June 4, 2026

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 10:31 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Be here now.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SCHUTZSTAFFEL SCHWANZSTÜCKER SOON TO BE SEEN?

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

INVISIBLE COUNTER-REVOLUTION: It may be the least reported “seismic shift” in the global political alignment. Richard Pollock did NOT miss it and he’s got the scoop.

Posted at 7:32 pm by Mark Tapscott

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR, HOLLYWOOD: Masters of the Universe Review.

Your tolerance for Masters of the Universe will likely depend on how funny you find it for a character called “Fisto”—because he has a giant fist, you see—uttering the following line: “Let’s fist some bad guys! Give him head, Ram Man.”

Now, this sequence is funny for a couple of reasons. For starters, Fisto and Ram-Man are not the real names of these characters: They’re just what Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) calls the two heroes of Eternia. Because of the aforementioned giant fist and Ram-Man’s head, which looks like a battering ram. But it’s also funny because of the double entendre. “Fisting” and “giving head” are sexual acts, as you, the adult reading this, well know. Fisto (again, not his real name) has said that he and Ram-Man (ibid) should commit acts of violence that also sound like phrases commonly associated with physical acts of love. The dissonance here is intended to provoke an uncontrolled guffaw as your brain connects the two ideas.

Ha ha. You get it.

And maybe you will love it! I do not dispute that this is mildly amusing; there were people in my theater who laughed quite heartily at several of these gags. “Fisto” is, objectively, a very funny name for a character based on a children’s toy. But it really gets to the annoying, leering wink at the heart of Masters of the Universe, a movie that seems to exist entirely in the hopes of turning any discrete 45-second chunk of footage into a GIFable, memeable moment, something to amuse people on social media once this thing hits home video in six or seven weeks, if not sooner.

Based on an ’80s children’s toy, and with Mattel gearing up to sell new merchandise off of Fisto and Ram Man: Mattel Unveils Full “Masters of the Universe” Product Line Ahead of Highly Anticipated Live-Action Film.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAINE KAMPF: NYT: Ex GF of Platner Says He Knew All About “My Totenkopf,” Used Physical Force Against Her, Bragged That He Would Rape His Male Enemies, “Not in a Gay Way,” But to Show “I’m Dominant.”

More here: Latest Graham Platner Story Veers Into ‘Me Too’ Territory.

Like the invasion of Stalingrad, Platner seems determined to campaign on:

Next stop, damage control on M-SNOW:

 

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRO… NEVER MIND, LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH THAT:

Posted at 6:20 pm by Stephen Green

SPACE: Meteorite found in Sahara desert may be 1st evidence of lost solar system world. “The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774, is a roughly one-pound (454-gram) rock discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2019. Scientists classify it as an angrite, a rare type of meteorite that ranks among the oldest volcanic rocks in the solar system. This particular chunk of space rock, known as NWA 12774, preserves an unusual chemical signature that suggests some of the solar system’s earliest worlds developed differently from other rocky planets, researchers say.”

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

YOU DON’T HAVE TO SELL ME ON IT, I ALREADY WANTED HIM GONE: Media Reporter: Pelley Firing May Trigger ’60 Minutes’ Exodus.

Along with Pelley, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega were recently fired and correspondent Anderson Cooper departed.

“No one has left the building at ’60 Minutes’ without some version of what Scott did, some sort of criticism toward the new management, and indeed the new ownership about the direction of the show,” Byers said.

“It is very difficult to see how this new leadership is able to usher ’60 Minutes’ as it has existed in the past into the future,” Byers added. “We only have three remaining correspondents there. I know that they currently are deliberating over what they are going to do.

“It’s very possible that we’re going to arrive at a moment here in a matter of weeks, if not days, where there is no existing talent left at ’60 Minutes’ and they are going to have to build this back up from scratch.”

Best thing that could happen to the show, really.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS: Trump signs order to make it easier to fire 8,000 federal workers. “You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and ​policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism obviously for ​people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will.”

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

REASON’S MICHAEL MOYNIHAN AND MATT WELCH ON SCOTT PELLEY’S CRASH AND BURN:

Later in their Fifth Column podcast, Moynihan and Welch discuss the current state of the CBS News:

Moynihan: We have seen this for so long. This pompous, journalistic attitude of, “We are here for the truth.”

It’s like, you’re not here for the f**king truth. You’re here for the truth in some ways; you’re not always here for the truth. And thank God you aren’t. I’m happy that you’re not. I just don’t want you to pretend that you’re doing something you’re not.

Welch: If you are here for the truth, you don’t say–because it’s not true–that Bari Weiss was sent to destroy 60 Minutes.*

Moynihan: Or you don’t say to Donald Trump in an interview, as Lesley Stahl did, “You can’t tell that that’s his laptop.”

Are you a journalist? Are you brain-dead?

All you have to do is look at the emails and email the person in the email and say, “Did you get this email from Hunter Biden?” “Yeah, I did.”

[Then] it’s his f**king laptop.

One email. Do five of them. Do ten of them. Take ten minutes.

But they didn’t want the story. They didn’t want it because it crashed into their worldview, and they thought it would help Donald Trump. And that’s not what journalism is about.

“It’s going to help Donald Trump.” Who f**king cares? It’s a story. Go after the story.

And everyone abdicated their responsibility on that. And she did that on camera to Donald Trump: “Well, we can’t tell. There’s no way of verifying it.”

Yes, there’s a way of verifying it.

You guys go to the Uyghur camps in China–and congratulations, you do great work on a lot of stuff–but you couldn’t verify it? You didn’t want to verify that.

That’s fine. But don’t pretend you’re speaking truth to power in a broad way. You’re not.

* As X personality “Jarvis” notes:

Political talk today is characterized by CATASTROPHIZING. Your enemies will put you in CAMPS. Democracy is ENDING. Every election is THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIMES. Scott Pelley being sacked isn’t the mere natural outcome of calling his new boss a murderer and generally acted like a petulant dickhead in front of God and everyone — it’s the END OF LIBERAL MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT just like it was when Acosta and Lemon and a million other replacement level talking heads were shown the door.

 

Weiss isn’t “destroying” 60 Minutes, but technology and market forces rendered the original three TV networks no longer a monopoly for news, a topic that Geoffrey Ingersoll explores in “The Truth Behind Scott Pelley’s Epic CBS Meltdown:”

Pelley’s highly choreographed meltdown is more than likely his way of resigning so that he can launch a substack or his own podcast venture amid the kind of controversy that gets an early boost in viewers.

Yes, it really is that cynical and contrived.

Underneath it, however, is a real anxiety.

Scrape away the high-minded f*ckery, the self-flattering elitism, and you lay bare a rather coherent theory of mind.

Pelley is right. Something is dying. They’re losing their grip on the (un)reality machine. They see their rapidly dissolving ability to include and exclude lines of inquiry and it freaks them out. New people with new motivations will now be deciding which stories are legitimate and, importantly, how to cover them.

Pelley’s composure might be well practiced, intact, stalwart, but he is almost certainly shrieking on the inside.

Tranquility Base here, the Ego has landed. Was Pelley doing an Olbermann? Does he think he’s Cronkite? William Holden in Network? Olbermann left MSNBC 15 years ago. Cronkite retired 45 years ago. Network debuted in movie theaters 50 years ago. The era of mass media was over a long time ago.

So what could be Pelley’s next gig?

That cable opinion network is a perfect fit in many ways: Pelley ripped for claiming he was ‘in combat’ in Afghanistan and Iraq after CBS News firing.

Pelley was fired from the long-running CBS News show on Tuesday following a bitter clash with the network’s editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton. Pelley, who first joined CBS News in 1989 and did not serve in the military, quickly raised eyebrows with a statement he gave following his termination.

“I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast,” Pelley, who has reported from several war zones in his career, told The New York Times.

As the successor to MSNBC, M-SNOW has a lot of experience with former network anchormen who cosplay as soldiers:

UPDATE: Democrats’ youth movement continues unabated:

 

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll