Constitutional Collapse in Real Time

This morning, FBI agents raided the home of John Bolton—former National Security Advisor, lifelong Republican, and one of the most establishment figures in American foreign policy. His crime? Writing a book critical of Donald Trump and opposing the president’s surrender summit with Vladimir Putin. The justification? A “national security investigation in search of classified records”—the same bureaucratic language once used to investigate Trump’s actual document theft, now weaponized against Trump’s critics.

We are no longer operating under constitutional government. We are witnessing its systematic dismantlement by the very people sworn to preserve it. This is what constitutional collapse looks like in real time—not dramatic overthrow or military coups, but the patient corruption of every institution designed to constrain power until they serve only to protect it.

Nobody wants to admit this reality because admitting it requires confronting what it means for everything else we’ve assumed about American democracy. But that comfort is a luxury we can no longer afford. The Bolton raid isn’t an aberration—it’s observable evidence that we’ve already crossed the line from constitutional republic to authoritarian protection racket.

The Bitter Irony of False Equivalence

There’s a devastating irony in Bolton becoming one of the first high-profile victims of Trump’s weaponized Justice Department. Throughout the 2024 election, Bolton and many establishment figures operated from the “anti-anti-Trump” position—treating both candidates as equally flawed, seeing no meaningful moral distinction between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, flattening existential differences into ordinary political disagreements.

Bolton couldn’t bring himself to endorse Harris despite understanding perfectly well what Trump represented. Like so many sophisticated voices, he was too committed to maintaining his independent credibility to make the obvious moral choice that democratic survival required. He performed the elaborate intellectual gymnastics necessary to avoid acknowledging the clear distinction between a candidate committed to constitutional governance and one openly promising to dismantle it.

Now Bolton experiences personally the constitutional crisis he refused to prevent politically. The FBI agents who ransacked his home weren’t rogue actors—they were following orders from an administration he couldn’t oppose when it mattered. His decades of public service, his genuine expertise, his legitimate policy concerns—none of it protected him once he crossed the regime he helped normalize through sophisticated neutrality.

This pattern extends far beyond Bolton. Across the political spectrum, intelligent people convinced themselves the stakes weren’t really that high, that institutions would constrain Trump’s worst impulses, that the “adults in the room” would prevent constitutional catastrophe. The anti-anti-Trump stance provided permission structure for millions of Americans to vote for authoritarianism while telling themselves they were making a normal political choice.

By flattening the moral difference between Harris and Trump, these voices enabled the very outcome they claimed to fear. Harris represented continuity with constitutional governance—flawed and frustrating, but operating within democratic frameworks. Trump represented systematic destruction of constitutional governance—openly promising to weaponize federal power and eliminate civil service protections. These weren’t equivalent positions requiring sophisticated analysis to distinguish.

The Propaganda Function of “Objectivity”

The most insidious aspect of this false equivalence is how it masquerades as intellectual sophistication while functioning as authoritarian propaganda. When someone with a platform responds to Trump’s systematic weaponization of federal law enforcement by invoking the “Biden Crime Family,” they’re not demonstrating objectivity—they’re selling surrender.

What exactly is the “Biden Crime Family”? Hunter’s laptop? Business dealings investigated by Republican committees for years that produced no criminal charges? Meanwhile, we have documented evidence of Trump selling pardons, accepting foreign bribes, conducting government business at his properties, and now using the FBI as his personal revenge service. These aren’t comparable phenomena requiring balanced analysis—they’re manufactured distractions designed to normalize actual criminality through false equivalence.

When public figures invoke “both sides” rhetoric during an active constitutional crisis, they’re not rising above partisanship—they’re providing cover for the side that systematically benefits from confusion and paralysis. They’re giving their audience permission to remain passive while democracy dies, to treat the collapse of constitutional government as just another partisan disagreement where reasonable people stay neutral.

This sophisticated-sounding neutrality serves the same function as “just asking questions” or “maintaining balance”—rhetorical devices that sound reasonable but provide cover for unreasonable things. The “Biden Crime Family” talking point in response to the Bolton raid essentially argues: “Well, both sides weaponize law enforcement, so this is just normal political hardball.” But one side investigated actual evidence through proper channels, while the other raids former officials for writing books critical of the president.

Authoritarians don’t need everyone to support them actively—they just need enough people to remain confused and passive while they capture the machinery of state. When people with influence treat constitutional governance and authoritarian rule as equivalent, they’re not maintaining objectivity—they’re actively participating in the normalization of authoritarianism.

The Observable Reality of Systematic Collapse

We need to stop pretending this is normal politics conducted by unusual means. The evidence of constitutional collapse surrounds us daily: the executive branch operates through fake emergency declarations to bypass Congressional authority. Trump conducts trade policy through personal decree, ignoring constitutional requirements for legislative approval. The Supreme Court creates immunity doctrines that place presidents above accountability. Congress suspends its own procedures to avoid constitutional duties.

Federal law enforcement has become a revenge machine targeting political opponents while providing protection services for regime loyalists. ICE operates as domestic surveillance apparatus building algorithmic dossiers on American citizens. The FBI raids critics while ignoring documented crimes by allies. The Justice Department empanels grand juries to investigate Barack Obama while dropping cases against Trump.

This is the systemic destruction of a government constrained by law. Not merely political dysfunction. The people orchestrating this understand exactly what they’re building: a protection racket masquerading as constitutional government, where loyalty determines legal consequences and opposition becomes criminal activity.

The Bolton raid demonstrates this logic perfectly. FBI Director Kash Patel, Trump’s personal enforcer now wearing federal authority, tweeted “NO ONE is above the law” while his agents searched the home of a man whose crime was exercising First Amendment rights. Attorney General Pam Bondi amplified: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.” This is justice as theater, law enforcement as performance art, federal power as instrument of personal revenge.

by Mike Brock, Notes From The Circus |  Read more:

Image: Shutterstock.com

[ed. For real. See also: Who Are the “Real” Americans Here? (NFTC); and, We Used to Think the Military Would Stand Up to Trump. We Were Wrong (NYT).]

What About The Children?

The First Generation of Parents Who Knew What We Were Doing—and Did It Anyway

I have harmed my own children through my screen addiction.

I write those words and feel them burn. Not because they’re dramatic but because they’re true. I was a tech executive who spent years thinking about both technology and philosophy. I understood these systems from both sides—how they were built and what they were doing to us.

The technologist in me recognized the deliberate engineering: intermittent variable reward schedules, social validation loops, dark patterns designed to create dependency. The philosopher in me understood what this was doing to human consciousness—fragmenting attention, destroying sustained thought, replacing authentic relationship with parasocial bonding.

I wasn’t building these social media platforms. But I used their products. And I couldn’t stop. Even knowing exactly how they worked. Even understanding the philosophical implications of attention capture. Even seeing what they were doing to society, to democracy, to our capacity for thought itself.

Still I fell. Still I chose the screen over my family. Still I modeled for my children that they were less interesting than whatever might be happening in the infinite elsewhere of the internet.

My children learned what I valued by watching what I looked at. And too often, it wasn’t them.

This Is Not Okay

No, seriously. What about them?

We’re destroying them with social media and now AI chatbots, and we all fucking know it. If you’re a parent who’s watched your kid with a smartphone, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The vacant stare. The panic when the battery dies. The meltdown when you try to set limits. This isn’t kids being kids. This is addiction, and we’re the dealers.

There’s a tech cartel in Silicon Valley that built the seeds of our modern epistemic crisis. But here’s the thing—they didn’t know what they were building either. Not at first. They thought they were connecting people, building communities, making the world more open. They discovered what they’d actually built the same way we did—by watching it consume us. And by then, they were as addicted to the money as we were to their platforms.

Their platforms have been weaponized into systems of mass distraction. They’re not competing for our business—they’re competing for our attention, buying and selling it like a commodity. And now these companies have all taken a knee to Trump to make sure no government regulation ever gets in the way of them perfectly optimizing us into consumerist supplicants.

This isn’t an anti-capitalism screed. I’m a technologist. I think self-driving cars are going to be amazing. But social media as it’s currently designed is fucking insane, and we all know it.

by Mike Brock, Notes From The Circus |  Read more:

Image: Ben Wicks on Unsplash

Nano Banana

Something unusual happened in the world of AI image editing recently. A new model, known as "nano banana," started making the rounds with impressive abilities that landed it at the top of the LMArena leaderboard. Now, Google has revealed that nano banana is an innovation from Google DeepMind, and it's being rolled out to the Gemini app today.

AI image editing allows you to modify images with a prompt rather than mucking around in Photoshop. Google first provided editing capabilities in Gemini earlier this year, and the model was more than competent out of the gate. But like all generative systems, the non-deterministic nature meant that elements of the image would often change in unpredictable ways. Google says nano banana (technically Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) has unrivaled consistency across edits—it can actually remember the details instead of rolling the dice every time you make a change.

Google says subjects will retain their appearance as you edit.

This unlocks several interesting uses for AI image editing. Google suggests uploading a photo of a person and changing their style or attire. For example, you can reimagine someone as a matador or a '90s sitcom character. Because the nano banana model can maintain consistency through edits, the results should still look like the person in the original source image. This is also the case when you make multiple edits in a row. Google says that even down the line, the results should look like the original source material.

Gemini's enhanced image editing can also merge multiple images, allowing you to use them as the fodder for a new image of your choosing. Google's example below takes separate images of a woman and a dog and uses them to generate a new snapshot of the dog getting cuddles—possibly the best use of generative AI yet. Gemini image editing can also merge things in more abstract ways and will follow your prompts to create just about anything that doesn't run afoul of the model's guardrails.

The model remembers details instead of generating completely new things every time.

As with other Google AI image generation models, the output of Gemini 2.5 Flash Image always comes with a visible "AI" watermark in the corner. The image also has an invisible SynthID digital watermark that can be detected even after moderate modification.

You can give the new native image editing a shot today in the Gemini app. Google says the new image model will also roll out soon in the Gemini API, AI Studio, and Vertex AI for developers.

by Ryan Witwan, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Images: Google

[ed. Hot new thing. Try it here. See also: Google aims to be top banana in AI image editing (Axios).]

The Gospel According to South Park

Somehow, five years have passed since the COVID summer of 2020. My son had just “finished” fourth grade. His mother and I were distracted parents of him and his seven-year-old sister, both of us teetering from cabin fever. It felt like we were hanging on to our sanity, and our marriage, by a thread.

We held on to both, thankfully. Our kids seem to have recovered, too. But by this time that summer, it’s fair to say we had completely “lost contain” of our children. Even under normal conditions, we’ve favored a loose-reins approach to parenting, with a healthy dose of Lenore Skenazy-style “Free Range Parenting.” But that summer? I gave up entirely. I let my son watch TV. A lot of TV.

By the time school resumed, he had watched every episode of The Simpsons and every episode of South Park.

At the time, I felt more than a little guilty about letting a 10-year-old binge-watch two decades of South Park. It was a bit early, I thought, for him to be learning proper condom application techniques from Mr. Garrison. When I told friends later, the story always got a laugh – a kind of comic confession from a parent who’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

But as my son made his way through middle school and into high school, something changed. One night over dinner, we were talking about wars when I mentioned Saddam Hussein. My son chimed in casually – he knew exactly who Saddam was. I asked him how. His answer: “South Park.”

That kept happening. From Michael Jackson and Neverland Ranch, to Mormonism, to the NSA, to wokeism … my son was not only familiar with these topics, he was informed, funny, and incisively skeptical. I realized that this crash course from Butters and Cartman and Mr. Mackey had functioned like one of those downloads Neo gets in The Matrix; except that instead of instantly learning martial arts, my son had instantly become culturally literate. And, just as important, that literacy came wrapped in a sense of humor rooted in satire, absurdity, and a deep mistrust of power, regardless of party affiliation.

He jokes about Joe Biden’s senility and Trump’s grifting grossness. He refers to COVID-era masking as “chin diapers,” a phrase South Park coined while many adults were still double-masking alone in their cars. It struck me: my greatest parenting lapse had somehow turned into one of my best decisions.

Of course, it’s not just that South Park is anti-authority and unapologetically crude. So was Beavis and Butthead. The difference is that South Park is crafted. It endures not just because of what it says, but how it’s made – with discipline, speed, and storytelling intelligence.

South Park co-creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone are master storytellers. In a short video that should be required viewing for anyone who writes, they explain that if the beats, or scenes, of your story are best linked by the phrase “and then,” you’re doing it wrong. Instead, each scene should be connected by “therefore” or “but.” It’s deceptively simple, and it’s the single best explanation of narrative momentum I’ve ever seen. (Watch it here.)

Combine that storytelling mastery with a relentless work ethic that has allowed them to churn out weekly takes on almost every major current event of the last three decades, and you get the South Park that we know and (that most of us) love today. A generational institution that’s still funny.

by Jeremy Radcliffe, Epsilon Theory | Read more:
Image: South Park

[ed. Smart moronic vs dumb moronic. People are probably just grateful for any kind of resistance these days.]

Eric Cartman, Welcome (for Now) to the Resistance

There is a slang term that, because I am not writing this for a foul-mouthed satire on a streaming service, I will refer to as “bleep-you money”: the amount of cash you need to feel free to do and say what you want.

For Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the makers of “South Park,” that number appears to be around $1.25 billion — the price tag on their recent deal with Paramount. Once the ink dried, they put their mouths where their money was, going hard after President Trump and their own corporate benefactors.

The Season 27 premiere aired July 23, shortly after Paramount agreed to a lawsuit settlement with the president that the late-night host Stephen Colbert called a “big, fat bribe,” and shortly after CBS, which Paramount owns, announced that Colbert’s show would end next year. (Paramount said the move was purely a financial decision.)

In the episode, “Sermon on the ’Mount,” the president is suing everyone, and everyone — from local governments to “60 Minutes” — is giving up. The town of South Park has to literally bring Jesus (a recurring character since the show’s earliest days) into its schools. President Trump appears as a tinpot dictator, in bed (again literally) with Satan. Desperate, the townspeople turn to Christ, who bestows his wisdom: “All of you, shut the [expletive] up, or South Park is over,” he says. “You really want to end up like Colbert?”

In the follow-up episode, the school counselor, Mr. Mackey, gets fired because of funding cuts and signs up with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (“If you need a job, it’s A! Job! To have!” goes the recruiting jingle.)

Mr. Mackey and his inexperienced comrades pull up their face masks, bust a “Dora the Explorer” live show (another repurposing of a Paramount property) and raid heaven to round up Latino angels. For good performance, Mr. Mackey wins a trip to Mar-a-Lago — here, a debauched Fantasy Island with President Trump as Mr. Roarke and Vice President JD Vance as Tattoo.

If you were making a list of the series likeliest to become voices of the Trump 2.0 resistance, “South Park” would not have been close to the top. It has savaged liberal pieties and has been credited, if not by its own creators, with inspiring a wave of “South Park conservatives.”

The show’s politics have been elusive — close to libertarian, in the neighborhood of cynical. It’s not that “South Park” is amoral — it is often deeply moralistic, summing up episodes with speeches and epiphanies. But for years, its core principle has been that people who care too righteously about any cause are ridiculous.

That message may have been a blueprint for civic nihilism, an invitation to LOL all the way to dystopia. But the show’s history may also be exactly what makes “South Park” a compelling voice at this moment. Along with its three-comma price tag, the show has amassed cultural capital, a reputation for not being in any party’s corner. (...)

Beyond the crackdown on media and academic speech, the new “South Park” also focuses on the people who feel more free than ever to speak up in the new order. Eric Cartman, the show’s Magic 8-Ball of offensiveness, begins to realize that “woke is dead”: People are free to spew the kind of slurs and insults that used to get him yelled at. A classmate steals his material — anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, kneejerk sexism — to start a hit podcast. Cartman has won, and he’s miserable. “You can just say ‘retarded’ now, nobody cares,” he moans. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” (...)

Of course, you could counter that Parker and Stone are free to mock. They have become very rich doing it, and, unlike Colbert, no one is taking their show off the air yet.

But this, too, is part of the meta point. It is still a free country. You can still say what you want. So why are so many powerful institutions behaving like it isn’t and they can’t? If a few bratty cartoon kids can peel off the emperor’s clothes, what are the grown-ups so afraid of?

The show has a theory for that, and it’s also about money. In the premiere, big institutions — up to heaven itself — are brought to heel by billion-dollar litigation. Later, Mr. Mackey quits ICE despite the pressure to swallow his qualms and go along with things he doesn’t believe because he needs to “make my nut” — that is, pay his bills.

It’s the same story either way: Everyone’s got to make their nut, even if some people’s nuts are bigger than others. Maybe it takes bleep-you money to buy your freedom. But maybe, “South Park” is telling us, freedom comes from deciding that your self-respect is priceless.

by James Poniewozik, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Comedy Central

[ed. Double thumbs up. Kristi Noem episode is an instant classic.]

A Teen Band Needed a Pianist. They Called Donald Fagen.

I'm crossposting this amusing account of how Donald Fagen, the creative linchpin in the Dan sound, showed up recently as pianist with a teen band. (He is 77 years old and the rest of the band is 17!) Fagen can be prickly and reclusive and hasn't performed anywhere else this year. But here he unexpectedly agrees to sub for another musician on a lowkey gig. Enjoy! - Ted Gioia.

In April, a curious video began circulating among Steely Dan fans online. It showed a trio of very young-looking musicians playing with the silver-haired eminence Donald Fagen.

The performance at the Barn at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, New York, was the first time Fagen had been seen onstage since Steely Dan canceled the last nine of their tour dates with the Eagles in the spring of 2024. The show also marked his first public appearance following the October 2024 death of his wife of more than 30 years, the singer-songwriter Libby Titus.

Exactly how, fans wondered, had the Nightfly been coaxed back behind the piano? To get the story, I spoke in April to the members of Roche Collins: Ronan Roche and Sam Cousins, who trade guitar and bass, and drummer Lavon “Lee” Collins. At that time, all of them were 17.

Collins’s mother, the singer-songwriter Amy Helm, is the daughter of Titus and Levon Helm, the famed drummer and vocalist of the Band. Which makes Fagen, technically, Collins’s step-grandfather. As it turns out, this wasn’t the first time Collins had asked Mr. Steely Dan for a little help.

The video of you guys playing with Donald Fagen at the Barn made the rounds among Steely Dan fans.

Lavon Collins: Wait, really?

People were excited to see Donald onstage playing music again.

Collins: That’s really funny that it got circulated that way.

How did that appearance come about?

Collins: It was really kind of a simple thing. I’ve been playing with Donald sometimes just for fun, and he, of course, has a good feel and can play chords. I had an idea for this groove kind of thing [for the song “Words to Live By”], and then I asked Donald for some help on it, and we just did it together. So before the show, I said to him, “Hey, we need a piano player for that song,” and he just did it.

Ronan Roche: We had a dire need. We had a piano player who was going to do that whole gig with us, but then he couldn’t get off work.

Sam Cousins: So we figured our last option is Donald Fagen, I guess. [Laughs.]

by Jake Malooley, Expanding Dan |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Nice to see him back in action, plus discover a new Steely Dan substack/website.]

How the Media Shapes a Narrative. Alaska Edition.

People show their support for Ukraine outside the Government Hill gate prior to the summit with President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Bill Roth / ADN) [ed. Liberals! lol!]

Supporters of Donald Trump wave signs on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025 in Midtown. (Bob Hallinen for ADN). [ed. Whoa. Well, it is a pretty red state.]

Except, the day before there was this. Which was briefly mentioned in this link:

Several hundred protesters gathered along the Seward Highway near Northern Lights Boulevard on August 14, 2025, to protest President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Marc Lester / ADN)

by By Iris Samuels, Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News |  Read more:

Additional image: Marc Lester

[ed. So, what do we know now about how things actually went down in Anchorage. Hell if I know. And... what about that Epstein guy everyone was so worked up about last week?! Was all this just convenient and reciprocal diversion tactics (for both)? See also: Trump leaves Alaska summit with Putin empty-handed after failing to reach a deal to end Ukraine war (ADN). Update: a few more sign wavers:]

[ed. See also: The Power of the Trump-Putin Presidential Photo Op (NYT):]

The two men clasped hands, and then strode to Mr. Trump’s limo, in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties (red for Mr. Trump, burgundy for Mr. Putin), giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.

That’s the picture that was caught by the waiting cameras, and those are the photos that have gone around the world to accompany reports of the nonproductive meeting.

In the absence of an actual resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have become the takeaway. And that, said both President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, even before the meeting, was Mr. Putin’s goal in the first place.

“He is seeking, excuse me, photos,” Mr. Zelensky said. “He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”

Why? Because whatever happened afterward, a photo could be publicly seen — and read — as an implicit endorsement.

After all, the Russian president has been a virtual pariah in the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine; accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Whether or not Mr. Trump was tough with him behind the closed doors of their meeting room — whether or not their talks were, as Mr. Trump later said, “productive” — what has now been preserved for posterity is Mr. Putin’s admission back into the fold.

And of all current world leaders, the only one who understands, and embraces, the power of the image quite as effectively as Mr. Trump is Mr. Putin. Both men have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.

Retire These Words

If ever an era and a locution were mismatched, it’s ours and “thought leader.” Thinking is in conspicuously short supply these days. Leaders are even scarcer.

But “thought leader” warrants erasure independent of the age. It’s pretentious. You show me someone who claims to be — or happily accepts designation as — a “thought leader,” and I’ll show you an insufferably smug sage. Scratch that: I’ll show you a self-enamored fool. No genuinely insightful person would deem it attractive or effective to wear such a gaudy garland of omniscience.

Not that “public intellectual,” a common “thought leader” synonym, is any better. It too is enveloped in an air of preciousness and cursed by its aura of self-congratulation. Here’s a good compass: If you cannot use a title or descriptor to introduce yourself without sounding like a pompous punchline in an old Woody Allen movie — “I’m Jonathan, and I’ve been a public intellectual for three decades now” — you need new language for your occupation.

Which isn’t really or solely about leading thought or intellectualizing publicly anyway. If you’re sharing your ideas in a classroom, you’re a teacher or instructor or professor or such. If you’re doing so on a page, you’re a writer, an author, maybe a researcher. On a stage? You’re a public speaker. On television? Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder and depends largely on the substantiveness and affect of the beheld. You’re a journalist or a news anchor or an entertainer — but please, please not a pundit. That’s another mushy, needless label rightly replaced by a more specific term or terms.

Besides, it makes no sense to speak of a “public intellectual” when there’s no “private intellectual,” just as “thought leader” lacks the antonym “thought follower,” which would refer to … what? Someone in a cult? All but a few Republican members of Congress since Trump took over their party?

Are those two categories redundant?

That’s a leading question. And just a thought.

***

Also this: George F. Will bemoaned the ubiquity and vagueness of a four-letter word: “Having no fixed meaning, ‘vibe’ cannot be used incorrectly. So, it resembles the phrase ‘social justice,’ which includes a noun and a modifier that does not intelligibly modify the noun.” Will added: “Shakespeare used 28,827 different words without resorting to ‘vibe.’ He could have written that Lear gave off a bad vibe while raging on the heath, and that Falstaff’s vibe was fun. But the Bard did as well as he could with the limited resources of the Elizabethan English he had.”

by Frank Bruni, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Shakespeare/Getty

A Simpler Life - Too Much to Ask?

via:
[ed. Yep. And don't make me identify bicycles to prove I'm human, restrict repairs to approved corporate vendors and parts, download "critical new updates" that make my software worse, put touchscreens on everything, etc. etc. See also: Slopocalypse Now.]

Sermon on the 'Mount'

“South Park” Skewers a Satire-Proof President

There’s a legal strategy known as the small-penis rule, wherein an author who writes a character based on a real person can potentially evade a libel suit by giving said character a small penis—the logic being that, in order to sue, a plaintiff would have to tacitly admit that the description of his manhood is accurate. This rule technically does not apply to the latest episode of “South Park,” in which the series’ creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, make absolutely no effort to anonymize President Donald Trump, but one wonders if the logic of embarrassment still holds. Trump is portrayed as a deeply insecure leader who literally gets into bed with Satan, his apparent lover. (“I’m not in the mood right now,” the Devil tells him. “Another random bitch commented on my Instagram that you’re on the Epstein list.”) Most notably, the Trump of “South Park” is endowed with a penis so small that Satan says he “can’t even see anything.” If the actual Trump were to retaliate, as he so often does, he’d be playing directly into Parker and Stone’s hands.

“South Park,” amazingly, is in its twenty-seventh season. It’s the second-longest-running animated show on U.S. television, behind “The Simpsons,” and easily the most offensive. Since its première, in 1997, the cartoon—which follows a group of profane elementary schoolers in the town of South Park, Colorado—has managed to piss off nearly every political group, pop-culture fandom, and religious denomination... To the extent that the show has any “beliefs,” it’s that all beliefs are asinine, whether they’re held by the left or the right. Environmental groups criticized the series, in 2006, for portraying Al Gore as a delusional figure obsessed with an imagined monster named ManBearPig. The show was banned in China, in 2019, for mocking Chinese censorship, and the creators famously received death threats after depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Although “South Park” has declined both in quality and in popularity over the years, it’s still valuable enough that Paramount recently paid $1.5 billion for exclusive streaming rights to the series, and for Parker and Stone to make another fifty episodes. The studio has long been in the process of merging with Skydance Media—a deal that was in a holding pattern for about a year, until Paramount agreed to pay sixteen million dollars to settle a lawsuit that Trump filed against its subsidiary CBS’s “60 Minutes.” A few days before the F.C.C. finally approved the merger, Stephen Colbert, the host of “The Late Show,” on CBS, called the settlement a “big fat bribe”—and then his show was cancelled, ostensibly for financial reasons. All of these are crucial plot points in the latest “South Park” episode, “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” which is now available on Paramount+.

The town of South Park has its fair share of Trump supporters, albeit increasingly disillusioned ones. (“I voted for him to get rid of all the woke stuff,” one man says, “but now that retarded faggot is just putting money in his own pockets.”) Some parents are especially upset when religion is introduced at the local elementary school—in the form of Jesus Christ himself physically showing up and milling around. When the parents call the President to complain, he says that he’s going to sue the town for five billion dollars, setting up an extended riff on Trump’s status as a serial litigant. (Throughout the episode, he also threatens to sue people who make reference to his unfortunate penis.) But Parker and Stone’s true focus is media cowardice, which becomes clear when a fictionalized “60 Minutes” runs a segment on the showdown between Trump and the town of South Park.

The anchors are visibly anxious. “Oh, shit,” one says, as the news broadcast begins. “The small town of South Park, Colorado, is protesting against the President. The townspeople claim that the President—who, who is a great man, great guy, we know is probably watching—and, uh, we’re just reporting on this town in Colorado that’s being sued by the President.”

His co-anchor cuts in: “To be clear, we don’t agree with them.”

“We think these protesters are total retards,” the first anchor adds.

The demonstration is interrupted by Jesus, who flies onto the scene, Superman-style. He hands everyone bread. “Just eat the bread, and listen,” he says, and so begins his Sermon on the ’Mount: “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to, because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount.” He explains that Trump “can do whatever he wants now that someone has backed down,” adding, “Do you really wanna end up like Colbert?” He tells the people that they need to shut up, or else “South Park is over.”

Donald Trump poses a real conundrum for comedians. He’s an endless wellspring of material, but what he says and does is inevitably more absurd—and often more compelling—than any satire could be. Parker and Stone realized this early on. They initially dealt with Trump by having one of the show’s recurring characters, a former schoolteacher named Mr. Garrison, act as a surrogate; he ascends to the Presidency by promising to build a wall, and gradually turns orange. But the showrunners quickly found that, as Parker put it, “what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with.” So they pivoted to the other defining issues of our time: Kanye West’s antisemitism, ChatGPT, the COVID-19 pandemic (in this case, caused by a character’s decision to have sex with a bat in China).

The Paramount drama has prompted “South Park” to go after Trump more directly than ever before, but the gags, which all too often come back to his anatomy, or his penchant for memes, aren’t exactly revelatory. The sharpest joke is a meta one: the last time we saw Satan in bed with someone was in the 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” which depicted an abusive relationship between Satan and Saddam Hussein. (Hussein was the abuser.) Rather than concoct a new playbook for Trump, Parker and Stone have returned to an old one.

Trump’s existential threat to comedy has another dimension, one that intensified after his reëlection, as figures like Shane Gillis and Tim Dillion gained mainstream appeal: it’s hard to make boundary-pushing statements when there are no longer any boundaries. This problem is especially pressing for Parker and Stone, and they confront it via the angst of South Park’s resident provocateur, Eric Cartman.

The episode opens with Cartman turning on a radio station, where he’s met with the sound of static. “Mom, something’s wrong with my favorite show,” he complains. “National Public Radio, where all the liberals bitch and whine about stuff.” His mother informs him that Trump has cancelled NPR. Cartman is devastated: “That was, like, the funniest shit ever.”

Later, Cartman confides in his friend Butters, who’s more of a snowflake type. “Woke is dead,” Cartman says, sadly. “You can just say ‘retarded’ now, nobody cares. Everyone hates the Jews. Everyone’s fine with using gay slurs.”

“That’s not good,” Butters replies.

“No, it’s terrible!” Cartman says. “ ’Cause now I don’t know . . . what I’m supposed to do.”

At first, it didn’t seem like “South Park” had an answer to this question; Cartman, unconvinced by Butters’s assurances that “woke” is “still out there, somewhere,” forces him into a suicide pact. The two of them sit inside a car, parked in a garage, with the engine running. The scene is foreboding—until it’s revealed that the car is electric. [ed. Lol!]

The townspeople, meanwhile, negotiate a settlement with the President, who agrees to a sum of $3.5 million. (“We’ll just have to cut some funding for our schools and hospitals and roads and that should be that,” one woman says.) But there’s one condition: as part of the settlement, the town also has to engage in “pro-Trump messaging”—an apparent reference to recent reports that Trump has demanded the same from CBS. What follows is genuine shock comedy, and a treatment of Trump that feels original. The town’s first P.S.A. is an A.I.-generated video of Trump—a live-action one, not a cartoon—trudging through a desert. He proceeds to take off his clothes, though he leaves his dress shoes and sock garters on. “When things heat up, who will deliver us from temptation?” a voice-over says. “No matter how hot it gets, he’s not afraid to fight for America.” Trump lies down in the sand, and his micropenis, which has googly eyes and a mouth, slowly becomes erect, before announcing, “I’m Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message.” The P.S.A. is labelled one of fifty, leaving open the possibility that, in the course of the forty-nine “South Park” episodes still to come, we’ll get forty-nine more.

Is this too much? Probably. Yet there’s an age-old tradition of political vulgarity, of which Trump himself is a practitioner—it’s the crux of his appeal.

by Tyler Foggatt, New Yorker | Read more:
Image:South Park Studios/YouTube

[ed. Classic.]

‘Quishing’ Scams Dupe Millions

QR codes were once a quirky novelty that prompted a fun scan with the phone. Early on, you might have seen a QR code on a museum exhibit and scanned it to learn more about the eating habits of the woolly mammoth or military strategies of Genghis Khan. During the pandemic, QR codes became the default restaurant menu. However, as QR codes became a mainstay in more urgent aspects of American life, from boarding passes to parking payments, hackers have exploited their ubiquity.

“As with many technological advances that start with good intentions, QR codes have increasingly become targets for malicious use. Because they are everywhere — from gas pumps and yard signs to television commercials — they’re simultaneously useful and dangerous,” said Dustin Brewer, senior director of proactive cybersecurity services at BlueVoyant.

Brewer says that attackers exploit these seemingly harmless symbols to trick people into visiting malicious websites or unknowingly share private information, a scam that has become known as “quishing.”

The increasing prevalence of QR code scams prompted a warning from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year about unwanted or unexpected packages showing up with a QR code that when scanned “could take you to a phishing website that steals your personal information, like credit card numbers or usernames and passwords. It could also download malware onto your phone and give hackers access to your device.”

State and local advisories this summer have reached across the U.S., with the New York Department of Transportation and Hawaii Electric warning customers about avoiding QR code scams.

The appeal to cybercriminals lies in the relative ease with which the scam operates: slap a fake QR code sticker on a parking meter or a utility bill payment warning and rely on urgency to do the rest.

“The crooks are relying on you being in a hurry and you needing to do something,” said Gaurav Sharma, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester.

On the rise as traditional phishing fails

Sharma expects QR scams to increase as the use of QR codes spreads. Another reason QR codes have increased in popularity with scammers is that more safeguards have been put into place to tamp down on traditional email phishing campaigns. A study this year from cybersecurity platform KeepNet Labs found that 26 percent of all malicious links are now sent via QR code. According to cybersecurity company, NordVPN, 73% of Americans scan QR codes without verification, and more than 26 million have already been directed to malicious sites.

“The cat and mouse game of security will continue and that people will figure out solutions and the crooks will either figure out a way around or look at other places where the grass is greener,” Sharma said.

Sharma is working to develop a “smart” QR code called a SDMQR (Self-Authenticating Dual-Modulated QR) that has built-in security to prevent scams. But first, he needs buy-in from Google and Microsoft, the companies that build the cameras and control the camera infrastructure. Companies putting their logos into QR codes isn’t a fix because it can cause a false sense of security, and that criminals can usually simply copy the logos, he said.

Some Americans are wary of the increasing reliance on QR codes. [ed. Me!]

“I’m in my 60s and don’t like using QR codes,” said Denise Joyal of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “I definitely worry about security issues. I really don’t like it when one is forced to use a QR code to participate in a promotion with no other way to connect. I don’t use them for entertainment-type information.”

Institutions are also trying to fortify their QR codes against intrusion.

Natalie Piggush, spokeswoman for the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which welcomes over one million visitors a year, said their IT staff began upgrading their QR codes a couple of years ago to protect against what has become an increasingly significant threat.

“At the museum, we use stylized QR codes with our logo and colors as opposed to the standard monochrome codes. We also detail what users can expect to see when scanning one of our QR codes, and we regularly inspect our existing QR codes for tampering or for out-of-place codes,” Piggush said.

Museums are usually less vulnerable than places like train stations or parking lots because scammers are looking to collect cash from people expecting to pay for something. A patron at a museum is less likely to expect to pay, although Sharma said even in those settings, fake QR codes can be deployed to install malware on someone’s phone. (...)

Low investment, high return hacking tactic

A QR code is more dangerous than a traditional phishing email because users typically can’t read or verify the encoded web address. Even though QR codes normally include human-readable text, attackers can modify this text to deceive users into trusting the link and the website it directs to. The best defense against them is to not scan unwanted or unexpected QR codes and look for ones that display the URL address when you scan it.

Brewer says cybercriminals have also been leveraging QR codes to infiltrate critical networks.

“There are also credible reports that nation-state intelligence agencies have used QR codes to compromise messaging accounts of military personnel, sometimes using software like Signal that is also open to consumers,” Brewer said. Nation-state attackers have even used QR codes to distribute remote access trojans (RATs) — a type of malware designed to operate without a device owner’s consent or knowledge — enabling hackers to gain full access to targeted devices and networks.

Still, one of the most dangerous aspects of QR codes is how they are part of the fabric of everyday life, a cyberthreat hiding in plain sight.

“What’s especially concerning is that legitimate flyers, posters, billboards, or official documents can be easily compromised. Attackers can simply print their own QR code and paste it physically or digitally over a genuine one, making it nearly impossible for the average user to detect the deception,” Brewer said.

by Kevin Williams, CNBC |  Read more:
Image: Fongfong2 | Istock | Getty Images
[ed. Not surprised at all. I've avoided using them from the start.]

Yoann Bourgeois: Stair Dance

Yoann Bourgeois: ‘I want to return to the spirit of childhood' (The Guardian)

Image: YouTube

[ed. Don't miss this one - delightful dance art.]

L'affaire Epstein Update: July 23, 2025

[ed. Crisis management 101: deflecting attention/responsibility.]

This morning, President Donald J. Trump told Republican members of Congress that his popularity is rising and that talk about the Epstein files is a distraction from what he insists is the real story: that former president Barack Obama cheated in the 2016 election. Trump insisted the cameramen cut their cameras when he made that accusation, although there was no break in the recording. He told the congressmembers: “[Y]ou should mention that every time they give you a question that's not appropriate, just say, ‘Oh, by the way, Obama cheated on the election.’”

At a press briefing today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed this story, insisting that Democrats led by Obama had tried to sabotage Trump’s first administration and had done “grave material harm to our republic.” She called it “one of the greatest political scandals in American history.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard followed Leavitt to talk about today’s release of a report drafted in 2020 by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee to push back on the idea that Russia preferred for Trump, rather than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, to win the 2016 election.

Despite her claims that it is a damning bombshell, the material in the newly released report in fact does not challenge the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence agencies, the Mueller report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia preferred a Trump presidency to a Clinton presidency and worked to get Trump elected in part by attacking Clinton and spreading lies about her health.

What the report did do was deliver red meat to the MAGA base by spreading the same sorts of rumors about Clinton the Russians spread in 2016.

Gabbard compounded that effort at the White House press conference by reading material in the report as if it were fact, saying that Russia had “high-level [Democratic National Committee] e-mails that detailed evidence of Hillary's ‘psycho emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.’ And that then-secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers,” along with a number of other charges that Clinton had broken the law. Gabbard did not mention that these allegations were in fact identified in the report as material prepared by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Services.

Just to be clear: The director of national intelligence for the United States of America is making allegations against a former U.S. presidential candidate based on material from Russia’s intelligence services.

This seems to be another unforced error, reminding Americans of another story the administration would prefer they forget, since opponents of Gabbard’s nomination for her post noted that she has a long history of repeating Russian propaganda. While Trump seems determined to reach back to the rhetoric that got him elected in 2016, it’s hard to see that as a powerful distraction from the Epstein story, since Americans have now had eight years to contemplate the many times Trump has deferred to Russian president Vladimir Putin and weakened Ukraine’s ability to fight back against Russia’s incursions. And claims about the health of a losing presidential candidate from nine years ago seem pretty weak sauce, especially since today she seems far more stable than Trump.

In any case, the distractions seemed to be for naught, since Sadie Gurman, Annie Linskey, Josh Dawsey, and Alex Leary of the Wall Street Journal dropped a story just after 3:00 this afternoon, reporting that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy informed Trump in May that his name appeared “multiple times” in the Epstein files. They told him they did not plan to release any more documents from the investigation because the files contained both the personal information of victims and child pornography.

Ohio’s David Pepper noted that this timing checks out with the feud between Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who tweeted on June 5: “Time to drop the really big bomb: [Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” Musk followed that tweet with another: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”

While that “sort of felt like old news,” Pepper wrote, “for the White House, that was Musk revealing something that had only recently been confirmed (and that clearly had hopes to bury). So it was a far more brutal tweet than we realized at the time. And the reason why Musk took it down two days later.”

The Department of Justice set off the current firestorm on July 7 when it announced it would not release any more information from the Epstein files. When an ABC News reporter asked Trump on July 15 what Bondi had told Trump about the review, he denied any knowledge that he was in the files. The reporter asked, “specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?” and he responded, “No, no, she's—she's given us just a very quick briefing.” Then he claimed the files were created by Democrats. (...)

Today, under pressure from Democrats, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Maxwell. The Department of Justice also wants to talk to Maxwell, sending Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, to talk with Maxwell’s lawyer, who appears to be his personal friend. Alan Feuer of the New York Times notes the job fell to Blanche after the department fired Maurene Comey, the prosecutor of both the Epstein and Maxwell cases, last week. Maxwell is appealing her conviction, giving her incentive to say what the president wants to hear.

by Heather Cox Richardson, Notes from an American |  Read more:

[ed. Best to lay low, go golfing in Scotland (on the taxpayers dime), and let the lawyers do their job with Maxwell. See also: July 25, 2025; and, Before the Flood (Epsilon Theory):]

***

I am aware that the Department of Justice under Joe Biden was even less interested, if that’s imaginable, in identifying the rapists of more than a thousand young women, many of them children. Why? Because the Biden administration was pathetic and weak. That’s the short answer. The slightly longer answer is this:

• Because there are incredibly wealthy and/or influential men — Dem-coded, GOP-coded, nonpartisan-coded and everything in between-coded, men like Leon Black, Jes Staley, Glenn Dubin, Les Wexner, Bill Gates, and Larry Summers — who we know from publicly available documents and legal filings regularly ‘socialized’ privately with Epstein after his 2009 conviction and engaged in financial transactions with Epstein.
• Because there are so many more load-bearing names of wealth and power found throughout the publicly available Epstein record, including two American Presidents, an Israeli Prime Minister, and the brother of the King of England, and I suspect there are so many more load-bearing names in the sealed FBI records.
• Because I strongly doubt that any of the circumstantial evidence and grainy videos in the FBI records would hold up in a criminal proceeding against any of these incredibly wealthy and/or influential men, especially now that the only source of direct testimony was found dead in his jail cell while in Federal custody.
• Because I am certain that because of the aforementioned Presidents and Prime Minister, both US and Israeli spy agencies were at a minimum aware and in my opinion more likely up to their eyeballs in this covert intelligence operation systematic rape of children, and while circumstantial evidence and a grainy video may not work for a criminal trial, it is absolutely enough to turn a billionaire or a politician into an asset.

Put this together and any administration would want to run away from the Epstein case as fast as they can, because its full release would result in (probably) zero criminal convictions but (almost certainly) the reputational collapse of load-bearing names of wealth and power in multiple nations and (almost certainly) extremely damaging revelations about our government and allied governments. So that’s what Biden did. He ran away from this as fast and as far as he could. To his eternal shame.

The difference for Trump is that he can’t run away from it. He made Epstein a core part of the meaning of his candidacy and his Presidency in a way that was never part of the meaning of Biden’s candidacy and Presidency. Also, of course, the difference for Trump is that one of those load-bearing names of wealth and power that runs throughout the public Epstein record is his own.

There’s only one way for Trump to play this out from here, and it’s exactly what he’s doing: masks off!

All you Trump lieutenants and factotums and mouthpieces and hangers-on, time to toe the line and shut up about Epstein. You don’t like it? Tough. Case closed and we’re moving on. Bigger fish to fry. The ‘base’ is confused and angry? Who cares. Eff ’em.

We Are Winning!

Something has changed in the last few days.

In recent months, we’ve been bombarded with millions of lousy AI songs, idiotic AI videos, and clumsy AI images. Error-filled AI texts are everywhere—from your workplace memos to the books sold on Amazon.com. (...)

All Fake

But something has changed in the last few days.

The garbage hasn’t disappeared. It’s still everywhere, stinking up the joint.

But people are disgusted, and finally pushing back. And they are doing so with such fervor that even the biggest AI companies are now getting nervous and pulling back.

Just consider this surprising headline:

This was stunning news. YouTube is part of the world’s largest AI slop promoter—namely the Google/Alphabet empire. How can they possibly abandon AI garbage? Their bosses are the biggest slopmasters of them all.

After this shocking news reverberated through the creative economy, YouTube started to backtrack. They said that they would not punish every AI video—some can still be monetized.

But even the revised guidelines are still a major blow to AI slop purveyors. YouTube made clear that “creators are required to disclose when their realistic content is altered or synthetic.” That’s a huge win—we finally have a requirement for disclosure, and it came straight from the dark planet Alphabet. [ed. who's motto used to don't be evil]

YouTube also stressed that it opposes “content that is mass-produced or repetitive, which is content viewers often consider spam.” This is just a step away from blocking slop. 

What happened?

Maybe the folks at YouTube are just as disgusted by AI as the rest of us. Or maybe we have shamed them into taking action.

My view is that YouTube is (finally) reading the room. I’ve noted before that YouTube is the only part of the Google empire that actually understands creators and audiences. And (unlike their corporate overseers) they have figured out that AI slop is an embarrassment that will tarnish their brand.

The widespread mockery of the fake AI band Velvet Sundown might have been the turning point. This blew up in the last few days, and left AI promoters reeling.

Velvet Sundown is a non-existent AI band that got a million plays on Spotify. These deceptions have occurred in the past, but something different happened this time.

Music fans started mocking Spotify and its alleged promotion of a stupid slop band. The company was subjected to a level of ridicule and angry denunciation it has never endured before.

Journalists called this out as a hoax or fraud. And many speculated about Spotify’s role in the charade. After all, the company has been caught promoting AI slop in the past.

But this time Spotify got turned into a joke—or even worse. They were linked to a scam so clumsy that everyone was now making fun of them, as well as scrutinizing their policies and practices.

Rick Beato’s response to Velvet Sundown got two million views—so more people were watching takedowns of the band than listening to it. An industry group even demanded disclaimers and regulation.

And the jokes kept coming. People mocked the slop with more slop

That must be painful to endure, even for the billionaire CEO of a streaming platform.

Whatever the reason, Spotify started to buckle. It actually began imposing restrictions on AI.

“Spotify has now pulled several uploads from the AI act and the associated Velvet Sundown,” reported Digital Music News on July 14.

It felt like the tide was now turning in the war against slop AI music.

Dylan Smith, one of the best sources on this subject, clearly thinks so. “Velvet Sundown’s Spotify pulldown,” he writes, “doesn’t exactly bode well for forthcoming AI releases.”

I’m focused here on AI’s destructive impact on culture, but there are other signs that growing AI resistance is now forcing companies to reconsider their bot mania.

“An IBM survey of 2,000 chief executives found three out of four AI projects failed to show a return on investment, a remarkably high failure rate,” reports Andrew Orlowski. “AI agents fail to complete the job successfully about 65 to 70 percent of the time, says a study by Carnegie Mellon University and Salesforce.”

He also shared the results of a devastating test that debunked AI’s status in its favorite field, namely writing code. This study reveals that software developers think they are operating 20% faster with AI, but they’re actually running 19% slower.

Some companies are bringing back human workers because AI can’t deliver positive results. Even AI researchers are now expressing skepticism. And only 30% of AI project leaders can say that their CEOs are happy with AI results.

This is called failure. There’s no other name for it.

And it will get worse. The Gartner Group is now predicting that 40% of AI agent programs will be cancelled before 2027—due to “rising costs, unclear business value and inadequate risk controls.”

by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker |  Read more: 

Images: Bridge Chronicle/YouTube

[ed. I'd say temporary setback. The AI industry will eventually figure something out, they've got too much money and tech beavers involved not to. The product will get better, legislators will be lushly rewarded for IP protection and distribution, some hit movie/song will get made entirely by AI, some important (maybe unusual) event will occur and eventually be traced to it, etc. A million things could happen. So calling this winning seems a little premature. Likely we'll just get used to it over time (like advertising), with authenticity mostly a certification issue (if anyone cares. you have to wonder with taste these days). See also: I'm Sorry... This New Artist Completely Sucks ie. how to create a fake song of your own (with just two sentences) (Beato)]

Cows With Guns

[ed. Moooving.]

How We Stopped Caring About “Selling Out”

I know, deep down in my heart, that Matthew McConaughey is not my friend. Despite my lingering soft spot for his charming Texan accent, his role in my life amounts to nothing more than pixels on a screen. Still, that did little to ease the pang of betrayal I felt after spotting the actor in this commercial for the software company Salesforce, bemoaning a broken arm in the back room of an overcrowded hospital:

 

“If my healthcare provider had AgentForce, the powerful AI from Salesforce, an AI agent would have automatically paired me with the right specialist hours ago,” he mutters, that sweet, sweet Texan drawl camouflaging the dystopian premise of the ad. (Apparently, in America’s dysfunctional hospital system, your odds of healing a broken bone depend on the use of a new AI program.)

I couldn’t help but conjure a word from deep within my psyche, one I hadn’t heard in eons: sellout.

In recent years, our pop culture landscape has become so dominated by athletic-wear brand deals and laxative pill endorsements that it’s hard to remember an alternative. A-listers now seem to treat art like a side hustle, and advertising as their main career. It’s not enough for McConaughey to earn millions by smoldering through the window of a luxury Lincoln SUV, or lounging shirtless for Dolce & Gabbana cologne. He just had to become the creative director for Wild Turkey Bourbon, launch his own “Pantalones Organic Tequila” brand, and now, lend his rugged charisma to AI platforms.

A few decades ago, the very idea of an artist using their platform to shill products was not only considered tacky, but a moral failing—a betrayal of one’s fanbase and a stain on their integrity.

That’s why American stars travelled to Japan to film commercials; the shame of being caught in an advertisement could dissolve years of goodwill they’d built with the public. (Just look at Tommy Lee Jones. Stateside, he’s known for his Oscar-winning gravitas, but overseas, he’s been the face of Suntry canned coffee since 2006.) It’s the whole premise of Lost in Translation: a washed up, ashamed Bill Murray has to hide out in Tokyo just to promote a whiskey brand. Today, he’d proudly name it “Murray Malört” and slap his own face on the bottle. (...)

Celebrities are no longer scared to trade the public’s admiration for a paycheck, because they no longer have to trade. Sure, McConaughey could live indefinitely off the dividends from Interstellar. But if he’ll face zero backlash for shamelessly hawking liquor and AI platforms, why wouldn’t he?

To understand how we lost our dignity, we need to trace the mass commercialization of art—and with it, the disappearance of American counterculture. After all, if everything is for sale, there’s no such thing as a “sellout.” (...)

When Music Television burst into American homes, it ushered in an entirely new era for advertising. The 24-hour TV channel didn’t just kill the radio star—it also birthed the corporate celebrity. With the click of a remote, companies were given access to a direct line of information on what the youth found cool. Soon, advertising execs began to copy the DIY aesthetics of the underground. (...)

Before long, it became difficult to tell where MTV’s music programming ended and their commercial breaks began. Philip B. Dusenberry, an advertising executive for Pepsi-Cola and Apple Computer, admitted that the channel had profoundly shaped young consumers’ habits.

''MTV's impact, first and foremost, is as a teacher,” he told the Times. “It has educated people, particularly young people, to accept lots of information in a short period of time.'' (...)

Not every artist was eager to embrace the era of the endorsement deal. Neil Young fired back in 1988 with This Note’s for You:

“Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi / Ain’t singin’ for Coke / I don’t sing for nobody / Makes me look like a joke.”

MTV banned the video. The blacklist only made Young’s point clearer: the industry had chosen a side, and it wasn’t with the holdouts.

Maybe no one embodied the tension between anti-corporate ideals and mainstream success more than Nirvana. When the band left their small Seattle label Sub Pop to release Nevermind with Geffen Records—one of the “big six” corporate labels at the time—Kurt Cobain acknowledged complaints from the purist faction of his fanbase.

“I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout,” he told Rolling Stone. “I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.”

It’s almost nostalgic to think that Nirvana’s version of “selling out” meant signing to a major record label, instead of naming their fourth album 0% APR Discover Credit Card, the way a band might today.

By the end of the 20th century, the corporate capture of counterculture had entered its final phase. The clearest symbol of that shift came in the year 1999, when promoters tried to resurrect the spirit of Woodstock. Instead, they created Woodstock ‘99, a festival so nakedly commercialized and mismanaged it felt like a parody of the original.

Sponsored by Hot Topic, Pepsi, and AT&T, the event charged hefty ticket prices and quickly descended into chaos. Water supplies dwindled by the first day, and under the blistering, 100-degree heat, vendors charged $4 a bottle—the equivalent of $8 today—to dehydrated, sunburned attendees. Some people reported paying up to $50. Three people died. Rampant sexual assaults and rioting marred the weekend—which was broadcast live on MTV, via pay-per-view, starting at $60 a package.

by Emily Topping, Current Affairs |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

Even Educated Fleas Do It

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim

(with help from Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music – A History by Bob Stanley)

People looking to disparage modern literature will often complain that it has changed from an art to a craft. Gone are the days, they say, when writers considered themselves attuned to some outside force, mere channels for the muse, the antennae of the race. Now our novelists and poets consider themselves dutiful little craftsmen, attending Iowa or Columbia or NYU to learn from masters of the trade and going into the world to hammer out finely wrought but uninspired work, losing the wild vitality that animated the romantics and modernists.

Though this is a vast oversimplification, a half-truth at best, a half-truth is still a some-truth. So it is curious to consider that as literature underwent this shift, popular music was transforming in the opposite direction. While modern pop music is the product of many artisans, these days it’s hard to shake off appraising it with a Romantic sensibility; as the uncontaminated expression of one artistic soul. And this is true on all levels, from bedroom producers and coffeehouse strummers to Taylor Swift, whose records involve dozens of producers, co-writers, and musicians, but who is read by her fans on a diaristic, personal level, as though she were Sylvia Plath.

But there was a time, from around the invention of the Gramophone to the late 1950s, when popular music was understood as crafted, by people like Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter, who would, figuratively if not literally, clock in to an office, roll up their sleeves, and get to work producing songs, most of which were written for musical theatre but which quickly passed into culture via other recordings, often before the shows even closed. This meant that for the first fifty years of pop’s existence, songs were divorced from singers, they were uniquely free-floating and open to interpretation. Hear “Creep” and you think Radiohead, hear “Yesterday” and you think The Beatles, hear “All the Things You Are” and you think – who? Maybe Frank Sinatra, maybe Ella Fitzgerald, maybe John Coltrane, but almost certainly not the forgotten 1939 musical Very Warm for May.

Which brings me to Finishing the Hat, the annotated lyrics, partial autobiography, and opinionated consideration of his predecessors by Stephen Sondheim, the most important theatrical composer and lyricist of the twentieth century’s second half. Like Keith Johnstone’s Impro, which I’ve also written about in these pages, Finishing the Hat is a book seemingly concerning a narrow and oft-maligned branch of theatrical practice that will actually be useful, even revelatory, to anyone involved in any creative pursuit at all. Sondheim says it himself in the indispensable introduction:

The explication of any craft, when articulated by an experienced practitioner, can be not only intriguing but also valuable, no matter what particularity the reader may be attracted to. For example, I don't cook, nor do I want to, but I read cooking columns with intense and explicit interest. The technical details echo those which challenge a songwriter: timing, balance, form, surface versus substance, and all the rest of it. They resonate for me even though I have no desire to braise, parboil or sauté. Similarly, I hope, the specific techniques of lyric-writing will enlighten the cook who reads these pages. Choices, decisions and mistakes in every attempt to make something that wasn't there before are essentially the same, and exploring one set of them, I like to believe, may cast light on another.

It would have been easy to dash off a preface to this book, let the editors arrange the lyrics as they saw fit, and call it a day, but Sondheim, ever the perfectionist, cannot abide the thought. Each set of lyrics is given a long introduction describing the genesis of the production they were written for and then intensely annotated, with ruthless honesty in pointing out what he considers his mistakes, failures, and sloppiness. And interspersed throughout are short essays commentating on his predecessors, the men and women who created the form and canon of American song.

So what is the task of the lyricist, according to Sondheim? It is not the same as the task of the poet, who depends on density and evocation rather than clarity and catchiness (he scorns lyrics by poets like W.H. Auden and Langston Hughes who ventured into theatre, saying they “convey the aura of a royal visit”). Mostly, it’s to get out of your own way. The lyricist must serve both the music and the performer by being easy to sing, comprehensible, and not too overwrought, all while managing to convey the emotional tenor of the song. Despite his work’s reputation for being musically complex and somewhat chilly, on the page Sondheim’s lyrics read as quite simple and straightforward, without a word out of place. And contrary to what the Romantic might assume, he is adamant that attention to craft and detail helps to highlight the emotion of the song rather than smother it, as he writes in his extended defense of the importance of true rhyme (as opposed to near rhyme or slant rhyme).

In fact, pop listeners are suspicious of perfect rhymes, associating neatness with a stifling traditionalism and sloppy rhyming with emotional directness and the defiance of restrictions. [...]The notion that good rhymes and the expression of emotion are contradictory qualities, that neatness equals lifelessness is, to borrow a disapproving phrase from my old counterpoint text, "the refuge of the destitute." Claiming that true rhyme is the enemy of substance is the sustaining excuse of lyricists who are unable to rhyme well with any consistency.

"If the craft gets in the way of the feelings, then I'll take the feelings any day." The point which [the unnamed pop star he is criticizing] overlooks is that the craft is supposed to serve the feeling. A good lyric should not only have something to say but a way of saying it as clearly and forcefully as possible—and that involves rhyming cleanly. A perfect rhyme can make a mediocre line bright and a good one brilliant. A near rhyme only dampens the impact.

Then there’s trying to be too clever, and showing off – a common sin. Here’s the rapture of a critic praising the work of Jerome Kern and his partners Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse (yes, that P.G. Wodehouse), as cited in Bob Stanley’s book Let’s Do It.

Nobody knows what on earth they’ve been bitten by
All I can say is I mean to get lit an’ buy
Orchestra seats for the next one that’s written by
Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern

Not to dig up this long-dead man’s tossed-off verse just to bury it, but recite it and you can see that, despite the superficial cleverness of the rhyme, the third line causes the tongue to trip over itself, the glide from “orchestra” to “seats” is difficult, not to mention the dreadful “next one that’s”. Now compare Cole Porter in the bridge of “Anything Goes,” using the same technique of rhyming the penultimate word while repeating the final one:

The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos

Mad/bad, white/night, guys/prize – these are as elementary and obvious as it gets, but the recitation could not be sprightlier or easier on the tongue, and this, combined with the music, gives Porter his reputation for effortless wit and elegance rather than labored cleverness.

An aside: I should say that – and you won’t believe this but I swear it’s true – I actually have fairly little interest in musical theatre. I haven’t seen most of the shows described in Finishing the Hat and what affection I might have for the form is generally compromised by its cringier qualities. Truth be told, while I’m happy to listen to Chet Baker or Ella Fitzgerald or even croaky old Bob Dylan singing this stuff, my aesthetic sensibilities generally can’t make the leap to the originals, with their sickly-sweet orchestration and affected Broadway Voice. And as for modern examples of the form like Wicked or Hamilton, forget about it. But you’d have to be crazy not to recognize the unbelievable talent that coalesced around composing popular and theatrical song in the first half of the century. It’s like the peak of classic Hollywood, the Elizabethan stage, or the golden era of Looney Tunes – a marriage of artistic sensibilities and urgent commercial needs that kept a coterie of talented craftsmen churning out masterpieces at an accelerated rate.

The funny thing about Sondheim is that, for all his genius, he represents the final closing of the door on the era that I love. Let me try to explain why.

by Henry Begler, A Good Hard Stare |  Read more:

Image: Reginald Marsh, Twenty Cent Movie; Sondheim and Bernstein rehearsing for West Side Story