The Ungracious—and Their Demonization of the Past ~ VDH

Never in history has such a mediocre, but self-important and ungracious generation owed so much, and yet expressed so little gratitude to its now dead forebears.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past.

But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.

Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.

Yet 21st century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.

And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?

What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt—much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?

What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car-jackings?

Was our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?

Was it actually moral to discard the “content of our character” and “equal opportunity” principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the “color of our skin” and “equality of result” superior?

Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only six Americans in 10 working? Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I, in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?

Are we proud that most standardized tests of student knowledge and achievement continue to decline, despite record investments in education? 

Do we ever pause to consider that we enjoy our modern standard of living, and security because we were once a meritocracy that quit judging our workforce by tribal affinities and ancient prejudices?

Our generation talks of infrastructure nonstop. But when was the last time it built anything comparable to Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project—much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?

If prior generations were so toxic, why do we continue to take for granted the moral and material world they bequeathed to us, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to our airports, freeways, and power plants? Did we ever defeat anything comparable to the Axis powers or Soviet communism?

We know the symptoms of the current epidemic of hating the past.

One is Orwellian renaming and statue-toppling. Historical revision often responds to puritanical mob frenzies rather than to democratic discussion and votes of relevant elected officials.

Where is the pantheon of woke heroes who will replace the toppled or defaced Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt?

Whose morality and achievement should instead be immortalized? Were the public and private lives of Che Guevara, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Margaret Sanger, and Franklin D. Roosevelt without sin?

Racial fixations tend predictably in one direction. In good Confederate fashion, we lump all individuals who look alike into inexact collectives of “white,” “black,” or “brown”—often to stereotype the supposed evils of so-called white supremacy.

But if we go down that tribalist and simplistic road of caricatured oppressors and oppressed, will future generations tally up each group’s merits and demerits, to adjudicate the roles of millions of individuals in making America worse or better?

What standard would they use to judge our ignorant world of racial stereotyping—proportional representation in Nobel Prizes, philanthropy, scientific breakthroughs, or lasting art, music, and literature versus statistics on homicides, assault, divorce, and illegitimacy? 

Immigration—when legal, diverse, measured, and often meritocratic—has been the great strength of America, as typified by industrious arrivals who chose to abandon their own homeland to risk new lives in a foreign United States.

But if America is so flawed and so irredeemable, why in fiscal year 2021 are nearly 2 million foreigners now crashing its borders—illegally, en masse, and intent on reaching a supposedly racist nation that is purportedly inferior to those they abandon?

According to the ancient brutal bargain, assimilation and integration grant the immigrant as much claim to America’s present and past as the native born. But then shouldn’t the antithesis also be true? Shouldn’t immigrants at least respect those of the past who created the very country they now so eagerly desire, and died in awful places from Valley Forge to Bastogne to preserve?

Never in history has such a mediocre, but self-important and ungracious generation owed so much, and yet expressed so little gratitude, to its now dead forebears. 

X22, And we Know-Dec 30

 

Got an interesting article coming tomorrow to mark the end of this eventful year. Here's tonight's news:

There Is No Radical Right

There is no radical Right. And for Democratic Party voters, there is no mainstream Left, either.

by Sean Ross Callaghan for American Greatness

Firebrand Tucker Carlson is the poster boy for the radical Right. His fans are far outside the mainstream. They’re the “deplorables”: the alt-right, white nationalists, and so on. Pragmatic politicians should pick positions halfway between Tucker Carlson’s and those of his counterpoise on the Left—say, Rachel Maddow. These middling positions—flowers across the land of the moderates; reeds across the still waters of the independents—will win elections. 

That’s what many believe, anyway. But why? The mere existence of polar opposites does not, in fact, imply a virtuous mean. Some people murder a lot of people. Some people murder no people. Murdering some people is not, however, the good or pragmatic thing to do. 

Are Tucker Carlson and his fans extremists? Look at his 2018 book, Ship of Fools, for an answer. Carlson’s first chapter addresses the Democratic Party. He argues that it is deeply out of touch with the middle-class American voter. Americans agree. “[T]he Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either [President] Trump or the [Republicans],” the Washington Post reported from a 2017 Washington Post/ABC News poll. “Two-thirds of Americans think the Democrats are out of touch—including nearly half of Democrats themselves,” the Post (no doubt grudgingly) went on to admit. 

Just this year in Buffalo, New York, where voters are virtually all Democrats, the Democratic Party lost the mayor’s race. First, the incumbent mayor lost the Democratic Party primary to a leftist. But then, he won the backing of the Republican Party, sought write-in votes for the general election, and handily beat the leftist challenger, whom the Democratic Party leadership stood behind. What else might we call this but a demonstration of the accuracy of Carlson’s assessment of the Democratic Party? 

Even on immigration, the issue over which Carlson raises the most ire from the Left, he is no extremist. He makes the case that there should be less immigration. American residents are split. A third think that there should be less, a third more, and a third think that it should stay the same. That’s according to the latest Gallup poll. Yet when asked in the latest Rasmussen poll how many “new immigrants the government should be adding” per year, 74 percent of American citizens likely to vote said a million or fewer, with the majority saying 750,000 or fewer. That’s a smaller number than the little over a million our country has been admitting legally almost every year since 2001, according to official statistics from the Department of Homeland Security. 

Countless more come without permission. And on that, Carlson’s view is well within the mainstream. About half of all voters think that “illegal immigration” is a “critical threat to the vital interests of the United States in the next 10 years.” That’s according to a recent poll by Politico and Morning Consult. A whopping 78 percent call it at least an “important” threat. None of the issues leftist media and leftist politicians are prone to squawk about seem to move voters: not global warming, not race inequality, not even so-called “white supremacy”—even though Joe Biden strangely centered his inaugural address around the subject. 

What about cyber attacks? In the Politico/Morning Consult poll, Americans most often said that cyber attacks threatened America’s vital interests. Joe Biden didn’t even mention cyber attacks in his inaugural address. Politicians don’t talk about that issue much. 

Leaders of both parties ignore the issues that really matter and distract us with the issues that don’t because they are incompetent to do anything about the important things, according to Tucker Carlson. Americans also seem to agree with that. For the last decade and a half, Congress’ approval rating in Gallup polls has rarely topped 30 percent. 

On most issues, the so-called deplorables are deep within the American mainstream. Only 34 percent of Americans favor transsexuals playing on the wrong sports teams, for example; 62 percent oppose. Only 38 percent of Americans who know what it is favor critical race theory; 58 percent disfavor it, a majority strongly—and 55 percent say that teaching it is “bad for America.” 

What about President Trump? Is he proof of an extremist Right? Americans would elect him over Joe Biden in an election held today, according to a recent Harvard-Harris poll. Trump left office with only about 40 percent of voters viewing him favorably. So why would so many who had disfavored the man want him back after less than a year? Because he’s the mayor of Mainstream, USA. That’s why he got elected in the first place and that’s why he can get elected again. 

Yet oddly, leftists claim the people’s mandate in all their ends. They claim it in their quest to overthrow the independent Supreme Court. To do that, they seek to abolish the over 215 year-old requirement in the Senate that most matters pass with supermajority support in order to carry out their plan to pack the Court with leftist judges. 

After using the supermajority threshold to their own advantage 327 times just last Congress, including at least nine times to block major bills, now leftists want a change. Why? Because too many Supreme Court Justices espouse what they say is an extremist judicial philosophy. What is this philosophy? That the Supreme Court should abide by the Constitution instead of making it up to enact laws too unpopular for the democratically elected Congress to pass. It’s the Constitution itself leftists seek to overthrow. And our democracy along with it. That’s insurrection. 

Overwhelmingly, Americans want the Supreme Court and the Senate supermajority threshold protected against leftist attacks, polls show. So, to justify themselves, leftists adopt a strange arithmetic: when Senators Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) or Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) oppose the Left’s plan to abolish the supermajority threshold, “one senator,” they say, thwarts the will of the whole country. 

Populist conservatives could adopt for themselves the Left’s strange arithmetic. After winning just one more Senate seat, Republicans would regain the majority. Then every Republican Senator could vote only as Tucker Carlson would. At least that would better match what the people actually think. 

If you’re a Democratic Party voter and you dislike that proposal, then the time to repudiate the fevered Left is now. There is no radical Right. And for Democratic Party voters, there is no mainstream Left, either. 

Biden Gets His GOAT

Unique distinctions now await the Delaware Democrat.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

Joe Biden had barely escaped from his military-guarded inauguration when people began to wonder if he would become known as the worst U.S. president of all time. Yet by the end of 2021, Biden was clearly in the running for the greatest of all time, but not in the sense he might have hoped. Such an outcome was entirely predictable. 

Joe Biden was never much of a scholar or thinker, otherwise he never would have taken up plagiarism. That started in law school where Joe was a bottom feeder, though he later claimed otherwise. A legal career was not to be and when politics beckoned, Joe came running. Before long, he had his eyes on the prize. In his first run for president in 1988, the Delaware Democrat plagiarized a speech by pro-Soviet British Marxist Neil Kinnock, perhaps the worst choice he could have made. To say the least, that calls Joe’s judgment into question. 

Some Democrats thought Biden packed Kennedy-style cred, but he hung out with segregationists and his idol was Democratic Senate boss Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) a former big shot in the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd voted against African American Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall, and Biden followed the former Ku Klucker in his vote against Clarence Thomas—after Biden conducted what Thomas rightly called a “high-tech lynching.” 

Mark Bowden described Biden as “plenty smart” but “not an intellectual,” which in 2010 was pretty funny. The Delaware Democrat showed no sign that he had read anything of significance, so no surprise that he never wrote or said anything that would make a sub-moron’s mouth twitch. Except perhaps in derision. 

Biden’s achievements in the Senate were hard to find but, perhaps for that very reason, he caught the eye of the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. As vice president, Biden got the China gig and the PRC proved fond of son Hunter. The “big guy” had a piece of the action, but for Democrats that was only “Russian disinformation” and Joe stayed in the race. He claimed to “choose truth over facts” and told African Americans “you ain’t black” if they didn’t support him. Some blacks did support him, for curious reasons. 

Angela Davis, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1979, spent much of her life propping up an all-white Soviet dictatorship and in 1980 and 1984 ran for vice president on the Communist Party USA ticket under white Stalinist Gus Hall. During the 2020 campaign, Davis supported Joe Biden as the candidate “who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racist movement.” 

Joe boasted about deploying the most extensive system of voter fraud in American history, so it makes sense that he didn’t get out much during the campaign. He did tell one autoworker, “You’re full of shit,” instead of answering his question on the Second Amendment. As this revealed, Joe does have a rather nasty side, but on the other hand, he’s good at sniffing out the ladies. Joe wants to “build back better,” but at the end of 2021 embattled Americans have to wonder. 

As parents have noticed, the Biden Junta is all-in with BLM and “1619 Project” indoctrination. Lenin Peace Prize winner Angela Davis got what she wanted, and she had to be pleased with Biden’s choice for comptroller of the currency in the Treasury Department. Moscow State alum Saule Omarova, a Lenin scholar who wrote a sympathetic thesis on Marx, aimed to replicate Soviet banking in America. Fortunately, a few Democrats opposed her. 

In early December, Biden claimed to have met with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the Six-Day War, when “she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez.” Trouble was, Golda Meir was not Prime Minister during the Six Day War, and at the time Joe Biden was still in law school. Like many in government, the delusional Biden seems to live under the Dictatorship of the Subjunctive Mood (DSM). Should that be doubted, consider Biden’s views on his $3.5 trillion spending plan.

“My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” Biden tweeted.  “And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.” As that suggests, the books Biden has notread include Business Math for Dummies, and Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. And remember, Joe is plenty smart; just not an economist or an intellectual. 

Joe Biden inherited a surging economy with high rates of employment for all American workers. For the first time in decades, the nation was self-sufficient in energy. Illegal border crossings had been reduced to a trickle. When Biden took over, terrorists were running for their lives and national adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran were back on their heels. By the end of 2021, that has all changed. 

China, Russia, and Iran are all rattling sabers. Workers are giving up on the job market. America is again energy-dependent and gasoline costs more than $5 a gallon in some areas. The vaunted stimulus failed to stimulate much of anything, and the economy is a joke. Biden’s performance recalls Jimmy Carter, a leading candidate for worst U.S. president of all time. 

While living under the Georgia Democrat’s “misery index” Americans did not crowd into stadiums telling Jimmy to self-stimulate. In 2021, on the other hand, people in stadiums readily denounce Biden in no uncertain terms. Though “not an intellectual,” the Delaware Democrat has doubtless figured out what “Let’s go Brandon,” means.  

The composite character president, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, claimed to lead from behind but it’s hard to see Biden as a leader in any sense. The Delaware Democrat, 79, is an obedient follower of a leftist Junta, and as Angela Davis noted, easily pressured by comrades on the farthest reaches of the Left. 

Given the conditions prevailing when he entered the White House, Joe Biden could be the greatest failure of any politician attempting to lead an industrialized nation. If his current trajectory continues, Biden may wind up as the first national undertaker, the outcome many of his backers seek. 

For this crowd, the United States of America has never been anything more than a hothouse of racist oppression. Therefore, the USA must be demolished to make way for Soviet Amerikhastan, with Saule Omarova heading up the Federal Reserve and maybe Ilhan Omar as defense secretary. Happy New Year everybody!

Media Elites Take Insane Actions to Feed Their COVID Psychosis as the Country Remains Rudderless

Bonchie reporting for RedState

Is Joe Biden for or against more federal intervention regarding COVID-19? Good luck finding an answer to that question. Two days ago, he publicly stated that it was states, not the federal government, that would provide the solutions to the pandemic. Yet, as quickly as he uttered that obvious truth, he and his handlers rushed to pull the statement back. That culminated yesterday evening in the president proposing a federally imposed domestic travel ban for the unvaccinated.

One step forward, two steps back, every single time for the most unqualified presidential administration in modern history.

That lack of leadership has real-world consequences as well. Take the saga of our media betters at liberal networks like CNN and MSNBC. They are now hoarding medical supplies such as tests and N95 masks despite being triple-vaxxed.

As I’ve said before, this kind of thing qualifies as mental illness. These people are delusionally paranoid, driven insane by the hysterical coverage they and their colleagues pump out on a daily basis. There is no science behind the idea of someone who is vaxxed and boosted needing to wear an N95 in any circumstance, much less everywhere they go. There is certainly no reason for someone who is showing no signs of sickness to be stocking up on COVID rapid tests when medical facilities are dealing with shortages.

Yet, these people exist in a twilight zone where the coronavirus lurks behind every corner, ready to kill them if they contract it. Even three doses of sacrosanct vaccines are not enough to pull them back from the brink and firmly back into sanity.

There are leaders and followers in this world. Nicole Wallace and Chris Cillizza are followers, desperately waiting for someone they deem as an authority to tell them it’s acceptable to live again. Unfortunately, the current president is also a follower, and that’s driving much of the psychosis on the left. We don’t have a leader who is willing to stand up and tell his followers that enough is enough and that none of what they are doing is necessary or healthy.

Instead, we have a dementia-riddled old man who wears an N95 on the beach while playing with his replacement dog.

Is anyone looking at that and seeing anything but a projection of weakness and mindless spectacle? Either the vaccines work or they don’t. If they work, then what’s the point of all the mandates? If they don’t, then what’s the point of all the mandates?

That’s an example of the mixed messaging that is continually coming from this White House. And instead of bringing a sense of calm and normalcy back to a society that desperately needs it, Biden’s inability to speak plainly about COVID only drives more into their irrational bubbles. The president has turned the nation he’s supposed to be leading into a rudderless ship. Because to take the wheel would mean accepting some responsibility for the country’s outcomes, and Biden just can’t have that. Better to keep confusing everyone, never taking a firm position and feeding into the musings of the hysterics.

Profiles In Courage: The Five Bravest Journalists Of 2021

For speaking power to truth, or however the saying goes, 

let us offer thanks to these brave heroes.

IMAGE CREDIT

by Richard Cromwell for The Federalist

The average American’s trust in the media is up slightly to only its second lowest number ever recorded. You know what that means? That’s right, it’s been a banner year for speaking truth to power, preventing democracy from dying in darkness, and sexual healing.

The corporate media continues to hit home run after home run, elevating the discourse, and making sure we all know that no matter what our lying eyes tell us, we’re getting a happy ending

As such, it’s difficult to drill down to the most heroic of the heroes 2021 has delivered, but as I’m also something of a hero, I did the work. In doing so, I distilled the heroic number of heroes down to five, though I also encourage you to do the work. We’re all in this together.

Chris Cuomo: Bravery in Covering for Your Brother, Whose Deviant Proclivities You Share

Remember when everyone was lauding the Brothers Cuomo? I realize it might be hard to reach back that far as it was over six months ago, but you can do it if you try. Andrew Cuomo was the governor, the one that was taking Covid seriously while Donald Trump was preoccupied with getting three vaccines developed. While it turns out the vaccines are more preemptive therapeutic than vaccine, they’ve likely prevented a number of deaths, unlike Andrew, who most definitely caused a bunch.

At least he didn’t get a chance to be really friendly with those his policies killed, I guess. Harassment and abuse also seem to run in the family, as heroism sometimes does, at least when we’re talking the absolute best families out there.

Because constitutional scholar Chris, like his brother, is also intrusively friendly. Some would call this assault, but remember, the Cuomos were busy speaking truth to power and without Chris’s coverage, Andrew wouldn’t have been able to bring his nipple rings to the world.

Jake Tapper: Bravery in Being More Partisan Than the Elected Democrats You Interview

Jake Tapper is the king of speaking truth to power, and of heroism. He almost deserves a category of his own, except he doesn’t, because he’s just better at obscuring the fact that he’s more adept at pretending to hide his leanings than his contemporaries.

Whether it’s running interference for artist/author/completely honest renaissance man Hunter Biden or bravely losing most of his audience by pushing fear porn, Tapper, who got his start as a campaign press secretary for Democrat Marjorie Margolies, makes sure to give concepts like “fair” and “balanced” a wide berth when presenting the “news.”

Chris Wallace: Bravery in Admitting You’re Not So Objective After All

Chris Wallace is a true profile in courage. While many of his greatest hits occurred in the run-up to Biden’s coronation or just after, he’s not stopped courageously being a hero in 2021.

Now he’s departing for CNN+, the “much-anticipated streaming subscription service.” While it may not actually be “much anticipated,” particularly since the network already lost its airport contract, at least Wallace is unlikely to have to take any leaves of absence for personal behavior, unlike some people.

Jeffrey Toobin: Bravery in Taking Marvin Gaye Too Literally

When it comes to the modern colloquialism “you do you,” Jeffrey Toobin takes that more seriously than anyone. For this heroic act, he received a leave of absence. During his leave, he heroically continued to get paid while also, presumably, continuing to do himself.

Now he’s back and better than ever, if freaking out about the potential end of state-sanctioned homicide and how it might affect his desire to avoid personal responsibility can be considered better. But, given that he works at CNN, those traits are likely considered positives.

Joy Reid: Bravery in Being Unafraid of Labels Like ‘Sane,’ ‘Rational,’ or ‘Reasonable’

Joy Reid is special. She once bragged about jogging in two masks. She sees cultural appropriation more frequently than Haley Joel Osment once saw dead people. She is beleaguered by time-travelers.

Throughout all this, though, she somehow continues to forge ahead, bravely speaking power to truth, not letting truth get in the way of power, and making sure the object of power is power.

It takes a special skill to heroically win such a battle of heroism, particularly when pitted against other heroic heroes, but Reid is the queen. Is that cisnormative? Probably. Maybe she’s the king. In any case, she’s the victor, which is likely a gendered term, even if we don’t know it yet.

Regardless, it’s been a heroic year, one full of absolute champions who were, and are, willing to not let things like “the Constitution” and “voters” get in the way of power. 2022 is promising to be even more flush with, and in need of, such heroes, such champions, particularly if truth continues to get in the way of power. May we continue to be blessed with such stalwarts. The future of the republic depends on it.

The Insufferable Celebrities of 2021

Brad Slager reporting for RedState

During a pandemic, society was not suffering enough, according to these celebrities.

After a pandemic-plagued 2020, this year was poised to be better, but with numerous setbacks, media hysteria, political opportunism, and any number of other dismaying events, the year became a slog for many. Adding to this dysphoria was a bevy of celebrities who demanded attention. It only made matters worse. 

It was as if the severe lockdowns of the prior year meant the gradual reopening was their opportunity to reclaim whatever relevance they may have possessed. After all, it is their job to be the center of attention, so there was a lot of fawning that needed to be made up for this year. So as they glommed camera-time and logged social media entreaties we had to suffer the re-inflation of their egos.

Here is a list that is by no means exhaustive, nor comprehensive, but it fills the need to recognize these luminaries one last time. Just not in the way they intended.

 

GWYNETH PALTROW — The sometime actress and full-time self-promoter was constantly barraging social media and lifestyle outlets with her pronouncements. The best example is that she celebrated Earth Day on Instagram — with a pic of herself, in a bikini.  We learned of her horror during quarantine when she was reduced to eating bread. At her wellness and lifestyle website, GOOP (yes, seriously), she offered for sale the “Smells Like My Vagina” candle. The only thing more insufferable was the $75 price, before taxes and shipping.

Mitigating Detail: Gwyneth reportedly contracted COVID, and as a result, she suffered brain fog.

Gwyneth’s money-maker candle’

BUBBA WALLACE — Following last year’s contrived noose controversy, the black NASCAR driver received not only support from most of the field but full backing from team owner and NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Wallace rewarded that support by switching teams this season. He won a rain-shortened race this year, thus becoming the second black driver to win on the circuit. He also became insufferable. He raised ire with a comment on the Rittenhouse verdict, falling prey to the claims of racism. Then recently, ESPN featured Wallace in a documentary where he insisted the noose story – debunked by the FBI – was still valid, telling the channel he still did not forgive those who did not support him properly…over a false story.

Mitigating Detail: Immediately after saying Rittenhouse would not have been acquitted if he was black, black defendant Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted for self-defense.

 

SETH ROGEN — He kicked off the year picking a fight with Ted Cruz and was well above his weight class in the battle of wits. He walked away from his best friend and collaborator of 20 years, James Franco, over the sexual assault claims. When a video celebrity complained his car in L.A. had been broken into, Rogen defended the city from claims it is a hellhole — by noting he has had cars broken into 15 times. This summer, he lectured to comedians to stop whining about cancel culture and to own their past bad jokes — the stoner comedian who uses the F-word like a conjunction. When he released an unorthodox and unfunny Christmas comedy he accused those criticizing the animated fictional Santa feature made by a lily-white Canadian of being white supremacists.

Mitigating Detail: He actually called out the hypocrisy at The Emmy Awards for allowing the stars to go without masks.

PETE DAVIDSON — The Saturday Night Live cast member has managed to be a regular news fixture despite being consistently unfunny. For reasons that defy logic, he is a lothario with famous hot women, as the New York Post described: But it is Pete’s busy and chaotic love life that’s drawing even more attention than his acting roles or drug use. Numerous reports were made about how he wants to have his numerous tattoos removed. This detail was highlighted as he inexplicably appears in a SmartWater commercial, talking about the raft of bad decisions he has made in his life. Not a cagey move — choosing a spokesman who tells us why he should not be listened to.

Mitigating Detail: He appeared in “The Suicide Squad,” but that potentially bad move was remedied by his character being dispatched very early.

 

LEBRON JAMES — The NBA’s star has been on a social activist kick the past few years – except in regards to human rights in China. He has been challenged on this topic by the outspoken player Enes Kantor, and James only looks at the Nike millions and pipes down. The company even came out this year and described Nike as, “a brand of China and for China.” He had fans ejected from a game for taunting him. His long-delayed remake of “Space Jam” was released to yawns. For no discernable reason, James felt the need to weigh in on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

Mitigating Detail: James actually had some lucid comments about COVID and vaccines recently.  

AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

JIM CRAMER — In much the same way people tell athletes to just shut up and dribble, Cramer had people delivering a variation about stock quotes. The rabid CNBC host decided to go off on regular rants and tweets about COVID vaccines, even suggesting that government-forced shots were a fine idea. He then suggested opposing him meant you are anti-science. A recent tweet from him showing empty store shelves had the host scorched for not realizing they are clearing space for Valentine’s Day. He followed the Biden White House directive to act as a fluffer on the economy. 

Mitigating Detail: After screeching about mandated vaccines the twice-shot and boosted Cramer tested positive for COVID.

 

CHRISSY TEIGEN — John Legend’s wife has had a turbulent year, due mostly to her obsession with social media, leading to her allegedly canceling then reopening accounts. She was called out for past examples of cyberbullying, and then offered deep apologies. Then more examples of her attacks surfaced. After laying low for a while, she resurfaced again, only to be criticized for a tone-deaf party she held based on the violent show “Squid Game.” Then she was mocked heavily for displaying to the world her eyebrow surgery. 

Mitigating Detail: While she seems remorseful over her activity, it only seems to have dawned on Teigen after being dropped from the Safely cleaning products company she launched, and heaving her line of cookware removed from Bloomingdales, Macy’s, and Target stores.