Lizzo

Wednesday

Ross Anderson

The best and worst of the 2024 Met Gala

On Monday night, celebrities, designers and the highest edges of New York’s upper crust attended the biggest party of the fashion calendar, the Met Gala. Given its supposed importance, you’d think the looks would always be fantastic; that it would be a night for designers to compete for the best, most creative, most glamorous couture. The reality is a lot more disappointing. There are only ever a few truly standout looks, with most being bland at best — and when designers bother to follow the theme, it’s usually in a painfully uncreative manner. The message of the Met Gala should be that the fashion industry is filled with incredible creative talent. But it usually just tells you that money doesn’t buy taste; nor does being employed by Chanel.

met gala

Wednesday

Cockburn

Lizzo doesn’t want anyone to out-fat her, dancers claim

Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed against Lizzo, the plus-size flute-playing singing sensation. It was alleged that she created a “hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment.” Lizzo has denied the allegations. But one week later and lawyers representing three of Lizzo's former dancers say they've received new complaints. Ron Zambrano said that his firm, which specializes in employment law, is vetting new allegations from at least six people who said they toured with Lizzo, including other dancers and some who said they worked on her Amazon reality show, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. The allegations are of a “sexually charged environment” and failure to pay employees.

lizzo

Monday

Kara Kennedy

The new war on weight

We’re getting fatter. We even have a whole day dedicated to it now, World Obesity Day. We are reminded about our expanding waistbands and inflated cheeks every time we walk down the street, or look at an XXL model stuck onto a magazine cover to make the rest of us chubsters feel empowered. I don’t feel empowered at all. I feel alarmed — and confused. In a time when such advanced medicine is at our fingertips, the obesity problem is worse than ever. In America, one person dies from cardiovascular disease every thirty-four seconds, making it the biggest killer in the country. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that obesity is responsible for 2.8 million deaths each year. But what if there were a simple way to stop us from eating ourselves to death?

weight

Friday

Cockburn

Afghanistan lacks #BlackGirlMagic, laments top US diplomat

White House correspondents behaving badly Getting President Biden to answer to the press is hard enough. His handlers in the administration make it even tougher. And now it seems journalists are linking arms with them to help the aging president out. Tamara Keith, current head of the White House Correspondents’ Association and its apparent hall monitor, chastised her colleagues in an email a tipster passed to Cockburn about “decorum.” (Cockburn, you will be shocked to hear, is not a WHCA member and so is at liberty) Keith took umbrage when “at least three journalists continued loudly shouting” over a reporter, “making it impossible for the president to hear and answer the question. It didn’t reflect well on our profession.

afghanistan blackgirlmagic

Monday

Cockburn

Why is Ron DeSantis ‘polarizing’ but Stacey Abrams isn’t?

Ron DeSantis and Stacey Abrams have at least a couple things in common: they’re both running for governor of their respective states, and they both recently appeared onstage at big-name concerts. It is there, however, that the similarities end. Country music star Luke Bryan is defending himself for bringing DeSantis on stage over the weekend to raise funds for Hurricane Ian victims. Bryan and DeSantis were raked over the coals on social media following the concert, with users labeling DeSantis an “anti-LGBTQ” and “anti-immigrant” governor and threatening to boycott Bryan. One user expressed fear of “my hard earned money going into the pockets of election deniers and democracy assassins.

Friday

Cockburn

Tucker Carlson grills Kanye West

Tucker Carlson has tackled a question that has long puzzled Cockburn: is Kanye West crazy? Ye has had his fair share of controversial moments: he appeared on a 2006 cover of Rolling Stone mimicking Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns. He infamously stormed the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards stage to tell Taylor Swift she didn’t deserve her award. For the past couple years, he's been battling ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, during which time he also became religious, started hosting Sunday Services and bought a ranch in Cody, Wyoming, which he tried to sell but then took off the market. Most recently, Ye incited establishment ire by wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt alongside conservative firebrand buddy Candace Owens at Paris Fashion Week.

ye

Friday

Cockburn

Who REALLY blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

Four days have passed since the Nord Stream pipelines mysteriously ruptured in the Baltic Sea, just outside of NATO territory. Sabotage is suspected. Many in the West blame Vladimir Putin; others, such as Tucker Carlson, Radek Sikorski and, er, Vladimir Putin, blame America. But to truly solve this mystery, Cockburn thinks circumstances require us to cast the net a little wider. Here are some potential saboteurs deserving of further scrutiny. Greta Thunberg How dare we! The gray Swedish doom-gremlin has dedicated much of the last years to warning us of the looming Armageddon, traipsing from the UN to Davos to COP26. Is it farfetched to suggest that Thunberg might take dramatic steps to ensure her cause is the only option on the table?

nord stream

Thursday

Teresa Mull

Why woke culture wants you to be fat

Americans are fat and getting fatter. “More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or have obesity,” reports Heathline.com. The CDC (I actually trust them on this one) says that between 1999 and 2020, “obesity prevalence increased from 30.5 percent to 41.9 percent,” and severe obesity “increased from 4.7 percent to 9.2 percent.” And so, in the wake of woke, Old Navy and other clothing companies are (trying to) cash-in on our widening waistlines by disguising their latest capitalistic campaign as “inclusive sizing.” I gave up shopping for Lent. I made my return recently by perusing a Lands’ End catalog with my mother.

Thursday

Chadwick Moore

Why can’t we celebrate Adele’s dramatic weight loss?

Well, hello! Adele is a singer who identifies herself with numbers. Her first three albums are titled 19, 21, and 25. But after the British pop star caused a raucous on lady-Twitter Wednesday when she posted a photo on her 32nd birthday revealing dramatic weight loss, the only number that matters now is: what do we think she is out of 10? https://www.instagram.com/p/B_1VGc5AsoZ/ Obviously we would never rate a treasure of Adele’s talents merely on her appearance. That said we must acknowledge the many factors to be taken into account when evaluating the sexual market value of the formerly portly crooner, who is almost completely unrecognizable after her transformation. Does being a millionaire add points?

adele

Tuesday

Dominic Green

Who killed the American arts?

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. The arts in America are dying. In the 20th century, Americans defined the world’s popular culture, but the 21st century world has no need of America’s arts. Through technology transfer, the world entertains itself with knock offs like Bollywood and K-Pop. In the 20th century, Americans created a new art form in jazz and its derivatives, and turned Hollywood into the world’s dream factory. In the 21st century, African American music has collapsed into monotone misogyny, and digital sex (see Julie Bindel) is America’s real movie business. Americans are in the gutter, looking up at porn stars.

lizzo arts

Monday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Lizzo and the politically incorrect obesity epidemic

The woke have spoken: fat is fab. This is great news for Lizzo, an American singer and rapper whose rise to fame and celebrity has been rapid and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Lizzo, or Melissa Jefferson as she was once known, is unquestionably rotund. In the days of yore, Lizzo’s excessive layers would have been considered optimal, a marker of wealth and status coveted by women and adored by men. In theory, we’ve grown and evolved since those days, and now enjoy unprecedented levels of knowledge and education about medicine, diet, and exercise. This wealth of information should produce an especially healthy populace; instead, Americans continue to stuff ourselves with everything we know we shouldn’t eat: too much red meat, too much fried food, too many carbs.

lizzo