Following Howard Stern‘s surprise defense of Joe Rogan, the ladies of The View have entered the chat and also agree that the conspiracy peddling podcaster should not be “canceled” by Spotify following a demand by Neil Young. During Wednesday’s episode, The View panel tackled Stern’s remarks that he’s against censorship of any kind even if it involves Rogan, who the shock jock has repeatedly criticized for pushing anti-vaccine misinformation.
“I mean, I agree that Joe Rogan is a horror. A horror,” Joy Behar said. “But the way to counter that speech is with more speech. The way to counter it is with boycotts.”
HOWARD STERN SAYS DON’T CANCEL ROGAN OVER VAX VIEWS: After rock legend Neil Young demanded his music be removed from Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on his podcast, #TheView panel reacts to Stern’s take. https://t.co/HwcLhG1gxmpic.twitter.com/4Aw38rWxmP
Here’s where things get confusing. Unlike Stern, the co-hosts qualified their defense of Rogan by arguing that he shouldn’t be outright canceled by Spotify, but if enough musicians forced the streaming service to take action, that would be fine. Which is odd considering that’s exactly what Young is doing. Via The Wrap:
“Maybe other musicians will follow suit, and that would be legitimate,” Behar said. “It’s not a cancel culture, it’s a consequence culture. And the way we handle it is we don’t buy Spotify. We ignore Spotify.”
At that, Sunny Hostin chimed in, arguing that Spotify should still be “good corporate citizens” and draw some lines on Rogan.
According to Hostin, Rogan shouldn’t be pulled from Spotify, but there should be efforts to rein him in. “How about a disclaimer on his podcast, that says “This is misinformation.’ How about removing some of the podcasts that disseminate this misinformation?’”
The issue became even more convoluted when Behar compared Rogen to Fox News and said he’s protected by the First Amendment, which for the record, does not entitle anyone to a million-dollar podcast from a private company, but by this point, the discussion had gone off the rails.
“You can try to get Fox off your cable vision if you want, or disclaimers, but you can’t just cancel the show,” Behar said. “Because we have the First Amendment.”
Sorry, I got a little ahead of myself there. What I meant to say is:
(The) SUCCESSION (writing team) IS BACK (to write season four).
While accepting the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts International Award for Best Drama Series, creator Jesse Armstrong said, “Today’s actually the very first day of the writing room of season four of Succession. And I don’t think I’d be breaking any great confidentiality if I gave you a sneak peek of all the great ideas we’ve come up with so far on the wall here of the writers’ room.” Wow! Let’s take a look.
I see what you did there, Jesse, you rascal. Anyway, we’re still a long way from Succession being back (the filler text for the season four scripts probably reads “f*ck off” over and over again, which is also my writing process). But season three, along with big-event movies like Dune, The Matrix Resurrections, and The Suicide Squad, helped HBO Max grow “aggressively” in 2021. “We are up 35% over the past 24 months and are almost a full 4 yrs ahead of the original HBO Max + HBO sub projections shared with investors prior to the launch of HBO Max,” WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar tweeted.
Joe Ellicott (via Yahoo!) pleaded guilty to charges of fraud as well as a separate drug crime according to court documents released last week. Ellicott is the long-time friend of Florida tax official Joel Greenberg, the guy who served as Gaetz’s “wingman” in the sex trafficking ring. Greenberg allegedly created fake IDs for minors so that they could engage in commercial sex acts with himself and other men in his orbit. He may have even helped Gaetz traffic a young girl across state lines for that purpose, paying her through a Venmo account in exchange for sex with the Congressman.
Ellicott’s charges stem from other incidents within Greenberg’s tax office where he’s accused of “paying bribes and kickbacks” to officials on Greenberg’s behalf and illegally selling over $5,000 worth of Adderall to an unnamed client. As part of his plea deal, Ellicott has agreed to work with investigators on this case and, possibly, on the investigation into Gaetz’s sex trafficking ring. Last year, The Daily Beast reported that Ellicott knew intimate details about the 17-year-old girl Gaetz and his group paid for sex and had texts showing Greenberg and himself scrambling to cover up the crime.
Ellicott’s attorney has admitted that his client “might have some information” on the Gaetz allegations and has indicated the former shock jock is ready to do whatever he can to avoid a longer prison sentence.
Now might be the time for Matt Gaetz to start getting worried.
Sharing a video of herself showing off a swimsuit, Spears wrote about her time in Vegas, noting that she “had to wear two layers of tights every night,” that she “was never allowed to go to the spa,” and that “they didn’t want me having coffee or tea”:
“When I used to do shows I had to wear two layers of tights every night … the one night I cheated and said NO and didn’t cover my legs, I swear I danced and moved waaay faster with nothing on them … this bathing suit is actually expensive !!! It kind of looks like a costume but it’s cool to see my legs raw ….. People don’t know this but when I did Vegas, I was never allowed to go to the spa … they didn’t want me having coffee or tea so my friends from home would show up going to the spas drinking champagne no lie and I was the loser working and entertaining them at night … doesn’t sound like a good deal to me either !!!! So on this beautiful day here in Maui I’m here to remind them all that being treated like an equal individual doesn’t require much … just RESPECT !!!! Psss are we going to war ???”
This lines up with what Spears said about the residency last summer when she noted, “I was thinking about when I did shows in Vegas … the four years I was there I went out only two times !!!!”
In addition to getting heavily into the NFT game, making $2 million from a collection including action figures and comic books, Eminem has been finding new ways to leverage the popularity of his catalog. From partnering with Peloton to use his music in focused workouts to popping up on Dr. Dre’s upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show, Em’s building a brighter future by trading on his ironclad legacy.
His next endeavor will more directly utilize his older music, as he announces a limited-edition vinyl release of his albums for Interscope’s 30th anniversary. Interscope has been Em’s label home for nearly the entirety of his career, so it’s fitting his dusting off all his Interscope-released albums for this release, and to make it extra special, he’s brought pioneering visual artist Damien Hirst on board to reimagine the covers with his psychedelic designs. Eminem will also be signing these redesigned covers to make each one a little more unique. Meanwhile, Hirst is fresh off designing Drake’s Certified Lover Boy cover, which drew polarized responses from fans, but that’s unlikely to affect demand for his work with Eminem.
The vinyl will be offered on NTWRK beginning January 27 through January 31 — although they’re unlikely to last all that long. The profits from the vinyl sale will be donated to building a school in South Los Angeles. You can check out Hirst’s covers below.
There are a lot of things to be mad about in the year 2022. But for D.A.R.E., you know, the organization who made you talk to cops about smoking while you were still playing with crayons, the most outrageous thing to happen in pop culture is Euphoria.
The anti-drug movement known as D.A.R.E reached out to TMZ to express their concern with the way they portray drug abuse and risky behavior. The organization said:
“Rather than further each parent’s desire to keep their children safe from the potentially horrific consequences of drug abuse and other high-risk behavior, HBO’s television drama, Euphoria, chooses to misguidedly glorify and erroneously depict high school student drug use, addiction, anonymous sex, violence, and other destructive behaviors as common and widespread in today’s world.”
D.A.R.E offers to work with the show in order to send a better message to teens. A rep said, “We would welcome the opportunity for our team, including members of our high school-aged Youth Advocacy Board, to meet with individuals at HBO who are involved with producing Euphoria to present our concerns directly.”
On the one hand, yes, the show portrays a lot of drug usage. On the other hand, it is an HBO show made for young adults who are out of high school therefore can make their own decisions, not teenagers who have bedtimes before the show even airs. If this was happening on, say, Stranger Things, then maybe they would have a solid point.
The last two-plus years of Zach Collins’ life have been filled with surgeries, rehab, and basketball games that are consumed from the bench while wearing street clothes. Collins, then a member of the Portland Trail Blazers, hasn’t played in a game since Aug. 15, 2020 due to injuries to his ankle and foot, and before that, Collins spent months on the sideline with a labrum injury that required surgery, too. Now with the San Antonio Spurs, Dime sat down with Collins to learn about his road back to basketball. You can read Part 1 right here.
I’m interested in that “watching the game from a different perspective” thing you mentioned. What were some of the big things that you learned from that perspective, as a basketball player, as someone who loves the game, and someone who wanted, at some point, to take the stuff that you learned there and apply it to your own game?
I thought it would just be important not to just sit there and think about what you’re going to have for dinner after the game, and being there to clock in. I thought it’d be important to challenge myself to be more vocal as a leader, to ask questions. When you’re playing and you come back to the bench, and your coaches are telling you to do stuff, you don’t really see it from their perspective. And it was fun to hear what they tell them and be able to ask them, “Well, why did you say this,” or, “Oh, now I see why they’re always preaching that.” That was cool, and hopefully, a lot of that stuff stays with me when I come back. I’d like to think that watching all this basketball has made me learn the game a little bit more. You can only learn so much from not playing, but I think I took advantage of it.
The team announces on June 29, 2021 that you had to undergo a third surgery. What led up to that? What led to you making that decision and what all went into that?
The June announcement, when I found that out, that was even bigger of a blow than the December announcement. Because after the December surgery, that rehab was a full, six-month rehab and… it was just a very long rehab. It was a very slow rehab. I wasn’t weight-bearing for a while, I was in a cast at one point. It was a very … I wouldn’t say grueling rehab, it was just very long and very methodical — as it should be, we were trying to be conservative with it.
Just to find out that, after all that time, it still didn’t work, it sucked. It was bad. It was definitely more of an emotional hit than the second announcement of another surgery. So, yeah, it was tough.
It was summertime, and it was a couple weeks after the season ended. We’re still in the gym, we’re still working, and my ankle’s actually feeling really good. I’m going through basketball workouts, and it’s feeling good. And that was another thing too — the ankle felt good, but then we look at the picture, and there’s another fracture there. It’s frustrating, then you’re going through the stages of, like, blaming people. I started blaming the trainers around me, I started blaming the doctor I was working with, I was questioning whether or not I’ll ever even play again, because this damn thing won’t heal. And I was questioning whether or not I did everything I was supposed to in the rehab. Did I not ask enough questions? Did I not get enough sleep? Did I not eat right? Did I not focus enough?
It was tough. At the same time, I felt like I was letting, again, a lot of people down. I felt like I was letting friends and family around me who continue to believe in me and be positive for me so much, I felt like I was letting them down. So it all hit me at once. But the biggest thing was, I was just worried about this thing ever healing. And that was the biggest concern at the time.
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz
You were talking a bit earlier about how you tried to have the sunshine and rainbows mentality, but it weighed on you. When you find out about this third surgery, this one that’s going to hold you out even longer, do you have to take time to convince yourself, again, “Sunshine and rainbows, I’m gonna persevere and push through this?” Or was it exponentially harder to double down on that?
It was hard, bro, because at the same time, I was a free agent that summer. So, you have to pitch to teams that you’re gonna have to sign somebody that you’re going to have to rehab and get healthy. And that was another thing I was worried about, regardless of me showing up and working hard, because at the end of the day, no matter what happens to me, I know I’m going to continue to show up and work and not run from the work. That’s never the hard part.
The contract thing was definitely a worry for me. And luckily, my agent, when I told him that stuff, he said, “Relax, you have nothing to worry about, blah, blah, blah.” But yeah, it was tough to flip that switch. We took some steps, we talked to more people this time, and we just were a little bit more aggressive in how we were going to handle it, who we were talking to, what questions we were asking, and making sure that we are going to turn into a positive. Again, once I flipped that switch of, yeah, it’s a shitty situation, but make the most of it, life could be worse, that was always my thing.
I was going to ask about what goes through your mind with the timing of it, because you were a free agent. But it sounds like … I don’t want to say you were easily convinced that it wasn’t going to be a huge concern or anything like that, but it does sound like the people around you were saying yes, again, this is a shitty situation, but even though you’re a free agent, you don’t have much to worry about it from that regard.
I think everybody was concerned. I think the only person that wasn’t concerned was my agent. He’s great, it’s Mark Bartelstein. I was definitely worried about it because I didn’t know how that worked, and I had heard stories about guys continuing to get hurt, especially as a free agent, and their contracts not being great. I was definitely worried about it, everybody else was worried about it, too, maybe not as much as me. Everybody around me was still positive — Zach, you’ll be fine, don’t worry about it, regardless of the deal, you’ll work your way back. They were all cool in that sense. But I think everybody kind of held their breath for a while, as far as what the deal was going to be, if I was going to sign with a team, or if anybody would even want to bet on me in that sense.
When it came down to it, I realized that I didn’t have to worry as much as I was. The body of work before that, I think, and being able to come from a place like Portland, I think teams appreciated that. It ended up being a really good situation, obviously, that came out of it, but at the time, I was definitely worried.
After spending all of his career with the Trail Blazers up until that point, Collins signed a three-year, $22 million contract with the San Antonio Spurs in free agency.
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz
So if I may ask, the timing of the injury, and knowing that you would need a little bit of time, did any of this impact your decision to go to San Antonio? Or was it just, “That’s the best opportunity for me, all things considered”?
I think San Antonio was just the best opportunity for me. There were a couple options that we had talked about, but San Antonio just stood out amongst all of them. The money situation, it was good, I was pretty happy with it based on what had happened to me the past year or two.
But again, it’s San Antonio, it’s the Spurs, the culture that’s here, you don’t have to be a diehard basketball fan to know that San Antonio is known for winning. To be able to start my career in places like Portland, and then go to San Antonio, I couldn’t ask for much better than that. It was pretty easy for me at that point.
My final question before we start looking forward to getting back to playing: What’s it been like going through the rehab process in a new place? Have you had to change anything up being in San Antonio, or have the Spurs basically said, listen, Zach, you know your body, you know what you’ve been through, keep doing what you’ve been doing?
We tried to not come at it differently, but the Spurs definitely had a plan. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with the rehab, I show up and I learn from them, and they tell me what to do based on data and science and all that, and I follow through. I would definitely give my two cents here and there about, we did this before, we tried this, maybe we don’t do that this time because it went bad, or what is your opinion on this, this seemed to help me a lot last time, and this seemed to not help me. And they were very collaborative. All the time, they told me this is a team effort. We’re not just gonna come in here and tell you what to do every day. Give us your feedback, how you’re feeling.
The one thing that really helped me with San Antonio — and not that Portland didn’t do this — but coming into a team where, their objective is to rehab you and get you out there playing, I didn’t know if they would rush me at all, I didn’t know if they would give me a lot of pressure. But from day one, even before rehab started with them, I never felt any type of pressure. I never felt like they had a hidden agenda as far as when they wanted me back and they weren’t telling me. They, from day one, they said, we’re not in a rush. We want you to be great for the rest of your career, not great in the next four months. It was very, very genuine in that sense. So I was very happy with that.
Grimes‘ new era of music is well underway and on Wednesday, the singer unveiled another single ahead of her upcoming LP Book 1. The brand-new track “Shinigami Eyes” plays up her ethereal genre of music and its accompanying video is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Grimes project, complete with elven ears, vibrant graphics, and futuristic editing.
Directed by BRTHR and written by Grimes herself, the “Shinigami Eyes” is filled with eye-catching visual effects. Sporting a lit-up, scaled costume, Grimes’ video is filled with heavily-edited dance scenes and at one point, she even stabs another actor with a lightsaber. In an Instagram Live session alongside the visual’s release, Grimes noted the entire shoot took place over the course of just 10 hours in a virtual LED production volume, XR Stage. The room allowed visuals to be projected on an LED screen behind the singer while they were shooting live, with a team editing the graphics on-the-spot.
Grimes also sat down for a conversation about her new “Shinigami Eyes” with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, where she talked about her decision to make a double album. “I think I decided that the record needs to be a double album,” she noted. “I made a bunch of stuff and I just want to make a bunch more stuff. There’s just more kind of sonic, conceptual ideas that I think need to get done to make everything make more sense. And we kind of have two album covers and it seems like a waste to throw on one of them away.”
Navalney, which premiered Tuesday night at the Sundance Film Festival, is a must-watch just on its own narrative as a film. It’s tense, yet at times very funny. Alexei Navalny, after being poisoned with a nerve agent by, almost certainly, via a direct order from Putin, figures out who actually carried through the order and … well Navalny prank calls them. At least he tries this tactic after the first couple of calls he makes to his would-be murderers ends in hang-ups after simply introducing himself and asking why they wanted to murder him. (To be fair to his almost assassins, I would also probably just hang up.) But on the last call he strikes gold pretending to be an assistant to a government high up and asking why the plan to killed Navalny failed. And, this time, the man on the other end, hilariously, goes into horrifying detail why, he thinks, the plan to kill Navalny didn’t work. (It came down to, it seems, not enough deadly nerve agent was put on the crotch portion of Navalny’s underwear.)
Earlier, I said Navalny works as its own narrative as a movie. And what I mean by that is, even without the educational aspect of learning the story of Alexei Navalny, it works on its own. But that educational aspect is also very important and is why I watched this documentary in the first place. In that, I assume, I’m like most Americans. I know a little about this situation. Alexei Navalny hates Vladimir Putin and wants Putin ousted from power and Navalny represents a true opposition to Putin that is uniting a lot of Russians and, of course, Putin doesn’t like this and wants Navalny out of the picture. But Daniel Roher‘s film fills in the gaps and gets into the nitty-gritty of who Alexei Navalny is – Navalny himself gets annoyed at some of Roher’s questions about Navalny’s appearances at some nationalist rallies around a decade ago; waving them off by explaining he needs the help of every coalition to defeat Putin – and the details of what happened to him when he was poisoned and how he discovered who his killers were and why he decided to just call them up, which all are pretty crazy.
Nalvany also gets annoyed when Roher keeps asking him for “final messages.” Basically, if you are dead or in jail, what do you want to say to your followers? Nalvany keeps scoffing at these questions. Which, sure, makes some sense. But Roher knows the score. And, filmed in the weeks leading up to Nalvany returning from Germany, where he recovered from the poison, back to Moscow, where he was certainly either going to be killed or arrested … yeah it was probably a good idea to ask Nalvany for some final words, no matter how annoying he thought they were.
But Nalvany‘s best attribute is being able to explain why. Again, I think a good number of Americans remember hearing in 2021 about Nalvany’s plan to return to Russia and, at least for me, not being able to wrap my head around it. Why would he do this? Most people in his position would want to get away. He and his family are safe in Germany, why on Earth would he want to go back to Russia to face certain doom? Nalvany, the film, does a great job of creating a sense of why. It’s not really an explanation, it doesn’t just tell us. But it shows us why. It shows us how so many people are inspired by this man and Nalvany knows he can’t help them from Germany. He knows he’s more important dead or in prison than living a safe life in Germany. It’s hard to convey an outlook like that in words and have it sound reasonable. But by the end of the film, it’s hard not to believe he did the right thing, even though it feels so hopeless, but then we see, with how many people are waiting for him at the airport, how his actions bring so many the feeling of hope. Yes, Nalvany is a must see film.
Former The View co-host Meghan McCain has revealed that her family recently caught COVID, and she’s fuming mad at Joe Biden for failing to live up to his campaign promise of “shutting down the virus” as well as dropping the ball on making at-home testing more available. In McCain’s latest column for the Daily Mail, where she now works after leaving the ABC talk show, she details her struggle with finding rapid tests despite living “15 minutes away from the White House.” McCain also swats down the media characterization of the latest variant as mild. The conservative firebrand claims she’s still experiencing a loss of taste and smell as well as “post-COVID depression.”
As for Biden, McCain blasts the current president for being way too slow to react to the ongoing pandemic. “I didn’t vote for the man (or Trump) but I had higher hopes for a better preparedness for the country and the fight to at least mitigate Covid more than a year into the Biden administration,” McCain writes:
Roughly 446,197 Americans have died of Covid-19 since Biden’s inauguration.
More Americans have died in 2021 of Covid-19 (while Biden has been president) than in 2020 (while Trump was president).
It was easy for the media to — rightfully — blame Trump for the bungling of the early Covid-19 response, but Biden and his feckless, moronic, isolated Titanic of an administration gets the blame now.
McCain, a lifelong Republican, fails to mention her party’s involvement for current conditions outside of admitting Trump’s failures. Conservatives are more likely to be anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and basically, anti-any COVID restrictions whatsoever. McCain also attacks Biden for believing in the “left’s propaganda that America’s greatest days are behind her” and claims that someone will show up and provide better leadership. As for who that person is, McCain never says, but if she’s hoping a Republican would’ve done better on testing, again, she’s ignoring the realities of her own party.
While Omicron cases surged across the country, Governor Ron DeSantis, who is shaping up to be the 2024 GOP candidate for president, let one million rapid tests expire in his state because he wants to erase the “testing psychology” that people should get tested. Conveniently, Meghan never addresses how that ideology would’ve eased her predicament of not being able to find COVID tests.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
