Society

It may not come as a great surprise to readers that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will not, in fact, be having a cage fight with one another. Ever since Musk had posted on Twitter (now known as X) in June that he was interested in battling the Meta tycoon, only for Zuckerberg to reply “send me locations,” the saga has turned from a typically absurd piece of Muskian humor to a story that has oscillated between what has seemed like a serious piece of corporate warfare and utter silliness. There was never any serious doubt that Musk would have come off a poor second to Zuckerberg had the fight taken place.

New documents uncovered this week revealed that FBI director Christopher Wray was completely full of it when he testified to Congress that attempts to investigate traditional Catholics were limited to one rogue FBI field office. Earlier this year, a former special agent released a memo from the FBI's Richmond field office warning that so-called "radical traditionalist" Catholics were potential sources of domestic extremism. The memo asserted that there is "growing overlap" between white supremacist groups and traditional Catholics who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). According to the FBI, these individuals are "antisemitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT and white supremacy." The memo suggested infiltrating these traditional Catholic groups and developing "sources" within them.

The Women’s World Cup has tied a bow around a summer of own goals in feminist ideology. Barbie — yes, that plastic blonde with impossible proportions — became the feminist icon of the summer, trans women silenced the voices of biological females and the story of Lia Thomas’s prowess remains etched in our minds. But for the grand finale of this summer's theater of the absurd? White Western women elevating the hijab onto the pedestal of feminist glory. For those who may not know, the hijab is a religious headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. While the practice dates as far back as the fourth century AD, the popularity of the hijab is actually quite new, with a stark rise beginning in just the 1970s.

Dave Portnoy is back as the sole chieftain of Barstool Sports. Penn Entertainment, which bought 36 percent of the company in 2020 and increased its stake to 100 percent in February 2023, sold the company back to its founder Tuesday, “in exchange for certain non-competes and other restrictive covenants.” In other words: Penn basically gave the company back to Portnoy for free. Rarely does buyer’s remorse work out so well.   Founded in Boston in 2003 as a print publication dedicated to fantasy sports and gambling, and initially completely produced by Portnoy, Barstool Sports quickly became a juggernaut in the sports and culture landscape.

If you’re looking for accurate, hard-hitting, unbiased journalism, look no further than former Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki interviewing the former chief of staff who hired her, Ron Klain, about the administration they both worked for. That’s just what MSNBC tried to pass off as balanced coverage of current events, as Inside with Jen Psaki this weekend looked more like a segment of propaganda you’d see on the Korean Central News Agency than on a major American news network trying to be taken seriously. Of course it’s par for the course for former press secretaries to move onto TV jobs, but something about a former administration mouthpiece becoming a mainstream media administration mouthpiece seems a bit off to Cockburn.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to shave a few years off your age. Sportsmen do it all the time for example. Cockburn did it in a bar last week.  But if you’re in the public eye, are known for not being particularly popular and are estranged from your fame-hungry family, it’s possible that you'd raise suspicions if doing so. Meghan Markle has recently been accused of lying about her age as she celebrated her forty-second birthday on August 4.  The conspiracy arose on the internet, as all the best ones do. A YouTube video viewed tens of thousands of times claims that the duchess is actually several years older. "The court papers filed by her sister state Meghan was born in 1977," the narrator says.

Why are conservative media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens embracing Andrew Tate, an online celebrity known for misogynistic commentary, alleged abuse of women and foreign charges of human trafficking?  Because Tate sometimes has agreeable things to say about the importance of masculinity in culture, they ignore the clearly inexcusable parts of his lifestyle. Both Carlson and Owens’s interviews were generally peppered with mild questions and meant to give Tate a positive platform.  With 7.4 million Twitter followers and billions of TikTok video views, Tate already has his own exponentially influential platform — one that targets legions of young men with a destructive message of narcissism, sexual prowess and obsession with physical appearance.

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has graced the cover of another magazine, this time Women's Health, a health and fitness periodical for female-identifiers. Brace yourself for the interview that accompanies the beach photoshoot; Liz Plosser, the mag's editor-in-chief, has a difficult time disguising her puppy-dog crush on the community college English teacher. Given the fact that Mrs. Biden is a doctor, Cockburn was hopeful that she would share some of her health-related expertise. Alas, thanks to Plosser's mighty gentle probing, we only found out a few odds and ends regarding Biden's exercise routine and love of fish and vegetables.

David and Victoria Beckham are the latest celebs to be Markled. In case you don’t know what this is, Cockburn includes the Urban Dictionary definition below: Markled: To be "Markled" is when a new friend appears in your life, bombards you with attention and favor requests, once you are secure in the friendship things settle down, however, after a period of no communication you attempt to contact your friend only to be ignored and ghosted without warning, explanation and every avenue of open communication is now closed and you are effectively deleted from the friends life once you have served your purpose and are no longer of any use to her as she has now ascended the next rung of the social ladder.

Prince Harry’s recent run of bad luck is continuing, after it was ruled Thursday that his phone-hacking claims against a UK publisher have been thrown out by a High Court judge.  The judge also dismissed Harry's conspiratorial claim that there was a “secret agreement” between Buckingham Palace and the British press, calling the arrangement Harry described “implausible.” In his ruling, the judge said that the prince’s case had “not reached the necessary threshold of plausibility and cogency.” Harry’s lawsuit accusing the publisher of the Sun tabloid of unlawfully snooping on him, can go to trial.

Is Gavin Newsom the latest big name to snub Meghan Markle and Prince Harry? Royal author and socialite Lady Colin Campbell claimed that the California governor has blocked Markle’s phone number in an attempt to distance himself, as her political demands continue to fall on deaf ears. https://twitter.com/gbnews/status/1683593356524363777?s=46&t=KTzG0soGgiCKUdkuiUQOwA “Gavin Newsom has been harassed by Meghan to such an extent for her putting forward her idea that they should allow her to step into Dianne Feinstein’s shoes, which would incidentally give her access to the Intelligence Committee because that goes along with the seat, and Dianne Feinstein is a member of the Intelligence Committee," she said on GB News Monday.

The Washington Post is collapsing. Once one of America’s great media institutions, the paper lost $100 million last year and has shed 500,000 subscribers. Recent reports reveal that Post owner Jeff Bezos is going to be more hands-on to try and save the paper. Yet trying to get employees of the Post to do their jobs is like trying to get dogs to play baseball. Dogs just aren’t interested in baseball, and the breed of journalist now at the Post is just not interested in journalism. Always a liberal paper, the Post is now pure propaganda.

Gone are the days when local news anchors and weathermen went viral for unfortunate slips of the tongue or medical emergencies. Now these local TV staples are dancing and singing their way through their on-air reports, supposedly with the goal of making the news more "fun." Of course, these silly moments also coincidentally help these news anchors build their followings on TikTok. Nick Kosir, a former meteorologist for a local Fox affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina was one of the first local anchors to enjoy viral fame. He first garnered headlines by posting copycat versions of NFL quarterback Cam Newton's wildest fashion moments on his social media accounts, then exploded after nailing a dance challenge while wearing a business suit.

Now that the weakest Wimbledon since 1973 — the year of the boycott — is over, a few thoughts about Pam Shriver’s recent revelations that her coach Don Candy, deceased, was also her lover. Candy was fifty at the time, while Pam was seventeen, which in my book made Candy a lucky guy, assuming it was legal. The age of consent varies from place to place, and the only time I had to defend myself was when an irate father, whose twenty-eight-year-old daughter I had dated, rang me early in the morning and complained about me being seventy-two. “There is no age limit as far as being too old,” I told him. He rudely hung up on me. But before I go on about Pam Shriver and her oldie coach, a few comments are in order about how Oprah has taken over tennis and even Wimbledon.

After five years of marriage, rumors are swirling that Prince Harry and Meghan are set to part ways. Earlier this week, RadarOnline reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are “taking time apart” to heal and rebuild their bond. “They’re trying to figure out what hit them. Harry doesn’t fit in Meghan’s tacky Tinseltown world,” a source told the outlet, adding that he’s hoping to “find himself.” RadarOnline also claimed that Harry is planning a solo trip to Africa to film a documentary, saying that the prince thinks of the continent as his second home and a place where he feels "most like himself.

The “Femail Today” section of the Daily Mail often features such can’t-miss content as Doja Cat “flashing her bare bust beneath fishnet body stocking in VERY racy shoot” and Emily Ratajkowski’s every move. Lately, though, there’s been a shift in the Mail’s focus: pregnant women are everywhere! Femail last week, for instance, featured as many women with child — Lindsay Lohan, Rihanna and Serena Williams — in its top stories as women without. Kourtney Kardashian is regularly pictured “showing off” her growing baby bump (today it was in a TINY string bikini). When Lohan gave birth this week, the Mail lauded the occasion and reported how Lohan and her husband are “‘in love’ with their new addition.

ESG, or environmental, social and corporate governance, has taken the financial world by storm. It first hit the scene in a 2004 United Nations report that argued the financial sector could rack up more profits if it focused on carbon dioxide reduction and UN-approved progressive causes and has ballooned into a big, green financial juggernaut. In 2021, ESG assets under management hit an estimated $35 trillion. Bloomberg projects that by 2025 $53 trillion will be invested in ESG vehicles — that’s over one third of global assets under management and over five times 2007’s total of $10 trillion of ESG assets.  The main thrust is to hasten the renewable energy transition to solve climate change by diverting capital from fossil projects to various green projects.