PARTHIAN SHOT: CBS Torches Stephen Colbert After His Exit. “So in axing Colbert, the network turned the whole slot profitable. It sure sounds like CBS has now been unburdened by what has been.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Was Marcel Duchamp’s notorious ‘Fountain’ even his own work?

Collectors clamored for more paintings, but he was obsessed with his “readymades,” of which the most celebrated remains “Fountain.” It was a urinal he reputedly bought from a plumbing suppliers and signed “R. Mutt 1917.” He submitted it to the Society of Independent Artists, which was supposed to show any artist who paid $5 in annual dues and a $1 entry fee. So “Fountain” was duly entered – and rejected. Duchamp had it photographed by Alfred Stieglitz and that was the last anyone saw of it. The original no longer exists. Nevertheless, it has often been recreated for Duchamp exhibitions.

John Strausbaugh floats the interesting theory that “Fountain” was not actually the work of Duchamp at all but of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She was a well known German eccentric, “unhampered by sanity,” who turned up in New York in 1913, aged 39. She worked as a life model at the Art Students League and looked extraordinary: “Her lips were painted black, her face powder was yellow. She wore the top of a coal scuttle for a hat.” She lusted after Duchamp and wrote him a poem – “Marcel, Marcel, I love you like hell, Marcel” – but he would have none of her because she stank like a skunk. But they were good friends, so it is significant that Duchamp wrote to his sister the day after the Independent Artists’ exhibition opened: “One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.” And also that he did not claim “Fountain” as his own until 1934, after the Baroness died.

* * * * * * * * *

[Duchamp died of a heart attack in 1969.] The Village Voice obituary pronounced him “the most influential artist of our time… A mainspring, a wellspring, a genius.” And his importance has, if anything, increased since. Last year Jeff Koons declared that “Duchamp is as relevant today as in his own time” and Ai Weiwei said: “Marcel Duchamp’s influence remains profound – not only today but well into the future.”

Though there are certainly limits to his influence: Money Down The Toilet In Afghanistan. That time when progressive US colonialists tried to enlighten Afghans by teaching them about the glories of Dadaist art. “Cockburn dredges up something so horrible and hilarious that it’s straight out of a Monty Python sketch. In it, the American occupiers attempt to enlighten a group of Afghan women by showing them Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal-as-museum-piece, and telling them that it’s important art. Cockburn says watch to the 31-second point and see the moment when America failed in Afghanistan:”

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Henry Nowak and the savagery of state wokeness: The police’s vile treatment of young Henry exposes the cruelty and injustice of state ‘anti-racism’.

This is what it looks like when a regime is at war with its own indigenous population.

HAPPY SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL FROM AMERICA’S SOCIALISTS!

In any other era, Hollywood would have made hay this summer. Networks could have broadcast concerts and events, fireworks. Maybe a few blockbuster history movies. It’s all about the narrative. Trump is president so life must suck. If concert held, people might think Trump not…

— Bookshelf Q. Battler (@bookshelfbattle) May 30, 2026

Tweet concludes, “Trump is president so life must suck. If concert held, people might think Trump not bad.”

Democrats in 1976 knew they had to muster some patriotic spirit to celebrate the Bicentennial. It helped that Gerald Ford was the last liberal go-along to get-along Republican president to date (unless you were worked on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, where he was viewed as the Antichrist).

More on that from a post I wrote last week:  The Past is a Foreign Country; They Sell Cola Differently There.

Coca-Cola commercial from 1976

The past is a foreign country pic.twitter.com/TnVHQiF6Ah

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 21, 2026

The greatest threat to freedom is not any particular politician, party, or ideology.

It is precedent.

Most people evaluate political power by asking whether they trust the people currently exercising it. They ask whether a policy serves a good purpose, whether an emergency is real, or whether the current administration is acting responsibly.

What they rarely ask is what happens after.

Every new power creates a precedent.

Every precedent becomes a justification.

Every justification becomes a new baseline.

The power itself remains long after the original reason for creating it has been forgotten.

This is why limiting the power of the state is so important.

There are politicians who oppose communism, socialism, nationalism, theocracy, and other forms of authoritarianism. But opposing one form of authoritarianism is not the same as defending freedom.

Too often, politicians expand government power to fight an enemy they dislike while ignoring the precedent they are creating. They assume the same powers will never be used against their own values, their own supporters, or their own causes.

History suggests otherwise.

The pendulum always swings.

One administration expands executive authority. The next inherits it.

One government normalizes emergency powers. The next uses them for a different emergency.

One faction creates new censorship mechanisms. The next decides what should be censored.

One movement expands economic controls. The next determines whose lives will be controlled.

The justification changes.

The precedent remains.

That is how free societies gradually construct the machinery that future authoritarians inherit.

If communism ever becomes popular enough, it will not need to build a powerful state from scratch. The precedents will already exist.

The same is true of any authoritarian movement.

They inherit what previous generations normalized.

They use what previous generations justified.

They expand what previous generations tolerated.

The danger is not merely today's abuse of power.

The danger is tomorrow's legal use of the powers you created today.

Freedom survives only when government is restricted to the protection of individual rights. Once government is granted authority beyond that function, every expansion becomes a precedent, and every precedent becomes an invitation.

The question is not whether your side can be trusted with power.

The question is whether your enemies should ever be allowed to inherit it.