Cockburn, Author at The Spectator

Friday

June 30, 2023

Cockburn

Nikole Hannah-Jones almost goes back to work

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the "1619 Project”, almost brought herself to lift a finger in defense of affirmative action — almost. She took to Twitter on Thursday to denounce the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action. The anger was not strong enough, though, to make it worth picking up the pen. Hannah-Jones tweeted: “Was going to write an essay about it, but why even bother. (Also, Clarence Thomas is actually irrelevant here. So thanks but no thanks)” The Wall Street Journal’s new editor-in-chief has criticized the work ethic of the paper’s staff, but clearly the New York Times is not much better — Hannah-Jones wrote her last piece for the paper in February 2023, which itself was the first in two years.

Cockburn

Kamala Harris shares life-changing hair secrets

Although he has been a harsh critic in the past, Cockburn would like to thank fashion icon and hair-game legend Kamala Harris for teaching him the key to achieving the perfect silk press. While Cockburn must admit he wasn’t familiar with the hairstyling technique, he doesn’t know how he lived without it for so long. To quote People magazine, it had him screaming “queen.” The vice president shared her beauty secrets on an episode of Keke Palmer’s podcast Baby, This Is Keke Palmer on Tuesday. The two women spent most of the interview tackling America’s maternal healthcare crisis before turning to fun girl-talk which included Harris’s hair care routine.

Cockburn

Trans women take over DC softball

It’s not just women’s high school and college sports that need to be protected from biological men, apparently. The DC intramural softball circuit has become another battleground for “trans rights.” Cockburn has learned that Democratic and progressive co-ed teams are skirting league rules regarding how many women must play in each game by filling their spots with trans women — i.e. those born as males. The Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, fielded an over-six-foot trans woman in a recent game against a conservative media outlet. Some players on the team said that it didn’t matter much because the person was not very good at softball, while others got the impression that he/she was intentionally playing poorly to avoid criticism.

Thursday

June 29, 2023

Cockburn

Troubled artist Hunter Biden uses paintings to settle paternity suit with former stripper

Hunter Biden has settled his long-running child support case in Arkansas. The president’s son has reached an agreement with Lunden Roberts, the mother of his illegitimate daughter Navy, that involves giving some of his own paintings to her. This makes Cockburn ask, hasn’t that child been through enough? Per the settlement: "Defendant additionally agrees that he shall assign to the child [redacted] of his paintings over the next [redacted] which shall vary in size with a minimum size of 24x24. The child shall select the painting which shall either be sent to the child or sent to a gallery designated by Lunden Roberts. The child shall select the painting which shall either be sent to the child or sent to a gallery designated by Lunden Roberts.

Cockburn

Bill Gates’s sinister job interviews

Interviews are often tough — but imagine instead of being asked about your hobbies or what you’ll bring to the team, you’re instead quizzed on whether you’ve ever had extramarital affairs, what kind of porn you watch or if you had naked pictures of yourself on your phone. Cockburn would be out of the running, that’s for sure. These were the questions asked to women that interviewed to work at billionaire Bill Gates’s private office. The extensive screening process included being questioned by a security firm about their sexual past, previous drug use and other personal things in case they were vulnerable to blackmail. That old chestnut!

Wednesday

June 28, 2023

Cockburn

Trump talked about ‘what it might be like to have sex’ with Ivanka, claims ‘Anonymous’ NYT op-ed writer

Miles Taylor, CNN’s favorite mid-management White House bureaucrat, is back with hot new gossip on Donald Trump. The "Anonymous" author of the scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed about the former president is releasing his second book next month that promises to be both his juiciest work yet and an action novel — yep, you heard that right. Cockburn readily admits that Taylor is not a reliable source nor is he a real-life spy, but heck, the book will be too entertaining to pass up. Among the most shocking bombshells in Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump is the former president’s allegedly sexist behavior toward female staff, including lewd comments made about his eldest daughter.

Cockburn

Jada Pinkett Smith got her family into psychedelics

Cockburn doesn’t have any acknowledged children, but if he did, he’d like to think that he wouldn’t give them drugs. Any normal parent that gave their kids drugs would end up with a social worker, or potentially prison time. But Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will, isn't just any old mother. Her son Jaden Smith recently let slip that his mom was the reason for their family’s psychedelic drug usage. “I think it was my mom, actually, that was really the first one to make that step for the family,” the rapper said at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week, as reported by USA Today. He added, “It was just her for a really, really long time and then eventually it just trickled and evolved and everybody found it in their own ways.

Tuesday

June 27, 2023

Cockburn

Why did Epstein kill himself? Negligent guards…

It’s fun to conspire about the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein — or, at least, Cockburn has whiled away several hours doing so. Was it ordered by the Queen? Bill Gates? The Clintons? Did Ghislaine Maxwell stick a pin straight through the heart of an Epstein-shaped voodoo doll? It’s almost a shame that we now know the fault lies with something as mundane as negligent prison guards. The Justice Department’s watchdog announced Tuesday that a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and workers at its New York City jail allowed for the disgraced financier to take his own life in August 2019, finding no evidence of foul play.

Cockburn

Is Fox News self-immolating?

Fox News has announced its new primetime lineup post-Tucker Carlson: Jesse Watters will take over the coveted 8 p.m. ET slot vacated by Tucker, while Laura Ingraham is moving from 10 p.m. to the 7 p.m. hour. Sean Hannity will stay in his spot at 9 p.m., and Greg Gutfeld is slotted forward an hour to 10 p.m. The shuffle is an attempt by executives to resuscitate the network after the unceremonious firing of its top host, Tucker Carlson, which led several loyal viewers to jump ship.

Cockburn

Presidential hopeful Francis Suarez: ‘What’s a Uighur?’

Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez should pick Gary “Aleppo” Johnson for his 2024 running mate. After a revealing interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show Tuesday morning, it seems the two are both woefully unaware of foreign policy. Suarez was taking a hardline against China when Hewitt asked him if he would make the Uighurs a part of his campaign. “What — the what, what's a Uighur?” Suarez responded, parroting Johnson’s famous “What is Aleppo?” gaffe during the 2016 election. https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1673687808282697728 After Hewitt scolded the presidential hopeful for his ignorance, Suarez promised, “I’ll look at — what’d you call it, a 'Weeble?’” Cockburn can’t help but think Suarez’s blunder is a bit worse than Johnson.

Cockburn

Elon Musk: innovator, CEO, ket head

What’s your poison? All of the greatest minds have one. Freud loved cocaine, Charles Dickens dabbled with opium, Steve Jobs once claimed that LSD was “one of the two or three most important things I have done in life.” It turns out that Elon Musk’s drug of choice is ketamine, a controlled substance usually reserved for tranquilizing horses. Elon Musk “microdoses” the substance, according to the Wall Street Journal. “The CEO has told people he microdoses ketamine for depression, and he also takes full doses of ketamine at parties, according to the people who have witnessed his drug use and others who have direct knowledge of it,” the report says.

Monday

June 26, 2023

Cockburn

‘Biden should own his old age’ and other bad Jeffrey Katzenberg ideas

Seventy-two-year-old entertainment mogul and campaign advisor Jeffrey Katzenberg has some sage advice for President Biden: eighty is the new sixty. In the Wall Street Journal, Katzenberg encouraged Biden to “own” his age and tout his longevity and wisdom as assets. Katzenberg pointed to Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger, similarly geriatric celebrities who still make splashes in their industries, as style models for Biden. Cockburn can’t help but think Katzenberg is onto something here. Imagine: Joe Biden and the Trials of Burisma — that's sure to help with the youth vote. And as long as there aren’t any sandbags present, Biden could do well to launch a stadium tour when he hits the campaign trail.

Cockburn

Is Amber Heard staging a subtle comeback?

In just one short year, Amber Heard has transformed from arguably the most hated woman on the planet to some kind of new and improved Spanish celebrity. Amber moved to Madrid months after she was sued by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, for defamation. In a viral TikTok video, Heard answers questions from reporters, saying in Spanish, "I love Spain so much." When they asked if she plans on staying, she replied, "Yes, I hope so. Yes, I love living here." After being asked if she has movie projects on the horizon, she says yes and adds, "I move on. That's life." It turns out that exiling yourself to a new country for privacy can be an effective PR strategy. Take note, Harry and Meghan.

Friday

June 23, 2023

Cockburn

Kari Lake grabs the headlines

Choking up with the Faith and Freedom Coalition Imagine a venue where you can watch Kane from WWE following up Vivek Ramaswamy. That’s where Cockburn finds himself this Friday morning: in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority Conference. Sound like a mouthful? Cockburn is counting the mentions of the left’s agenda being “rammed down our throats” (two so far — is this a biblical reference?). Seven presidential candidates are speaking today. So far Cockburn’s clocked Vivek, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Francis Suarez — unforgivably he missed Asa Hutchinson after getting wrapped up in conversation with a trafficking advocate (anti) in the entryway.

Thursday

June 22, 2023

Cockburn

Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert’s catfight on the House floor

The gloves were off in the House of Representatives this week after Georgia congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene called her Colorado colleague Lauren Boebert “a little bitch.” The gruesome twosome used to be thick as thieves. What happened? The fight erupted over impeachment articles that Boebert introduced Tuesday and tried unsuccessfully to force a vote on. Greene, who drafted her impeachment articles in 2021 and again this May, publicly accused Boebert of copying. On Wednesday, Boebert again tried unsuccessfully to force a vote on her impeachment resolution. During the vote, Boebert confronted Greene over comments the congresswoman had made to the press. C-SPAN’s camera’s caught part of the exchange in a center aisle of the House floor.

Cockburn

The people deserve a Mark Zuckerberg-Elon Musk cage fight in Vegas

Just when you thought toxic masculinity was dead: Emmanuel Macron chugs a beer and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to a cage fight. Elon Musk tweeted Wednesday that he was "up for a cage fight" with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — to which Zuck replied on his Instagram Story, "send me location.” Musk came back with: "Vegas Octagon,” the fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts in Las Vegas, Nevada. Musk also tweeted "I'm gonna use a move called 'The Walrus', where I just lie on you, and you can't get away” and "I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air." https://twitter.

Wednesday

June 21, 2023

Cockburn

Is Kamala Harris the new Tina Turner?

Kamala Harris wants you to know how much she loves Tina Turner. She loves her so much that she has wonderfully unique and joyous memories of listening to the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll’s most famous hits growing up. “When I was a child, my mother would play “Proud Mary” on repeat as I danced around our living room, singing along into my toy microphone at the top of my lungs,” Harris wrote. Harris revealed this moment of rare vulnerability in a tribute to Turner published in Rolling Stones Tuesday. And reading Kamala’s tribute, Cockburn can’t help but think she considers herself the heir to Turner’s legacy. The constant sexism and racism that Turner overcame in the music industry must have inspired a young Harris’s calls for “Fweedom.

Tuesday

June 20, 2023

Cockburn

Emmanuel Macron accused of ‘toxic masculinity’ for slowly chugging Corona

Join Cockburn in a thought experiment. Close your eyes — and think of the phrase “toxic masculinity.” Who is the first person that you picture in your head? Recently charged Andrew Tate, perhaps — or maybe Floyd Mayweather. French Member of Parliament Sandrine Rousseau sees someone a little less likely: Monsieur Le President Emmanuel Macron. Macron was filmed downing a bottle of Corona this weekend in the dressing rooms of the Stade de France, after Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle in the French rugby final. Urged on by victorious Toulouse players, the president necks the bottle of beer in a modest seventeen seconds. https://twitter.com/chufl3t3r0/status/1670501095502757888?

emmanuel macron chugs beer toxic masculinity

Monday

June 19, 2023

Cockburn

Flashback: Meghan Markle gets staffers to conduct podcast interviews for her

Back in November, Cockburn wrote an entry of his gossip column titled "Meghan Markle: America’s laziest interviewer." While the piece may not have popular at the time, especially with Meghan’s #girlboss fans, boy does Cockburn feel vindicated now. It has recently come to light that while many were eagerly awaiting the one-hour-a-week podcast where the duchess investigated, dissected and subverts the labels that try to hold women back, Meghan Markle isn’t exactly the workaholic boss babe she made out — and Spotify has realized. Last week, Spotify released a joint statement with Archewell Audio, Meghan and Harry's content creation label, announcing that "Spotify and Archewell Audio have mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together.

Friday

June 16, 2023

Cockburn

Taylor Lorenz was right all along

Journalists are OUT, influencers are IN. That’s the chief finding from a new report by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, which discovered that 55 percent of TikTok and Snapchat users, and 52 percent of Instagram users, get their news from “personalities,” compared to 33-42 percent who get it from mainstream media outlets or journalists on the same platforms. “This Reuters study once again validates what I have been saying for over a decade,” Taylor Lorenz told Cockburn, “content creators are the new media and it’s been that way for a while.” The Washington Post columnist has long banged the drum about the importance of emerging social media platforms and the importance of members of the media cultivating brands on them.