (the sign says “best in Bundi“, which is in Rajasthan) but this would be the place to get your tea: in this case “masala chai” (spiced tea). The elaborate pouring ritual is standard.
All this for about 10-20rupees! )A rupee is about one American cent now. )
It’s also World Gratitude Day, National Beef Stroganoff Day, National Women’s Friendship Day, International Day of Peace, National Brunch Day (Anthony Bourdain said to beware of restaurant brunches), National Pecan Cookie Day, and National Sponge Candy Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for saying that the MAGA crowd was desperate to show that the murderer of Charlie Kirk wasn’t one of theirs, implying that everyone knew it was. But Kimmel was wrong, as were many others on the Left who rushed to judgement before the facts were in. Andrew Sullivan calls them out, but only before calling out the other side in a post called “The woke Right comes of age.”
The difference between Kimmel and the rest, of course, is that Kimmel is on a broadcast network, which is supposed to serve the “public interest” and is subject to government licensing. And what those networks have done these last few years — especially in late night — has been to become aggressive, partisan opponents of Trump and MAGA and subsequently, much more unforgivably, craven apologists — and even propagandists, in the case of Colbert — for Biden. They decided to cater to only one half of the country, and relentlessly mock, ridicule, and demonize the other half. Johnny Carson, they ain’t.
The networks’ public legitimacy was thereby sacrificed on the altar of these men’s vanity and convictions, and the pretense of neutrality evaporated more explicitly than ever before. I guess it felt good and noble at the time. But the hangover? Not so much. Legitimacy matters — especially when you need to defend yourself, as the tides of opinion shift. But along with so many other institutions dependent on broad public legitimacy — universities, foundations, major corporations, large media entities like the NYT, WaPo, or NPR — the networks chose in the last decade to delegitimize themselves with the center.
Almost all abandoned the veneer of neutrality. The View, anyone? The 1619 Project? “Democracy Dies In Darkness”? The woke screeds that were passed off as news reports for years? And yes, veneers matter. We all became used to soft-liberal bias on TV and newspapers for years like background music, and it didn’t delegitimize them entirely. We let it go. They kept up a veil of respectability, a wispy fig leaf of balance over their leftist privates. We sighed and kept subscribing and watching. But the full-on neo-Marxist propaganda of 2020? And far-left disinformation at the Kimmel level in the wake of an assassination? Well, the veil slipped, didn’t it, and here we are.
. . . This hasn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a ratcheting dynamic of tribal illiberalism, fueled by Trump after 2016, and by the woke after 2020, and now by Trump again — with a vengeance. My hope was always that these institutions could slowly re-balance after Trump, moderate, permit diversity of opinion, win back public trust. They had a chance under Biden — as did Biden, of course — but by then they were drunk on their own supply, and threw that chance away. They went far left — just as Biden did. (For added value, we found out this morning that Kimmel was not planning to apologize for lying, but to go on the offensive against his critics. The Hollywood bubble is tight.)
Sullivan’s point is now both Left and Right are against free speech, but the Right’s opposition is worse, because it has the levers of state power behind it:
. . . . But the tit-for-tat is at Orbán levels now, with state institutions directly canceling private entities. That is a difference in kind, not degree. It’s where cancel culture becomes outright authoritarianism. FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s mob-like threats against broadcast networks this week — we can do this “the easy way or the hard way” — were pure Budapest. Nexstar needs FCC blessing for a merger, so within hours of Carr’s encouragement, they and their 60 affiliate stations balked at Kimmel’s lie. Disney, faced with losing 40 percent of a late-night audience that had already declined by almost half in 2025, swiftly caved.
And the Trump right isn’t coy or shy about any of this. They love cancel culture, they now declare, and want the state to be fully involved in it. . . =
There’s even fat-shaming of Trump:
Mercifully, some on the anti-woke right have stayed solid. The Free Press should take a bow. Ditto the WSJ and Kimberley Strassel. Taibbi and Greenwald — not on the right — get it. Ditto Tucker Carlson. But Ben Shapiro and Chris Rufo? Yep, you guessed it. Authoritarian frauds.
Then there’s the Big Guy. In his inauguration speech this year: “I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.” Trump now: “The [networks] give me only bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.” And this: “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”
Of course this is no big surprise. Trump is a tyrant in every cell of his lardaceous body.
Sullivan concludes is that both Left and Right are “woke” in the sense of trying to suppress speech they don’t like. And the sad part is that there’s little we can do about it. The Supreme Court can, of course, but they haven’t really weighed in on any meaningful cases against Trump. And, of course, we have the vote.
Trump doesn’t just support shutting down “hate speech” — he wants more of it! He has now sued CBS, the De Moines Register, the WSJ, the NYT, and Penguin Random/House for lèse majesté — something unimaginable for any president before he came along. CBS surrendered and is now busy turning itself into a Trump-Netanyahu network. ABC gave in over Stephanopoulos and CBS surrendered over a Kamala interview — both absurd concessions. The WaPo has killed a diverse op-ed page, in favor of an entirely right-leaning one. The WSJ and the NYT are currently being sued for a total of $25 billion for telling the truth about a public official. And still Trump wants more. Of course he does. Appeasing tyrants merely whets their appetite. And if this is after eight months, imagine what the next three years will bring.
I guess it’s clarifying, at least. Wokeness — with its censorious attempt to control minds by threats — is not dead. It’s just on both sides now — and involves government. Cancel culture has leapt from the social and horizontal to the political and vertical.
*Note that Sully was prescient, as yesterday’s NYT also has an article about the “Woke Right”, with the term meaning the same thing as above. But people on the Right–people you don’t like–are calling out the Woke Right:
Tucker Carlson, the conservative writer and podcaster, told listeners this week that Mr. Kirk never would have wanted his death to be used as a pretext for a crackdown on speech.
“You hope that a year from now the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” said Mr. Carlson, who himself was dropped from Fox News in 2023 after revelations that he had made a comment implying white superiority in a text message.
“If that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that. Ever,” Mr. Carlson added.
His words of caution were the latest indication that a small but growing group of media and political figures on the right have been troubled by recent calls to punish and prosecute those who malign Mr. Kirk.
. . .Ben Shapiro, who has one of the highest rated podcasts in the country, told listeners that while he was no fan of Mr. Kimmel, he did not like the idea of the F.C.C. threatening broadcasters over content that the agency deems false. “Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot,” Mr. Shapiro said on Thursday.
If the situation were reversed, and the F.C.C. under a Democratic president went after a host like Mr. Carlson or Sean Hannity of Fox News, Mr. Shapiro asked, “Would the right be OK with that or would they be claiming, quite properly, that is massive regulatory overreach, unprecedented in scope?”
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, on Friday compared Mr. Carr’s comments to a mob shakedown. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” the senator said on an episode of his podcast.
Carlson, Shapiro, and Cruz: you can’t get a group more demonized by the Left than that. But they’re right, and it all comes down to enforcing the First Amendment, or at least being objective when you’re a purveying of supposedly objective news. People in America, including Pam Bondi, really do need a tutorial on the Constitution, and how the courts have come to interpret the First Amendment in the last 250 years.
*If your barista at Starbucks is especially nice to you lately, remember, it’s not that you’re an especially nice person: it’s all about money. The company is losing $$. Welcome to America:
Here’s how a Starbucks SBUX 1.37%increase; green up pointing triangle visit is supposed to go today: You walk in the door and the barista looks you in the eye, smiles and says, “Welcome to Starbucks.”
They may call you by name, if you’re a regular. When your drink is ready—in four minutes or less—the barista’s there again, handing it to you. “Your Caramel Macchiato looks so good, it’s one of my favorites,” they say. Making your way to a comfy chair, you notice a smiley face and “Have a nice day!” scrawled in Sharpie across your cup.
It’s all according to a carefully written script. The world’s largest coffee company is mounting a new effort to choreograph the way its hundreds of thousands of U.S. baristas speak, make drinks and hand off orders, down to the word. They are being coached to read customers’ moods, to choose the right gestures, the correct tone of voice.
“Pause for a second to make eye contact. Don’t rush the moment,” reads the “Thank with eye contact” section of Starbucks’s new training material, a copy of which The Wall Street Journal viewed. Employees should be present with customers, even when multi-tasking. If there’s a mishap, baristas need to LATTE: Listen, Apologize, Take action, Thank and Ensure satisfaction.
. . .In the director’s seat is Starbucks Chief Executive Brian Niccol. Now a year into his tenure, he is betting the company’s future lies in making its cafes warm and inviting, and he is leaving nothing to chance.
The company has rewritten its training materials. It’s standardizing uniforms, cafe decor and worker mannerisms. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its service and ambience. It’s trying to make its interiors warmer and adding hundreds of thousands of chairs, many of which were stripped out during the pandemic. Mobile-order pickup queues are being better sectioned off, an effort to tamp down on crowding and confusion.
The stakes are high. Starbucks has recorded six consecutive quarterly same-store sales drops, and investors remain cautious on the stock, with shares trading down about 7% this year. Well-funded coffee competitors, including newcomers like Arizona-based Dutch Bros and China’s Luckin Coffee, are picking off Starbucks’s customers and have plans to open thousands of new stores in the years ahead.
I don’t like Starbucks and go only when I’m at an airport at 5 a.m. and have to wake up, so I’m not sad they’re losing money. Plus their drinks are overpriced. And with this new makeover, you can bet that your large latte is going to cost you seven or eight bucks. For that, you get this:
In the lesson covering the handoff of beverages, baristas role-played how to impart warmth to the customer, according to the training material. Baristas could ask a customer what they thought of their drink, encourage them to return tomorrow or note that it means a lot for them to be part of their day.
“Thanks [Name]! I remembered your order today. Hope I got it right,” one suggested outro said.
This all seems fake and patronizing. I prefer the French way, where servers make a decent wage, are professional, and not obsequious. If they’re friendly, it’s usually genuine. “Hi! I’m Todd, and I’ll be your barista today.”
*After I read Andrew Sullivan’s piece above saying that the Washington Post now has an “entirely right-wing” editorial page, I went over there and looked. It didn’t look particularly conservative, what with op-eds damning House Republicans, RFK Jr., and the new CDC. But there was one column that, while not right-wing, at least was against the progressive Left: “New York’s Zohran Mamdani holdout” (subtitle” The state Democratic Party chairman takes a pass on endorsing a socialist for mayor”). Perhaps, though, it’s telling that it was by the entire WaPo editorial board. An excerpt:
“Mr. Mamdani and I are in agreement that America’s greatest problem is the continued growth in income disparity in our nation,” Jacobs said in a recent statement. “On how to address it — we fundamentally disagree.” He cited Mamdani’s views on Israel and added: “I reject the platform of the so-called ‘Democratic Socialists of America’ and do not believe it represents the principles, values or policies of the Democratic Party.”
Some Democrats have acknowledged disagreements with Mamdani’s socialism but endorsed him anyway as a matter of political calculation, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. (Mamdani didn’t return the favor, declining to endorse the governor’s reelection bid.) Other Democrats privately play down concerns about Mamdani and express hope that he will moderate in office. After all, he’s no longer making statements such as “Queer liberation means defund the police.” He just got caught up in the moment in 2020, right?
Moderate in office? Don’t count on it: he’s already moderated what he says he believes only to get elected. That didn’t work for Biden, who got woker, and of course AOC is worse than ever, though she’s realized she’ll never be a senator if she keeps on with extreme progressive stands. It’s clear that the editorial board doesn’t like Mamdani, so maybe Sullivan is right:
Another story Democrats tell themselves is that even if Mamdani is a radical, New York’s mayoralty doesn’t really matter. But New York has a strong-mayor system, and if the leader of the world’s most famous city is a socialist, people will notice around the country and the globe.
The truth is that Mamdani is a fresh face on a well-trodden political program. Command-and-control economic policies will hurt the city’s poorest residents the most. Rent control of the kind Mamdani supports has created housing shortages wherever it has been tried. Government-run grocery stores aren’t a better idea in the United States than they were in the collapsing Soviet Union. A retreat from policing will degrade public spaces, as it did in cities across the country after 2020.
Jacobs says the Democratic Socialists of America do not represent the values of the Democratic Party. But Axios reported Friday that Mamdani’s fellow Democratic socialist from New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is mulling a presidential run. The competition to define the Democrats in 2028 will be intense, and moderates don’t need to preemptively capitulate by falling in line behind Mamdani.
OMG OMG; this is the first time I’ve herd AOC’s name mentioned as “mulling a presidential run”. I would have to write in the name of another Democratic candidate if she got the nod, but if Democrats are smart, they won’t nominate her.
*And there is no news that Ghost, the dying Giant Pacific octopus incubating her eggs in a California aquarium, has died yet, so she’s certainly still at it, starving to death. I find that story ineffably sad, even though nearly all octopuses undergo this kind of “senescence” after they lay their one clutch of eggs. Again, see the movie “My Octopus Teacher” if you want to see this happening (at the end). You will cry, but you will also be amazed and learn a lot of cephalopod biology.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the boys are joking around:
Hili: You should enjoy life at least once a week.
Andrzej: On Mondays or on Tuesdays?
In Polish:
Hili: Co najmniej raz w tygodniu powinieneś cieszyć się życiem.
Ja: W poniedziałki, czy we wtorki?
*******************
From Things With Faces, by Herla MBang. A face in spreadable butter!:
From Jesus of the Day. Do you know what this is? The first person to guess correctly gets my warm congratulations:
From CinEmma:
From Masih; another brave Iranian woman who gave her life (and right before her wedding) protesting the murderous and oppressive regime of Iran. You can read about the murder of this 23-year-old at this site.
If your wedding was just a week away, what would you do?
She chose to take to the streets to protest the killing of Mahsa Amini in the hand of morality police in Iran. The regime killed her before she could celebrate her own wedding.
Say her name:#HananehKia
: #حنانه_کیا pic.twitter.com/wO1UzXuXiL— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 20, 2025
*Luana sent this tweet from Emma Hilton. The original Guardian article is here, and here are a few paragraphs:
Between 50 and 60 athletes who went through male puberty have been finalists in the female category in global and continental track and field championships since 2000, according to a senior World Athletics official.
World Athletics has introduced SRY screening, a gene test that uses a cheek swab to assess if someone is biologically male or female, for the world championships in Tokyo.
In a presentation to a scientific panel in the Japanese capital on Friday, Dr Stéphane Bermon, head of health and science at World Athletics, outlined why the sport’s governing body believes such screens are necessary as he presented data collected over the past 25 years. He said it showed that athletes with differences of sex development (DSD), who have a 46 XY karyotype with male testes but were reported female at birth, were significantly “over-represented” in major finals and that it “compromises the integrity of the female competitions”.
World Athletics reveals the scale of the issue of male athletes with DSDs competing in the female category in international track and field.
I am not surprised at the number (I suspect the true figure is higher).
Nobody working in this area will be surprised at the number. https://t.co/KP3ZhEoTQA
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) September 20, 2025
From Simon, Rechavi likes to take memes and give them a laboratory them. And he’s right about the ice buckets:
There are never enough ice buckets in the lab
— Oded Rechavi (@odedrechavi.bsky.social) 2025-09-20T13:24:55.159Z
Two from my feed. Maarten Boudry, my Belgian friend, will be interested in this one (actually, I found that he reposted it on his feed):
He comes from Gaza to Belgium, applies for asylum, and wants to strike the throats of all “kuffars.”
Consider the ideology of this young asylum seeker from Gaza.
“When I finish fucking Israel, I’m gonna come and fuck Brits. We are coming, bro. We are Islam. Allahu akbar. God… pic.twitter.com/Vf2Oary6lD
— Darya Safai MP (@SafaiDarya) September 19, 2025
This is what raccoons do when they’re frightened and trying to make themselves look bigger:
“We got caught Brian, just act normal” 😅 pic.twitter.com/b0SibUSbYX
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 19, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This 35-year-old Polish man lived but twelve days in the camp before he died.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-21T10:29:04.274Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Of the first one Matthew says, “These Public Information Films (PIFs) were shown on 70s kids TV in the UK. Vid in tweet. . . . There’s a reason the account is called Scarred for Life – it’s full of the alarming things we had in the late 60s early 70s.” Oy!
LONELY WATER (1973): Legendary child-frightener, and one of the most influential and effective PIFs ever made. Donald Pleasence's voice helped lower the number of child deaths by drowning and opened the door to the scary, deadly PIFs of the 70s & 80s. A folk horror film condensed into 90 seconds.
— Scarred For Life (@scarredforlife.bsky.social) 2025-09-20T17:31:26.986Z
And a bizarre male fish, who is “pregnant.” There must be three sexes!!!!
The next generation is safe behind those teeth! Yesterday, I spotted this pregnant dad Tiger #Cardinalfish (#Cheilodipterus macrodon) #mouthbrooding his eggs. #tigercardinalfish #cheilodipterusmacrodon #tulamben #tulambenbali #chrisgug #gugunderwater #gug
— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T12:31:00.253Z
Lagniappe from me:
Everyday this gentle deer waits patiently at her doorstep for a treat. pic.twitter.com/69EidehpGJ
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) September 20, 2025
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. -Stephen King, novelist (b. 21 Sep 1947)
Mr Chevrotain, I presume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrotain
You got it, pal!
Praise from Caesar!
Thanks Jerry.
By the way, I looked up what those “six sexes” might be that are referred to in the Sept. 19 post (“Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate seat in Texas says that there are six biological sexes”), and it seems likely that our friend is simply confusing karyotypes (XX, XY, X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY) with sex, as briefly discussed in this short piece: https://theparadoxinstitute.org/read/karyotypes-are-not-sexes.
Thank you for sharing this well written as easily understood article.
Thanx for clarification. I was rather curious to know how somebody came up with exactly SIX sexes.
I had been thinking about it yesterday and came up with 5 of these) (X0, XX, XY, XXY, XYY, with a 6th being XX with a SRY translocation somewhere but I hadn’t got XXXY. I guess if we get Ito odd translocation we can get mores sexes, and get the “trans”, too.
“Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for saying that the MAGA crowd was desperate to show that the murderer of Charlie Kirk wasn’t one of theirs, implying that everyone knew it was. But Kimmel was wrong, as were many others on the Left who rushed to judgement before the facts were in.”
I think Kimmel meant something different. Apparently his comment was taped before the shooter had been caught, and no one knew which side he was on. Kimmel was simply (and correctly) pointing out that the discussion was being politicized by the MAGA crowd who thought the shooter must be from the Left. Of course the Left was playing the same game, hoping that the shooter was from the Right or somehow enabled by gun availability, etc. The same game plays out during every notorious act of violence in the US. It would have been better if Kimmel had made fun of the way both “teams” react to political violence, but he wasn’t wrong to make fun of one of the “teams” (in this case, the more vocal one).
Some pics were uncovered of Robinson posing in a track suit that mimicked a Pepe meme commonly used by the far-right “Groyper” group. Groypers hated Kirk due to Kirk’s support of Israel and their leader, Nick Fuentes, directed them to troll Kirk at his public appearances. Leftists like Kimmel seized on that pic as proof that Robinson was in fact a member of the far-right — a “MAGA”—, not a member of the far-left. A super liberal friend of mine started crowing on Facebook that this proved that the right was more violent and Robinson was definitely a MAGA, etc. So Kimmel wasn’t lying, just overly hopeful and misinformed.
But the next day, Robinson’s relationship with a trans person was confirmed and his texts with his lover were made public, definitively proving he held leftist views.
Shame on Kimmel for not wanting to retract and apologize, though.
I have heard some argue that Robinson might better be classified as an NVE (nihilist violent extremist) rather than right or left, as has been the case with a number of recent assassins and would-be assassins. Indeed, his views seem to have been all over the place.
Given that he characterized Kirk’s views as hateful, believed that men can transition into women, and his family described him as having progressive views, I think “leftist” is an accurate characterization of Robinson.
Well, maybe, but I’ll be looking forward to hearing more. He seems to have grown up very conservative (Mormon family), but to have realized quite recently that he was gay, and perhaps to have hated himself for it. One of the bullets, after all, was inscribed with anti-gay rhetoric. (Others with anti-fascist slogans.) It might have also been a reason for the transitioning of the partner. (Obviously, I am speculating here.) So I suspect that he had long been very conservative, but was thrown into a tailspin upon discovering his homosexuality, ending in a very conflicted and labile psyche.
Yes, Adrienne, but “symptom pool” is more accurate.
We credit people who do big evil things with big evil complicated motives.
Often it is anything but.
The mechanism here (and often) is disturbed psychologies more than a political act – on either side. The ideation is immediate justification.
We mistake that b/c our own interests in politics is large, I think, yet we don’t (mosta us) don’t do violence.
best,
D.A.
NYC
“But the next day, Robinson’s relationship with a trans person was confirmed and his texts with his lover were made public, definitively proving he held leftist views.”
I assume that Robinson’s views were left or left-ish — he doesn’t sound like he had a coherent, well-integrated political philosophy at all. But if being in relationship with a trans person is definitive proof of leftist views, lots of Trump-supporting friends of conservative trans person Caitlyn Jenner will be surprised!
No Groyper would be in a romantic relationship with a trans person. I’m hard pressed to think of any prominent MAGAn openly in one either.
“Shame on Kimmel for not wanting to retract and apologize, though.”
He did want to at least clarity what he meant, on his next show. He was not allowed to do it by ABC.
I generally agree with your point, and would like to add another thought: Kimmel’s comment about the shooter was not the joke and was more by way of set-up or introduction of the topic. The humor part of that bit was his describing Trump’s “Stages of Grief” with the video of Trump, asked about his feelings about Charlie Kirk, talking about the construction of the White House ballroom. After the clip Kimmel returns saying how Trump handles grief “like a 4 year old mourning a gold fish.” I am sure it was the direct mockery of the Dear Leader that brought down the hammer. The comment regarding the shooter’s politics is just the thin pretext to cover that the real motive to cancelling Kimmel was poor Donny’s hurt feelings.
Yes, for sure that part was the most annoying to Trump. But even that was only a small part of the impetus for Trump’s ire. Trump’s public tweets gloating after Colbert’s cancellation said that “some people think” Kimmel was next. Trump has been deeply annoyed by Kimmel for at least seven years. This latest joke was only a good pretext.
I have to stress that President Trump didn’t fire Jimmy Kimmel. His employer, ABC did. If the President had called up the CEO of ABC and said, “I’ll make a world or trouble for you at the FCC unless you fire that Kimmel jerk for making fun of me,” the CEO could have told the President to pound salt. But entertainment companies aren’t free-speech crusaders. They are court jesters given royal patronage — their broadcast licences — to make fun of the monarch until he decides they aren’t funny anymore. ABC could have said, “Mr. Kimmel is too valuable a property for us to do without him, and too much loved by the public for them to put up with your messing with our licence.” But ABC, and the President, knew neither of those claims was true. So ABC folded, in order to uphold the interests of its shareholders as is its fiduciary duty.
What’s the point of lawfully having someone by the balls if you don’t extract concessions by threatening to squeeze?
Can the Administration revoke a broadcast licence as easily as I might fire the company who does my garden maintenance? If so, then the law has put great power into the hands of the Executive to censor entertainment. If not, then ABC could have called the President’s bluff, said, “No you can’t. The Commissioners won’t revoke our licence at Presidential whim. There’s a process it has to follow which is rigged in our favour because no broadcasting licence has ever been revoked.” But it didn’t.
Yes but the FCC itself did threaten ABC/Disney. Whether or not ABC could have won a game of chicken if Kimmel were more popular isn’t really the point, is it?
Well, sure. I assumed the FCC Director was doing the President’s express bidding with the “easy way or the hard way” stuff, unitary executive philosophy and all. My point is that freedom from censorship doesn’t come free just because of the First Amendment. It’s a philosophy, not just jurisprudence. The censors never sleep. Those whom they would silence have to decide if they are in the business of resisting it — “Go to Hell, Mr. President, [or Mr. FCC Director.] Do your worst as you try to wreck our company. This is a principle we’re standing on because the credibility of our business depends on it.” — or of taking a knee to keep making showbiz money with the least fuss. What the President and the FCC are doing here is perfectly legal until someone takes them to Court and wins. (And then what?)
Far from defending to the death an opponent’s right to utter disagreeable speech (as Voltaire probably never said), most people with anything to lose won’t even defend their own right to say things they themselves believe in. If Amy Hamm, RN, had been a breadwinner for her children who depended on her income as a nurse to educate them and put shoes on their feet, I’d have considered her in reckless disregard for their welfare in putting up her “I ❤️ JK Rowling” billboard in a place as full of crazies as Vancouver and in a country with as little regard for free speech as Canada.
I just find the dynamics of power fascinating. Richard Hanania had a good take on it in one of his free essays here:
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/power-is-power.
It even includes a clip from Game of Thrones inspiring the title: “Power is power.”
BTW, Hanania has a second essay expanding on this indirect suppression of speech, appraising two competing views of the President’s actions here, by Dominic Pino and Mike Solano, (neither of whom I know).
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/please-find-less-stupid-ways-to-defend [Trump]
For what it’s worth, I disagree with his two analogies that attempt to explain why what the President did was directly wrong, contra Solano. Analogies are not arguments. They carry only as far as the analogy is correct and they fail here. He should have just explained in direct terms why the President shouldn’t have done it, but he would then have had to have accepted the truth of what Solano said, which he was already committed to rebutting. Fail there, Mr. Hanania.
The situation is much more complex, involving pending mergers that need FCC approval, and a direct threat against Kimmel and ABC from the FCC chairman (“We can do this the easy way or the hard way”).
Income inequality is absolutely not the most pressing problem facing America today, Jay Jacobs. That is absurd and ridiculous. My well-being is not at all affected by my knowledge that some people are far better off than I am, even if they were born into it. There is some evidence that resentfulness and envy will shorten the lives of not just executives of health-insurance companies but one’s own life as well, and not just because one might be tempted to rob the rich and get shot dead in the attempt. It makes one’s arteries thicken with inflammatory proteins that attract cholesterol, or something. Only bitter, poisonous, “Eat the Rich” envy would make his and Mr. Mamdani’s message about inequality attractive.
You argue that your well-being is not affected by the existence of richer people, and you are right about that. But most analysts aren’t at all concerned about the psychological aspects of income inequality. They are concerned that the middle class is disappearing. I think this is a very serious problem.
HA! Allow me to loudmouth in here:
I think Lou and Leslie are talking at cross purposes.
There are people richer than Leslie and I, but we don’t care. “Rising tide, all boats” stuff. Which is true but often misunderstood by half the country (who don’t seem to understand economics…).
Maybe Lou’s point is that the tide isn’t high enough, generally? That irrespective of how many billionaires there are, middle class people could be doing better.
D.A.
NYC
Woke Right pushing for censorship is another case of the right learning bad habits from the Left and wanting to play tit-for-tat. I still don’t see the Kimmel situation as one of censorship, though. His show, like Colbert’s was losing viewers and money. I just think ABC said it wasn’t worth it to go on with him, in light of the hubbub.
In all the back and forth, the ratings factor was surely part of how this thing was weighed by the conglomerate executives. But there was considerable censorship at the moment (“We could do this the easy way or the hard way”).
I find myself in the strange place of agreeing with the criticism from Carlson, Shapiro, and Cruz over how this was done.
So who’s next to go off the air? I think from ratings alone Seth Myers will be next as his show is simply dreadful. He doesn’t even try anymore. But Fallon will carry on.
Noooo Mark! I love Seth!
I really like all those late night guys – they’re smart people with (VERY underappreciated) teams of writers, trained and skilled at tickling our funny bone.
And they’re easy to find. I watch their highlights most days.
Sure they’re very left and have moved rreeeeal far left in the past decade, but control for that, stay for the laughs.
D.A.
NYC
“His show, like Colbert’s was losing viewers and money.”
I probed around this issue for a bit, and while it is clear that all late-night talk shows have been losing audience for years, it is less clear — and quite likely false — that Kimmel’s show was losing money. It presumably made less money this year that at its peak, but as far as I can tell, with direct ad revenues to ABC of $70 million, and more than twice that through licensing/syndication to ABC affiliates, it seems unlikely that it was in the red.
I feel sorry for poor Ghost. Just a few nights ago I dined at an excellent, but surprisingly reasonably priced, Japanese restaurant. I was having a splendid dinner of grilled octopus, gently pickled vegetables with rice, and seaweed soup. As I was dining alone, I was scrolling and reading stuff on my phone while I ate (an atrocious, unhealthy habit I, like many other people, have picked up during the cell phone age) and I happened across an article explaining the sad plight of Ghost. I began to feel guilty enjoying my octopus dinner.
I think the potato with legs is a Dik-dik, a tiny forest antelope.
I think it is a Java Mouse Deer. The males have small fangs.
Awesome potato-eating buck!
AOC for President caught my attention too. I hope not, but because she is young and good looking she has a shot at it.
Her attractiveness is terrible, Norman.
I mean – she’s very, very pretty.
Unfortunately b/c few would make a worse president. So her “appeal” could be a secret weapon we haven’t seen in US politics b/c all the ladies running in the past were: “Middle Aged Corporate Well Presented.” (Including “my gal” Hillary)
As one would expect from somebody old enough to run for PotUS.
A young hottie like AOC has a chance. Sadly.
D.A.
NYC
D.A.
NYC
Another Oded Rechavi tweet for Jerry’s next post about Colossal Biosciences.
https://x.com/OdedRechavi/status/1969747489688543416
It is no surprise that men with DSDs are “over-represented” when you learn that several African countries seek out those men specifically to win medals at the expense of women. It is more common in countries where people with these conditions are not identified as early.
This is cheating at a national level.
Joolz – Cheating is just “life” in the 3rd world. Standards are different there, sadly for the people, and fixing those standards is how you become 1st world. Witness Poland’s incredible success.
best, and see you on X where I follow you,
D.A.
NYC
It’s hard to fix things when cheating is endorsed at a high level. One time I was visiting friends in Egypt around the time of an election, and they announced Mubarak has got 98% of vote, yet my friends didn’t know a single person who had voted for him.
When there’s corruption at the top, it sets a bad example for the whole country. At least with sports, we have a chance to stop it infecting other countries.🤞
Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ tells the story of Johnson personally calling the publisher of the Houston Chronicle, in those days a Republican-leaning publication, which was in line to purchase a broadcast media outlet, I think a TV station. Johnson, then President, told the man that they would be given permission by the FCC to go through with the purchase if and only if the Chronicle agreed, in writing, to editorially support any Johnson candidacy for so long as he chose to run. You can imagine the nation-wide outcry! Actually there was no outcry; after some whining the publisher groveled and provided the written undertaking, and performed on it too.
In terms of the use of power, Trump is a piker compared with LBJ or with Kennedy, who made his brother and chief political consiglieri Bobby his Attirney General.
Correct in spirit but with some details wrong. Caro showed (in his 4th volume. I hope so badly he gets the 5th volume completed) that in 1964 LBJ got a written pledge from Jones (editor of the Houston Chronicle) that the Chronicle would support LBJ’s administration for the length of it, but it had nothing to do with the FCC. It was tied to LBJ’s approval of a bank merger in which Jones had a significant personal financial interest in (Jones and his progressive editor Stevens, who predated the pledge, were both ousted from the Chronicle in 1965). A nation-wide outcry was not a possibility as no one knew about it for many decades. LBJ did also use FCC threats as pressure points, but not in this specific case.
Thank you for the correction. Despite living in the modern age, I do everything from memory, which used to be more formidable than it is anymore. I would note, however, that saying “no one” knew about it is not exactly so, since Jones knew about it and his business partners and editorial board members probably did as well. But no one went running to the national press, the Times, etc., because it would have availed them nought, and the national press was not about to cross LBJ at that juncture.
I have also been waiting for the fifth volume seemingly forever.
I don’t think the new worker guidelines at Starbucks are fake and patronizing; I think they’re likely of benefit for both the customer and employee.
When I was a waitress working for tips, I discovered something many psychologists are well aware of. If you consciously behave in a certain way, you begin to unconsciously adopt the emotions which normally justify such behavior. Act as if you like the person you’re waiting on and you often end up liking the person you’re waiting on. Act as if you enjoy your job and your job starts to become more enjoyable. Pretend you care, you begin to care.
While there are limits, of course, the “As If” Principle (also a book by skeptic psychologist Richard Wiseman) is a reasonable applied heuristic in everyday life. It also works the other way, which is why therapies and advice to “never hold your anger in” tend to lead to more seething and resentment, instead of the peace-creating catharsis it’s supposed to give us.
I agree. One of my kids has worked at the neighbourhood Starbucks for years while at university. It’s a franchise, owned by the company that provides food service on campus, and the jobs are unionized with benefits. The only staff who are complaining about these scripts from corporate are the ones who have trouble interacting with customers (and coworkers). No one else resents being reminded to make eye contact, call the customers by name, and generally behave like a friendly human. Improves everyone’s experience.
Also disagree with our host: my double espresso at Starbucks is better and much less expensive than at the beloved independent coffeehouse that my university has gone out of its way to host for decades.
Yes, Mike and Sastra. In Japan they call these new Starbucks “innovations”:… they call them….. “ordinary customer care”.
Japan “invented” that kind of cafe, “kisaten” after the war, which was later imported by Starbucks in the 90s. Culture is accumulative of course, and there have always been cafes all over, but you can trace the Japanese kissaten “genes” in what we call “Seattle (or Aussie) coffee culture”.
D.A.
NYC
” . . . call the customers by name . . . .”
As a practical matter, I understand the necessity (and convenience for the barista) to know the name of the customer so that the barista can let the customer know when their custom-made drink is ready. A black coffee, which can be accomplished immediately, is another matter. Not every customer wants their name broadcast throughout the establishment, nor needs the ego-stroking of hearing their name.
In my office, with an inexpensive (ca $300) Briel expresso machine, I can make a double espresso for about thirty cents. What I meant was that Starbucks’s coffee is far more expensive than the cost of making it yourself. Granted, there are wages and rent to pay, but I can’t stomach this tenfold+ price. And my espresso is better than Starbucks!
I too enjoy the black coffee I make at home more than the Starbucks and even the some other coffee places I’ve been to in the US. When I go to a coffee place it is usually to spend a long time reading, and I get something other than black coffee.
“People in America, including Pam Bondi, really do need a tutorial on the Constitution, and how the courts have come to interpret the First Amendment in the last 250 years.”
Agreed. And that so many do is an indictment of our K-12 system and our colleges. Bondi, on the other hand, lacks that excuse.
I suppose it is possible that by “hate speech” she meant incitement to violence, which is prohibited. If she did not mean that, it is indeed a worry. Here in Australia the hate speech laws are applied very selectively. Jews don’t count as targets but the Muslims who target them do, and thus selectively benefit from hate speech laws, just to give one example. That is, the group that most engages in hate speech is actually protected by hate speech laws.
Hate speech in America is not “incitement to violence”, but “imminent and predictable incitement to violence and/or destruction. As I’ve said, I can stand in the center of a local park and cry “Gas the Jews!” and that is NOT a violation of the First Amendment. However, shouting it in front of a crowd of people leaving a synagogue may welll be. “Hate speech” in the US has much more stringent definition than in most other countries.
“And that so many do is an indictment of our K-12 system and our colleges.”
What is your evidence for that claim? For at least the last 20 years, my subjective (objective?) perception is that Americans have more and more sought to blame third parties for their problems as opposed to taking personal responsibility. Some Americans of all ages are not interested in learning much of anything. Theirs is a mass pop culture “Bread and Circuses” perspective on life. (While I was in the Navy I first heard the phrase, “fat, dumb and happy.” Apparently, ignorance is bliss.) 5-10 years ago 96% of Americans recognized the name “Lady Gaga.” A substantially smaller percentage can state how many branches of the federal government there are.
High schoolers kvetch about being mistreated because they can’t access Instagram or TikTok during school hours. Several times over the last decade or so Lawrence Krauss has reflected to the effect that more or less 50% of American adults can correctly answer the following question: “True or False: the Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it.” Re: Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” and Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason,” among other tomes.
(I recently had a 90 year-old relative – who has not lost anything cognitively – ask me if Americans fought in France in World War II. She doesn’t care about history at any level but can sure update you on the latest local Peyton Place gossip.)
You would likely enjoy Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, an oldie but goodie.
Also, re lack of civic understanding, do they still teach some civics as part of year 6-8 Social Studies (as it was called in my day)? Either they don’t, or they teach it very badly.
The little potato with fangs? Colossal’s second attempt at a dire wolf?
😀
I grew up in the USA but began living in various other countries starting in 1990. Those other countries do not have a tradition of tipping, so I got used to just paying the prices on the menu. Thus whenever I go back to the USA, I find myself dumbfounded by the tradition of having to calculate a 15% tip. Very annoying and I wish the USA would join Japan, Australia and Europe in paying servers a decent wage with no expectation of a tip (except for truly extraordinary service of course).
Agreed!
All wages at whatever rate, “decent” or not, are paid by customers through prices. In tipping countries, customers demonstrate that they prefer that waiters receive low base wages, to keep prices low, with the option to goose up the income of selected waiters by tipping them beyond the billed price. Waiters have learned that through hustle and guilt exploitation they can extract (much) higher tips from customers with less difficulty than they could bargain from the restaurant as wages, with the additional perq that income taxes can sometimes be evaded on cash tips. Restaurants are happy to go along with this because the waiters prefer it. A restaurant in a tipping country that embarked on a high-wage, high-price policy would want for both waiters and customers.
In Europe, customers still subsidize the restaurant’s wage bill through the “service charge” — service y compris — which is embedded in the menu price, though rarely with a specific percentage indicated. There, the reason customers don’t tip is not because the restaurant pays a “decent” wage — customers don’t know or care what waiters earn — but rather because they are paying the mandatory tip already. Governments (and busboys) prefer this system for obvious reasons. The customer’s preference, which is to keep prices low with low wages and avoid tipping if she can get away with it, is ignored in Europe but celebrated in America and other tipping countries.
Given the tax, wage, and alcohol monopoly structure in Canada, I have a certain maximum tip %age above which I never, ever go, and that’s on the base bill before our high sales taxes are applied. (I don’t trust the tip buttons on the point-of-sale device to know that.) Now suppose a restaurant adopts the European model. To keep its staff from quitting, management has to promise them that it will raise prices enough so that the new embedded service charge leaves the waitstaff no worse off. The smart waiter will claim at the staff meeting that he really gets tips equivalent to “oh, 20 to 25% of the bill, easily, on a good night, even if I don’t declare it all. Who does, right?” The lesser waiters, who know their tips are closer to 10% and know the smart waiter is bullshitting, won’t speak up, because they are thinking, “Holy crap. I’m going to get a huge windfall if this service charge goes in at 25%!” The owner has to worry that if any individual customer figures out that the price increase is more than the amount she would historically have left as a tip, she will abandon that restaurant. So the owner will low-ball the service charge, knowing that his best waiters will leave for a restaurant that allows tipping, but at least he’ll keep his customers.
1). Contrary to what they might say, restaurant customers don’t want waiters to receive a “decent” wage if it means higher menu prices, which it must. They might imagine that higher wages come out of profits, but they don’t.
2). Restaurant customers in Europe are being fleeced through opaque service charges for indifferent service which they have no control over.
3). Taxes and subsidies should be visible.
4). A no-tipping policy works only if enforced nation- or culture- wide and if there is no collective memory among customers and waiters concerning what they paid and received under the old system.