March 14, 2026

LIEL LEIBOVITZ: ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable.

Walking out of One Battle After Another, I realized that the cavalry wasn’t coming. [Wes] Anderson is just another mindless mediocrity now, thinking first about party lines and only then, if at all, about truth and beauty. It’s all over.

Which, hallelujah, is very good news.

Because if you know anything about the history of Hollywood, you know that great thrusts of creativity and daring come only when the industry drives itself to the brink of extinction. In the late 1950s, for example, terrified by the ascent of TV, studios made a bevy of utterly forgettable spectaculars they hoped would draw people to the theaters. None did. The golden age was over. But slowly, slowly, working in smaller outfits and taking greater risks, a new generation of outsiders started telling the kinds of stories the Old Hollywood would’ve never approved of. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and their cohorts delivered films that were far more raw and daring and impactful than anything we’d ever seen before, giving American cinema another, brighter golden age.

Now that even the greats have fallen, now that even Paul Thomas Anderson seems interested more in purring for his fellow progressives than in making interesting movies, now that even DiCaprio is relegated to delivering lines about respecting another character’s “they/them” gender pronouns, it should be crystal clear that Hollywood has once again driven itself to total moral, artistic, and creative ruin. How lucky are we: Somewhere out there, I bet, some young punk feels liberated and called to make Hollywood great again.

Hollywood has been here before of course, issuing ridiculous slop when they believed the cultural revolution was nigh that suddenly looks very silly once the dust clears: Mystery Seventies Theater 3000.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

DID THEY REALLY SAY THIS? CNN Issues Incredible Statement About Their Horrible Week of False Stories:

Earlier:

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISTINCTIONS:

Posted at 4:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CUBA LIBRÉ!

Related: The Coming Revolution Down South.

Posted at 4:37 pm by Glenn Reynolds

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Has the Media Been Responsible for America Losing Wars?

The White House statement goes into specifics to answer the charges, closing by saying that “No amount of CNN hackery will change that.”

In short? Unlike 1968 and Walter Cronkite’s attack on LBJ’s Vietnam policy, President Trump is not sitting back and allowing today’s media – CNN in this case – to paint its own anti-media picture of the Trump Iran/Middle East policy.

Time has moved on. As is said often enough in this corner: Stay tuned.

What unfolds between the media and the Trump administration when it comes to the coverage of American policy in Iran and the larger Middle East remains to be seen.

In his 1977 book, It Didn’t Start with Watergate, Victor Lasky wrote:

By the time Lyndon Johnson left office, his administration was under bitter attack by the media and its subsidiary organizations. Thus in 1968 the journalism society Sigma Delta Chi had this to say: “The Credibility Gap, which has reached awesome proportions under the Johnson Administration, continued to be a grave handicap. Secrecy, lies, half-truths, deception—this was the daily fare.”

In turn there were those who felt that the press had its own credibility problems. Douglas Cater, special assistant to President Johnson, suggested that too often newsmen presumed an expertise they quite obviously didn’t have.

“I’m concerned about the little demigods of TV who make an instant analysis of complicated events,” said Cater. “There should be bounds on what TV men do, so much of which is delivered with flippant abandon.”

Cater, of course, was and is of the liberal persuasion. His remarks concerning “instant analysis” were generally overlooked at the time. A year or so later Vice President Spiro Agnew used the same phrase in condemning television coverage of presidential speeches—and all hell broke loose. The reaction ran true to form. The liberals claimed the remarks augured—in the words of the International Press Institute in Zürich—“the most serious threat to the freedom of information in the Western world.” And commentators like Walter Cronkite agreed.

But down in Texas the former President wondered out loud whether “Ted” Agnew had been politic in saying what he did. It wasn’t that Citizen Johnson disagreed with what was said. Shortly after the 1968 election he had sought to warn the Vice President-elect about the antagonistic nature of the media.

“Young man,” he had told Agnew, “we have in this country two big television networks, NBC and CBS. We have two news magazines, Newsweek and Time. We have two wire services, AP and UPI. We have two pollsters, Gallup and Harris. We have two big newspapers—the Washington Post and The New York Times. They’re all so damned big they think they own the country. But, young man, don’t get any ideas about fighting. . . .”

Well, Agnew got precisely that idea and came out swinging. 

And how. Not surprisingly, so has the Trump administration. And why not? The DNC-MSM never punched back when (P)resident Biden routinely insulted them. Why should they expect anything less from the current administration?

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS WILL END WELL FOR THEM:

Posted at 3:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHEN BILL MAHER IS THE VOICE OF SANITY:

That puts Maher one up on David Letterman:

In now a famous “You Tube” moment, Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel, went on Letterman to be the recipient of the host’s rude and sophomoric antics. As the segment shifted into high gear, O’Reilly asked Letterman a pointed and direct question: “Do you want the United States to win in Iraq?”

To the surprise of no one but his sycophants, Letterman could not or would not answer the question. When pressed by O’Reilly to answer, the best he could do was to play to his mostly left-leaning audience for cheap debating points and say, “It’s not easy for me because I’m thoughtful.”

As I asked back then, how thoughtful do you need to be? it’s an A or B question: Do you want the US to win, or Al Qaeda, the Baathists, and Iran? Letterman, who, [40] years ago, was once the master of postmodern irony, became its unintentional victim as he unwittingly echoed Jack Benny’s classic gag when he retorted to a fictional mugger shouting ‘Your money or life, pal!’ on his old radio show: ‘I’m thinking it over!’”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

RIOT ACT, READ:

Posted at 1:25 pm by Stephen Green

THIS IS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY DO:

Posted at 12:54 pm by Stephen Green