February 25, 2026

OUR MEN’S HOCKEY TEAM’S HISTORIC WIN WAS JUST TOO MUCH FOR SPORTS WRITERS TO BEAR:

The charge against the men’s team seems to be four-fold. First, that, having won the gold, its members declined to address the “tide of fascism in the United States” and instead said gauche hyper-nationalistic things, such as, “This is all about our country right now,” “I love the USA,” “I’m so proud to be American today,” “This is for every American,” “It’s the greatest country in the world,” and “Everyone better be wearing the red, white, and blue for as long as they can.” Second, that during a post-game phone call with a rollicking President Trump, the players didn’t band together on the spot to push back against his supposedly sexist jokes — or apologize later for their complicity. Third, that the team subsequently agreed to go to the White House to celebrate their victory — and, even worse, that it seems excited by that prospect. Fourth, that the FBI director, Kash Patel, went over to Italy to watch the game and then chugged beer with the team in the locker room. Together, the sporting press is keen to inform us, these decisions have “sullied” the USA’s victory and ruined the reputations of its architects for all time.

What nonsense this all is. What narrow, monomaniacal, outlandish, freakish guff. I had a low opinion of sports writers before the last 48 hours, but good grief do I now want to throw the entire corps into a lake. The USA men’s team wins the gold for the first time in 46 years, and the news cycle following that achievement is stocked with fringe, politicized crap. I am reminded in this moment of Margaret Thatcher, berating the press after the recapture of South Georgia during the Falklands War. “Just rejoice at that news,” Thatcher said, “and congratulate our forces and the Marines.” Amen, Maggie. Just rejoice, and congratulate our team. I promise you’ll live through the ordeal. Not everything has to be a campus psychodrama. Not all stories need to “surface the nuances of” this or that. Not every incident that tangentially involves Donald Trump requires his elevation to the star of the tale. It’s okay to be happy that the United States won something, without finding 100 other reasons to be sad, angry, indignant, or confused. There really is no need to stretch to canonize a woman who represents another country when we have our own heroes before our very eyes. Rejoice!

Journalists are not politicians, and there is no need for them to be perfectly representative of the nation. But it might be a good thing for our culture if they weren’t all massive weirdos.

One of the cliches of the newspaper business is to call the sports section the paper’s “candy store” or “toy department.” (Hoping to get a rise out of Bill Parcells in 2004, Mike Wallace of Sixty Minutes told him that he — Parcells — worked in the toy department.) Most sports writers see themselves as capable of crafting far meatier stuff than writing up sports games, and they wouldn’t get hired by their editors if they weren’t leftists, so of course they’re rooting for Eileen Gu and the CCP, and loathe American patriotism in general (scoundrel, last refuge of) and Trump specifically.

Think of the past couple of days as a dry run though, for what’s coming this summer:

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

BURIED LEDE — MONTEVALLO HAS A LIBERAL MOB? TPUSA to host 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson following death threats and student walkout.

The TPUSA chapter at the University of Montevallo rescheduled the mid-February “Change My Mind”-style event after administrators postponed the original date, citing safety concerns.

Now scheduled for March 5, it will still feature conservative commentator and 1819 News founder Bryan Dawson and be a “pick up the mic” format encouraging open debate, according to TPUSA Montevallo’s Instagram page.

“Montevallo caved to the liberal mob on campus who staged a walkout as a protest for the university allowing me to speak,” Dawson posted on his Facebook page. “Montevallo cancelled the TPUSA event citing this and security concerns due to death threats towards me.”

Dawson’s planned appearance had prompted a walkout by several dozen students earlier in the month who said they felt unsafe with the speaker selection, citing his criminal past, the Vallo Vision News reported.

Reading the Vallo Vision News suggests that there is, at least at the Vallo Vision News. On the other hand, “several dozen students?” Puhleez.

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

IS THIS REALLY A SURPRISE?

Posted at 10:16 am by Glenn Reynolds

I READ ROGER SIMON’S NEW NOVEL, EMET, AND I OFFERED A BLURB, which you can read at the link. Truly enjoyable and kept me turning pages until the end.

Posted at 10:04 am by Glenn Reynolds

IT WAS A HELLUVA SHOW:

Posted at 9:53 am by Stephen Green

IT AIN’T OVER YET: Warner Bros. Discovery says Paramount made higher bid, board will weigh offer against Netflix deal.

Last week, WBD announced it would re-engage Paramount in deal talks under a seven-day waiver from Netflix. WBD and Netflix have an agreement to sell the legacy media group’s studio and streaming businesses to the streamer. Paramount is seeking to buy the entirety of WBD.

“Following engagement with PSKY during the seven-day limited waiver period, we received a revised PSKY proposal to acquire WBD, which we are reviewing in consultation with our financial and legal advisors,” WBD said in a statement. “We will update our shareholders following the Board’s review. The Netflix merger agreement remains in effect, and the Board continues to recommend in favor of the Netflix transaction. WBD shareholders are advised not to take any action at this time with respect to the amended PSKY tender offer.”

Paramount in a statement confirmed it had submitted a revised bid and said it will continue with its previously announced tender offer while the WBD board reviews both deals.

This is supposed to be Paramount’s “last best” offer, and Netflix will have up to four days to counter.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Gives GOP Blueprint for Midterms in Soaring SOTU Address. “After he wrapped up, I posted in the liveblog that this speech didn’t have the meandering bridge section near the middle that so many of his longer speeches do. It came in at just about two hours and brilliantly hit every note that there was to hit. It may seem weird to say it about a speech of that length, but there was an economy to it that made it effective.”

Much of the speech was more like a conversation — with the American people, with heroes in attendance, and even at times with surly Dems — that made the two hours fly.

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

ROGER KIMBALL: What Trump got right in his State of the Union address.

The second thing I thought about was a fact I recently learned about Ulysses S. Grant. He was a great general, yes, and he was also a great, if generally under-appreciated, president. One sign of his greatness came posthumously. At his funeral, two of Grant’s pallbearers were Confederate generals. Grant had won the civil war, defeating the Confederacy, saving the Union. But in death he underscored his ultimate purpose: to unite the country. . . .

Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution stipulates that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” That duty was eventually codified into the televised drama we have today. It’s pure theater. In Trump’s case, it is an hour or two of Muhammad Ali-like oratory on stage. Trump does not speak like Daniel Webster or even JFK. He infuriates the left and leaves even some of his supporters a little queasy. But he connects with the people. His opponents may dislike his policies. They may bridle at his rhetoric. But no honest observer can deny that he is utterly sincere in his love of America and his desire to improve the lives of its citizens.

To reunite the country, Grant had to utterly defeat the Democrats. Trump hasn’t done that yet.

Posted at 9:03 am by Glenn Reynolds

HEADLINES FROM 1998: Microsoft Considered Harmful. “Microsoft has long had a reputation of an abusive company, all the way back to its origins, when Gary Kildall accused Bill Gates of stealing parts of CP/M for DOS. The list of lawsuits against Microsoft for anti-competitive or shady business business practices is so extensive it has its own Wikipedia article. But it’s latest moves to force both subscription models and AI into every nook and crevice of its software may be the final straws that break the Borg’s back, as longtime Windows users finally seem to be abandoning ship.”

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

THINGS YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW BECAUSE THEY MIGHT HURT DEMOCRATS:

Posted at 8:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

OOPS:

Posted at 8:21 am by Glenn Reynolds

AMAZING WHAT A LITTLE LIBERTY WILL DO:

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green

SHOCKER:

This applies in many spheres, actually. In 2016, Trump thought he was elected president of a normal America with functioning institutions. Now he knows better.

Posted at 8:02 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHRIS BRAY: Gavin Newsom Is Playing A ‘Trump’ Character He Doesn’t Understand.

Newsom is not yet swaggering into campaign events in a wifebeater, but give him another week. The character he’s currently playing is a rude, crass, and transgressive, and not above dropping hints about coming up from the streets. Of Marin County, but whatever. If you haven’t seen what his hard-talking communications guy looks like, by the way, go take a look.

It’s a baffling performance, but last year the Bay Area lawyer and journalist Laura Powell gave us the key to understand it: Newsom is cargo culting, like a South Pacific islander watching the disappearance of military logistics efforts after World War II. “In isolated societies,” Powell wrote, “so-called cargo cults emerged when indigenous groups constructed imitation airstrips and towers, believing this would cause Western goods to descend from the skies as they once had, without understanding the actual forces that made the planes appear.” He’s performing a set of appearances, thinking that the images are the substance.

Men are turning away from the Democratic Party, so Newsom turned up last year on the podcast of Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL. As Powell noted, “Newsom laced his speech with curse words – roughly one per minute – and called Ryan ‘man’ or ‘brother’ with cringe-inducing frequency.” He talked a lot about football and guns, bro. Powell summarized the performance as Newsom “trying on a new mask.”

This year’s mask is modeled on the Shawn Ryan masculinity mask, but it’s a different version. It’s more directly a Donald Trump mask, but not quite: It’s a mask of what Gavin Newsom thinks Donald Trump is.

Both men were born into privilege, but Trump went on to create real estate and entertainment empires, while Newsom mismanaged a city for years and now an entire state.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green