Society

CNN’s media reporter Oliver Darcy took a blowtorch to one of his network’s rival outlets for daring to host a Republican presidential debate and “collaborating” with so-called extremist partners, like a YouTube competitor and a massive radio company that used to host his former boss, Glenn Beck. “NBC News has made its decision,” Darcy fumed in a blog post about the network’s partnership with Rumble and Salem Media... which CNN has previously partnered with for multiple Republican primary debates. “Now it’s up to other news organizations to do so as well.” Awkwardly for Darcy, as of the time he published his article, his own network was working to secure the exact same kind of partnership with the Republican National Committee.

It's been a year since Elizabeth II’s death and Harry and Meghan are looking to make their move. With the Queen — that old bulwark of tradition — finally out of the way, the couple has judged it safe enough to return to the royal fold. Their in: Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh.    Cockburn can only imagine what ruin the attention-loving couple has in store for the British royal family. And while he wouldn’t inflict Harry and Meghan on his worst enemy, Cockburn can’t hide his excitement that they are finally making their way back across the pond.

The recent spate of articles about attempts by different countries to land vehicles on the Moon make it clear that a new space race is on. Just last month, Russia launched its first mission there in forty-seven years. And although the automated Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed at the last minute, India’s heavily-instrumented Chandrayaan-3 landed successfully just four days later. NASA itself aims to return humans to the lunar surface in 2025 with its Artemis program. Remarkably, more than eighty countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, have thus far established some kind of presence in space.

Of all the things to lead to a Washington Post smackdown, Cockburn never would have expected it to happen over a pizza festival.   On Wednesday, Barstool Sports’s Dave Portnoy posted a call with a Washington Post reporter on social media. Portnoy had caught wind that the paper was running a hit piece on his One Bite Pizza Festival taking place in Brooklyn on Saturday and decided to hit back first.   https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1704574353415823411 Portnoy was tipped off by an email that reporter Emily Heil had sent to one the event’s largest sponsors.

The New York Times sports section finally, officially shuttered, making way for my old employers, the Athletic, to operate under the NYT aegis. That all makes sense because the New York Times bought the Athletic specifically to fill its sports void. If you read the (surprisingly) vast amount of media eulogies to the New York Times sports section, though, you’d hardly get a sense that there was any void to fill. Instead, what happened is depicted as a lamentable tragedy, possibly born out of small-minded corporate callousness. It’s the result of the NYT looking to undermine its unionized “guild” writers. The New York Times sports section, like so many defunct media properties, was superb, flawless even. Except, that’s not entirely what’s going on.

If you've been reading the mainstream headlines about a recent pornography scandal in a Virginia state election, you might be under the impression that Republicans have collectively committed sex crimes against a Democratic female candidate. An Associated Press article claimed in a headline that the GOP "leak[ed]" online videos of Susanna Gibson, a House of Delegates candidate for Virginia's 57th district, having sex with her husband. "Virginia election candidate responds after leak of tapes showing her performing sex acts with husband," said CBS News. The worst offender was the New York Times, which ran with the headline, "State House Candidate in Virginia Condemns Leak of Sex Tapes.

On July 4, our Independence Day, Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to immediately cease contact with social media companies, which it had been urging to censor protected free speech. Evidence unearthed in the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we are co-plaintiffs, has revealed a vast federal enterprise dictating to social media companies who and what to censor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House itself were all closely involved.

Get a sample of your bodily fluids ready: Elon Musk is coming for them.  X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, announced in its updated privacy policies that it will begin collecting users' biometric data next month. “Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the policy says. The catch — you don't have a choice. According to X users, they have already been prompted to accept pop-ups for the policy that wouldn't close unless they hit "got it." But the new policy, which goes into effect on September 29, won't be the first time X has gathered biometric data.

Elon Musk, the owner of X — once known as Twitter, may she rest in peace — is making Americans an offer that they must refuse. When he purchased the social media platform last year for a whopping $44 billion, he led us to believe he was doing it in order to save free speech, an ideal in regard to which he said was an absolutist. Today, what he is actually offering instead is a censorship regime slightly more friendly to the right than his predecessor. It’s a recipe for disaster. Back during the bad old Twitter days of Jack Dorsey, most of us had a fairly consistent idea of how the site should moderate its content.

Bracha Jaffe, an American-Israeli, spent decades working in tech, focusing on software development and raising her family in Israel. But following a midlife career shift and a move to New York, she now also works as an assistant rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a large Orthodox synagogue in the Bronx. Every day, she plays a key role guiding congregants during life cycle events, such as births and deaths. She teaches classes and visits the sick. “I think it’s still true that when someone says ‘Rabbi,’ what comes to mind is an older male, perhaps with a white beard,” she says. With her blonde bob, ever-present smile and warm demeanor, Jaffe is a far cry from this stereotype.

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.