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During a game in England, fans threw things on to the pitch and threw punches at the police.
Meg James, reporting for The Los Angeles Times (News+ link):
The two companies announced the blockbuster deal early Friday morning. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters as Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone.
Fred Flintstone?
“Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement. “By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies — from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends — with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better.”
Not sure Squid Game belongs in the same comparison as Citizen Kane, but the Warners library is incredibly deep. Stanley Kubrick’s post-2001: A Space Odyssey films were all for Warner Bros.
Netflix’s cash and stock transaction is valued at about $27.75 per Warner Bros. Discovery share. Netflix also agreed to take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the deal’s value to $82.7 billion. [...] Warner’s cable channels, including CNN, TNT and HGTV, are not included in the deal. They will form a new publicly traded company, Discovery Global, in mid-2026.
I don’t know if this deal makes sense for Netflix, but Netflix has earned my trust. Netflix is a product-first company. They care about the quality of their content, their software, their service, and their brand. If you care about the Warner/HBO legacy, an acquisition by Netflix is a much, much better outcome than if David Ellison had bought it to merge with Paramount.
The LA Times article goes on to cite concerns from the movie theater industry, based on Netflix’s historic antipathy toward theatrical releases for its films. Netflix is promising to keep Warner Bros.’s film studio a separate operation, maintaining the studio’s current support for theatrical releases. I hope they do. I grew up loving going to the movies. I still enjoy it, but the truth is I go far less often as the years go on. Movie theaters shouldn’t be a protected class of business just because there’s so much affection and nostalgia for them. If they continue sliding into irrelevance, so be it. That’s how disruption, progress, and competition work.
Anne Salmond, who recently called for thinkers to engage with open rather than closed minds—arguing that "other cultures may have insights that elude us" —was recently called out by Dane Giraud for the very same reason: specifically, for ignoring the insights of Enlightenment culture. The only position that actively suppresses inquiry, pointed out Giraud, is her own. "What is more antithetical to free thought'" he asked rhetorically, "than declaring whole categories of knowledge off-limits to criticism because they belong to the wrong culture."
Salmond, of course, has form. Her own favourite cultural whipping person is Western. Her writing, said Michael King of her 2003 book Two Worlds, gives "a strong impression that, rather than attempting to represent both cultures dispassionately, Salmond [is] straining to case every feature of Māori behaviour in a favourable light and many features of European in an unfavourable one.”
But in doing so, she fails to learn there either. Reviewing Salmond's work, historian and former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere reckons Salmond's work "turns our tipuna into cardboard caricatures." Rather than learning deeply from other cultures, he says, she offers only a "one-dimensional characterisation." For her and several other Pākeha historians, he says, "Māori [are] invariably depicted as deeply spiritual beings who only ever acted on the basis of high-minded principles. Pākehā, on the other hand, [are] mostly unprincipled rogues or fools whose behaviour was always motivated by racial arrogance, greed and self-interest."
Such is the accusation, it will be remembered, Salmond throws at the Pākehas of the Free Speech Union. It apparently never gets old.
It begins to look as if Salmond is unable to learn much from either of the Two Worlds of which she writes.
What also never gets old is re-reading the demolition of Salmond's work by the grand old man of New Zealand history Peter Munz, who destroyed her whole platform of post-modern posturing and epistemic duplicity in his 1994 review of her first major book. In her work she is guilty, he says, of not just "disinformation, but of actual misrepresentation."
Salmond claims to have been "guided by 'Heidegger, Foucault, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, [Mary] Hesse, Derrida, Eco and others.' ... [a] list [that] reads like a Who's Who in Postmodernity ... all of whom would have helped to confirm her in her prejudices and methods."
What she does not discuss ... [is] whether [these thinkers] are sound guides. It appears that she is under the impression that these postmodern thinkers have solved the problem as to how different systems of knowledge or belief are related or, rather, not related to one another. Could it be that she is simply ignorant of the fact that there is much modern thought which rejects these facile, politically motivated doctrines of Foucault and Derrida, of Eco and Ricoeur? If she takes her stand with these people, she ought, to say the least, have produced some evidence that she has also examined the counter-arguments and, perhaps, found them wanting. But as things stand, she appears simply as an uncritical camp-follower — which is a poor show for a professional anthropologist.
Furthermore,
the explanations of the differences in systems of knowledge that these thinkers provide should not, I trust, be considered final. In the pre-postmodern world of good sense, belief or knowledge systems are distinguished according to whether they are true or false. ... What is really at issue and what she is trying hard to disguise by her way of constructing the past, is the brute reality of cultural evolution. ...
[I]nstead of jumping on the postmodern bandwagon which is nothing more than a belated overreaction to the Victorian age, it is time scholars like Salmond caught up with modern thought and revised their view of evolution.
The limitations of the early mind are the result of isolation and of absence of the kind of contact which would expose beliefs and taboos to criticism. Societies and cultures, which for demographic and political reasons are exposed to contact with others, are more likely to question their own traditions, change their taboos and develop eventually a more universal system of knowledge — that is, beliefs which are more than validations or legitimizations of their own parochial cultures. In a nutshell, this is the heart of cultural evolution.
An evolution — a progress — only made possible by being open to new ideas. Says Munz:
Darwin or no Darwin, we are all descended from black Eve, and every single culture which has ever existed is a departure from the culture of black Eve, whoever she was. [I am using the notion 'black Eve' metaphorically to indicate that all existing cultures are descended or transmuted from a common stock.] ...
I would suggest ... that one can rank the distance of societies from black Eve according to their exclusiveness. The earliest societies were totally exclusive and would not admit people other than those who belonged to their descent group. Next came societies which would admit people through marriage; and at the other end of the scale, farthest removed from black Eve, there are societies which potentially include anybody who wants to be included. Ranking in these terms is completely neutral and value-free. All it says is that while one cannot 'become' a Maori, one can 'become' a New Zealander, and that, for that reason, there is a structural difference between these two kinds of societies, and that that difference defines the distance of these societies from black Eve and that the actually exclusive structures are earlier than the potentially inclusive structures. Since this criterion is neutral, there can be no question of 'progress', only of progression. ...
[W]hatever criteria one likes to choose, the distances from black Eve can be ascertained because evolution, including cultural evolution, is a reality of life.
If one wants to understand the coming together of two different cultures, as Salmond does, one must take into account, as Salmond does not, the different distances they have moved away from the earlier forms. Salmond has explicitly rejected evolution. 'Contemporary literature on traditional thought is still bedevilled", she writes, 'with implicit sometimes explicit evolutionism.' If she had her way, it would soon cease to be so bedevilled! I suppose she rejects cultural evolution in the face of overwhelming evidence because by making all cultures more or less equal she thinks she can heal wounds and pour oil on troubled waters and be 'politically correct'. But in the long run, there is no point in burying one's head in the sand: a distortion of reality brings about its own nemesis even if one does not quite yet know what shape that nemesis will take.
Can one say 'Ouch!'?
Jimmy Kimmel isn’t a broadcast TV anchor or CNN talking head.
He just pretends to be one via “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The propagandist uses his ABC perch to share “news” with his hard-Left flock. Remember, Kimmel said of his former Republican viewers, “not good riddance but riddance.”
Lately, he out-Colberts Stephen Colbert, leaning into his anti-MAGA shtick following his one-week suspension.
Jimmy Kimmel just called Trump supporters “domestic terrorists” while saying Antifa doesn’t exist and there is “no chaos” in Portland, Chicago, or Los Angeles.
This guy is a professional LIAR.pic.twitter.com/sDfkHFtmWV
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 16, 2025
That ABC time-out has had serious legs for all the wrong reasons.
For those who forget the imbroglio, Kimmel suggested Charlie Kirk’s murderer was part of MAGA Nation days after the conservative leader’s assassination. It was a lie, full stop, and the blowback proved so potent that ABC temporarily took him off the air.
Kimmel returned, alternately weeping and ducking responsibility for his actions. The media, to no one’s surprise, refused to hold him accountable or correct the record.
So, between Kimmel’s cowardice and media malfeasance, many Americans didn’t learn that Kirk’s alleged killer was a furry-loving Leftist. The following is from the Right-leaning Media Research Center.
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- In a text conversation obtained by investigators, he plainly stated his motive: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
- Multiple family members publicly confirmed his left-wing tendencies. Robinson’s mother remarked that over the past year, her son had started to “lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans rights-oriented.”
- Another family member recalled him expressing outright hatred of conservatives.
- Robinson inscribed his bullet casings with unambiguously far-left messages, despite the bad-faith insistence by corporate journalists that they were somehow inscrutable. The slogans included, “Hey, fascist, catch,” and “Bella Ciao” (the name of a left-wing song popular among antifa radicals).
Now, we’re seeing the results of that obfuscation.
The MRC polled likely voters with a seemingly simple question – what was the ideology behind the alleged Kirk shooter?
The results are shocking.
Just 24 percent of respondents shared the correct answer. The suspect is on the Left.
The elitist media had a successful lap around the world of propaganda after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Only 24% of adult voters correctly identify Charlie Kirk’s killer as a left-wing psycho. @willcain cites new MRC poll on @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/atd409bKq9
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) December 5, 2025
That’s a depressing low number, unless you believe truth-averse influencers who have peddled any number of fact-free theories in recent weeks.
Should Kimmel feel guilty about this? Yes. And, while it’s too late to make a difference, he’d be doing the right thing if he addressed the matter anew from his ABC showcase.
We don’t need another faux apology, just an admission that he did the wrong thing. Twice. And that he won’t do it again, even if the lie might hurt Trump.
Are the poll results entirely Kimmel’s fault? No. The Legacy Media should take a bow here. As should Candace Owens, a toxic figure in our Body Politic, whose unhinged theories have made matters worse.
Yet a professional broadcaster like Kimmel should understand that having a powerful megaphone, one attached to a legacy broadcast channel, comes with some responsibility.
The post Kimmel Effect? People Still Think MAGA Killed Charlie Kirk appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.
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