November 6, 2026

JULIE BURCHILL: Beware the fauxmosexual.

Does it start with Panto Dames? At Christmas, in flighty old Blighty, little Brit girls are introduced to the idea of a matronly man in a dress who gets most of the laughs and isn’t remotely interested in any of that soppy love stuff that the plucky heroine and the principal boy (played by a girl, of course) get up to. The Pantomime Dame is a place of safety in the dark-scary-forest-world of “Behind you!” that little girls are already aware of at this early age.

And then, when we’re older, pop culture takes over. The Gay Best Friend is the natural go-to for the female casualties of the Love Wars; think of Sex and the City’s Stanford Blatch, always there for Carrie to cry on when Mr Big treats her like a side-piece.

But we’re on trickier territory when it comes to what might be called “fauxmosexuals”, straight men who act gay to get girls. Before Russell Brand was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, his trial featured a telling moment. After hearing that one of the complainants testified that she had presumed Brand to be gay when they met at a Labour Party conference and thus felt “safe” asking him back to her hotel room, the prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC whipped out the accused’s unfortunately-titled 2007 memoir My Booky Wook and confronted the leering Lothario with a photograph of himself at the age of seven, with the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.”

Though he claimed under cross-examination that this was a “joke” (wouldn’t be the first unfunny joke he’d told in his long career of alleged comedy — the only time he made me laugh was when he couldn’t find the verse from Isaiah he was looking for on Piers Morgan Uncensored, while thumbing through the Bible for close to two minutes) and denied he had ever pretended to be gay in order to put women at ease, it wasn’t as convincing as it might have been. There is a long tradition of such behavior in this country although, of course, not necessarily leading to any crime. Indeed, one of Brand’s comedic contemporaries — who most people believed to be gay because of the flagrant way he camped it up — is currently undergoing a right royal canceling due to his highly “bloke-ish” attitude towards women.

“Actor and comedian Russell Brand found guilty of rape and sexual assault,” CNN reports, adding, “Brand faces a lengthy prison sentence after he was found guilty in a London court on Thursday of raping a young fan and sexually assaulting three women.”

Wait, the Brits still actually investigate and arrest people for that sort of thing?

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

THE ASSASSINATION TANGO:

Related:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

ARE YOU TAKING NOTES, SEN. THUNE?

The question was rhetorical.

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

INSTEAD, THE GOP WILL REALLY PUT THE “LAME” INTO BEING LAME DUCKS:

Hugh echoes the point that DeSantis made on Wednesday, but this Congress is too feckless to heed their advice:

 

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

NRA: Now is When The Real Work Starts.

Make no mistake, this election was not a referendum in favor of gun control. Indeed, most Democrat candidates – from the party most likely to support gun control – took pains to avoid the issue in highly contested races or tried to portray themselves as moderates on it. And while national gun ban lobbies like Everytown and their billionaire patrons like Michael Bloomberg spent heavily to obtain these results, their campaign ads tended to downplay gun control, if they mentioned it at all.

Polls showed gun control was not a significant factor motivating voters this cycle. Their chief concerns centered on the economy and cost of living.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s policies on crime and immigration have helped to drive nationwide violent crime rates as low as at any time in the FBI’s history of measurement. And while hot spots of violent crime still exist, they are heavily concentrated in discrete neighborhoods and among discrete feuding social groups, most often in locales under legacy Democrat control. This is occurring at the same time as the Second Amendment is being embraced by a more numerous and broader cross-section of law-abiding Americans than at any point in the nation’s history.

Indeed, if there was a bright spot in the outcome, it was in Florida, where pro-gun forces prevailed in every major race.

It seems almost impossible now, but Obama won Florida handily in 2008, and again — if less comfortably — in 2012.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

ARE YOU DESPAIRING ABOUT 2028? Rod Martin offers an abundance of evidence from history and logic that points to Reagan’s 1984 electoral landslide and unprecedented economic boom as the strongest indicator of what to expect in two years.

Posted at 7:26 am by Mark Tapscott

CONSTITUENT SERVICE:

Posted at 7:20 am by Stephen Green

WHEN POLITICS ISN’T YOUR RELIGION:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

FOR THE UNFORGIVABLE CRIME OF OPPOSITION:

Remember when David French posed as the sensible principled conservative as opposed to Trump’s impulsiveness and irrationality?

Key word: Posed.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

November 5, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OLD BLIGHTY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DOWNFALL: The Inevitable Hitler Explodes Over the GOP Losing the Midterms Video Has Dropped:

Posted at 8:29 pm by Ed Driscoll

SALON SINGS SWAN SONG: Goodbye from Salon.

We also want to thank our readers. You came to Salon for the journalism, the dialogue, the essays, the criticism, the unexpected discoveries and the sense that there was a place on the internet where ideas mattered. You read, shared, challenged, subscribed, wrote to us and kept coming back. Your engagement made Salon a publication and a community, and it gave our work meaning. We are so grateful for the time you spent with us.

The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable. We know this news will be deeply disappointing to many of you, and we share that sadness.

Perhaps we can still collectivize all the memories, though:

● Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.

—David Sirota, Salon, March 6, 2013.

● “Let’s nationalize Fox News: Imagining a very different media…Excerpted from ‘Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.’

—Salon.com, January 18, 2014.

● “Like [the late communist Pete] Seeger and the FDR cargo cult, Salon also harbors turn-the-clock-back fantasies of their own: Last month, the publication called for the nationalization of the news media because it was uncomfortable with the glut of right-leaning news and opinion led by — you guessed it! — Fox News. (Hmmm — I wonder if someone in the FCC read that article?) Now the Website wishes to turn the clock back on the film industry because of a perceived glut of independent films.”

—Easy Riders, Raging Stasists, Ed Driscoll.com, February 22, 2014.

● “Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Publicly funded technology built Big Tech. They’re huge and ruthless and define our lives. They’re close to monopolies. Let’s make them public utilities.”

—Salon.com, July 8, 2014.

Exit question:

UPDATE:

And:

MORE:

UPDATE (7:30 PM): Jonathan Levine of the Washington Free Beacon is rounding up some of Salon’s greatest hits over the years, including this brilliant juxtaposition:

Posted at 7:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

POTTY-MOUTH POLITICOS: Democrats started the downward slide into public vulgarity in 2025, according to the Washington Post, and Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, followed right along, and conservative evangelical Christians were almost uniformly silent about it. Might that silence reflect a deep Biblical illiteracy among Christians?

UPDATE: Is this too much to ask: “perhaps it’s time we start insisting upon, as a minimum standard, language from which children need not be protected, transparent and accountable decision-making, and keeping promises made at all levels of American politics and governance.”

Posted at 7:24 pm by Mark Tapscott

VITAMIN B5: Common Nutritional Supplement Shows Surprising Promise Against Psoriasis. “Scientists found that pantethine, a derivative of vitamin B5 commonly used to lower cholesterol, can interfere with metabolic processes that drive inflammation. The findings were supported by experiments in mice and a small clinical trial involving people with psoriasis.” Hope this pans out.

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE ASSASSINATION FAN BASE:

(Classical reference in headline.)

 

Posted at 6:36 pm by Ed Driscoll