Cockburn, Author at The Spectator

Wednesday

February 1, 2023

Cockburn

The Sims adds double mastectomy scars and chest binders to game

The Sims is now trans-inclusive! Electronic Arts, the gaming company behind the wildly successful Sims franchise, added the ability to give your custom sims double mastectomy scars, tucking underwear, and chest binders in the latest update to The Sims 4. The new Create a Sim options are available for teen, young adult and adult sims. Teen sims attend high school in the game, so Electronic Arts is subtly promoting the idea of "top surgery" — or lopping off healthy breasts so that females may appear physically more male — for minors. According to one study, chest reconstruction surgeries for minors in the United States rose by nearly 400 percent between 2016 and 2019. https://twitter.com/make_it_sizzle/status/1620553289078284288?

Visitors try out the game 'SIMS 4' at the Electronic Arts stand at the 2014 Gamescom gaming trade fair (Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images)

Cockburn

Larry Elder 2024? Radio host may run for president for some reason

The field of 2023 Republican presidential contenders may soon get larger: commentator Larry Elder said he may jump into the race as soon as March. Cockburn is skeptical that this will make much of a difference in a race that is already largely defined by the two biggest fish in the pond: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Elder made the surprise comments on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show on Monday January 30. Elder said that he is not considering a run “because I want to derail Trump or DeSantis or anybody who decides to run.” He also mentioned the two main concerns that he wants to focus on, should he opt to run: “the centrality of having fathers in the home”, and “debunk[ing] this lie about systemic racism.

Monday

January 30, 2023

Cockburn

Lori Lightfoot: footloose and fancy-free as Chicago crime soars

Cockburn found himself grimacing over his Monday morning mimosa as he watched a viral video of Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot “dancing” in the snow-strewn streets of the crime-ridden city she is supposed to govern. Lightfoot is under fire for her behavior at a Lunar New Year parade, as her lighthearted attitude contrasts sharply with the recent release of somber Chicago Police Department data showing crime reports have surged 59 percent this month compared to last January. Of course Cockburn is not surprised that Lightfoot would be so nonchalant in such a moment. Her city's crime problem is, after all, nothing new. According to the Washington Examiner, “the city has experienced an overall 33 percent increase in crime since 2019, the year Lightfoot was sworn in as mayor.

Friday

January 27, 2023

Cockburn

Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez now works in retail

The Washington Post’s revolving door People are losing their jobs in all sorts of industries — but chances are the layoffs you’ve heard about most in recent weeks are in finance, tech or the media. Squeakiest wheel and all that. This week brought news that the Washington Post was cutting twenty newsroom jobs and shuttering its gaming vertical. Also out at the Post: Margaret Sullivan, who has left to sign as a columnist for the Guardian. It's not all departures at One Franklin Square though: executive editor Sally Buzbee has signed up a slew of names for the Opinion desk, including conservatives Jim Geraghty and Ramesh Ponnuru from National Review and disaffected liberal Ruy Teixeira.

Cockburn

Rubio wants Pfizer to answer ‘gain-of-function research’ charge

Cockburn absorbed a lengthy segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight along with his nightcap last night, that reported on an undercover Project Veritas video purporting to show a Pfizer executive admitting to all kinds of alarming practices. Namely that the company is considering carrying out the same type of experiments that caused the Covid pandemic. The video shows Pfizer director of research and development, Jordon Trishton Walker, who evidently thought he was on a date with the Veritas reporter, talking freely about Pfizer’s operations. Walker explains, amid giggles, how the company is “exploring” mutating Covid variants themselves “so we could create — preemptively build new vaccines, right?

Thursday

January 26, 2023

Cockburn

Oh no: Adam Schiff announces for California Senate

If you thought the California nightmare was bad enough, things are about to get much worse. It pains Cockburn to tell you that Representative Adam Schiff is running to replace Dianne Feinstein in the US Senate. His announcement follows hot on the heels of his being booted from the House Intelligence Committee and the resulting wave of media attention. https://twitter.com/adamschiff/status/1618626586303160325 In the opening lines of his video announcement, Schiff says he “always believed that what’s right matters, that the truth matters — and that decency matters.” This is the same Adam Schiff who for years promised he had the goods on Trump’s Russia collusion, that some new conclusive evidence had been found that Trump was a Russian catspaw.

Wednesday

January 25, 2023

Cockburn

Azealia Banks loves Ron DeSantis

Azealia Banks is taking a break from digging up her dead cat and returning to music after signing with major label Parlophone. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Banks spilled the beans on her very public breakdowns, Kanye West and, weirdly enough, Ron DeSantis. (Naturally, she used rather colorful language in doing so: Cockburn urges the faint-hearted to skip over the following quotes.) Banks, the New York rapper and singer who first gained popularity eleven years ago with her hit "212," claimed that she felt safer after her move from Los Angeles to Florida. She said that people “mind their fuckin’ business” and claimed that the media lies about the Republican haven. Part of that, she said, is down to the governor, Ron DeSantis. “He’s focused on the basic shit.

Tuesday

January 24, 2023

Cockburn

Pete Davidson is ditching his Ruth Bader Ginsburg tattoo

Pete Davidson is comedy’s human Etch-A-Sketch. The King of Staten Island star is plastered in tattoos, though he’s proved indecisive of late as to what art he wants to wear on his skin for the rest of his life. Paparazzi photos that were published this weekend indicate that Davidson is ditching the elaborate depiction of the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Eagle-eyed Turning Points Memo reporter Hunter Walker spotted the in-progress removal after Davidson was snapped frolicking on a Hawaii beach with his Bodies Bodies Bodies co-star Chase Sui Wonders. https://twitter.

pete davidson ruth bader ginsburg tattoo

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?