Society

In a presidential campaign notable for its lack of substantive debate, a serious citizen needs to look far and wide to pierce Donald Trump’s blather and Kamala Harris’s bromides — or to find anything that might resemble real political information. So I quickly reached for my wallet last week when I happened upon the New Yorker’s newsstand edition. The first cover line and subhead caught my eye: “The Democrats’ Left Flank: in the swing state of Michigan, antiwar voters want a commitment from Kamala Harris on Gaza. Are their tactics a gift to Trump?” The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been top of mind in the campaign press corps all year.

Once upon a time, in a land faraway, CBS was called the “Tiffany Network.” The network’s glittering jewel was its news division. This is the story of that division’s decline and fall, driven by partisan goals and leftist ideology. CBS News gained its fame in the 1940s, under the leadership of Edward R. Murrow, who not only painted a vivid word-picture of London during the Blitz, but also recruited the best broadcast journalists in the business. For decades, they formed the core of CBS News, first on radio and then on television. That tradition continued through the 1960s, when tens of millions of Americans turned to Walter Cronkite for an honest report of the day’s news. If the newscast included editorial comments, as it sometimes did, they were offered by Eric Sevareid.

Someone call the disinformation police! Left-wing conspiracy theories and attempts to manipulate the media are spiraling out of control ahead of the 2024 election. From tall tales about former president Donald Trump staging his own assassination attempt to the lower-stakes speculation that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is wearing guyliner, “BlueAnon” has reemerged in a big way. BlueAnon is a blanket term coined by some conservatives to describe liberal and left-wing conspiracy theories. It intentionally rhymes with QAnon, the arguably better-known right-wing conspiracy, and mostly arose in response to what many regard as the Russian collusion hoax, the idea that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election.

Astute readers might know of the sale process The Spectator has been going through for the past several months. At long last, The Spectator has found a new owner — Sir Paul Marshall, the proprietor of UnHerd in the UK. The sale price of $131 million is a testament to the value and importance of The Spectator brand and everything it stands for. The US edition of The Spectator was established in 2018, with our monthly print edition appearing in 2019 — and we've grown every year since. First edited by Freddy Gray, the publication has made an indelible mark on matters of politics, arts and culture. We're excited by what our new future holds and look forward to new investments across our entire operation.

Dyson isn’t the first brand that comes to mind when you’re thinking about buying a pair of Bluetooth headphones. You likely don’t even know they make Bluetooth headphones. And if you do, it’s because their first pair, last year’s Dyson Zone, were the first critically panned headphones released in years. In his review, tech YouTuber MKBHD called them “the dumbest product I’ve ever reviewed.” For the unfamiliar, the Zone has fans and air filters in each earcup, which — through a magnetically attachable mouth visor — filters the air you breathe. But it can’t filter out Covid, is less effective than an N95 mask and using it ruins the Zone’s sound quality, as you’re blasting fast-moving fans right beside your ears.

In the middle of one of the craziest news cycles of my lifetime, I attempted to take a few days off from mainlining X, the drug formerly known as Twitter. (Big mistake. Huge!) My life felt unmanageable and I needed a detox. It was post-Trump assassination attempt, post-Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt at the RNC, post-Biden withdrawing from the presidential race in what was essentially a tweeted-out Notes apology. It was also just barely post-Kamala being tapped as heiress to the throne — though she had yet to be endorsed by Obama or Nancy Pelosi. Things seemed somewhat settled — and I opted to tune the online world out and touch grass. When I logged out, the Democrats were still somewhat in disarray. There was talk of a Trump landslide.

Considering the demographics who typically watch Fox News, it's ironic that it's one of its youngest viewers that's desperately in need of a hearing test. In a clip from this morning's Fox and Friends that has circulated the web, Fox host Brian Kilmeade critiqued Vice President Kamala Harris's decision to speak to a "college sorority"... but the mob has been quick to assert he said "colored sorority." Politico reporter Eugene Daniels, the current head of the White Houser Correspondents' Association, tweeted the clip with the caption: “Kilmeade: ‘She’d rather address, in the summer, a sorority…a COLORED sorority, like she can’t get outta that!’ Not this in the year of Beyonce 2024.

If you want to see a devastating snapshot of the partisan reports that now pass for journalism, just juxtapose two articles in the Washington Post. Published a month apart, they report on the same event: the Hollywood fundraiser for President Joe Biden, hosted by George Clooney and Julia Roberts and featuring former president Barack Obama. The first article, published immediately after the event, stressed the glitz and glamour. The headline captured the tone, “Biden, Obama warn of Trump dangers in star-studded LA fundraiser.” It was all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, marred only by a few sentences about pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the event.

After staking her entire career on her claim that French first lady Brigitte Macron was born a man, former Daily Wire host Candace Owens was suddenly ousted from the company. While her criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza is ostensibly what got her the boot, Cockburn is sure claiming perverts run the French government didn’t help her case. Owens, who has always reveled in controversy, does not seemed phased however. “I am finally free,” she rejoiced, including to renew her attacks on Brigitte.  https://twitter.com/realcandaceo/status/1806055079570764216 "France is being run by perverts," she declared, in a sentence that could be considered objectively true in any of the last few centuries.

It takes a master to untangle the web of drama being spun at the Washington Post these days. Fortunately, Cockburn knows a thing or two.  The recent drama concerns Sir William Lewis’s appointment as CEO, handpicked by owner Jeff Bezos, and the subsequent attempt by Lewis to dissuade journalists from covering his role in a long-running British phone hacking scandal (he denies any involvement), which supposedly contributed to the recent and abrupt departure of former editor Sally Buzbee. Add that to the earlier stories of Cameron Barr stepping down in 2023 as managing editor after nineteen years and the lawsuit filed by former Post journalist Felicia Sonmez in 2021, who went ham on her colleagues on Twitter and was subsequently fired.

We are shifting from the early era of space exploration to a more serious phase extending ever further from Earth’s orbit, focused on key opportunities such as mining and manufacturing as well as military purposes. This newly expanded playing field will determine not only who rules in space, but who ends up dominating Earth. The protagonists include some familiar faces — the US, Russia and the European Union — but much competition will come from emerging powers, notably India and China, both of which look upon the “final frontier” as critical to their economic and military futures. Yet the rise of non-state space entrepreneurs, notably SpaceX, has introduced a fresh and potentially decisive factor to the new space race.