Jeff and I spent most of the second half of February up at Lake Texoma. In the past, taking two weeks off wouldn’t have been that big a deal but two weeks in 2026 is the equivalent of two years in any other news cycle. During our vacation, there were a lot of things that I heard about that I wanted to comment on. This is a culture and entertainment blog and we’re living in a moment of enormous cultural upheaval. In the future, historians will try to figure out the enigma of the 2020s. Who knows? Maybe they’re reading this typo-filled post right now.

Below are a few thoughts.  They are my thoughts so don’t get mad at any other contributor on here if you disagree.

It’s Lent!

I gave up cursing for Lent. Not that I ever really curse to begin with….

What’s funny is that, as I soon as I gave up cursing, I suddenly found myself wanting to curse.

How irrelevant are the Oscars?

In the past, movies were definitely a part of our shared culture. Whenever there was a huge national news story, it was common to hear it compared to a recent film. Often times, movies would be cited as a way to learn about whatever was happening in the world.

But today, in a time of economic uncertainty, no one is talking about Nomadland. In a time when the press claimed to be under attack, no one is recommending Spotlight. With everything that has happened in Iran, no one has mentioned Argo. These were all films that won Best Picture and they are also all films that have left absolutely no cultural footprint.  (Don’t even get me started on Green Book….)

That’s not say the Oscars are totally irrelevant. Oppenheimer definitely left a cultural footprint, though I think that has more to do with Christopher Nolan than anything else. The days of a film being relevant solely because it won an Oscar are pretty much over with.

The Case of James Talarico

I’m not one of those people who feels that Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel should be shamed for having political guests. It seems like every time there’s another controversy about Colbert or Kimmel, a hundred people tweet that Johnny Carson was never overly partisan. That may be true but neither Colbert nor Kimmel are Johnny Carson and, for that matter, neither has really said that they aspired to be him. That Colbert’s show would be political shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Colbert has always been political and, even when he would joke about running for President while hosting The Colbert Report, there was a gleam in his eye that leaves little doubt that he’ll be running for something as soon as he’s done with CBS. As for Kimmel, I do feel that he was more effective when he was a blue collar, anti-establishment goofball as opposed to a partisan commentator. But again, times have changed and the old argument for late night television — that it was the only way that celebrities could advertise their projects and reach the public — has pretty much been negated by social media, YouTube, TikTok, and all the rest. Late night programming on network television is dying but I imagine that would be the case regardless of who hosted.

That said, I have always wondered how both Colbert and Kimmel have managed to avoid the equal time rule. This is the rule that states that, if a show features a candidate in an upcoming election, it also has to give equal time to the candidate’s opponent. (In 2024, when Saturday Night Live featured Kamala Harris in a skit, NBC had to give Donald Trump some time during NASCAR.) Kimmel and especially Colbert have become a part of every up-and-coming Democrat’s itinerary.  Their shows have become a place for politicians to go and pretend to have some sort of personality.

That brings us to James Talarico. Talarico is a youngish and religious state representative who is running in the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in my home state of Texas. Democrats outside of Texas have fallen in love with him and are convinced that Talarico can turn Texas blue because he’s a white guy who quotes the Bible. (A friend of mine in Ireland even contacted me to tell me how much he liked Talarico.) To win the primary, he’s going to have to defeat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who has a national following and who is a very liberal black woman. The Democratic establishment has made it clear that they feel Crockett cannot win a statewide election in Texas, specifically because she is a liberal black woman. For that reason, they’ve been promoting the heck out of James Talarico.  (This is similar to what we saw in 2020, when the DNC essentially ordered people to support MJ Hegar over Royce West.)

On February 16th, Stephen Colbert announced that CBS had forbidden him for airing an interview with James Talarico because the interview might violate the equal time rule. Colbert put the interview on YouTube and Talarico announced that it was “the interview that Donald Trump doesn’t want you to see.” A lot of people took the bait, spent fifteen minutes watching Colbert trying to make the bland Talarico interesting, and then sent money to Talarico’s campaign. Talarico got his moment in the spotlight.

Of course, later it was revealed that all CBS did was inform Colbert that he might be required to interview Jasmine Crockett if the Talarico interview aired on primetime television. The interview was pulled not because of a conspiracy to silence James Talarico but instead because Colbert didn’t want to have Crockett on the show. Crockett is currently leading Talarico in most polls. Talarico is not a particularly interesting person so there was really no point to interviewing him — and only him — beyond to boost him over Crockett.

In the end, all of this has been a reminder of how politics and entertainment, for better or worse, have collided. The DNC has made clear that it prefers Talarico over Crockett. Colbert was on hand to help out. And the equal time rule, which was first proposed by FDR, became a convenient mechanism to make Talarico seem more dangerous than he is.

You may have guessed that I’m not a huge James Talarico fan. It’s true, I’m not. I don’t trust politicians who brag about how religious they are. If you’re that religious, why are you involved in a dirty business like politics? Why are you lying about why your interview got pulled? Despite all of this, most polls still have Crockett winning the Democratic Primary on Tuesday. I’m not a huge Crockett fan but I’m hoping she pulls it off because I don’t know if I can handle 8 months of James Talarico telling me what God wants me to do.

Suddenly, I love hockey!

On February 22nd, I was one of the many people who watched the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team defeat Canada at the Winter Olympics. That, along with the earlier victory of the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team, made me at least temporarily into a hockey fan.

Why was I so happy? Some of that was because both teams were considered to be underdogs to Canada.  America — a country that rest of the world loves to whine about — stepped up and defied the so-called experts.  That’s something we’ve been doing for 250 years.  That a lot of Canadian commentators proved themselves to be very sore losers only made the victory feel all the more sweet.  The insistence that Canada had won despite losing only added luster to those gold medals.

I was also happy because I’m an American. I love this country. I may not always love our government and I may not always be happy with who wins our elections but I love America and I love my fellow Americans. We are 250 years old this year and to me, there was no better symbol of everything that I love about the American spirt than Jack Hughes, hitting the winning goal despite having lost two teeth just an hour or so earlier. This was a victory that America needed.

And you know what? I’m still proud of Jack Hughes. I’m still proud of our two hockey teams. And I’m still thrilled we won the gold. The media has been insisting that the Men’s Hockey Team is controversial because they accepted a phone call from the President, they attended that State of the Union, and none of them have been outspoken when it comes to politics. My personal feeling is that a lot of people were hoping America wouldn’t do well at the Winter Games so that they could write stories about how our poor Olympic performance was a metaphor for our supposed national decline. There are people who simply do not know how to handle the fact that the majority of Americans love their country.

Some day, a movie will be made about this hockey team. A critic will complain that the movie doesn’t address “the controversy.” No one will care.

The Case of John Davidson

Up until last week, I had never heard of John Davidson. The same is true for most Americans. However, he’s a bit of an institution in the UK. John Davidson has Tourette’s Syndrome. Along with the tics that people usually associate with the condition, he also has Coprolalia, which leads to swearing, slurs, socially inappropriate remarks, and derogatory comments, none of which Davidson can control. In 1989, when Davidson was 16, he was the subject of a BBC documentary. He’s appeared in several follow-up documentaries and his life was dramatized in a BAFTA-nominated film called I Swear. In the UK, people have watched him grow up and they know that, in the past, he has come close to suicide as a result of his condition. In America, we’ve never really had a figure like John Davidson and, as such, Tourette’s is still seen as a disorder that is often played for laughs on television and in the movies.

Because I Swear was nominated for several BAFTAS, Davidson attended the ceremony. Because Sinners was also nominated, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were brought on as presenters. While Jordan and Lindo were on stage, Davidson yelled the word, the N-word.

Myself, I had sympathy for both sides of this particular incident. I am not an expert on Tourette’s but I do know enough to know that Davidson cannot control his tics. At the same time, I’ve never had a racial slur shouted at me so I can’t have any idea what it was like for Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan to step out onstage and have that word echo through the theater.

As soon as it happened, a thousand people automatically decided that they were experts on Tourette’s. Jamie Foxx declared that Davidson “meant that.” On twitter, many claimed that Davidson could somehow control his tics or that his use of the word showed that it was what he actually wanted to say, two claims that showed a complete ignorance of the reality of Tourette’s.  There were many — far too many — who claimed that Davidson should never leave his home if he couldn’t control his impulse.  One woman even claimed that Davidson intentionally shouted his slur to try to keep the members of the Academy from voting for Sinners.  (It was remarkable how many of these experts were apparently under the impression that I Swear was also an Oscar nominee, despite the film not having been released in the U.S.)  Meanwhile, Davidson’s defenders did a good job of explaining the reality of Davidson’s condition but too often, they resorted to the popular European argument of “This proves that Americans are all stupid!,” as if a bunch of blowhards on twitter spoke for a nation of 300 million.

Once people finally started to accept that Davidson couldn’t control his tics, they decided that he was still a racist because, while he said he was “mortified,” Davidson did not due the usual public apology thing. Personally, I think Davidson said more than enough. Asking a disabled man to apologize for a disability that he cannot control shows a remarkable lack of grace. As well, our current culture sees apologizing as being a sign of weakness. Any apology that Davidson gave would be followed by demands for another apology. If anything, people’s anger should be with the BBC, who has two hours to edit out the slur but who left it in.

For about a week, people fought about this online. Now, they’re fighting about Iran. As I said, the news cycle moves very quickly. I Swear, the film about Davidson’s life, will be released in America later this year. I love forward to seeing it.

My Poor Ankle

On Saturday, I visited with my niece. She loves ballet so I decided to show her some pointe work. You should understand that it has been years since I last did pointe work. On Sunday, I could barely walk. Fortunately, I woke up feeling better this morning but still, aging is no joke!

Iran So Far Away

I know our readers probably have a lot of different feelings about what’s happening in Iran right now. As I mentioned earlier, no one is talking about Argo, despite the fact that it’s a relatively recent best picture winner about Iran. Personally, I would recommend Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, a film that probably would have been a Best Picture nominee if the Academy actually had the guts that it often claims to have.

One Final Thought

Happy Purim!  Every year, I look forward to attending my best friend Evelyn’s Purim party.  That’s especially true this year.

And those are my thoughts on the culture.