June 21, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY AND MALIGNANT NARCISSISM: Criminal Minds Star Paget Brewster Tells TV Journalist to ‘Work at a Shelter’ After Mixed Review, Sparking Outrage From Other Critics.

“Criminal Minds” star Paget Brewster lashed out at ScreenRant staffer Shealyn Scott over X on Saturday afternoon for her story lamenting the changes Paramount+ has brought to the long-running procedural drama.

“Hello critic Shealynn Scott,” Brewster wrote in the since-deleted post. “You’re young. You don’t know that bad pics and bad reviews can lead to 350 people losing their jobs. Sell vintage. Work at a shelter. Do something better than what you do now. Because right now you suck.”

Film and TV critics were quick to hit back in the replies. David Rooney, chief film critic at The Hollywood Reporter, wrote in his response to Brewster, “This is a very bad look. An actor on a long-running show attacking a young reviewer who contextualizes her respectful criticisms with obvious knowledge of the material — says way more about u being thin-skinned than it does about her professionalism. ‘Work at a shelter,’ really?!”

I know this is crazy talk, but isn’t the purpose of the critic to judge the product so that consumers can make a more informed decision about what to watch during their leisure time? Or to put it another way:

At The New Criterion, when we hear the name “Woody Allen,” we think first not of his movies but of an anecdote that Hilton Kramer, our founding editor, liked to tell.

Attending a dinner at the old Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street, Hilton was pleased to find himself seated next to an attractive and agreeable young woman. Woody Allen was also in attendance, but he was on the opposite side of the table facing a large window that looked out upon the street. Of course, the window also looked in upon the diners. Allen announced that he could not abide being seen by anonymous passersby and insisted that he change places with the young lady.

Settling into his new chair, he asked whether Hilton ever felt embarrassed when he met socially artists whom he had criticized in print. “No,” Hilton replied, “Why should I? They are the ones who made the bad art; I just described it.” Allen, Hilton recalled, lapsed into gloomy silence. It was only on his way home that Hilton remembered that he had written a highly critical piece on [1976’s] The Front, a PC movie about the Hollywood blacklist in which Allen acted.

That anecdote encapsulates something essential about Hilton’s practice as a critic: his focus was always on the work, not on the personality of the artist. It also encapsulates something essential about the querulous and brittle narcissism of the filmmaker.

—“Cancel culture comstockery,” the New Criterion, April 2020.

Posted at 6:23 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE FLAK TOWER:

Nonsense! I can think of at least 36 Obama speeches which featured a line so memorable, even the lefties at “PolitiFact” dubbed it “The Lie of the Year” at the end of 2013:

Posted at 4:39 pm by Ed Driscoll

LEFTISM IS EASIER IF YOU HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN OF AN OVER-CAFFEINATED SPIDER MONKEY:

And here’s the Community Note, still in need of more votes to be ranked as Helpful: “Overdose deaths sadly still remain highly elevated in Oregon. Recent declines from the spike are not enough to offset the spike. Overdose deaths still remain above pre-pandemic levels.”

Posted at 4:26 pm by Stephen Green

SOME SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY?

Posted at 3:36 pm by Stephen Green

NIXON’S THE ONE! NOW MORE THAN EVER: How The Kids Learned To Love Richard Nixon.

It’s especially clear why Gen Z would be excited about this prospect. They learned the standard “Nixon bad” narrative from teachers who themselves only knew this one-dimensional Nixon. But more generally, Gen Z has every reason to question the “truths” they’ve been fed. They came of age during COVID lockdowns and peak woke, and have now seen those movements and the people who pushed them collapse in disgrace. Their generation’s drive to question authority and push the bounds of acceptable thought has led them to embrace people like Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes, figures whose ideas threaten the foundation of our democracy.

But this has also led them to praise the aura of a self-made California Quaker who dedicated his life to public service and remained in the arena even after the people and country he fought for rejected him time and again.

Richard Nixon always seemed like something from a bygone age, always just a few steps behind where America was trending. But perhaps, like so much else about Nixon, we got it wrong. Maybe Nixon wasn’t a relic come too late, but a visionary come too early. Maybe his time is now.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

If only there was a parable about broken windows written 175 years ago to describe the above tweet.

UPDATE: Downside Detected: “Sadly, a fall in gun violence has led to layoffs in the East Bay mortuary business.”

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE:

Posted at 1:15 pm by Ed Driscoll

JENNIFER SEY: Creepy Pasta, Toxic Masculinity and a Full Theater: My Take on Backrooms.

I didn’t find it scary — not in the way other low-budget hits with a truly terrifying premise land. Take Open Water, for example: a couple on a scuba dive gets accidentally left behind in shark-infested ocean waters. It’s just them, bobbing helplessly as night falls and sharks circle. The horror is primal and real — the isolation, the helplessness, the slow-building dread that this could actually happen. We go with them on the psychological journey —

We were left, but it was an accident and the boat will come back —> The boat is never coming back and we are going to die either from the cold water, starvation or getting eaten by sharks and we just have to wait here for it to happen.

This movie made me so uncomfortable and anxious I could hardly stand to watch it.

Backrooms is more weird than that. Not terrible. It had more story than I expected for something born from a 4chan meme (which again, I don’t really know what that is).

The liminal spaces — the endless, off-kilter yellow rooms, buzzing lights, moist carpet vibe, I could almost smell how musty it was — are atmospheric and effectively creepy in a disorienting way.

It sort of seems like it’s supposed to be deep, but I couldn’t really pin down the themes. Is Clark the embodiment of “toxic masculinity,” seeking a place with no rules where he can wallow in his anger? Maybe. Or is it about depression, escapism or how we all get trapped in our own mental mazes? Or is it about nothing at all?

I’m not sure. Overall, I give it a C. Maybe a B-minus on a generous day.

The best part of the whole experience was that the theater was jam-packed and full of energy — a crammed theater, everyone experiencing it together. I had to wait in line for snacks, just like the old days.

I love a shared cultural moment, even for a C-level film.

Exit quote: “Maybe the movies are back? I hope so. I just wish they were better.”

Posted at 12:10 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE GODLESS PARTY: The New Yorker’s Review of JD Vance’s New Book Is a ‘Distasteful’ Blend of Illiteracy and Anti-theism.

Whenever an anti-theist tries to lecture people of faith about Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, or really anything related to religion, it is always hilarious. But when that person of faith is the Vice President of the United States and the anti-theist works for The New Yorker, we know we’re in for a giant belly laugh.

Over the past week, JD Vance has been doing the media rounds — even going on The View — to promote his new memoir, Communion, which chronicles his journey to becoming a Catholic. Because he is the Vice President, of course, other topics have come up, such as the Iran MOU and — erasing black people from history?

Well, Whoopi Goldberg’s weird fever dreams of imagined racism aside, Vance’s book was bound to cause leftists to throw a tantrum because the left is virulently anti-Christian. So, it was no surprise that The New Yorker was going to take out its poison pen to review it.

What was somewhat of a surprise is that The New Yorker doesn’t know what words mean.

Eustace Tilley weeps into his monocle.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all Instapundit readers!

Posted at 10:02 am by Helen Smith