Culture

America is enduring a mental health crisis, and you need go no farther than your local Barnes & Noble bookstore to see evidence. I was an avid journal-keeper for years and love all things paper, so I get a little giddy perusing the “stationery and gifts” section. Last weekend, however, rather than being energized by the prospect of filling one of those gorgeous, gilded, supple leather books with my most brilliant thoughts and sweetest sentimentalities, I was left feeling sad about the message sent by so many of the journals, planners, and gifts for sale. Judging from the featured items, you’d be led to believe America is a nation of depressed, exhausted, anxiety-ridden alcoholics. And for the most part, you’d be right.

Peroxide blonde hair, black sullen eyes and teeth like Pez candies. That hardly sounds like the face of a dream man. But Pete Davidson is not just any man; in the last ten years he has transformed from a nobody New York stand-up to every woman’s favorite plus-one. Davidson is a contested sex symbol. Women spend their Saturday nights salivating at Saturday Night Live, thinking about how they'd offer up their firstborn for one date with the comedian. Men, on the other hand, think we’re mental. They just don’t get Pete’s appeal. So, gents, I’d like to tell you what it is about Pete. I’ll start with the obvious: it has been well-reported that the comedian is well endowed. Ariana Grande once tweeted, then deleted, "ten inches," but she was probably just being nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, he’s done it again. Pete Davidson is reportedly dating Emily Ratajkowski: model, businesswoman and certified stunner. The news isn’t that shocking to Cockburn after seeing the string of babes Davidson has dated in the past. The list includes Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale, Margaret Qualley, Kaia Gerber, Phoebe Dynevor and most recently Kim Kardashian. Pete’s whirlwind romance with Kardashian ended earlier this year after just nine months together. Thank goodness Skete got rid of his tattoos dedicated to Kim that read, “My girl is a lawyer,” and also the initials of Kim and her four kids; KNSCP, representing North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm.

Bella Hadid ate burritos today, in case anyone was wondering. Kourtney Kardashian had a smoothie and Paris Hilton had a facial. These snippets of celebrity lives have become so accessible through social media that many of us see these characters more than our family members. But lately, along with recipes and promotions of their new album, fans are increasingly seeing too much. Just this month we’ve witnessed Kanye West’s chaotic downfall, which has now — thankfully — resulted in him vowing to take a month of silence after spurting antisemitic hate for the past few weeks. Lately I’ve seen Madonna’s breasts more than my own — though thankfully I've not yet taken to licking water out of a dog bowl.

Brearley is an all-girls day school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a $150 million endowment and an unparalleled history of academic excellence. Its alumnae are among the most capable, accomplished and charming women on the planet. Its graduates include publisher Dorothy Schiff, arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and actresses Ann Baxter, Téa Leoni, and Jill Clayburgh. The list of Brearley’s serious, soignée women is long. Legendary English instructor Frances Taliaferro was an essayist and book reviewer for Harper’s magazine. Head Priscilla Winn Barlow ranks among the great educators of her generation. The place has always had a dash of marching suffragette and limousine liberal, but hey, this is Gotham, not Grover’s Corners.

There was a time in recent memory (i.e., my childhood) when on October 31, kids dressed up in whatever costumes they wanted, roamed their neighborhoods at dusk and even past dark, accepted candy from strangers, and had an innocently fun time trick-or-treating. Their parents were aware of this Halloween tradition and approved of it, as did most Americans. Fast-forward to now, and Halloween is just another enjoyable tradition-turned-casualty of pretend progressive paranoia.

After weeks of media speculation, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen have announced that their divorce is finalized. Cockburn is not one to celebrate the demise of anyone’s marriage, especially when children are involved. He thinks very highly (theoretically, at least) of commitment, fidelity, happily ever after, and all that. But morality aside, Cockburn can’t help but be convinced that Tom Brady is getting the better end of this divorce deal — by far. Here’s the thing: Gisele had the dream life. She was wife to a hot, filthy-rich husband whose job it is to play a game for 18 weeks out of the year. She also got to be a mother without ever having to worry about many of the things that stress out most mothers: cooking, cleaning, paying the bills.

Maybe it was all those drinks he guzzled after demanding the restaurant comp them, but James Corden forgot for a whole week that his wife has a food allergy. He used this clever excuse to try to explain away his alleged “extremely nasty behavior” that got him banned from Balthazar’s in New York, a swanky French restaurant. Keith McNally, Balthazar’s owner, labeled Corden "the most abusive customer" in his establishment’s 25-year history. McNally detailed on Instagram two accounts of abuse Balthazar’s staff received from Corden. One involved the comedian supposedly finding a hair in his food and insisting afterward on free drinks as compensation, with an added threat of bad restaurant reviews.

Being an eclectic chap, Cockburn has sampled his fair share of music. And he’s not ashamed to admit, contrary to Al Michaels’s suggestion that Taylor Swift only appeals to teenage girls, that he considers himself a “Swiftie” — not least of all because Swift makes repeated reference to one of his favorite activities: drinking alcohol. Swift just released her new album, Midnights, along with an official music video to accompany her catchy and oh-so-clever song, Anti-Hero. The video tells you all you need to know about Swift’s preferred method for dealing with her problems. Though she never mentions booze by name, she appears in the video taking shots and desperately shaking the last drop from a bottle of wine directly into her mouth.

For much of my life, I confess I didn’t pay much attention to Queen Elizabeth II. My Muslim upbringing in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia meant that the idea of a female figurehead was utterly foreign to me. How could a woman be the head of a church or the leader or embodiment of a nation? This was not what my god taught. Allah, for me, was the ultimate patriarchal ruler. He would certainly not countenance a figure like the Queen. But once I left Islam and became a convert to the ideals of the West, I came to appreciate her. The massive crowds following her coffin as it wound its way down from Balmoral, through Edinburgh, to London and finally to Windsor show that I am far from alone. The Queen was beloved.

At the beginning of 1962, President John F. Kennedy had high hopes for a peaceful year with the Soviet Union, the United States’ most dangerous adversary. On December 30, 1961, Kennedy issued a statement offering his good wishes for the new year to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet people. Ten months later, in October of 1962, the US and the Soviet Union were on the brink of war. The Soviets had moved missiles into Cuba, which initially went undetected by US intelligence. On October 14, an American U-2 spy plane took pictures showing missile base construction taking place in Cuba. The next evening, American analysts realized the implications of what that construction meant.

Candace Owens's latest foray into the sphere of defending antisemitism ought to be something everyone can easily condemn. Discussing rapper Kanye West's controversial post, which has gotten him locked out of his social media, Owens said Monday: "If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This is not the beginning of a Holocaust." https://twitter.

Progressives at the zenith of privilege and power have steered US civil rights, education, and welfare policies almost exclusively for fifty years. What does the nation have to show for it? Recent answers include federalized transgender protections, academic collapse, and the expansion of a dependent, often disreputable underclass for whom permanent government-based custodial care is the only feasible option. Food Stamps, Medicaid, Section Eight, and other public income support evidently sap incentive and enterprise, but what’s the alternative now for the structurally unemployable? Anti-white indoctrination is rife in tax-funded schools. Price inflation and declining social mobility haunt the millennial generation’s future.

Spotify once took a run at Joe Rogan. YouTube banned Dan Bongino. Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene. Twitter also famously canceled Donald Trump, and for a while, me. As with the suspension of Trump (and on a much, much lesser scale, me) progressives cheered the deplatformings the way public lynchings used to attract a picnicking crowd. The left controls social media (as well as most mainstream media) and so day by day their unreal world becomes ethically more cleansed, more free of things they do not like, and with all the bad news (Hunter Biden) made to go away. The world online is the way they want it to be, with the real world held at bay behind the screen. Like living in The Villages in Florida, or maybe in the Matrix.