“¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa” represents the Smithsonian’s Latino Museum’s third attempt to present itself to the American public. The first two exhibits failed — one so badly that it was withdrawn before opening — largely because of their overtly political, left-leaning framing. Museum leadership apparently hopes that the third effort will finally succeed.
To its credit, ¡Puro Ritmo! initially seems designed to avoid the controversy that doomed its predecessors. After all, who could reasonably object to an exhibit focused on salsa music? As the museum’s director, Jorge Zamanillo, explained to Time Magazine in 2023, a music-centered exhibit was chosen precisely because it would have “broader appeal.”
Yet the exhibition ultimately falls into the same ideological patterns as before. Opened to the public on April 18 at the Molina Family Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the exhibit’s content reveals a clear bias. The curators, deeply committed to a culturally Marxist framework, conspicuously exclude any meaningful discussion of one of salsa’s most important influences: Spanish music and culture.
Throughout the exhibit, the displays and explanatory panels emphasize the African roots of Cuban dance music that later evolved into salsa. Considerable attention is given to African sacred music, defined as “the religious songs, dances, and instruments of Yoruba, Kongo, and Calabar (Efik) peoples, among others, that influenced the development of Afro-Cuban dance music.”
These contributions are undeniably significant and worthy of recognition. However, this narrative tells only half the story. The influence of Spanish music and culture is also essential to the development of salsa, yet, aside from three cursory references to “African, Spanish and Indigenous heritage,” it is purposely ignored.
Museum patrons won’t learn that Spanish troubadour traditions contributed the foundational harmonies and melodies that shaped Cuban “son,” the genre that, when fused with African rhythms, became salsa in New York. Spanish musicians also introduced guitars, lutes, and other string instruments to the Caribbean, which became central to Cuban musical traditions.
The Cuban intellectual Alejo Carpentier — by no means a conservative — was one of many who highlighted how the arrival of Spanish musicians in the 16th century initiated the Cuban sound.
In his foundational <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/497535366/CARPENTIER-Alejo-La-Musica-en-Cuba">La Musica en Cuba</a>, Carpentier writes, “Cuban music is the result of the convergence of two fundamental factors: the Spanish and the African; but while the former contributes the melodic and formal elements, the latter introduces a rhythmic richness that profoundly transforms those elements.”
Additionally, while the exhibit is rich with references to Santería (the Yoruba-based religion, akin to Haitian Vodou, practiced in Cuba) as permeating salsa music, it fails to acknowledge Catholicism. This omission is striking and difficult to justify.
The reason becomes clearer when the exhibit is viewed through a broader ideological lens. Much like the museum’s earlier efforts, ¡Puro Ritmo! seems intent on redefining the Latino experience exclusively in terms of “people of color,” and erasing the legacy of the West, a framing that distorts Latin identity. Latin American culture is not rooted in a single ancestry; it is the product of centuries of cultural and racial blending.
Indeed, the one single thing that would link Hispanic identity would be Spain — its religions, language, etc. There is no salsa without Spanish musical and cultural contributions.
This pattern of exclusion of all things Western is consistent with the background of the exhibit’s chief curator, Ranald Woodaman, a longtime advocate of leftist identity politics who frequently advances narratives centered on white supremacy and oppression frameworks.
Woodaman previously led the Smithsonian’s first Latino Museum exhibit, “¡Presente!: A Latino History of the United States,” which opened at the Molina Gallery in 2022 and promoted racial identity politics, gender ideology, and Marxist interpretations rather than balanced historical analysis.
I panned ¡Presente! soon after it opened in <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3596470-the-smithsonians-latino-exhibit-is-a-disgrace/">an article</a> for The Hill. I have repeatedly cautioned lawmakers that the museum’s early exhibits reflected an overtly Marxist portrayal of history, religion, and economics, shaped by an oppressor–oppressed narrative that dominates much of contemporary academia.
Zamanillo later scrapped a second exhibit that two socialist curators had been working on, which was known as the “Latino Youth Movements” exhibit. Among other things, it was going to showcase how bad capitalism was for Hispanics.
I argued then, and maintain now, that such ideology has no place in taxpayer-funded institutions charged with preserving and transmitting American culture. So forceful was that critique in 2022 that Congress, for a time, cut funding for the Latino Museum.
The Trump administration shares our concerns and proposed cutting the museum’s funding and halting its full development. Unfortunately, several Republican Hispanic lawmakers intervened to restore full funding, arguing that the institution could be corrected of ideological bias.
¡Puro Ritmo! demonstrates that this hope was misplaced. The museum has again proven unable — or unwilling — to separate culture from political ideology. Perhaps now it will become clear that the only way to truly fix the Latino Museum is to dismantle it entirely.
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Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Smithonian National Museum of American History

The Smithsonian’s New Latino Exhibit Is Missing A Huge Piece Of The Story

Culture

DW Opinion

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The cultural script about parenthood has consistently sidelined fathers. Women want children, we&#8217;re told, and men might eventually be persuaded into fatherhood. But something has shifted.
A recent <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/">Pew Research Center analysis</a> found that among young adults ages 18 to 34 who do not yet have children, 57% of men say they want kids someday, compared to just 45% of women. This reverses a decades-long pattern in which women consistently reported stronger desires for parenthood than men.
Men aren&#8217;t just willing to be fathers; they want to be good ones. According to the <a href="https://aibm.org/research/dads-rock-the-evidence/">American Institute for Boys and Men</a>, the time fathers spend with their children has grown by over 250% since the 1960s, and nearly two in three dads still say they spend too little time with their kids. The modern man is no longer confined to the roles of provider and protector alone; emotional connection, caregiving, and presence are now seen as strengths. The useless, comic-relief sitcom dad feels stale, replaced by fathers who are more engaged and treat fatherhood as something to aspire to.
This shift is starting to be reflected in culture. Much has already been said about Bandit, the dad in the kids&#8217; show <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-gap-between-two-popular-kid-shows-is-bigger-than-it-looks">&#8220;Bluey,&#8221;</a> but we are also seeing changes in video games.
Capcom&#8217;s recently released title Pragmata has already been dubbed a &#8220;dad simulator&#8221; by gamers. The game sold over <a href="https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news/html/e260420.html">1 million copies (at $60 a pop) in two days</a>. Pragmata follows Hugh, a man tasked with protecting and guiding a naive young (android) girl through a hostile environment. Beneath the sci-fi combat, players have been drawn to something more resonant: the protective instinct, the mentorship, and the pride of helping someone grow. In short, the best parts of being a dad.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Girl-dad here, my daughters are in their early 20s now.
To all the guys out there who society told being a responsible father was a fate worse than death, and who are now getting a glimpse through Pragmata of what fatherhood might be like:
You were lied to hard, sorry bro,… <a href="https://t.co/z2u4mW1kOL">https://t.co/z2u4mW1kOL</a> <a href="https://t.co/ydYk0wXYfl">pic.twitter.com/ydYk0wXYfl</a>
— Timothy Stebbing (@tjstebbing) <a href="https://twitter.com/tjstebbing/status/2047189552587219228?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This isn&#8217;t an isolated phenomenon. Games such as The Last of Us and God of War have already demonstrated how powerful fatherhood narratives can be. But Joel and Kratos are reluctant, grief-shaped fathers. They remain emotionally distant and walled-off. Hugh, by contrast, takes genuine joy in his pseudo fatherhood. The &#8220;sad dad&#8221; archetype is giving way to something warmer, and the market response to Pragmata suggests audiences are hungry for it.
Video games have always found success as power fantasies with aspirational characters. Now, a significant part of that aspiration includes fatherhood.
Why now? Traditional markers of male achievement, such as home ownership, seem unobtainable. The economy feels oppressive, and the cultural narratives that once gave men a clear sense of purpose have grown thin. Masculinity is demonized relentlessly, and young men feel it. Fatherhood offers something concrete: a person who truly needs you and values your very existence. It is no surprise that social media is filled with videos of fathers coming home to hugs from excited children, often captioned with the sentiment, &#8220;Other men may be wealthy. This man is rich.&#8221;
Becoming a dad isn&#8217;t the end of freedom but the beginning of something that finally matters. Men are not just accepting fatherhood; they&#8217;re seeking it out. They&#8217;re dreaming about it. And the culture is starting to catch up. Games like Pragmata offer a different message. Fatherhood is a sacrifice. It always has been. But its legacy outlasts the man, and its reward outlasts his own life.

Pragmata

Culture Mocked The ‘Useless Dad,’ But Now Even Video Games Are Selling A Different Story

family

fatherhood

Upstream

The monoculture is dead, The Hollywood Reporter claims. Its evidence? No one watches the Oscars anymore. An article over the weekend, “The Last Time Everyone Watched the Same Thing,” highlighted the last moment everyone shared: a selfie that Bradley Cooper took at the 2014 Oscars, which instantly became the most widely-shared Tweet ever.
More than 43 million people witnessed that act of elite digital solipsism. But we should be asking: Does an iPhone snapshot that includes Ellen DeGeneres and Kevin Spacey really indicate some sort of peak? Or was it so self-absorbed and off-putting that it actually hastened a cultural shift? Whether consciously or not at the time, Americans saw that moment and thought, “This is bullsh*t.” After all, the number-one show at the time was The Big Bang Theory, which had something like 23 million weekly viewers, a sitcom about geniuses, but made for dumb people, or at least people that Hollywood thought were dumb. Good riddance, and don’t let the door hit you in the bazinga on the way out.
Look at what happened when Hollywood took one last stab at uniting us all when COVID hit. That was the age of Tiger King, a terrible documentary reality show that baked its own obsolescence into its premise. Sure, everyone watched it, but only because public entities and massive peer pressure terrified them into staying indoors.
But the ultimate mask-off moment occurred with Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” video, which just celebrated its sixth birthday. It was the cringiest thing ever created: entitled celebrities singing a dated folk song while normal people grieved the losses of loved ones, their jobs, or their regular daily routines. That was just the start of the 2020 crap parade, the worst cultural period in global history, which featured charity cast “table reads” of 1980s comedies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and a video of Katy Perry singing “Baby Mine” from Dumbo while dressed in an elephant costume. Faced with this tsunami of garbage, people watched reruns of Columbo and Friends instead and said, &#8220;Take this monoculture and shove it.”
The traditional pipeline stopped producing. Our entertainment became YouTube and Instagram videos of people cooking stuff they’d found in the garbage. And it was fine.
Then again, maybe the article’s entire premise is flawed. The “monoculture” might actually still exist. It’s just that old metrics, like Nielsen ratings and box office grosses, don’t tell the whole story. The Hollywood Reporter mentions Stranger Things, but what about Squid Game? Or Mr. Beast? The Minecraft movie was a massive cultural phenomenon, as were the Super Mario Bros. films. If the monoculture is dead, then how did KPop Demon Hunters take over the Oscars this year?
Let’s not denigrate the traditional monoculture era. It brought us Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Cheers, the golden age of The Simpsons, Yo! MTV Raps, Seinfeld, Thriller, Legally Blonde, and many other entertainment products serving infinite pleasure. All that material is still out there, swirling around, and much of it is still watchable and good. Young people still listen to ’80s music and know what a flux capacitor is; they can still pick Donkey Kong out of a police lineup. It’s just that we’re not all watching the same thing all the time. As the title of an Oscar-winning movie — which was not part of the monoculture — goes, it’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
Besides, we don’t all need to be watching the same thing. The era when 90 million or so people saw BJ say “Goodbye” to Hawkeye on M.A.S.H. is more distant from today’s reality than V-J Day was from the 1970s. It has no relevance. Our world is more atomized, more diverse, and less dependent on traditional gatekeepers than ever. Maybe the death of the monoculture is a good thing. Imagine.
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Neal Pollack is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time Jeopardy! champion.

86th Annual Academy Awards – Show

If The Monoculture Is Dead, Should We Be Cheering Its Demise?

Entertainment

Hollywood

The internet pulled up its bootstraps, took to the streets of X, and started dragging the United Kingdom for being abysmal on pretty much every front: immigration, food, housing, the deletion of their culture in exchange for burqa shops, and now… their economy.
A new report from the <a href="https://x.com/iealondon/status/2044309863468093756?s=20">U.K.-based Institute of Economic Affairs</a> revealed that Brits thought the UK ranked 7th against U.S. states in income per person, when in reality it ranks 51st. Worse yet, Mississippi, the poorest state in the United States, is richer than the United Kingdom. If they joined our great nation, they&#8217;d be the poorest state in the entire union.
Absolutely bloody news there, mate.
The beatdown didn&#8217;t stop there. <a href="https://x.com/tatereeves/status/2044809466885939212">Mississippi</a> Governor Tate Reeves posted to X: &#8220;As we say in Mississippi, &#8216;Bless Your Heart.&#8217; Or as you say in the U.K., &#8216;As-Salamu Alaykum.'&#8221; Phenomenal clapback.
I must say, this feels good. This was the rush of patriotism we all needed this week, amid war with terrorists, high-profile doxxing threats, Pope scuffles, and rape scandals. Despite our flaws as a nation, by golly, at least our weakest link (fiscally speaking) is more economically sound than the entirety of the United Kingdom.
The mockery is the easy part. The harder question is how the country that gave us the Magna Carta, Winston Churchill, and the Industrial Revolution ended up here. The answer is a masterclass in what happens when a government prioritizes the feelings of newcomers over the well-being of its own citizens for decades without correction.
Put the kettle on, because there is more tea to be spilled.
The U.K.’s GDP technically has grown since 2008. That’s because the population grew, mostly from immigration. <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locations=GB">Real GDP per capita</a> — the number that tells you whether individual Brits are actually better off — crawled just 7.8% over 16 years. Productivity has flatlined at its slowest rate in 200 years. <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2025">Net migratio</a>n hit a record 944,000 in 2023, with large portions being low-skilled migrants who consumed public housing, the National Health Service, and welfare faster than the infrastructure could absorb them. NHS waiting lists are catastrophic. Housing costs are suffocating. And on top of all of it, <a href="https://www.henleyglobal.com/publications/henley-private-wealth-migration-report-2025/what-driving-uks-millionaire-exodus">Britain&#8217;s punishing tax burden</a> on its most productive citizens sent wealth, investment, and talent straight out the door. You cannot bleed your earners dry and wonder why the engine stalled. The country hasn&#8217;t collapsed, but it&#8217;s buckled badly, and everyone can see it and feel it.
Their pocketbooks aren&#8217;t the only things threatened. Take the <a href="https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham">grooming gang</a> scandal that rocked the U.K. over the past several years. Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford. It is one of the most documented and most deliberately suppressed institutional failures in modern Western history. Multiple official inquiries confirmed that networks of predominantly Pakistani-heritage men systematically targeted and sexually exploited vulnerable young British girls. Authorities knew. Police knew. Social workers knew. For years, they did nothing for fear of being called racist. Children were abused. Officials had the evidence. They chose institutional cowardice over the safety of British girls.
This is the rot. Open borders without assimilation requirements created the conditions that allowed it to fester. Europe wasn&#8217;t only deluding itself over crime policy. It was deluding itself about everything.
The problem was a government that imported millions of people over two decades, refused to enforce meaningful assimilation standards, and then labeled anyone who raised concerns a bigot. When you grow your population faster than your housing, your hospitals, and your schools, without requiring newcomers to adopt the legal and civic norms of the country they&#8217;re entering, you don&#8217;t get a multicultural utopia. You get broken public services, Muhammad as the number one baby name, and a GDP per capita that loses to Mississippi.
We don’t get to enjoy this schadenfreude for long. The same ideological forces that hollowed out Britain — open borders dressed as compassion, multicultural paralysis dressed as tolerance, debilitating taxes on the most productive members of society — have not left our politics. They’re knocking on the door.
Net migration in America is now negative for the first time in 50 years. That&#8217;s an absolute win. But <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2044780352586055994">Elmo</a> is already out here celebrating National Arab American Heritage Month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is one green light away from unleashing rent control and a tax regime that would gut the financial capital of the world, and a sizable chunk of the progressive coalition openly sympathizes with terror. The U.K. didn&#8217;t fall in a day. It made a thousand small policy decisions, each defended as the humane choice, each quietly making things worse for the people who were already there.
Don’t be Britain, but Bless Their Hearts.

Political Crisis Concept: Mud Cracks With UK Flag

The Poor State Of The United Kingdom And What It Says About The Culture

Britain

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The buzzy new Apple TV series “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” didn&#8217;t seem poised to be appreciated by conservatives. The show’s premise of a single mom making money on OnlyFans felt icky, leading me to tune in out of morbid curiosity more than expecting any kind of solid entertainment. The near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score from critics did nothing to alter my preconceived notions; if anything, it made me even more skeptical. We all know how mainstream media critics think.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself not only rooting for Margo (played brilliantly by Oscar and Emmy nominee Elle Fanning), but also agreeing with her on major social issues such as abortion and the transformative power of motherhood. I kept thinking, “Wait, this is Apple TV?”
The series follows a first-year college student who becomes pregnant after having an affair with her married professor. I knew based on the show’s synopsis that she would not choose abortion, but what I could not anticipate was how little she even considered it.
The cheating professor immediately offers to “support” Margo after she informs him about the pregnancy, hurrying to suggest that she go to Planned Parenthood, not “some cheap clinic.” Margo looks on in confusion, then accuses him: “Sounds like you’ve made my decision.” 
The awkward professor quickly backtracks with platitudes about it being her body and her choice while still making it clear what his preference is. 
“Terminating a life, that’s something to think about,” Margo tells the professor. 
In the same episode, Margo gets an ultrasound and hears her baby’s heartbeat as tears run down her face. She gazes in wonder at the printed ultrasound photo.
Margo’s mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), is similarly unhappy about Margo’s decision to have the baby, despite also being a single mother after having a one-night stand. “You kept me,” Margo points out, to which her mom really has no good response.
When Shyanne asks if Margo loves the professor, she says she doesn’t. But she also decides, “For whatever reason, I want this baby. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Predictably, Margo gets pushback from her roommates, with the most vocal among them haughtily complaining that Margo was “supposedly a feminist” and asking “what message is she sending?” by keeping the baby. That same roommate turns out to be a villain later on when she abruptly moves out, leaving Margo with a heavier burden of rent. 
Margo debates internally but decides pretty quickly that she’s going through with the pregnancy despite having zero support from her mother, her friends, or the child’s father. And yet, she is undoubtedly the protagonist of this story and arguably the most sane among them.
Only three episodes out of eight have been released so far, and the series has only begun dabbling in the OnlyFans territory, which is broached after Margo loses her job due to not having reliable childcare. There’s still a chance this show could go off the rails and become a subtle advertisement for online prostitution in the face of financial hardship. 
But even if it does, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” has done something that few modern shows have attempted in a long time. Instead of glorifying abortion and careerism, it’s showing a young woman who chose motherhood even when her entire support network told her it would ruin her life.
The series depicts the messy, uncomfortable side of single parenthood; Margo’s son Bodhi is colicky and constantly crying, he won’t latch, and she’s forced to drop out of school after he’s born. For some reason, she’s dropping $200-plus on diapers every week. 
But despite all this, the young mother still looks at her son lovingly and calls him “beautiful.” Throughout the first three episodes, she never once questions if she made the right choice when she decided not to end his life in the womb.
It’s refreshing to see this perspective coming out of Hollywood. Maybe the world really is healing after all.

Margos_Got_Money_Troubles_Photo_010201

Series Goes Off Script When A Professor Suggests Abortion

Abortion

Motherhood

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Sabrina Carpenter is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fan-disrupts-sabrina-carpenters-coachella-set-her-response-has-people-crying-islamophobia">canceled</a>. It&#8217;s surprising it took so long. The pop star famous for her bubbly, retro sounds is no stranger to controversy. She’s come under fire in the past for her performances simulating sex acts on stage, and her music videos routinely feature male murder fantasies. But now, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/sabrina-carpenter">Carpenter</a> has finally stepped on a progressive cultural land mine. During her headline Coachella performance, the singer committed a grave act of “xenophobia” when responding to a disruptive fan, and her carnivorous fan base has finally found an excuse to take out its queen bee.
Coachella 2026 was poised to be the highlight of Sabrina Carpenter’s meteoric rise to pop stardom. Her headline show, dubbed by fans “Sabrinawood” for its nods to Old Hollywood, was a star-studded affair with over-the-top stage production and cameos from iconic actors such as Sam Elliott. As initial videos of the performance trickled onto social media, the internet crowned her the reigning princess of Coachella.
Then the unthinkable happened. An interaction with a loud fan summoned the internet’s cancel culture vultures with accusations of racism and xenophobia.
X user <a href="https://x.com/PopBase/status/2043086112969646135/photo/2" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/PopBase/status/2043086112969646135/photo/2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2_BViCcgPq7UnveoCCxZi1">Poppy</a> posted a clip of the incident, which has now been removed, showing a performance interrupted by what Sabrina Carpenter called a “yodel.” After being informed by the audience member that it was a cultural custom, Sabrina grimaced and responded, “That’s your culture?” Poppy’s caption expressed disappointment: “sabrina saying that she doesn’t like a cultural arabic cheer… this is so insensitive and islamophobic.”
The post garnered 30.9 million views and a response from Carpenter, who quickly <a href="https://x.com/SabrinaAnnLynn/status/2043076482529108262?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/SabrinaAnnLynn/status/2043076482529108262?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1EU5stybcQ2ES60TcDk80t">apologized</a> after being informed of the disruptor&#8217;s cultural background, “my apologies I didn’t see this person with my eyes.”
The fan was not from Appalachia or the Swiss Alps, as Sabrina likely assumed, and the noise was not a yodel, but a zaghrouta, a celebratory ululation used throughout North Africa and the Middle East. In the eyes of Sabrina Carpenter’s progressive fanbase, the offender was not a safe person to criticize.
“I’m in a complete shock,” one of the viral posts <a href="https://x.com/maxlldr/status/2043034137267777892" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/maxlldr/status/2043034137267777892&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3eXtFG8jGHuXlKOYLZksUN">said</a>, “I used to be a huge sabrina carpenter fan and now she’s mocking my culture and calling me &#8216;weird&#8217;, this is so racist and inappropriate and it made me feel uncomfortable. this white blonde racist woman should be cancelled.”
The speed with which Sabrina Carpenter’s fans were willing to condemn her is revelatory of the inner workings of “stan” culture, a pop-star-obsessed internet subculture. The name originates from Eminem’s 2000 song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DgOMhN-hfMtY&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2-KABhGKzVyHq7gaWuTus9">Stan</a>,” which chronicles a fan’s obsession that devolves from sending letters into a murder-suicide. For “stans” to adopt this identity as their own, even if done ironically, indicates a destructive underbelly.
As I pointed out in <a href="https://x.com/maggiemoda/status/2043372428496195946?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/maggiemoda/status/2043372428496195946?s%3D20&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2DvwSFJPtN2eyAE1W1EeDy">this</a> post, the quick switch-up from fan to hater is often rooted in progressive politics. Over a decade ago, a Tumblr <a href="https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0_OoV2y0-bp_yAJ0snFloN">account</a> called Your Fave is Problematic became famous for its <a href="https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/list" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/list&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1w8v3IG9hlf6f5TqYkkkx3">lists</a> of celebrity transgressions. Even Katy Perry, the current girlfriend of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was <a href="https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/post/45579525968/katy-perry" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/post/45579525968/katy-perry&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2dd8t0fJ86A4JhSwpcRrMQ">“called out”</a> for transgressions such as “[demonstrating] unsafe binding techniques,” cultural appropriation, and &#8220;trivializing bisexuality” with her hit song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAp9BKosZXs" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DtAp9BKosZXs&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776194968072000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3P8JKmdPGiWjiCdfhQCHUj">“I Kissed a Girl.”</a> As a pop culture-obsessed tween, I was introduced to progressive puritanism by blogs such as these.
Stan culture is inextricably linked with progressive politics. Once a star has misbehaved, the incident serves as cover for a variety of heinous comments and obsessive cyberbullying of both the star and her fans. Sabrina Carpenter will undoubtedly encounter this fate. Her fans now have a decision to make that feels consequential: call her out and distance yourself, or become problematic too.
This is an under-recognized entry point of the progressive radicalization pipeline: online stan culture. The participants are young and want to fit in, and participating in the cancelation mob is a moral duty in this environment.
While many have correctly pointed out that Sabrina Carpenter has cultivated this type of fanbase, it is nearly impossible to ascend to her level of stardom without engaging in progressive politicking. The danger is that progressives are more puritan than puritans themselves and offer no path to redemption. The stakes of offending them, which is laughably easy to do, are incredibly high.
For radical progressive pop fans, God is replaced by the pop star. In this role, it isn’t enough for Sabrina Carpenter to be exceptional; she must be perfect. If she is human, like the rest of us, then she doesn’t deserve the lights, the stage, the celebrity cameos, and most importantly, the money that comes with being at the top. In this light, Carpenter’s cancellation is completely predictable.
***
Maggie Anders is a video journalist and political commentator. Her work explores international political movements, history, pop culture, economics, the cost-of-living crisis, and Gen Z social issues.

The 68th Annual Grammy Awards

Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella Stumble Shows How Little It Takes To Trigger The Outrage Mob

Cancel Culture

Celebrities

Music

Sabrina Carpenter

Podcaster Jack Posobiec stirred controversy last week with an explosive accusation: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is pagan.
“I’ve heard people try to make the argument that ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly Christian and I hate to burst the bubble, guys, but you’re just wrong,” Posobiec said. “There’s nothing overtly Christian about ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Uh, there’s no church in it, there’s no faith in it, there’s no Christ figure — there’s none of these things. And honestly, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ if it’s anything, ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly pagan … You have a pantheon of powerful creatures, and figures.” The fact that Stephen Colbert likes the trilogy is further proof that Lord of the Rings is bad, Posobiec added. He <a href="https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/2037574821417038127">doubled down</a> on X, arguing that the Lord of the Rings couldn’t be Christian with “no Christ figure, no religion, not even prayer.”
First, let’s dispense with the baffling Colbert argument. Stephen Colbert is a liberal moron. But “something must be bad because a liberal moron likes it” is the logic of a child. I’m sure there are plenty of liberal morons who love their children, but that doesn’t mean loving your children is bad.
Moving on — sure, you could say that Tolkien’s masterpiece isn’t a Christian work because there’s no explicit Christ figure in it. You could also say that The Old Man and the Sea is a book about fishing. But in both cases, you would sound like an idiot.
For starters, there’s what the author himself said about his work: Tolkien doesn’t beat you over the head with religious allegories precisely because the book is shot through with his Christian worldview.
In a 1953 <a href="https://archive.org/details/lettersofjrrtolk00tolk_1/page/172/mode/2up">letter</a> to a priest friend, Tolkien made that clear: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’ to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”
Or, as Tolkien <a href="https://library.pepperdine.edu/news/posts/2020-01-jrr-tolkien.htm">said</a> elsewhere (emphasis mine): “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).”
Tolkien’s work backs up his words. After all, in the trilogy’s final book, Return of the King, it’s the Christian virtue of mercy that ultimately saves the day.
Frodo journeys to the fires of Mount Doom to destroy the ring, only to succumb to temptation at the last moment and claim the ring for himself. But in a twist of fate, Gollum — whose life Frodo spared earlier in the trilogy — bites off Frodo’s finger (and the ring) before falling into the fire, thereby completing the mission of destroying the ring. If not for Frodo’s mercy towards Gollum, Tolkien notes in a letter to a fan who questioned whether Frodo had “failed” as a hero, Frodo or Samwise Gamgee may well have had to cast themselves with the ring “into the fiery abyss” in order to destroy it.   
“Frodo indeed &#8216;failed&#8217; as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say &#8216;simple minds&#8217; with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgment (since it is present in the Divine nature),” Tolkien notes in <a href="https://www.tolkienestate.com/letters/letter-to-eileen-elgar-september-1963/">the letter.</a>
He goes on to add: “Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.”
Mercy. Redemptive suffering. Providence. Those are all Christian themes — you just have to look a little harder beyond “Is Jesus in this book?” to find them.
Finally, I’ll leave you with what Tolkien wrote about the Eucharist — what Catholics believe is the true body and blood of Jesus. Tolkien wrote about his love for the Eucharist in the most emotional, passionate terms — the way a romantic might write about his lover (or the way Jim Acosta might write about himself).
Here’s a sample, from a <a href="https://archive.org/details/lettersofjrrtolk00tolk_1/page/52/mode/2up">long letter</a> that Tolkien wrote to his son: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste—or foretaste—of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.”
Are we seriously supposed to believe that the man who wrote that used his pedestal to promote paganism?
The Lord of the Rings is a Christian masterpiece. The trilogy’s fans know it. Tolkien knew it. And hopefully Jack Posobiec will read this piece so he can know it too.
***
Peter J. Hasson is an editor at The Washington Free Beacon and author of  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07YL7FH5F/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech&#8217;s War on Conservatives</a>.

J.R Tolkien first edition

The Lord of the Rings Reminds Us That Great Stories Have Christian Roots

Christianity

JRR Tolkien

Lord of the Rings

Religion

Sheryl Sandberg thinks women are stupid. The former chief operating officer of Meta and the founder of the nonprofit Lean In, based on the ideas in her 2013 book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is back in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/sheryl-sandbergs-lean-in-sheds-quarter-of-staff-will-focus-on-manosphere-fight-1baf7d84?mod=e2tw">news</a>, this time (again) voicing her disappointment in the fairer sex’s inability to conquer corporate America.
Sandberg has pivoted from her claims that women aren’t fulfilling the DEI prophecy because of a systemic failure in American corporate culture (patriarchy!), to aiming her sites on the manosphere and pushing back on the “tradwives” movement. In a recent LinkedIn post, Sandberg writes:
<blockquote>
The problem with the romanticized vision of the tradwife is that it signals to women that to be a good wife, partner, or mother, you have to do it full-time. 
This gives working women one more burden to carry on top of everything they already manage: guilt. Arianna Huffington says it best: “As a working mother, it feels like they take the baby out and put the guilt in.” As I told People magazine last week, I’m worried that the glamorization of the tradwife trend risks putting that guilt back into women — guilt that many of us have worked long and hard to shed.
</blockquote>
As a full-time working mom of three (4- and 2-year-olds and a one-month-old that I’m holding while writing this essay) who has never taken a maternity leave and has felt the intense pressure of being a good — or at least not so bad — mom, wife, employee, and colleague, Sandberg is partly right about the guilt; she just wants to own all of it.
Twenty-first-century feminists emphasize choice the same way Henry Ford offered color options for the Model-T: You can choose any path, as long as it’s the one prescribed by the Lean In feminists.
It’s been over a decade since Sandberg proclaimed that she does not “believe two countries run by women would go to war. Full stop,” and she’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyohphFqRJU&amp;list=PLKlRp-ywAMm6-0HCixmEqXiqZtdNPCpng&amp;index=2">still</a> making the case that more women in positions of power and influence would make for a better world — especially for women. First, it’s obvious by this statement that Sandberg has never seen an episode of The View, and second, she’s denying an inherent truism of human nature: that the most cruel and unforgiving people toward women are…other women.
Note to my fellow women: Sheryl Sandberg is angry at you for taking her advice and exercising your agency just as readily as any man’s. The trouble is you chose unwisely in the eyes of the pseudo-empowering world of Lean In feminism.
Sometime after Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote her revealing 2012 Atlantic essay, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/">Why Women Still Can’t Have It All</a>,” (to which Sandberg’s book is a reply), society pivoted from the “Mommy Wars” of the 1990s to flattening the sexes into androgynous groups where there should be no differences in the types of ambitions or motivations between sexes. So, when outcomes are disparate by sex, there must be something wrong with the individual or the system. It couldn’t possibly be because women have a natural tendency to choose maternal roles or prioritize home and child care over professional advancement. Women have been duped again! Don’t you understand that deep down under all that maternal instinct is a girlboss destined for the C-Suite?
In the journal Fairer Disputations, Elizabeth Grace Matthew <a href="https://fairerdisputations.org/vocation-not-identity/">writes</a>, “Modern feminists’ failure to acknowledge the well-established desire of most women to spend more time mothering and less time working involves no mystique, but an unwillingness to recognize women’s average differences with men. Declining marriage rates, a fertility crisis, and increasing rates of female anxiety and unhappiness are all perpetuated by a hegemonic bill of goods about women’s desire for a functionally androgynous identity.”
Sandberg wants to guilt women into denying their intuition, ironically, something society fully acknowledged with the oft-used phrase “women’s intuition.”
I was a Division I collegiate athlete, a U.S. Marine, and a working professional, all so-called “male-dominated” activities (one might label the “manosphere”). No one told me I was less than; no one challenged my ability based on sex. What I did hear was other women trying to convince me I would fail because the deck was stacked against me, or that if I came to the realization that being a tech overlord wasn’t my true ambition, I was a tool of a sexist system. There is nothing more toxic than a supposed feminist saying you shouldn’t try because you’re set up for failure. That’s nonsense and a lie.
In reality, women need to follow their instinct despite the upside-down, passive-aggressive, pantsuit messaging from their fellow travelers. The real threat to women carving their own paths and finding fulfillment, purpose, and happiness isn’t the patriarchy, the manosphere, or tradwives; it’s women like Sheryl Sandberg who don’t believe average American women have the capacity or mental wherewithal for making the “correct” choice for themselves, their families, or their careers, and who get angry when they don’t want to be Sheryl Sandberg.
That women are exercising real choice and have life ambitions outside the boardroom signals a shift away from the guilt-ridden Lean In feminism lie and shows that we’re not as stupid as Sheryl Sandberg wants us to be.

Sheryl Sandberg Visits “America’s Newsroom”

Sheryl Sandberg Champions ‘Choice’ Except When It’s One Specific Choice

Feminism

Girlboss

Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg

Tradwives

A recent episode of the ThoughtCrime podcast set conservatives on X abuzz.
The spark that lit the flame: conservative firebrand Jack Posobiec declaring that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is not only not Christian, but in fact “overtly pagan.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JackPosobiec</a>: Lord of the Rings is overtly pagan. <a href="https://t.co/OiNMWC7HbP">pic.twitter.com/OiNMWC7HbP</a>
— Human Events (@HumanEvents) <a href="https://twitter.com/HumanEvents/status/2037315598401798445?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Tolkien has returned to mainstream conversation <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/03/stephen-colbert-lord-of-the-rings-1236764923/">after reports</a> that the Trump Derangement Syndrome patient and former comedian, Stephen Colbert, is helping develop a new Middle-earth film with Peter Jackson’s team.
Posobiec, no stranger to controversial takes, made the following case:
<blockquote>
‘Narnia’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ were, you know, kind of, kind of written almost not, you know, concurrently in a sense. And Tolkien always said that he didn&#8217;t like Narnia because he thought that it was too overtly Christian. And I&#8217;ve heard people try to make the argument that ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly Christian. And I hate to burst the bubble, guys, but you&#8217;re just wrong. There&#8217;s nothing overtly Christian about ‘Lord of the Rings.’ There&#8217;s no church in it, there&#8217;s no faith in it. There&#8217;s no Christ figure. There&#8217;s none of these things. And honestly, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ if it&#8217;s anything, ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly pagan.
</blockquote>
Posobiec is right about one thing: “The Lord Of The Rings” doesn’t have a Christ figure. It has three.
Tolkien distributes the threefold office of Christ between Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn: prophet, priest, and king.
Gandalf (not a wizard, actually) is an angel sent, literally from the heavens, to Middle-earth to counsel its people. He meets death and returns transformed and renewed. Frodo bears a burden of suffering he did not choose but accepts for the salvation of others. Aragorn is the self-exiled king whose healing hands and rightful claim to a throne can restore a fading kingdom and fallen world.
Yes, a <a href="https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/N%C3%BAmenor">fallen world</a> — where could that concept come from?
Let’s also consider that Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom begins on December 25th and concludes on March 25th, the Feast of Annunciation, the date of Christ’s crucifixion, and the beginning of death’s defeat.
Tolkien’s monarchist vision of the good is something of a modern fixation amongst conservative Catholics, weary of liberal democracy’s slow decline into Denethor-level despair and unwillingness to “conserve” anything in the face of evil rising in Mordor.
But Posobiec prefers C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series, as do I. There the Christian imagery is more overt. Aslan <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-narnia-isnt-allegorical/">is not</a> even a “Christ figure,” but Christ himself operating in a multiverse with layer upon layer of reality waiting to be peeled back like an onion. What the heroes of Lewis’s story learn is that London is an echo of Narnia, and Narnia is but an echo of another place even more glorious.
For his part, the irascible Tolkien didn’t care for Narnia. But Lewis very much cared for Middle-earth.
“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity,’” Lewis said of his friend’s world. Tolkien dips Christian truth in a stew of medieval mythology, indeed drawing on imagery from pagan stories and making them submissive to Christian belief.
Posobiec mistakes the absence of overtly Christian imagery for the lack of Christian themes. But just because no one takes the Eucharist in Gondor does not mean Tolkien’s world must be pagan. Quite the contrary. Middle-earth in all its strangeness speaks to the imaginative hunger of people’s hearts, calling them to see with fresh eyes the Truth they so often take for granted.
In Western books and films, Christian morality and themes are the default setting — we often become “nose-blind” to it in the same way you can’t smell the distinct odor of your own home until you return home from vacation. In that way, Tolkien and Lewis both favored dressing stories in ways that lower the defenses of the reader and free our God-given imaginations to know Him in different contexts. It’s a beautiful idea.
***
Stephen Kent is a conservative commentator and host of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@GeekyStoics">Geeky Stoics</a> on YouTube. Follow him <a href="https://x.com/StephenKentX">@StephenKentX</a>.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” Premieres in London

One Does Not Simply Walk Into Thinking Lord of the Rings is Pagan

C.S. Lewis

J.R.R. Tolkien

Actor and producer Vince Vaughn might have cultivated a certain reputation based on his popular roles as the “Vegas, Baby!” wingman, frat boy who never grew up, or any number of smart-mouthed, fast-talking bros who always seem to land on their feet. It wasn’t a surprise, then, to hear him talking earlier this week with outspoken candidness about the sorry state of entertainment with podcaster and comedian Theo Von on his <a href="https://www.theovon.com/podcast">show</a>, “This Past Weekend with Theo Von.”
Most of the post-podcast focus centered on Vaughn’s criticism of late-night talk shows, with the Swingers actor telling Von they are becoming “the same show” and “really agenda-based.” The Wedding Crashers star continued, “They all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad.”
But his main point, an overarching observation about the current state of American culture in the wake of cruelly divisive politics permeating every facet of entertainment, is that we have lost a deep, authentic sense of commonality. When we can’t share laughter, what can we share?
Vaughn has the secret sauce:
<blockquote>
The truth is most people, they want to laugh. They don&#8217;t want to see stuff be precious that you can&#8217;t talk or joke about. Most people can make fun of themselves. You know, in the real world, if you don&#8217;t have a sense of humor about yourself, then it&#8217;s a lonely experience. You got to be able to laugh at yourself. You can look back at stuff that you believed so strongly a few years ago and laugh about it. So, I think you got to have that quality and comedy is that: being able to laugh at stuff.
</blockquote>
Vaughn’s observation, so simple and truthful that it was easy to overlook, earns him the title of Everyman Hero — especially in an industry increasingly dominated by shallow moral preening and risk-averse, viewpoint-reinforcing clique hierarchies that make junior high cheer squads look like bastions of meritocracies and courageous champions of individuality (no offense to junior high cheer squads).
Vaughn, who grew up in the Midwest and never went to college and put his career on the back burner after getting married and having kids, is the heir apparent to the late actor and comedian John Candy. What these two share is an unapologetic view of the good in people and a refusal to engage in the chest-thumping applause mills that get attention from bobble-heads at award shows, glossy write-ups, and fawning interviews by mainstream media outlets. These hacks would rather rattle their tin cups for pennies like an organ grinder’s monkey than find some connection with the average working-class American.
You’d never hear Kimmel, Steven Colbert, or Jimmy Fallon echoing Vaughn’s sentiments about the Pledge of Allegiance: “We were super pro-America, too. Everything was. It was taught in that way. I thought it [The Pledge of Allegiance] was good. Hell, yes. I liked it. By the way, I love it … I still feel the same way. I still feel like [America] it&#8217;s the best out there. Not that it&#8217;s perfect.”
Instead, we get television “stars” who trash half of America so they can keep paying their kids’ private school tuition. Just after Vaughn’s truth bomb, Jimmy Kimmel illustrated his point by targeting Sen. Markwayne Mullin in his sermon monologue, not for any gaffe or silly political grandstanding on the senator’s part, but because he used to be a plumber. Gee, hard not to find the laughter in that.
Jimmy Kimmel had to keep his career afloat somehow. You didn’t think he was coasting along on his…talent, did you?
The late-night shows had one rule: be funny. To participate, you didn’t have to be a part of the Cool Kids Comedy Club, which isn’t about comedy at all but about signaling your superior intellect or esteemed opinion over the hoi polloi knuckle who (gasp) just want to enjoy some lighthearted entertainment and honest fun before a night’s sleep ahead of a backbreaking or mind-numbing job the next day.
Vaughn understands this concept — that comedy works when shots are taken at everyone and comedians are actually doing comedy. Ratings for these shows are tanking because the people in charge of them aren’t doing their jobs. “You don&#8217;t want to become part of a group and feel like you&#8217;re now a champion for one ideology. You want to make fun of everybody.” What Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon are selling is “the same show,” but in the sense that it’s entirely predictable. People are tuning out because they know exactly what they’re going to see, night after night: basically, an MS NOW show with a studio audience. People don’t want to turn on a comedy show and get an hour’s worth of condescension and mean-spirited, mindless snark. If they did, Joy Reid might still have a TV gig.
What defined the golden era of late-night was that it offered Americans equal opportunity to laugh, no matter one’s race, sex, religion, socioeconomic status, or political persuasion. “Ultimately,” says Vaughn, “comedy is a big tent.” It used to be. “We used to be a proper country,” the saying goes. We will be again when we can all laugh about it.

West Coast Premiere of “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” With Beyond Fest and American Cinematheque

Vince Vaughn Is The Everyman Hero Comedy Needs

Comedy

Politics

Television

Theo Von

Vince Vaughn

Gen Z gets to have its Lucky Strike moment, living amidst a social behavior so widely accepted that we hardly notice its near-complete ubiquitousness and carry on a seemingly innocuous yet encompassing habit without a second thought.
Today&#8217;s addictive product isn’t rolled in paper and sold at gas stations. It lives in our back pockets. And this week, for the first time, a jury suggested it might be just as dangerous — and just as liable.
Cigarettes were everywhere in America in the 1950s through the 1980s, and they were cool. You saw them in every movie and TV show and on every billboard. More than 40 percent of adults smoked. It was normalized, glamorous, and quietly killing people.  
 
Then came the lawsuits. States sued Big Tobacco for hiding what they knew about addiction. Internal documents proved companies had engineered dependence and targeted children. The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement forced the four biggest tobacco companies to pay states more than $206 billion, ban cartoon ads, and fund anti-smoking campaigns. The once romanticized and ubiquitous habit fell out of favor: Between 1998 and 2018, overall cigarette consumption fell more than 50 percent, and youth smoking dropped from 36 to 6 percent. 
 
Fast forward to the present, and a now-20-year-old woman named Kaley — identified in court papers as K.G.M. — filed a lawsuit against the corporate behemoths of our time, Meta and Google, when she was 17. She began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, sometimes scrolling for 16 hours a day. She argues that the apps&#8217; design, with endless scrolling, Pavlovian notifications, and calculated recommendation algorithms, prompted endless scrolling, causing her serious depression, anxiety, body image issues, and suicidal thoughts. 
 
Her lawyers&#8217; arguments echoed those against the big cigarette companies decades earlier. They argued product liability: the apps are defectively designed, the companies knew it, and they launched them anyway. The jury agreed, finding both Meta and Google negligent in how they designed their platforms and in failing to warn users. Kaley was awarded $6 million. One day earlier, a separate New Mexico jury hit Meta with a $375 million verdict for similar conduct.
These are the first jury verdicts to hold that social media’s business model itself can constitute a defective product. This is a watershed moment — not just for Kaley, but for the 2,400 similar lawsuits waiting in federal court and hundreds more in California. And New Mexico&#8217;s case has a second phase in May that could compel Meta to actually change its apps nationwide: stronger age verification, safer algorithms, meaningful oversight.
Meta knew what it was doing. Its own internal 2020 “Project Mercury” study found that deactivating Instagram reduced depression and anxiety in users. The company buried the findings and shut down the study.
But parents should resist the urge to treat this verdict as someone else finishing the job for them. 
 
Fifty-one percent of parents say they regularly check their children’s social media accounts. Many don’t know which apps their kids are using and abusing at all. Meanwhile, 60% of young people self-report feeling addicted to social media. 45% say they spend “too much time” on it, and 48% of teens say it has a mostly negative effect on people their age. These kids know something is wrong. They cannot fix it alone — the apps are engineered to make quitting feel impossible — and a courtroom in California cannot reach into a bedroom at midnight and take the phone off the nightstand. Parents have to do that. 

There are more lessons from the tobacco lawsuits to be heeded. The 1998 settlement was historic on paper, but it only changed behavior because prices rose, culture shifted, and parents got involved. States spend most of the settlement money on things other than prevention. Tobacco companies pivoted overseas and kept selling. A legal victory is only as durable as what follows it. 
Congress isn’t helping. The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate in 2024, stalled again in 2025, and remains stuck in the House. COPPA 2.0 passed the Senate unanimously — twice —and died both times. This is the fourth major legislative attempt since 2022. At some point, passing a law that bans social media for those under 19 has to be easier than explaining to constituents why you didn’t. 
 
There is also a real tension at play: the same companies now being sued are also building AI tools with genuine potential — in medicine, education, and mental health. Heavy-handed regulation designed to punish Meta could inadvertently slow innovation that actually helps kids. Any serious legislative solution has to thread that needle: protect children online without strangling the technology that may one day serve them. 
 
These verdicts are a genuine first step. The jury got it right: these products were defectively designed, and the companies that built them knew the harm they were causing. But the work doesn’t end in a courtroom. It continues at home, in the living room, when a parent decides to actually look at what their kid is doing online. It continues in Congress when lawmakers stop treating children’s mental health as a bargaining chip. The jury started something this week. Now everyone else has to finish it — we can all start by touching some grass.

Zuckerberg leaves Los Angeles courthouse after social media addiction trial defense

Is This The Beginning Of The End Of Big Social Media?

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On Monday, March 23, a story circulated. Alan Ritchson, star of the television series Reacher, was confronted by a neighbor after the actor “sped” through a Brentwood, TN, neighborhood, which would be insane. While Ritchson is not a direct reflection of the character he plays, he is jacked. The neighbor, however, is British.
The initial story quickly shifted. Ritchson was now labeled the aggressor. Then, he released his own vindicating bodycam footage, which showed Ronnie Taylor, the neighbor, standing in Ritchson’s path as he slowed down from speeds over 21 mph to 17 before falling off his bike to avoid the hysterical neighbor. The initial reporting was correct.
First, a little lesson on those who don’t encounter motorcycles, dirt bikes, or even Ford Mustangs in the wild. While Ritchson’s revving sounds rather loud and intimidating, it’s a growl that any of those vehicles can reach while rolling calmly and legally through a school zone. It makes one wonder if Ritchson’s second question to Taylor — “Are you drunk right now, bro?” — was accurate. Or was it simply Taylor’s delicate British sensibilities?
Not that those sensibilities have ever stopped the British from overestimating their capabilities. See, for example, the Revolutionary War, a war that could have been easily avoided if the Brits had simply accepted that the Declaration of Independence was badass and correct, instead of insisting on a fight they were manifestly destined to lose. Taylor was simply honoring that misguided spirit that lives in his blood. Points for trying?
Except, no, not so much, because all Taylor did was aggravate Ritchson for no reason as he and his sons were trying to enjoy a few leisurely laps around the neighborhood. And, yes, leisurely is the correct word here, for the bodycam footage reveals that the top speed they reached as they fled the scene of the self-defense was a whopping 33mph. Mostly, though, they kept it in the 20s.
It really makes one wonder what, besides being day drunk on a Sunday, would motivate such behavior on Taylor’s part. First of all, while Ritchson is a theater kid, he is also an <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/1224724/how-alan-ritchsons-military-brat-experience-played-into-his-jack-reacher-performance-exclusive/">Air Force brat</a>. He is respectful of duty, diligence, training, and truth. Second, he looks the part for the roles he plays. No CGI necessary — the guy has some serious muscle. Third, it’s generally best not to mess with a man on a dirt bike. They create <a href="https://youtu.be/O-Gutzfe-Gs?si=OyZ4N1ElaEqFwcDA&amp;t=33">YouTube channels</a> just to document the skirmishes.
Taylor, though, ignored all those points and ended up with a few bruises. He’ll survive, which is a testament to Ritchson’s restraint. He could have run into him. He could have pummeled him into oblivion for messing with him while he was out with his progeny. These Reacher <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFH-JMbWwHg">scenes</a> may be choreographed, but did Taylor think that Ritchson didn’t learn a few things during rehearsals? To state it in a way that resonates with his native dialect, it was a bloody mad decision.
In other words, this story is not one of Hollywood excess, but of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3U55usfJK8">keeping it real gone wrong</a>, because, for all his stupidity, Taylor did have a mild point. Dirt bikes are rather loud, as the bodycam footage proves, and Brentwood is a rather tony suburb of Nashville. Excessive noise in the &#8216;burbs can be annoying and possibly even in violation of <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/05/28/lawn-and-order/">HOA rules</a>.
Taylor could have politely approached Ritchson, who can assuredly afford a trailer and admission to one of the <a href="https://www.onxmaps.com/offroad/dirt-bike-trails-near-me/nashville-tn">numerous trails</a> near the city, and asked him to be a little quieter. He could have explained that the noise was disrupting his afternoon tea and that, if it didn’t stop, he would have no choice but to report it to the HOA board.
Instead, he chose violence. He ignored Reacher’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw1smhdwwks">one simple rule</a>, which states that if people leave him alone, he’ll leave them alone, and also one that Ritchson himself seems to follow. Taylor decided to become the guy in the &#8216;hood known for getting a beatdown in front of his own house, which was likely quietly applauded because that guy is for sure that guy: the one who has complained to all the other neighbors about things like not bringing their garbage cans in from the curb by 6 pm on trash day or having a visitor park on the street for longer than 2 hours.
In short, the odds are he’s the annoying neighbor who, in this case, tried to break Jack Reacher’s fist with his face and failed. However, he did succeed in one thing: brilliantly demonstrating that when Jack Reacher tells you to get out of the way, just like when a fledgling United States tells you to step aside, you&#8217;d better do it — lest you suffer the publicly humiliating defeat headed your way.
***
Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin&#8217; Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4

NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500

Ignore the “Reacher Rule” At Your Own Peril.

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