Infowars founder and conspiracist jack-of-all-trades Alex Jones is finally on trial to determine how much he must pay the
families of ten victims of the Sandy Hook shooting after a judge last year found him liable for defamationfor calling the attack a hoax.
Now we’re talking.
The entire promise and rationale of a Biden presidency was not, I hate to break it to my lefty friends, a total transformation of the country in favor of green energy and “social justice.” It was a return to constitutional normalcy, and the kind of legislative deal-making that offers gradual progress on the biggest challenges of the day.
We wanted a better rollout of vaccines, competent economic management of the bust-and-boom cycle of the pandemic, progress on the urgent question of climate change, and responsibility again on the world stage. Biden gets a B on the first, a C- on the second, a B+ on climate, and a solid B in foreign policy.
You’re reading “America This Week,” a recap of U.S. news that launched in English, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, and German last Friday. Today we say Hola to readers in Spanish as well, while taking the first steps into what’s historically the slowest month in American politics.
Children are seen at a protest against the supreme court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade inAnti-abortion zealots want to legalize murderEvolve or die.
Every time a tech company capitulates to its audience and rolls back the future it’s a mistake. The best example being Netflix saying it was going to become a streaming company and the hoi polloi bitching that they still needed to rent DVDs by mail. Who’d want to stream movies? Well, despite Netflix backtracking, saying it was going to split into two companies, the streaming giant was right all along. Rent any DVDs by mail recently? Never mind streaming decimating linear television while ushering in the true golden age of television, now the superior art form. The boob tube? It’s not even a tube anymore!
And Disney and HBO ultimately woke up, after getting over their short term profit mania of licensing their shows to others.
In TFW No GF, Alex Moyer’s brilliant documentary about disaffected young American men, a pensive loner in a ski hat named Viddy describes how some turn violent. Hardcore internet subcultures like 4Chan, he says, attract some by way of the “trolling aspect,” but others are serious:
They think, okay, what do people hate most? And then they just become that, because it gets the reaction every time.
Then some of them forget that they’re playing the character. Next thing you know, they end up at a place like Charlottesville.
Record high temperatures and extreme weather events are being recorded around the world. Photograph: Ian Logan/Getty ImagesThe publication of Bill McGuire’s latest book, Hothouse Earth, could not be more timely. Appearing in the shops this week, it will be perused by sweltering customers who have just endured record high temperatures across the UK and now face the prospect of weeks of drought to add to their discomfort.
Mr fantasy … Neil Gaiman. Photograph: Chris Buck/The GuardianGraphic novel The Sandman made its author into an icon. He talks about his big break in comics, the genre’s long struggle for respectability and the lavish Netflix adaptation that’s bringing his gothic hero to lif
Neil Gaiman is relieved to be home. Dressed all in black, unruly black hair shot through with silver, he sits comfortably on a couch at his house in Woodstock, New York. “I left here in August 2019, figuring I’d be back by the end of March,” he says. “I didn’t actually get back till April 2022. Just in time to go off on a tour of America.” Nobody was completely unaffected by the pandemic, but not even Covid could derail the big-budget Netflix adaptation of Gaiman’s seminal 90s comic series The Sandman, due next month.
Over the weekend I saw the much-hyped Top Gun: Maverick. Two hours of bad-ass plane battles. It wasn’t art. It didn’t mean anything. And it was awesome. I left the theater genuinely sad to be back in 2022 America.
In a gutsy call, considering how high-tech the movie’s effects and roller-coaster direction were, the film opened with a scruffy-looking Tom Cruise — his “real life” costume — looking like he’d eaten a canister of happy pills as he delivered a 50s-style apostrophic intro to the long-awaited sequel. Sounding like a proud Dad, he told audiences to buckle up for “real Gs” and the “most immersive and authentic film experience” they could muster.
Cut to: the most unapologetically corny script ever, but one that works all the way. It’s every film cliché in history! It’s “Washed up hero gets one last chance at glory” meets “Fulfilling a dying friend’s last request” meets “Hand over your gun and badge!” (it’s a movie about pilots, so the actual line is, “You’re grounded!”) meets “Slow-running man impossibly escapes fusillade of helicopter-fired automatic weapons” meets “Boy and girl ride off into the sunset.”
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