The idiot Jonathan Turley -- idiot, racist, transphobe,
disgraced professor at George Washington University -- keeps pimping the
death of DISNEY. It's just not happening. PARAMOUNT, on the other
hand, is in trouble. Douglas A. McIntyre (24/7 WALL STREET) explains:
CNBC
recently published an article about legacy media and the great trouble
they are in. None is crippled as badly managed as Paramount Global (NASDAQ: PARA), which is unlikely to recover from its current problems. (These companies have the worst reputations.)Paramount’s
stock is down 42% in the past year, while the market is 12% higher. The
recent stock market rally has not helped it much.
While
Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney have viable streaming services, which
at least can challenge industry leaders Netflix and Amazon Prime,
Paramount does not. It has only 60 million subscribers for its
Paramount+ service. Disney+ has 158 million, and Netflix has 232
million. The streaming business suffers greatly from churn. People
regularly cancel one service and move to another. The average U.S.
household has four services. Paramount is near the bottom of the
pyramid.
PARAMOUNT+
actually doesn't have 60 million subscribers. I know because I was
one. For months, I got PARAMOUNT+ through AMAZON. I paid for it and
STARZ and another. Then I cancelled. Why?
I'm a WALMART
subscriber -- I forget what they call it. But if I order over $35 in
groceries, I get free delivery (it's around ten dollars a delivery
otherwise) by paying a monthly fee of about the price it costs for a month of NETFLIX. And, some months back, PARAMOUNT was added to my WALMART
subscription -- and to other WALMART subscribers. I'm not paying any
additional money to WALMART and I'm also not paying anything to
PARAMOUNT so the actual number of people paying for PARAMOUNT+ are really worse than that. Far less are paying than 60 million. Back to the
article:
Even
Paramount’s studio operations are in trouble. Revenue dropped 6% in the
most recent quarter to $588 million. Adjusted OIBDA showed a loss of
$99 million. According to Box Office Mojo, Paramount does not have a
movie in the top 10 based in revenue in 2023.
Paramount
may simply be too small to compete in either the old media or new media
business. That news could hardly be worse for shareholders.
In fact, is there a less woke group than PARAMOUNT and PARAMOUNT+ -- home to YELLOW STONE and to TOP GUN MAVERICK?
Swirley Turley is an idiot.
“The
truth is, I was super complimented for a long time about this. James
Bond... It’s one of those coveted [roles]. Being asked to be James Bond
was like ‘OK, you’ve sort of reached the pinnacle’. That’s one of those
things the whole world has a vote in.
“Essentially,
it was a huge compliment that every corner of the world except from
some corners, which we will not talk about, were really happy about the
idea that I could be considered.
“Those
that weren’t happy about the idea made the whole thing disgusting and
off-putting, because it became about race. It became about nonsense and I
got the brunt of it.”
Let
it go. By the time Daniel Craig finished his run, you were too old.
I'm sick of your whining. Not only were you too old but your last three
films flopped so there was no reason to make you James Bond. Would
everybody please take a moment to note Halle Bailey? As C.I. pointed
out two weeks ago, Halle is being targeted for her race. But she's
handling it with grace, she's not whining, she's not griping -- and she
has every right to gripe. She's being the Disney princess in real life
that the kids are seeing. She's smiling and each week THE LITTLE
MERMAID makes a little more money and some of the hate -- a little bit
-- drops away. C.I. said, "In 2023 we shouldn't need cross over
artists." And she's right. But we're sadly at that point again in the
US. And Halle is being a gracious ambassador on behalf of us to White
America.
She doesn't need
the sour grapes of some old man from England infecting what she's
doing, the trailblazing she's carrying off. And, for the record, the
film (not counting today's tickets sold around the world) is $1,06
million away from hitting $500,000,000 in ticket sales -- that's a 1/2
billion in ticket sales.
No,
it is not a bomb. No, it is not an underperformer but didn't a lot of
racist media -- THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, DEADLINE, etc -- rush to prop up
the racism in this county by repeatedly declaring this a bomb. Halle
Bailey has handled it with grace. But there's going to come a time when
they're going to pull this on the wrong African-American and it's not
going to be pretty. Nor should it be.
Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tuesday, June 27, 2023. John Kerry lies about the Iraq War yet again,
RFK Jr prepares to hump hate group Moms For Liberty, THE NATION has a
major piece on the war on transpeople, and much more.
A
French TV anchor confronted John Kerry over whether U.S. condemnations
of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s bloody and baseless invasion of
Ukraine come as hypocritical in light of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kerry, who serves as the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate
and was in Paris for a climate summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, appeared for an interview
with veteran journalist Darius Rochebin
on French news channel LCI Sunday night. They discussed Kerry’s work to
combat climate change and the Russian war against Ukraine, which
prompted Rochebin to bring up recent criticism of President George W.
Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 from countries in South America.
[. . .]
“We have to judge Putin for crimes of aggression, of course. But you,
the Americans, you committed the crime of aggression in Iraq,” Rochebin
said. “These countries of the Global South say, should we judge George
Bush? Why isn’t Bush judged in the same way?”
“No,” Kerry shot back.
“Why?” Rochebin asked.
“Because there’s never even been a direct process or accusation or
anything with respect to President Bush himself,” Kerry said. “Have
there been abuses in the course of that war, yes.”
Rochebin asked: "Was it not a crime of aggression to enter Iraq based on a lie?"
Kerry, the U.S. presidential envoy for climate issues, replied: "No, no,
no... Well, we didn’t know it was a lie at the time. You know the
evidence that was produced, people didn't know that it was a lie. So no,
again, I think, you’re stretching something. That’s not constructive."
"But he lied," the French journalist said about President George W. Bush. "He lied, he lied."
"Sir, I’m not going to re-debate the Iraq war with you here right now,"
Kerry said. "We spent a lot of time doing that. I opposed to going in, I
thought it was the wrong thing to do. But we gave the president the
power, regrettably, in the Congress, based on the lie. And when we knew
it was a lie, people stood up and did the right thing."
It's
all so shameful and embarrassing. And let me do a confession before we
go further: I supported John Kerry for the 2004 presidential Democratic
Party nomination. I'd known him for years. He was talking big about
how he'd stand up to the press, no buckling to NEWSWEEK this time, blah
blah blah. The party never wants who I want. That was the first time
in my lifetime that a non-incumbent got the nomination after I'd
supported them in the primary. And what a huge disappointment and
disaster he was.
And still is. Actually, he's
much worse now. Oh, sure, he's not 'entangled' with reporters covering
the State Dept, but his outright lying has gotten even worse.
"I opposed to going in."
He
just can't stop lying. In 2004, he made a mockery of himself by trying
to explain his vote for the Iraq War by saying "I was for it before I
was against it." And he was for it. He voted for it. Despite everyone
laughing at him for that ridiculous "I was for it before I was against
it" -- more laughter than he even garnered -- Wait, we'll come back to
that.
Democratic
presidential nominee John Kerry said Monday he would not have changed
his vote to authorize the war against Iraq, but said he would have
handled things "very differently" from President Bush
That's two years after the vote. He wasn't opposed to it when he voted for it. He wasn't opposed to it two years after.
Then
John dropped the for-it-before-against-it pose and just started lying
that he'd been against it all along. He told that lie on MSNBC in
September of 2013 prompting
FACTCHECK.ORG to call him out:
[. . .]
It’s
not inconsistent for Kerry to authorize Bush to go to war and then
criticize the president’s execution of the war. But for Kerry to say he
“opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq” ignores the ample
record that shows the Democrat agreed with Bush that Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction and should be forcibly removed from power, and it
ignores his vote that allowed Bush to do just that.
And he's still lying today. He just can't stop lying.
He's
a huge disappointment and a huge screw up. And I realized that when he
ruined my 2004 suggestion. The GOP convention that year was going to
be hate filled -- that was a given and they were going to try terrorize
people into voting with fear-fear-fear. Months before anyone had seized
the nomination -- though, outside of Howard Dean, it did appear it was
going to be John Kerry -- there was a big meeting for strategy on
another issue. Someone brought up the upcoming conventions, I want to
say it was Harold Ickes -- and we were talking -- all of us -- about how
fear based Bully Boy Bush's campaign had to be for him to win the
election. How do we counteract that?
I said
with normalcy. I said sunshine -- openness. And then I said, because I
have a home in Hawaii, that the candidate should go there during the
GOP convention. First of all, few presidential candidates go there and
it does lead to the state feeling ignored and dissatisfied so this could
be an opportunity to fix that growing attitude. Second, Hawaii's
beautiful. Strolling through the streets, hanging out on the beach?
The news crews would love it and get tons of stock footage that would
air and wouldn't require a lot else. Bully Boy Bush and company are
preaching destruction and yet, here in sunny Hawaii, is our candidate
strolling around and greeting people suggesting that, yes, the world
continues and goes on and it's not all doom and gloom the way the GOP is
portraying it.
How was I to know, when they
decided to run with the idea, that John's vanity was so great, he'd
squeeze himself into what resembled sausage casing and do a sport that
was seen as elitist. I was talking about strolling through the streets,
relaxing on the beach, a luau. Things that would make the point, we
can all breathe and relax to counter the fear mongering. Instead,
John's showing off stalk and tip in a ridiculous outfit that no man his
age should have been wearing.
He
took what was a solid photo-op with a subtle message and turned it into
weeks of laughter -- at him -- because he was so damn stupid.
And,
yes, we did know ahead of time that Colin Powell lied to the UN. We
did know that Bully Boy Bush was lying. That was why Senator Bob Graham
repeatedly begged other senators -- most of whom, like Hillary Clinton,
refused -- to go look at what they were calling 'the evidence.' Go to
the secure room, read it over.
John's just a cheap liar.
I know Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well. And -- what do you say there?
I can't hold it back anymore. What? The destruction of Cheryl's career.
I've
begged friends not to judge her by Robert. But it's over for her now.
And it's a shame because she's a nice person and she's a talented
actress and director. But her husband's decision to appear at a Moms
For Liberty event has shredded any wall that those of us who like Cheryl
have attempted to build. She's done nothing wrong herself but studio
exec and producers and everyone down the line are now referring to her
as "that bitch." She didn't do anything wrong. I hope Robert realizes
as he appears to sink his own campaign, that his getting chummy with
hate merchants destroyed his wife's career.
The
vax argument isn't one I get into, I've discussed that here before.
Autism is a cause I've worked my whole adult life on and I don't get
into that debate, it hurts fundraising and its hurts people's feelings.
And it's not my intent to do either.
But
that stance that Robert has? It didn't hurt Cheryl. There are some who
are inclined to side with Robert on that in the entertainment industry
and most are sensitive enough to grasp that there are no points to be
scored on this issue.
But Moms For Liberty?
For
Marianne Williamson, this is perfect timing. She needs a win bad. And
the same week Robert's buddying up to Moms For Liberty, she's supposed
to be delivering a major statement regarding the attacks on the
transgender community. If she does and delivers it and does it even
half-way well, this could see her get the campaign on track finally and
also move up in the polls (Robert has been sinking of late).
A right-wing
inquisition is singling out young transgender Americans, their parents,
their teachers, and their doctors as targets in the battle over what
kind of nation we are and want to be. Since 2021, roughly half the
states have passed at least one law designed to eliminate medical or
educational policies that recognize trans youth and protect them from
abuse. According to the ACLU, 20 states enacted 72 new anti-trans laws in the first six months of 2023; more than 200 are in the pipeline.
Anti-trans
campaigners seek to create a blanket of repression. Because the recent
wave of anti-trans laws was not triggered by a landmark event like the
rush of anti-abortion laws enacted in the wake of the Dobbs decision,
this new reality has crept up on the country. Major media outlets have
struggled to keep up with which laws have been passed in which states.
With the exception, perhaps, of the trans people who find themselves in
the cross hairs of these new laws, almost no one saw it coming.
As a comparison, the Guttmacher Institute counts 26 states where
abortion is now banned or significantly restricted—a nearly identical
list. With the passage of a handful of new laws or court decisions, the
overlap may soon be complete. Laws attacking “critical race theory,”
which also came on suddenly and are now widespread, have less of a
complete overlap because such resolutions often arise in local school
boards rather than in state legislatures. Nonetheless, according to a report from
the UCLA Law School’s Critical Race Studies program, anti-CRT laws now
affect 22 million public school students, almost half the nation’s
total.
Given
the avalanche of anti-trans legislation, it might be surprising to
learn that the bulk of Americans are turned off by the extremism and
cruelty of these laws. According to Roll Call,
recent polling found that 64 percent of Americans believe that the
sudden onset of anti-trans bills this year amounts to “too much
legislation,” with politicians “playing political theater and using
these bills as a wedge issue.” On youth access to gender-affirming
medical care, an NPR/Ipsos poll found
that 47 percent of Americans oppose restrictions while 31 percent
support them, with 21 percent declining to answer. On allowing trans
girls to compete in girls’ sports, however, the same survey found that
63 percent oppose. A Pew survey from
June 2022 found that the number of people who think American society
has gone too far in accepting trans people (38 percent) is roughly equal
to the number who think it hasn’t gone far enough (36 percent).
How
is it possible that a country with so little demand for anti-trans
policies produced such an onslaught of anti-trans laws? The most
important characteristic that these states share with states that have
passed new anti-abortion and anti-CRT laws is a legal structure that
reinforces minority control of governance—in effect, a democracy
deficit. Political scientist Jacob Grumbach calls such
states “laboratories against democracy.” Eight of the 24 states that
have passed the worst anti-trans laws rank among the worst states for
legislative gerrymandering, according to ratings issued by either the University of Southern California’s Schwarzenegger Institute or the World Population Review.
Nan makes solid points and writes a great article. I would quibble with the "how" aspect above. It wasn't just that.
It
was a group of people egging it on. It was supposed leftists like Matt
Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (again, Glenn was never left, he was a
Libertarian who had a whatever as his hag and people mistook him for a
liberal) making 'jokes' and be insulting to transgenders. (Again,
Chelsea Manning saw Glenn's transphobia before anyone did -- certainly
before I did.) It was Max Blumenthal's wife attacking and mocking the
transgender community.
It
was THE KATIE HALPER SHOW, USEFUL IDIOTS, and so many more refusing to
treat this war on LGBTQ+ as a serious issue and devote time to it. Not
everyone was silent and those who deserve credit for speaking out
include BLACK POWER MEDIA, Karen Hunter, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE VANGUARD,
etc -- and Olayemi Olurin especially deserves credit for her strong work -- which included
calling out -- on air -- to their faces, not one but two hosts of RISING who were laughing at and
mocking transgender people. No surprise, while White YOUTUBERS mocked
and ignored, it was people of color who spoke up maybe because they
historically know the importance of standing together to stand up.
It
was RISING on THE HILL doing one transphobic segment after another. It
was BREAKING POINTS trying to use MonkeyPox to target gay men.
It
wasn't just the people working in the shadows (often advised by
Jonathan Turley -- everything Lawrence Tribe said about Turley was
true), it was also a pathetic left that refused to stand up and say,
"Stop it." That refused to say, "These people are our family and we're
not going to be silent while you attack them." What's so interesting
when we speak with people around the country is that, in their areas,
people stood up. It's just the left media that didn't. Especially
those people on YOUTUBE.
And
when super-cool Matt Taibbi's laughing at transgenders, well don't we
all want to be cool and laugh at them like he does. I don't but maybe
some do -- you know the ones who want to suffer from male pattern
baldness and erectile dysfunction.
The left media didn't stand up and immediately call this out. Instead, they ignored it or they joined in.
A lot of people now live at risk because of this.
I've
noted repeatedly that when DOBBS was overturned, LGBTQ+ people rushed
to the front to stand with us. And, unless you're a lesbian that gets
raped, unwanted pregnancy was really only something the B in LGBTQ+
really had to worry about. But they, as a group, stood up. NETFLIX had
a comedy special on LGBTQ+ and these comedians made DOBBS part of their
act and called it out.
But
we couldn't speak in support of them. We couldn't call out the hate
being directed daily at them. And when THE NEW YORK TIMES staff pointed
out that the paper had used extreme and sensationalistic stories to get
clicks and sell copies, who stood up for those employees.
I
know who stood against them. Glenneth Greenwald. The empress was not
amused by unruly employees who would disparage their employer. The
empress was not used to serfs being so unruly. Glenneth Greenwald's
royal "we" was not at all amused and felt the need to trash them over
and over.
When in fact, it is THE NEW YORK TIMES
that has repeatedly been behind on the science as anyone knowledgeable about science was aware. Yes, there was the AIDS crisis and their
attacks on gays and ignorance on science. But even something like
extinction level events -- check the archives of the paper -- they got
that wrong as well. Despite being known for their science section of
the paper, they repeatedly fail on that topic.
And
they failed transgendered people by refusing to report accurately and
by who they sought out for sources to their bad articles.
But,
hey, uptight prig needs a laugh -- and apparently his reflection in the
mirror of that still bad dye job out of box to cover his gray hair
wasn't doing it. He got a lot of laughs, didn't he? And
played like he was Demi Moore in ST. ELMO'S FIRE -- only I don't
believe Jules, as much as she wanted that "fabulous talk show," would
have abandoned her dying husband in the hospital. (Yes, Glenneth, tea
was spilled by your ex to us about that college infatuation.)
Oh.
And Tucker. Don't forget that Mother Tucker. Lying over and over,
trashing the LGBTQ+ community over and over. They didn't object -- not
Aaron Matte, not Jimmy Dore, not Max Blumenthal, not Glenneth, not any
of the whores who went on Tucker's show. No, they all worshiped at
his crotch -- Glenneth, Matt, Tara Reade, all of them.
These
are the ethics of the people who couldn't stand up for transgender
people as they were clearly under attack. The hate merchants only got
as far as they did because too many of us refused to object and let our
silence -- or giggles -- feed and encourage the hate merchants. A
united front over nine months ago and we might have been able to stop
it. Instead, we just grinned at the big wooden horse and fell asleep as
the hate merchants emptied out of it and took over our world.
This
is probably a good time to note that we're said goodbye to Naomi
Wolf. I don't like a dog pile. I was fine with giving her a platform
when she was under attack. She was getting banned by everyone and she
was humiliated. We could have looked the other way and ignored her.
I'm not a good person so if I'd known that she'd get in bed with hate
merchants like Moms Of Liberty, I wouldn't have been kind. Her downward
spiral (I believe she's on meds, by the way) started with -- wait. Did
it start with the custody battle? I don't know. It's been so long
since I gave a damn about her. As Ava and I had established at THIRD,
she had a racist streak and identified with authoritarianism among other
things. We established that with her actual work. She practically
brought herself to orgasm while describing White Victoria Woodhull who,
honestly, looked like a young boy, not a pretty woman. And then, mere
paragraphs later, this is her book FIRE WITH FIRE, by the way, she's
referring to Madam CJ Walker as ugly. Look it up. Didn't even enter
her airheaded head that (a) she'd fallen into her own beauty myth and (b)
Madame CJ Walker wasn't ugly -- unless you don't believe Black Is
Beautiful.
We called her
out for PROMISCUITIES -- that's the book where she lets slip (did she
even read what she wrote) that she kept silent when a college woman was
raped. Naomi was there. She heard that night and then the men joking
about it the next morning -- bragging about it. It gave her pause. Not
enough to make her report it, not enough to make her walk out, not
enough to make her break up with the frat boy she was seeing, not even
enough to stop eating her eggs, but, hey, it brought her buzz down
during breakfast and, after all, isn't that enough of a sacrifice for her?
Judith N. Shklar. Very important political theorist. I loved her work. I spoke
with her about her work many times. I wouldn't use the word friend but
I knew her and liked her. And that's why I never bought into Naomi
Wolf's THE BEAUTY MYTH which largely cribbed from Judith's Oxford
lectures. Oxford. Who went to Oxford? Oh, that's right -- Naomi Wolf
and she went when Judith was lecturing. Did no one else notice that all
the literary examples first popped up in Judith's THE FACES OF
INJUSTICE -- which is based upon the Oxford lectures.
I
love Judith's work. In November of 2004, after a group of us finished a
lengthy post mortem on the
2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry and
after I suggested we needed to think about the things we didn't do, I
did just that. I asked myself to think about that. It was a Friday. I
knew nothing about blogging. I knew it had impacted the election. And
I knew I needed to do something that I hadn't already done. I was at
my desk and nervous -- I probably ran to the bathroom three times in the
thirty minutes it took to set up this site on Blogger/Blogspot. (It is
much quicker now but it's also true I didn't know what I was doing so
that took longer too.) Everything about it made me nervous. (I'm
someone who can cold call for
an issue like the Iraq War but someone who wouldn't answer the home
phone
myself many times, people find it hard to believe but I am shy. That's
also why I don't plan what I'm going to say in front of groups. If I
spend time planning, I'm going to be nervous.) So, creating this site, I
got to the point where I had to name it and I went with "The Common
Ills" in a nod to Judith's work.
I
don't think Naomi grasped, when she was stealing from Judith, how
obvious the theft was or how some of us would immediately catch on.
Again, Ava and I have called her out for all of that and more.
When
she published OUTRAGES in 2019, she finally committed career suicide.
Turns out the primary research for the book was wrong. Not flawed,
wrong. You can search and find where, in a roundtable at THIRD, Ava
and I are expected to be gleeful but instead refuse to join the dog pile
and I say that the publisher is responsible for fact checking so they
bore part of the blame. She misunderstood the records she was
examining.
If
we were doing the roundtable today, I would say, however, she needs to
return her doctorate. I wasn't aware that the 2019 book was actually
the work she'd done on her doctorate.
That
book has been pulped -- something that rarely ever happens without the
threat of a lawsuit. That's how wrong it was. I don't think she is
entitled to have that doctorate now.
And
we're not defending her anymore. OUTRAGES was actually a book where
she examined the treatment -- mistreatment -- of gay people
historically. She'd turned her back on so much of the left during her
manic period. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that now she's in bed
with the anti-LGBTQ+ hate mongers Moms for Liberty.
You've made your bed, lay in it and lie from it.
I
could pull quote Nan B. Hunter's entire article (it's that strong and
that important) but we have to note at least one more section:
Despite
its massive impact, there is a temptation to dismiss the anti-trans
campaign as merely another battle confined to the domain of cultural
politics. Some on the liberal left agree that the cruelty is
unconscionable but believe that the underlying problem is less
significant than questions of economic redistribution. But the flood of
anti-trans, anti-abortion, and anti-CRT laws is much more than a
distraction from economically regressive legislation. Instead, the
attacks on women, people of color, and trans people work hand-in-glove
with attacks on the social institutions that we all depend on.
The
inseparable nature of attacks on trans people and on our democratic
institutions can be seen in the debates over public schools. The
anti-trans campaign is a bonanza for groups engaged in a war against
public education, which has long been a major target for the right wing, in spite of the fact that public education has support even in some deeply conservative states.
Painting
schools as dens of “woke indoctrination,” as Florida Governor Ron
DeSantis put it, facilitates disinvestment, which has direct material
consequences. Of the 23 states most actively targeting trans youth and
their families, the Education Law Center gave
16 grades of either an F or a D for their per-pupil funding level
relative to the national average. In effect, however, there is a
sectarian carve-out: Religious schools are often shielded from policies
that starve public schools. A report issued in September 2022 estimated
that by the end of that school year, Florida would shift an estimated 10 percent of its education budget from public to private schools. Most of the schools receiving those funds are religious and lack accreditation. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has plans to start dozens of conservative charter schools by
partnering with the K-12 school management arm of Hillsdale College, a
Christian school in Michigan that DeSantis wants to use as a model for a
public liberal arts college in his state.
In fact, there is a growing nationwide movement to
reallocate public funds to private schools, including many religious
schools using the same rhetoric of “parental freedom” that the
anti-trans campaigns deploy. The Supreme Court opened the door for it,
especially with its decision in 2021 in Carson v. Makin,
which struck down a restriction on public tuition assistance funds
going to religious schools. Although billions of dollars are at stake,
the shifts in funding have gotten far less attention than anti-trans
bills and the attacks on CRT and school libraries. The right wing is
building a potentially massive edifice of religious, pro-market, and highly profitable education institutions in the same states where anti-trans hysteria has taken root, but the two issues are rarely discussed together.
Having failed to stand up and stop it when it was gathering steam, we now have a lot of work to do.
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