Cockburn, Author at The Spectator

Monday

January 23, 2023

Cockburn

The Trump scions are inviting e-girls to Vegas penthouse parties

Trump parties are usually littered with famous, Botox-ed faces. It's far rarer to find yourself rubbing shoulders with TikTok stars. Hailey Lujan, who has over 350,000 followers on her TikTok @lunchbaglujan, is a twenty-one-year-old soldier who is apparently in the US Army's 101st Airborne Division. Cockburn's nieces tell him that Lujan is also an "e-girl," which Vox describes as "hip young people whose defining qualities are that they are hot and online." In her latest TikTok, the influencer was recently seen chilling in Las Vegas with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Rick Harrison from the reality show Pawn Stars. Lujan introduces her video by saying “OK I'm with my friend from IllPro, we’re about to go to Donald Trump Jr.’s party and if I meet Donald Trump Jr.

Cockburn

Does your mass shooting suit my worldview?

In the wake of Saturday’s horrific shooting at a Lunar New Year celebration in the heavily Asian neighborhood of Monterey Park, California, Democratic lawmakers sprang into action, speculating that the violence may have been racially motivated. Hours later it emerged that the shooter was himself also Asian. The frequency of mass killings in this country is harrowing. But Cockburn finds such tragedies are made all the more gruesome when politicians so often jump ahead of the facts, ascribing motivations or reasons to the violence that are politically beneficial to them or fit their ideological framework. Representative Adam Schiff, for example, pegged “bigotry towards AAPI individuals as a possible motive.

Friday

January 20, 2023

Cockburn

Are Anna Wintour and Bill Nighy back together?

We need to deep-clean the halls of Congress January is a month for shedding the pounds — and the latest fitness fad for Capitol Hill reporters is chasing around disgraced congressman George Santos. In a show of collegiality, the staffers of other representatives have been alerting the press to Santos's whereabouts. Take deputy chief of staff Aaron Fritschner, whose boss Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, shares a hallway with Santos. "I've done it twice now," he told Politico's Huddle newsletter. "I'm gonna keep on doing it for as long as he's there. And it seems like he's not going anywhere." Cockburn is delighted that Fritschner has found a fun new hobby to plug the hole left by his last one: explaining why Don Beyer is inadvertently employing Chinese spies.

Wednesday

January 18, 2023

Cockburn

The weirdest stuff you can get at the Twitter auction

Elon Musk’s Twitter is holding a massive auction to sell its surplus office assets — and it is quite an eclectic selection. Cockburn is wowed by what the company's old guard has blown on superfluous products (the Kegerators, however, were an excellent choice). Here are some of the most interesting "assets" Twitter is liquidating. Neon Twitter Bird Light Electrical Display With a current bid of $35,500, this display tops the list for expensive lots. Ideal for anyone who wants a giant glowing bird in a booth for their living room. At ten feet tall, you may have to carve a hole in the ceiling to fit it into your home. Twitter Bird Statue Want to save a little money but still have a giant blue bird? This lot is the right fit for you!

Cockburn

Can I now free the nipple on Instagram and Facebook?

It’s a funny old world. Cockburn noticed today that Facebook and Instagram have been told to overhaul their longstanding ban on exposed female nipples, as the policy impedes the right to expression for, wait for it, trans and nonbinary people. Isn’t it funny that more than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the boob ban to satisfy the rights of people that insist they are now men. What a victory! “Lactivists,” otherwise known as women, spent an entire decade in the 2000s attempting to reverse the ban by explaining that images of breasts were not inherently sexual. This resulted in the campaign to #FreetheNipple, which went mainstream in 2013.

Cockburn

Shakira, Miley Cyrus and the unwelcome return of the diss track

Over the weekend, singing sensations Miley Cyrus and Shakira brought the "diss track" — a song whose primary purpose is to disparage someone else — back into the mainstream. Both artists chose to target their ex-husbands. Shakira’s new song, which was released last week, racked up 63 million views in the first twenty-four hours following its release. It has since been viewed more than 142 million times, making it the most watched new Latin song in YouTube’s history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CocEMWdc7Ck Last year the Colombian singer split from former soccer player Gerard Piqué, her husband of more than a decade.

Tuesday

January 17, 2023

Cockburn

A deluge of deviants in Davos?

Sex workers take Switzerland! As the World Economic Forum gets underway in Davos, it's not just politicians and business leaders flying in for a few days: droves of prostitutes are said to be heading into the Alpine resort town. Cockburn can’t pretend to be surprised: what more do we expect from the 1 percent? One visiting escort told German tabloid Bild that she's charging $700 per hour or $2,500 per night. She also said she preferred the visiting Americans and Brits as bedfellows: "Unfortunately, Germans are stingy when it comes to tips." Customer details, given their high profiles, are typically hush-hush — politicians could get in big trouble back home if their excursions became public.

Cockburn

Colleges join the war on TikTok

TikTok likely hasn't been too bothered about a bunch of crusty old senators and governors denouncing their social media platform. But Cockburn thinks the Chinese-owned company may be a little concerned by the latest wave of resistance as it directly affects their core demographic: young Americans. One of the South’s largest universities, Auburn, has banned TikTok from campus WiFi. The move was ordered by Alabama governor Kay Ivey, one of many Republican governors to bar the use of TikTok on state devices in December. “China doesn’t care if they are building a dossier on a nine-year-old or a ninety-year-old," Ivey said. "They will build it on all of us and really that’s a part of their five-year plan and really part of how China conducts their global affairs.

Saturday

January 14, 2023

Cockburn

Santos’s little helpers

The volume and scale of new GOP representative George Santos’s untruths boggles the mind. The New York congressman has lied about: where he went to high school; where he went to college; working at Goldman Sachs; founding an animal charity; his mother dying in 9/11; his grandmother being a Holocaust victim; his employees dying in the Pulse Orlando shooting, and being Jewish. Plus, there are multiple investigations into his finances, and the loans he made to himself while running for office; he may face fraud charges in his native Brazil and has been accused of operating a Ponzi scheme. Given all this, it seems reasonable to ask: who would risk their reputation — and time — to work for the man?

Friday

January 13, 2023

Cockburn

Biden is a Major ‘good boy’ truther

Cockburn came across this interesting little tidbit while he was stirring his first apéritif of the early afternoon: a Vox preview of Christopher Whipple’s forthcoming book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House, reports that President Biden is distrustful of his Secret Service team and believes the agency fabricated a story about Biden’s German Shepherd, Major, biting an agent. Major Biden and fellow White House German Shepherd, Champ, were removed to Delaware for a while following the alleged incident. Vox reports how in the book, “Whipple details how Biden was showing a friend around the White House and pointed to the spot where Major allegedly bit a member of Biden’s security team. ‘Look, the Secret Service are never up here.

Cockburn

Nick Adams doesn’t write his own tweets

Nick Adams doesn’t write his own tweets Heartbreaking news from the social media world: a spy tells Cockburn that Nick Adams, the Trump surrogate, author and self-proclaimed “Alpha Male,” hires a communications firm to write most of his tweets. He may not, therefore, be the author behind classics such as "Joe Biden has never been to a Hooters." Adams's entire “Alpha Male” persona is a highly effective troll job that has led his account to reach massive engagement levels. Adams recently made headlines for getting into a Twitter war with former professional golfer Paige Spiranac after he said slow female golfers should only be allowed to play par-three courses. Cockburn wonders what "alpha male" would intentionally alienate Spirinac and what she calls her “fantastic milkers.

Thursday

January 12, 2023

Cockburn

Ten other places Joe Biden should check for classified documents

So it turns out that there were classified documents lying around Joe Biden’s office and garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, dating from his time as vice president. In a press conference today, the president justified this to Fox News's Peter Doocy by saying, "by the way, my Corvette's in a locked garage... it's not like they're sitting out in the street." https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1613565691994447872 The news follows the revelation that classified documents were located in his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC. But is that all?

Cockburn

George Santos makes politics worth paying attention to

As the Republicans' on-again-off-again, will-they-won’t-they romance with Kevin McCarthy drags on, Cockburn has found refuge in a genuinely entertaining drama. Each day offers another layer to the George Santos tall-tale trifle — and as the mainstream media purports to be shocked that a politician would lie about something (gasp!), Cockburn is gobbling it up. Just yesterday, for instance, Cockburn learned the Republican congressman from New York lied about being a “‘star player’ on the volleyball team for a college [CUNY Baruch] that he did not attend” (per Business Insider). Cockburn also enjoyed hearing how Santos was involved in a Ponzi scheme fewer than two years ago.

Tuesday

January 10, 2023

Cockburn

Who wants to work for the Katie Porter campaign?

Congresswoman Katie Porter of California announced on Tuesday that she would be running for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat. But given Porter’s supposed office conduct, Cockburn can't help but wonder if anyone would dare to work for her campaign. Former staffers for the representative have made allegations that Porter “says rude/racist things” and “talks [expletive] about other members, leadership, staffers, local electeds etc.” It was earlier reported that Porter had mistreated a staffer for having caught and transmitted Covid to the congresswoman. After the staffer apologized via text message, Porter replied, “Well, you gave me Covid. In twenty-five months, it took you not following the rules to get me sick.

Friday

January 6, 2023

Cockburn

Source: Camilla ‘had a giggle’ about Prince Harry losing his virginity

The state of Tate Shiny-headed influencer Andrew Tate dominated the headlines over Christmas after being detained in Romania as part of a human trafficking and rape investigation. Of course Cockburn believes in the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." But he is at pains to point out that many facets of Tate's lifestyle come across as rather sinister. Cockburn was recently approached by a former acquaintance of Tate’s, who wanted to recount going for a meeting at his Bucharest property. Naturally Cockburn couldn't confirm every detail, but the account nonetheless paints an interesting picture: Walking into his house was like walking into an IKEA showroom from 2011. We went down this dirt path to get to it on the outskirts of Bucharest.

Thursday

January 5, 2023

Cockburn

Did Prince Harry’s nasty older brother force him to wear a Nazi uniform?

Ahhh, Harry’s truth. This time, instead of optionally wearing a marginally funny Nazi outfit to a costume party in the 2000s, back when nobody really cared about poor taste, Prince Harry was dragged kicking and screaming by Wehrmacht William and Kristallnacht Kate to the naughty shop against his will. Not quite, but not far off. In extracts from Harry’s upcoming memoir, Spare, obtained by Page Six, Hapless Harry says: “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said.” He claims he was originally deciding between a Nazi or pilot uniform, but his big-bad brother and Kate “howled” at the sight of him in the outfit, which won the impressionable prince over. Harry then calls his brother by a pet name, saying: “Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit!

Cockburn

Harry and William’s royal rumble

Britain has spoken. After extracts from Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, were leaked to the Guardian, the overwhelming reaction to the book's explosive claims is "what kind of man wears a necklace?" Describing a confrontation at his London home in 2019, Harry says that his brother William called Meghan Markle “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive,” which Harry calls a “parroting of the press narrative” about his American wife. Or maybe those were just the first three adjectives that sprung to mind about moaning Meg. Harry goes on to describe how William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and... knocked me to the floor.” Heroic Haz then writes that he gave his brother a glass of water and said: “Willy, I can’t speak to you when you’re like this.

Wednesday

January 4, 2023

Cockburn

The rise of Sudden Oligarch Death Syndrome

Since Moscow launched the invasion of Ukraine in February, the deaths of Russian oligarchs seem to be constantly in the headlines. Despite the official causes of death given, Cockburn has a sneaking suspicion that Vladimir Putin might have something to do with it. Death by unusual, news-making circumstances is a hallmark of his regime. The Russian leader intends for such deaths to make the news and for the world to blame the Kremlin for them. It forms part of his strategy of intimidating potential opponents and dissidents. Enemies of Putin that have gone to the West have faced radiation poisoning and attacks with powerful nerve agents. Those who have countered Putin in Russian politics have been jailed or gunned down in the streets. Now, apparently, oligarchs are in the crosshairs.

Tuesday

January 3, 2023

Cockburn

Will Biden ever follow the science on Covid?

Cockburn, like every other American, finally thought we’d seen Covid's last hurrah. But right on cue, in the dreaded month of January, the Wu-flu is resurgent. Public-health experts have begun sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB that is rapidly spreading across the Northeastern United States. It's not yet clear if XBB is any more lethal than other variants, but its mutations can make any prior vaccine useless. Growing evidence also suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus’s rapid evolution. “It might not be a coincidence that XBB surged this fall in Singapore, which has among the highest vaccination and booster rates in the world," writes the Wall Street Journal.

Saturday

December 31, 2022

Cockburn

TikTok sleuths are convinced Britney Spears is dead

Cockburn understands that the period between Christmas and the new year is a weird time. His own days have been spent knocking back the bourbon and hiding behind the couch when family members come to check in. But it seems that others have been spending the festive period glued to TikTok and convincing the world that Britney Spears is dead. Remember the conspiracy that Avril Lavigne committed suicide and was replaced by a look-alike named Melissa? This is pretty similar. Spears’s fans — which Cockburn should mention aren’t exactly the most sane of people — have alleged that the singer is either missing, in trouble or dead, and have started the hashtag, #WheresBritney.