Cockburn

Cockburn

Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips and party invites to cockburn@thespectator.com.

Thursday

Cockburn

New York Post hacked: ‘We must assassinate AOC for America’

Cockburn has always been fond of a New York Post headline. Snappy, funny, eye-catching: that's why he reads the New York tabloid every morning. But today, even for Cockburn, some were too far. In what appears to be a hacking, a scroll down the Post's Twitter feed at around 9 a.m. revealed the following headlines: “Devine: We must murder Joe and Hunter Biden” “We must assassinate AOC for America” “Frank: I will beat up sorry ass Bergen bitches like Gottheimer and his family” “Zeldin: I will rape and batter Hochul’s sorry ass pussy” “Gov. Abbott: I will order border patrol to start slaughtering illegals” "Rufo: We must destory [sic] and imprison Union teachers" "Zeldin: Eric Adams is NYC’s fried chicken eating monkey” https://twitter.

new york post
prince harry memoir spare
Cockburn

Prince on pre-order: Harry’s memoir release date announced

Cockburn has a few vacations coming up in 2023, so is on the hunt for some new light reading material. Thank God that Prince Harry has announced that his long-awaited memoir, Spare, will hit shelves globally on January 10. The cover features a close-up of the man fifth in line to the British throne, staring down the barrel of the camera, blue eyes glinting, beard tidily trimmed. His expression says, "this is my story." Publisher Penguin Random House said in a press release: “Spare takes readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow — and horror.

Wednesday

Cockburn

The Halloween costumes guaranteed to get you fired this year

Cockburn has had some stellar Halloween costumes over the years… but the world is no longer what was. Thanks to political correctness, social media and your HR department, an outfit that’s viewed to be in poor taste could now result in your cancellation and dismissal. Maybe you’re looking to make a change at work — if so, here are some Halloween costumes that will help you unleash your inner Justin Trudeau and leave your employer no option… Candace Owens and Kanye ‘Ye’ West The real power couple of the latter half of 2022! This one is guaranteed to get you canceled. Ye’s appalling “White Lives Matter” T-shirts are a bit pricey — fortunately there is a knock-off version. Candace-style wig available here.

halloween costumes

Tuesday

Cockburn

Ye learns that hate is bad for business

Cockburn keeps up with the Kardashians, so to him, Kanye West’s recent outbursts are not much of a surprise. But over the last few weeks, anyone that didn't previously know that he was, shall we say, in decline, is now fully aware. Ye's antisemitic comments, such as declaring that he would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and continuously talking about how Jews “own the media,” have resulted in dire financial consequences for him, as the various businesses he works with cancel their contracts and denounce his remarks. The most recent — and arguably the most important — business collab that Ye has watched crumble is his partnership with Adidas. The lucrative multi-year deal to design sneaker brand Yeezy was valued at $1.5 billion.

kanye west business
Cockburn

James Corden suddenly remembers his wife has a food allergy

Maybe it was all those drinks he guzzled after demanding the restaurant comp them, but James Corden forgot for a whole week that his wife has a food allergy. He used this clever excuse to try to explain away his alleged “extremely nasty behavior” that got him banned from Balthazar’s in New York, a swanky French restaurant. Keith McNally, Balthazar’s owner, labeled Corden "the most abusive customer" in his establishment’s 25-year history. McNally detailed on Instagram two accounts of abuse Balthazar’s staff received from Corden. One involved the comedian supposedly finding a hair in his food and insisting afterward on free drinks as compensation, with an added threat of bad restaurant reviews.

Monday

Cockburn

Does Taylor Swift have a drinking problem?

Being an eclectic chap, Cockburn has sampled his fair share of music. And he’s not ashamed to admit, contrary to Al Michaels’s suggestion that Taylor Swift only appeals to teenage girls, that he considers himself a “Swiftie” — not least of all because Swift makes repeated reference to one of his favorite activities: drinking alcohol. Swift just released her new album, Midnights, along with an official music video to accompany her catchy and oh-so-clever song, Anti-Hero. The video tells you all you need to know about Swift’s preferred method for dealing with her problems. Though she never mentions booze by name, she appears in the video taking shots and desperately shaking the last drop from a bottle of wine directly into her mouth.

taylor swift
charles
Cockburn

JustStopOil protesters attack waxwork King Charles with chocolate cake

The JustStopOil activists are on the loose around Europe again. This time they’ve chosen to stop off at Madame Tussauds in London — the museum of life-sized wax replicas of famous celebrities and icons. So, who did they set their sights on? Kylie Jenner? Taylor Swift? Or any of the other gas-guzzling, private plane flying celebs? Nope. This time twenty-year-old Eilidh McFadden and twenty-nine-year-old Tom Johnson covered a waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake. https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil/status/1584491199771316225 Perhaps in their simple minds, this gesture made sense. Two fingers up to the Establishment and all that. But the new king is known for his extensive environmental campaigning.

Saturday

Cockburn

Ghislaine Maxwell’s daddy issues

Cockburn has just posted bail, after some post-AA meeting cocktails got out of hand yesterday afternoon. He apologizes for the tardiness of his Friday gossip column. Hopefully the contents make up for it... The ungrammatical WHCA The White House Correspondents' Association has been busy this week. Preparing for midterms, you ask? Not quite. Their members have been focusing on making the language of their by-laws gender-neutral. (They/them as a singular, etc.) Eighty-two percent of the membership voted to change the language, and it will take effect January next year. Way to go, guys. Super important. *** Tim Ryan’s nightmares In Ohio, the internal numbers are terrible for Tim Ryan. Cockburn has heard that some Ryan staffers believe he hasn't been sleeping.

ghislaine maxwell

Friday

Cockburn

What’s on Lana Del Rey’s stolen laptop?

What do Lana Del Rey and Hunter Biden have in common? More than you might think, apparently. Cockburn must admit that he felt a little sorry for the singer after she announced that she was facing a “bit of a roadblock” with her work... after her laptop was stolen. The singer posted to her private Instagram that “a few months ago, I parked my car on Melrose Place and I stepped away for a minute. And the one time I left my backpack inside my car, someone broke all of the windows and took it and inside of it was my computer and my three camcorders and my hard drives.” So, what’s in the bag? Del Rey revealed that she lost her in-progress album after admitting that she did not have any of her work backed up to the cloud and had wiped her computer.

lana del rey

Thursday

Cockburn

Style blog rates Meghan Markle’s funeral ’fits

Whisper it — but Cockburn can’t help but love a funeral. Old churches, black clothes that take a few inches from the waist, the spread is always great and the wake is single-handedly the best after-party anyone, dead or alive, could ask for. But there are a few rules. The first, one that should be glaringly obvious, is not taking smiling selfies for Instagram. Now, Cockburn knows that for a funeral such as Queen Elizabeth II’s, photos are unavoidable. But it seems that the people at Meghan’s Mirror, the style blog devoted to Meghan Markle, are lacking in basic etiquette. A little over a month after the death of the Queen, Meghan’s Mirror has splashed photos of Meghan’s outfit at the events surrounding the Queen’s death on their blog's homepage.

meghans mirror blog

Wednesday

Cockburn

You, too, can ban James Corden from your restaurant

The restaurant world was devastated this week after learning a fact our cousins across the Pond have been telling us for some time: that James Corden is a huge douchebag. The Late Late Show host found himself on the blacklist of swanky New York haunt Balthazar, after owner Keith McNally described the Brit as his “most abusive customer.” Now, one enterprising company that provides signage to restaurants is offering its clients a “free digital sign” to Iet Corden know he’s banned from their establishments too. Australia-based Mandoe Media breathlessly rushed the signs out in a press release. A bit too quickly for Cockburn’s liking, as the company appears to have skipped the spell-checking stage. One reads, “DONT BE LIKE JAMES: TREAT STAFF WITH RESPECT!

james corden
kevin spacey
Cockburn

The craziness of the Kevin Spacey misconduct trial

An antihero, an allegation, a court case, a neo-Nazi. The Kevin Spacey trial has been a hell of a ride and it's barely begun. This week, Spacey has taken the stand as the first witness in his own defense in his sexual misconduct trial, brought forward by actor Anthony Rapp. Best known for his role in Star Trek: Discovery, Rapp claims that in 1986, Spacey, who was twenty-six at the time, invited Rapp, then fourteen, to his New York home. He alleges that Spacey picked him up, laid him down on his bed, grabbed his buttocks and pressed his groin into his body without his consent. Rapp first made his allegation in October 2017. In the eyes of the public, Spacey went from antihero to villain.

Tuesday

Cockburn

J.D. Vance owns Tim Ryan after Ryan calls him a racist

Cockburn watched with delight last night as Ohio’s Democratic candidate for US Senate, Tim Ryan, served up an absurd accusation against Republican candidate J.D. Vance — only to have Vance spike the allegation in Ryan's face with the force of Kerri Walsh Jennings. It all started when one of the debate moderators, in a blasé, 1960s Firing Line kind of way, asked Ryan for his opinion of the Great Replacement Theory, which holds that powerful Jews are conspiring to replace white Americans with minorities and foreigners. Ryan said he thinks the theory is nonsense, “grounded in some of the most racially divisive writings in the history of the world.

work
Cockburn

Sleepy Joe leads the work-from-home crusade

Rejoice, slackers of America! For there is a new figurehead leading your crusade for lunchtime naps, camera-off Zoom meetings and sea-level productivity. Yes, Joe Biden has, finally, excelled at something: he is the president that has spent most time at home. According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who has been meticulously keeping tabs of Biden's days off, since taking the White House as his official residence, the president has traveled to his home in Delaware fifty-five times. Whether he’s practicing his cycling skills, injuring himself while playing with his dogs naked or lounging in his $2.

Monday

Cockburn

Is Candace Owens cashing in on Kanye West?

A great American poet once wrote: I went to the malls and I balled too hard/ “Oh my God, is that a black card?”/ I turned around and replied, “Why yes/ But I prefer the term 'African-American Express.’” How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband. It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.

kanye west candace owens parler

Friday

Cockburn

Which royal is attempting to pull a sibling affair chapter from their new tell-all?

Candace Owens fallout at the Daily Wire Cockburn’s spies have heard that the Candace Owens's recent antics have internally divided her colleagues at the Daily Wire. Some found her defense of her buddy Kanye West's antisemitic comments gross, but Jeremy Boreing, the company's CEO, is said to have a soft spot for Candace — and is circling the wagons. In case you missed it: Candace came to Kanye’s defense after he tweeted that he was going to "go death con 3 on Jewish people." Owens claimed that, "If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic.” That’s right reader: it’s your fault for interpreting it all wrong. Cockburn also hears that the Wire's use of NDAs is keeping disgruntled former staffers quiet.

royal
j.k. rowling
Cockburn

J.K. Rowling laughs all the way to the bank 

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Ron Weasley uses a levitation spell to knock a troll unconscious. On Thursday evening, his creator J.K. Rowling repeated the feat on Twitter. The world's most highly paid author was asked how she slept at night, "knowing you’ve lost a whole audience from buying your books?" “I read my most recent royalty cheques and find the pain goes away pretty quickly,” she replied. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1580639051774054404 Now, Cockburn has always been a fan of J.K. Rowling, but her recent years on the right side of the culture war has seen her find a new audience, consisting of people with common sense.

emily ratajkowski
Cockburn

Great! Another podcast about feminism 

Politics, feminism, sex, TikTok. These four topics will form the heart of Emily Ratajkowski’s new podcast High Low with Emrata. Doubtless Cockburn speaks for everyone when he says: praise the gods, a podcast about feminism is just what the market is missing. The new Sony-produced series will consist of two episodes per week. One will see the model and swimwear entrepreneur sit down for intimate conversations with special guests. Perhaps she'll diverge from the Meghan Markle playbook and actually let her guests speak. The second will have Ratajkowski’s own commentary on current events. Cockburn is sure you’re just as excited as him to hear what the model has to say about the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and ballot harvesting.