March 18, 2026

THE CULTURE WAR HAS NO PLACE IN THE CASTING ROOM:

Most disheartening about these banal debates is how little curiosity they show about what art might otherwise be capable of. No one asks what a black Helen of Troy might reveal about desire, beauty or war. No one asks what a contested casting choice might say about contemporary anxieties. No one asks if there are more profound relationships between actors and their characters than shared genetics. The conversation never manages to rise above the level of offence and entitlement.

This is what the culture war really boils down to: a philistine struggle to deliver a pre-approved message, as opposed to just letting artists crack on with making what they want to. It distrusts audiences to make sense of things for themselves. It squeezes out any room for imagination and interpretation. The upshot is a complete flattening of culture.

If Western cinema is to revive itself from the hollowed out zombie-industry it’s become, we must reject such black-and-white thinking. Art ought to be risky, unpredictable and open to exploring the full range of human experience – even ones that might make us uncomfortable. It’s high time to get the culture warriors out of the casting room.

QED:

 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

WELFARE STATE DEFENDERS REFUTED: Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Frank Bisignano has the clearest possible answer to welfare state defenders who claim his digital efficiencies are clogging the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program — Look at the F-A-C-T-S!

Posted at 6:59 am by Mark Tapscott

FROM MARY CATELLI: Sylvie’s Escape.

Princess Sylvie’s parents sent her off to a mountain castle for her safety. There, she is greeted with a gift of a kitten. Not just any kitten, but one of the legendary Queen Angelique’s kittens.

When the kitten leads her into the forest, she follows, just avoiding capture as soldiers arrive to take the castle. She must flee and find refuge among the mountains and the mountain folk.

If she can.

Posted at 6:56 am by Sarah Hoyt

RIGHT? THE PROBLEM IS THEY WON’T LET PEOPLE GET ON PLAINS WITHOUT THE THEATER:  Ummmm Okay.

Posted at 4:31 am by Sarah Hoyt

BACK TO THE LAND WAS SILLY FOR THE LEFT AND IT’S SILLY FOR US:  Yeah, I know this is engagement bait bullshit from a European with no clue, but I see this kinda RETURN TO FARM post on X all the time, and it’s always some idylic dreamscape of rural niceness, which makes it really fucking obvious to all of us who come from farming backgrounds that these people have zero fucking clue, and would probably end up wrapped around an auger on their first day.

Xcancel.

Posted at 3:33 am by Sarah Hoyt

THE SPELLING IS AWFUL (I HAD A FEVER) AND I MIGHT NOT BE AS COHERENT AS NORMAL BUT STILL:  People Are Not Widgets.

Posted at 2:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

March 17, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I think it’s time for someone to drive the snakes out of Ireland again.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WELL, GOOD: In an article on Robert Goddard, the New York Times admits an error:

The question was, would it actually work?

Goddard faced scorn and criticism from a variety of corners, including this newspaper.

In an editorial titled “A Severe Strain on Credulity,” writers of The New York Times said that Goddard “seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” Rockets, the editorial claimed, would not work in the vacuum of space with nothing to push against.

The paper apologized — after humans landed on the Moon.

Posted at 9:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HOW IT STARTED: New York Magazine Publishes Tom Wolfe’s Brilliant “Radical Chic” Article in 1970.

How It’s Going: What Fresh Hell Is This? New York Mag Lionizes Shoplifter and Gives Tips on How to Steal.

Here’s the excerpt from a New York Magazine article headlined, “Paying the Price for Shoplifting From Whole Foods:”

At Whole Foods, you are apparently being monitored by a swarm of security officers, some of whom wander the aisles in plain clothes, and the company’s surveillance tech is improving. When security officers catch you, they will take you to Whole Foods Jail. Sometimes with glee.

The Union Square Whole Foods jail is a windowless storage closet near the entrance, says Astrid, a photographer. She mostly remembers the wallpaper: “Layers and layers of grainy faces,” she tells Nora Deligter. “All the thieves that had come before me.”

A sculptor we’ll call Gina found herself in the Bowery Whole Foods Jail. She was late to an Alex G concert at Bowery Ballroom and had decided to slip into Whole Foods for a quick spicy-tuna-roll walk-and-dine. She had a system: Approach the item with confidence, grab it, then head upstairs to the dining area and surreptitiously place it into her bag. But this time, she headed straight for the exit. “A rookie mistake,” Gina says. 

Gina remembers keeping her head bowed and her eyes low as she was escorted back to Whole Foods Jail. The windowless office was almost too bland to recall, she says, except for a rudimentary banner, that read: ALL SHOPLIFTERS ARE BANNED FROM WHOLE FOODS FOR LIFE. A few weeks later, Gina says her parents received a $90 ticket in the mail from the company.

David Strom replies, “Is this the new socialism? Why wait for the revolution when you can just decriminalize stealing, or take your chances of getting caught and running to the media with your sob story?”

Pretty much. Flashback to the annus horribilis of 2020: NPR regrets elevating pro-looting anti-Semite.

Did anyone at NPR read the book, which includes a chapter titled “All Cops Are Bastards”? Did no one at NPR question the wisdom of elevating an activist whose Twitter handle even bears the acronym for “All Cops Are Bastards”? Did it not occur to anyone that, instead of elevating a provocative but worthwhile voice, they were actually amplifying an ignorant bigot with no basic understanding of history or community?

Apparently not, which is why NPR is in the embarrassing position this week of having to issue mea culpas for what was always an extremely avoidable fiasco.

“This piece was fact-checked, but we should have done more,” Code Switch editor Steve Drummond said of the interview, which has been updated to correct [Vicky] Osterweil’s many false assertions.

But even with the corrections, NPR’s McBride explained Thursday, “this failure to challenge this author’s statements is harmful on two levels. Publishing false information leaves the audience misinformed. On top of that, news consumers are watching closely to see who is challenged and who isn’t.”

As I wrote back then, I have no problem with NPR interviewing Osterweil. If somebody writes a book with the provocative title of In Defense of Looting — A Riotous History of Uncivil Action, complete with a crowbar on the front cover, and gets it published by the subsidiary of a major publisher, it’s news after all. Alex Haley famously interviewed American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell for Playboy in 1966 — but he asked the appropriately tough questions. In contrast, Natalie Escobar, who interviewed Osterweil for NPR, tweeted (and eventually deleted) the following, which was still cached by Google as of [September 4th, 2020]:

New York magazine, like much of the left, apparently hasn’t moved on from the positions they staked out during the 2020 color revolution.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DOWNSIDE: How the Oscars Made Everyone Hate Them.

Upside: As a Result, No One Was Watching. TV Ratings: Oscars Fall to 17.9 Million Viewers, Lowest Since 2022.

Related: Failing Oscars Demoted to YouTube. “Starting in 2029, the irrelevant Oscars will have its annual irrelevant Academy Awards show broadcast on — lol — YouTube.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:35 pm by Ed Driscoll