Culture

Now we got bad blood? Billion-dollar pop star Taylor Swift almost had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Cockburn pulled out his binoculars at the Chiefs game Thursday and did not see Britanny Mahomes anywhere near Swift, as she usually is. Both Taylor and Mahomes appeared to be in entirely different suites. Why the distance? From what Cockburn can tell, it might have something to do with the fact that Mahomes has associated herself with the MAGA world. For the uninitiated, Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Brittany Mahomes is the wife of Patrick Mahomes, quarterback for the Chiefs. Last season, Swift and Mahomes were almost always seen together in the same suite, cheering on their significant others.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign in swing states on Friday and officially endorsed former president Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Electorally, this was a potentially pivotal moment: RFK was pulling about 5 percent of the total electorate, according to the RealClear average, and an even higher percentage in some swing states. If Kennedy was right when he told Dr. Phil that 57 percent of his voters would go to Trump if he left the race, then his exit and endorsement could prove a significant boost to Trump. Since RFK Jr. and another former Democrat, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, endorsed Trump, both have been added to the former president’s transition team. Culturally, RFK Jr.

Former president Donald Trump and Tesla founder and X CEO Elon Musk had a wide-ranging conversation in a record-breaking X Space on Monday night. The pair spoke for about two hours with millions of listeners tuning in; the Space received hundreds of thousands of comments. The opportunity to hear from an unscripted presidential candidate for one of the two major political parties on pretty much every major issue facing our country is a gift to journalists. The amount of access Trump gives to the press in general — even adversarial reporters — is also a gift. Ideas directly from the horse’s mouth; no anonymous sources or investigate legwork required.  But the establishment and corporate media don’t view Trump’s words this way.

One of the great comedic actors of our time, Vince Vaughn, appeared on the most recent episode of Hot Ones, an interview program in which celebrities answer questions about their lives and careers while eating progressively spicier wings. I highly recommend watching the full episode because Vaughn is incredibly charming, funny and way more intelligent than he gets credit for. One question really caught my attention. The host, Sean Evans, asked Vaughn, “There’s been endless ink spilled about Hollywood no longer making the R-rated, wide-release theatrical comedies that were such a tower of strength in your career. How have you seen Hollywood’s interest in making those kinds of films change over the course of your career and what do you think are the forces at play?

I am typically a huge Olympics fan because I am very big into national pride and love to shamelessly root for the USA. Gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, soccer, or even canoeing, judo and fencing — don’t care, will watch. Unfortunately, this year’s Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France were immediately marred by the obvious mockery of the Christian faith during the opening ceremony. There was a drag show version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s depiction of Jesus Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles prior to his crucifixion (plus, separately, a faceless rider on a pale horse and a queer ménage à trois).

Hello everyone and welcome back to Culture Shock! We took a couple weeks of off because I went on vacation and then was in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention.  We’re going to kick off this edition by hopefully settling the years-long debate as to whether Donald Trump is as good at golf as he claims. Trump said earlier this year that he won both the Club Championship and the Senior Club Championship at his course in West Palm Beach, and last year said he won the Club Championship at his course in Bedminster by firing off a 67, which is five strokes under par. However, sportswriter Rick Reilly claims Trump routinely cheats at golf, which has given some haters the impression that Trump isn’t actually any good.

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès made more than 500 films in his career, but 1896 was a banner year for the Frenchman. He captivated audiences with Playing Cards, his sixty-seven-second exploration of three cigar-puffing men as they are waited on by two young ladies. One man reads the paper and pours the wine as the other two play cards. It was the first reboot in film history. One year earlier, Louis Lumière released Card Game, a forty-three-second exploration of three men with cigars drinking wine and playing cards as they are waited on by a man. Méliès rightly recognized the original’s lack of representation, not to mention the absence of a news- paper.

Yeezy porn may have been put on ice, but Kanye West is still intent on bringing debauchery to the world. West’s wife Bianca Censori, whom the rapper often styles in, well, nothing, was spotted in one of her most scandalous outfits yet, evoking outrage for the couple’s X-rated stunts.   On Monday, the Australian architect and model was on her way to the Melrose Tanning Company in Los Angeles in nothing but underwear and a completely see-through top. With the amount of sun Censori must get from her frequent displays of public nudity, Cockburn is surprised she has to go to a tanning salon at all. Censori did, however, have the decency to at least cover her hair with a hat.

Social media last week was ablaze with memes about “Hawk Tuah” girl, the nickname given to a young woman in a viral man on the street video who got awfully candid about oral sex. Hawk Tuah girl, whose real name is Hailey Welch, was asked, “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” She replied, “You gotta give him that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang, ya get me?” The clip has been viewed millions of times and Welch has since appeared onstage with country singer Zach Bryan for his “Revival” encore, appeared on influencer Brianna Chickenfry’s podcast and is selling merch and planning to start her own podcast. The video admittedly made me laugh, mostly because of how unexpected her answer was and how confidently she delivered it.

Left-wing activists are working overtime to smear the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in a blatant attempt to undermine rulings coming out of the nation’s highest court. They attempted to stop Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination with dubious, vague and uncorroborated sexual assault accusations. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was painted as a Catholic extremist — Senator Dianne Feinstein declared during her confirmation hearing that “the dogma lives loudly in you” — and her husband was targeted with a Rolling Stone article that charged him with the crime of... being a lawyer.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Dobbs decision two years ago this month, pro-abortion activists have scrambled to prove that ensuing state laws restricting abortion are putting women’s lives in danger. Although the vast majority of abortions are performed for reasons of convenience, the new trope is that women are going to die en masse if they can’t have access to these procedures. There are a couple of angles to this argument:  Abortion bans and restrictions will render doctors unable to provide life-saving care to women  Because abortion is safer than pregnancy, forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term puts her life in danger  In this edition of Culture Shock, we are going to dig into the first claim.

The popular dating app Bumble was forced to apologize recently when its anti-celibacy advertisement didn’t land the way that it had hoped. Bumble tried to tap into many women’s frustration with modern dating, telling women who are having trouble finding a significant other that “a vow of celibacy is not the answer.” But whoever is on Bumble’s marketing team failed to realize that many women are opting out of casual sex and hook-ups as they realize they prefer settling into a long-term partnership before they engage in a sexual relationship. Others are taking a break from dating entirely, as they feel a deep dissatisfaction with the current landscape, which seems centered around fleeting physical attraction and short-lived connections.

Do you currently enjoy a workplace environment that is free of violent criminals? Is your work bathroom reserved for members of the same sex as you? You might not enjoy those commonsense benefits for much longer. The Biden administration is flexing the bureaucratic state’s muscle to force businesses to comply with its progressive worldview. Last month, the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it was suing Sheetz, a popular gas station and convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic, for alleged racially discriminatory hiring practices. Sheetz is a great American success story. It was opened by Bob Sheetz in 1950 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and is still owned by the Sheetz family to this day.

Should students be allowed to use their phones during school? The answer seems like it should obviously be no. But apparently this is has become a difficult subject for school districts to grapple with. Across the country, school boards and administrators recognize that phones distract students from learning, diminish attention spans and affect students’ mental health. But few have the gumption to remove personal devices entirely from schools.