Month: July 2021

Josh Hawley has been one of the break-out stars of the Republican party this year, and for good reason: He’s one of the chief lawmakers accused of helping foment the failed insurrection of Jan. 6. Since then he’s followed a predictable trajectory: acting as though he did nothing wrong and occasionally saying something that gets him mocked on social media. On Friday he had a doozy.

The Missouri Senator joined many in his party in loudly denouncing Critical Race Theory, which seeks to teach students that America has a racist history that continues to impact its present. Republicans have countered that by, basically, offering a whitewashed version of the nation’s past. But Hawley went one step further: He proposed legislation.

“The Left wants to teach our kids that America is systemically racist. That’s false and it’s meant to divide,” Hawley wrote on Twitter. “It’s time to replace lies with the truth! America is a great nation of good people – and our kids should be proud of that. That’s why I’m introducing the Love America Act.”

Hawley was short on details, but his bill would “require schools that get federal tax dollars to teach kids the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution & Bill of Rights, and the Pledge.” (Schools already do this, incidentally.) He added, “No more critical race theory. No more hate. Let’s teach our kids what unites us as Americans – what we love together. Let’s teach them the truth.”

Should Hawley go through with this act — which, again, forces schools to teach things…they already teach — it would be one of dozens of bills targeting CRT. But social media inevitably shot it down.

Some mocked its name (and, of course, Hawley himself).

Some thought it sounded suspiciously like what is done in less democratic nations.

Others proposed similar-but-different acts.

Celebrities weren’t having it either.

And some reminded Hawley that a “Love America Act” is rich from someone who goaded on Trump supporters who stormed a federal building.

The United States men’s basketball team lost its first Olympic game since 2004 on Sunday morning. Despite taking an eight-point lead into the locker room at the half, the U.S. was ice cold out of the break, opening a door for the French to pick up an 83-76 win that will invariably bring up questions about whether the Americans will be able to pull off a four-peat.

There were already some doubts about what this team could accomplish based on their struggles in the lead-up to the tournament, but the thought was that by the time the lights got bright, the United States — which did not have three of its players due to them participating in the NBA Finals during those pre-Olympic exhibitions — would elevate its game to another level. Instead, a 28-point outing by Evan Fournier, along with big games from Rudy Gobert and Nando de Colo, took down Team USA.

In the aftermath, the team found itself in an unusual position: At the butt of a whole bunch of jokes.

Plenty of folks had the same idea: It’s officially time for USA Basketball coach Gregg Popovich to call up the most accomplished player in program history.

On the flip side, some people pointed out that while France has gobs of NBA talent right now, the most exciting young player in the world will play for the team some day.

The Americans should be able to get back on track against an Iran team ranked 23rd in the world during their second game in group play, but if not, it’s safe to say basketball fans will be even more ruthless.

It turns out the myriad of issues the United States men’s basketball team displayed during its tune-up for the Tokyo Olympics were not solved by three players flying over immediately after playing in the NBA Finals. The Americans took to the hardwood for their tournament opener on Sunday against France, and by the time the dust settled, Team USA suffered a 83-76 loss, its first Olympic defeat since the infamous 2004 Games.

The Americans looked like they were going to cruise to a win, taking a 45-37 lead into the half. But then, the team’s offense fell apart out of the break. The team scored 11 total points in the third quarter, while France, powered by the backcourt of Evan Fournier and Nando de Colo, got into quite the rhythm. By the time the frame ended, the French found themselves with a 62-56 lead, setting up a nervy fourth quarter for the three-time defending gold medalists.

Thanks to Jrue Holiday, the United States got off to a roaring start in the final frame. The team started off the fourth on a 13-1 run, with Holiday scoring 12 of those points, to go ahead, 69-63. Despite just joining the team after winning a championship with the Milwaukee Bucks, Holiday provided some much-needed energy and a calming presence on the ball.

But the lead was fleeting. After Devin Booker made a pair of free throws with 3:41 left to push things to seven points, the American offense hit the wall. They did not make another shot from the field, with their only points coming on a pair of Damian Lillard free throws with 10 seconds left.

France, meanwhile, found another gear. Their grouping of NBA players (Fournier, Rudy Gobert, Nic Batum) and an international legend in de Colo scratched and clawed their way back, with Batum hitting a go-ahead three with a tick under a minute left off of a hustle play by former Boston Celtics forward Guerschon Yabusele.

The United States had a chance to win, though, but just could not get past its team-wide offensive slump. This was best exemplified with one late possession, as Zach LaVine, Kevin Durant, and Holiday all bricked threes. They were good looks — the Durant one, in particular, is the kind of shot we’ve seen him hit a billion times — but the iron was unkind.

Fournier was magnificent, going for 28 points. Gobert pitched in 14 points and nine rebounds, while de Colo scored 13 with five rebounds, five assists, and two steals for the French. On the other side of the coin, Holiday’s 18 points, seven rebounds, and three assists stood out, with Bam Adebayo (12 points, 10 rebounds), Damian Lillard (11 points on 3-for-10 shooting), and a foul-plagued Durant (10 points) joining him in double-figures. As a team, the Americans went 25-for-69 (36.2 percent) from the field and 10-for-32 (31.3 percent) from three.

The United States will look to get back on track against Iran on Wednesday.

Skateboarding made its debut at the Olympics on Sunday in Tokyo (Saturday here stateside) in a moment that few ever thought would happen. Tony Hawk was on hand for the start of the Street competition, and couldn’t help but notice the surreal atmosphere that was skate culture being on display at the Olympic Games.

However, it couldn’t truly be a skateboarding event until some unfortunate soul became the first to take a groin shot off a rail. Peru’s Angelo Caro Narvaez was the poor individual who had to take that leap into Olympic history by taking an absolute direct shot to the nuts on Sunday morning in Tokyo.

There are so many unfortunate things about this video. For one, he was so close to landing a nice grind down the first rail, but gets his weight just a little too far back and sees the board pop up on him as he’s careening towards another rail. In his head, he’s thinking he has to bail so he doesn’t hurt himself on said rail, but somehow he goes backwards into it, with the rail splitting his legs and his momentum being stopped by the worst possible body part.

He would be, ultimately, alright, but it is at least a little bit of Olympic history for him, if there’s any consolation to be found in such a painful moment. As any good skateboarder would, he was right back on his board for his next run and absolutely ripped.

The Olympics are, as an entity, fraught with problems and there are many legitimate reasons people have soured on them overall, but there are still moments during the Games that are absolutely tremendous and a reminder of why we love sports.

On Saturday night (Sunday in Tokyo), we got one of those moments in the men’s 400 meter freestyle when Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia won his country’s fourth ever swimming medal, and first in the 400 meter event, with a gold medal swim from lane 8, out-touching Jack McLoughlin of Australia by 0.16 seconds.

The celebration in the pool is incredible from Hafnaoui and, if there is a positive to the lack of fans in the arena, it is being able to hear that celebration and just how much it means to him to pull off the stunning upset. Afterwards, Hafnaoui spoke with NBC’s Michelle Tafoya about the win and seemed as surprised as anyone, but the emotion and excitement as he talked about it being a “dream come true” is, truly, what makes the Olympics great.

As they noted on the broadcast, Hafnaoui was the last man to make it into the field for the final and for him to win the gold is truly stunning. It is the type of moment that shows the best of the Olympics, as he picks up Tunisia’s second medal of the Games — Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi earned a silver in Taekwondo — and gave one of the great underdog moments this Olympics will see.

Team USA is used to being at the top of the medal count in the Olympics, but a day into the proceedings in Tokyo they had yet to pick one up as the first events like Rifle, Taekwondo, and Fencing handed out medals with China atop the count after Day 1.

However, as Day 2 got going the Americans got on the board thanks to a sport they have long excelled at as the first of the swimming finals began. The first two USA medals came from the men’s 400 meter individual medley, where Chase Kalisz followed up his silver medal performance in Rio in 2016 with a dominant gold medal winning effort in Tokyo, with Jay Litherland charging his way in the final 25 meters to earn silver, just ahead of Australia’s Brendan Smith.

It was the ideal start for what USA Swimming hoped would be a very big night and big Games in the pool. Kalisz will also compete in the 200m medley next week — starting on Wednesday with his first heat — while Litherland’s Olympics are done as he goes a perfect 1-for-1 in medals with a silver in his lone event. Three other swimming events will hand out medals on Sunday, with the men’s 400m freestyle (where Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui stunned with a gold medal swim and American Kieran Smith won bronze), women’s 400m IM, and women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay all having finals in the primetime slate stateside.

The Atlanta Dream are about to be on their third head coach of this season. After Nicki Collen took the Baylor job during training camp, Mike Petersen took over in an interim role, but on Saturday, the team announced that he would be stepping down during the midseason Olympic break due to health reasons.

“For health reasons that the grind of the WNBA season will not allow me to adequately address, I have decided to step down from my coaching duties with the Dream,” Petersen said. “I want to thank the Atlanta Dream players, staff and ownership for the opportunity to be part of an amazing organization.”

The Dream are currently 10th in the WNBA at 6-13, losing their last four before the break while dealing with some internal turmoil that saw second-year guard Chennedy Carter get suspended indefinitely for an altercation that took place on the bench during a timeout in a loss to the Aces. Taking over for Petersen will be assistant coach Darius Taylor, who joined the team in 2017 from South Carolina’s staff.

Hopefully Petersen is able to take care of his health by stepping down and no longer being in the day-to-day of coaching, while Taylor will look to put his imprint on a talented Dream team that will need to come together in the second half to make a playoff push.

The Walking Dead universe held multiple virtual San Diego Comic-Con panels on Saturday. In the process, fans received a look at Fear The Walking Dead‘s apparent non-time jump setting, and the universe’s flagship series released a Season 11A trailer, which previews the first eight episodes of the season. Expect two more same-sized chunks to follow for a total of twenty-four episodes as showrunner Angela Kang brings this series home in 2022 with the universe continuing forward.

Clearly, there’s a lot happening in the above trailer, which follows up on some first-look images (that showed a leather-free Negan). Carol’s seen preparing to leave “to fight ghosts,” which appears to be a nod toward her future spinoff with Daryl Dixon. Maggie’s shown taking off a Whisperer mask, and there’s some lead-up to confrontation with The Reapers. This teasing is going down while The Walking Dead: Origins limited series bridges some gaps exclusively on AMC+.

During the SDCC panels, The Walking Dead also announced that Laila Robins will join the cast as Pamela Milton with Josh Hamilton also joining as Lance Hornby; and Margot Bingham and Michael James Shaw were previously announced as new cast additions.

AMC’s The Walking Dead returns on August 22, although although viewers can get a head start on Season 11A episodes beginning on August 15. And there’s much more cooking in this franchise, despite the flagship series coming to a close. Fear the Walking Dead returns on October 17 (for Season 7), and The Walking Dead: World Beyond returns on October 3 (for Season 2). There’s the aforementioned Carol-Daryl spinoff in the future, too. Also, those Rick Grimes movies are still happening… at some point!

Fear The Walking Dead, for months, didn’t shy away from speculation that a possible time jump was in store for this spinoff, and maybe that could have been a way to tie some of The Walking Dead universe threads together. The universe’s architect, Scott Gimple, previously danced around the subject, telling Entertainment Weekly (regarding a time jump), “That is something we’re playing around with for the future, and time is actually going to be played around with on this season of Fear the Walking Dead.”

Well, the way that the season ended could have conceivably set up such a jump by sealing many characters into an underground-bunker setting, where presumably, they’d need to stay for years following a detonated nuke in Texas. Yet the way that the action played out seemed to rule out a logical set up to a time jump occurring. And during Saturday’s virtual San Diego Comic-Con panel, a few first look clips at Season 7 showed how four of the characters are riding out the nuclear fallout, and things don’t seem too time-jumpy, at least not in what we’re seeing here.

Above, Morgan awakens in a bunker to the sound of crying baby Morgan, who was obviously present in the Season 6 finale and is still (no mystery here!) a baby. Then Grace (who recently lost her own baby) heads out into the outside world, possibly to track down some food for the hungry child. She’s seen wearing a protective suit and a respirator and gazes out into the immediate wasteland before walking past an incapacitated walker on the ground. All of this would lead one to believe that, nope, there’s no leap into the future here.

In the below clip, John Dorie, Sr. and June appear in their own post-nuke confines, where they stumble upon the room where serial-killing Teddy took his victims. Yikes.

AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead will premiere Season 7 on October 17.

We’re down to just a couple days until Billie Eilish releases her second full-length project, Happier Than Ever, and by now it’s pretty clear that the album is a huge pivot from her initial sound. In a recent interview with Vevo, the thoughtful superstar gave some insight as to why that shift happened. She said that after the success of her first album, and all the anxiety that she felt while writing her debut, the goal with this album was to make something that felt timeless.

“I wanted to make a very timeless record,” she explained. “That wasn’t just timeless in terms of what other people thought, but really just timeless for myself. I gathered a lot of inspiration from a lot of older artists that I grew up loving. Mostly Julie London, and a lot of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee — and then, the songs on the album are all over the place. Very versatile, and different to one another, but also very cohesive. Which is a big goal for me.”

Well, considering pop music has been a lot more influenced by the trap beats of Atlanta than the jazz standards of Sinatra as late, it might be Billie who causes a shift in culture with this release. We’ll have to wait and see the reaction when the full record drops next week. Check out Billie’s full interview with Vevo above.