Libs Vow to Never Leave You Alone

Ever

Americans are staying away from liberal media in droves. Except for a handful of blinkered midwits on the literal fringes of the country — let’s call them “elites” who are “coastal” — most people no longer care what’s on network TV or CNN. Why should we watch it anymore, when we already know what they’re going to say? Long gone are the days when a few provincial idiots set the tone for the entire country.

But our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters aren’t giving up without a fight! Here are a couple of examples from the past week.

What have the late-night talkshow hosts been doing during the Hollywood strike?

1. Who cares?

2. But also: This.

Yes, the four current network hosts, and one guy on HBO, just started a podcast together while their shows are in reruns. Why not? Beats sitting around the mansion all day.

In theory, I like the novelty of this. It’s nice to see competitors being friendly. Imagine if David Letterman and Jay Leno had been able to put aside their differences and work on a project together.

On the other hand, imagine if they hadn’t made you laugh in 15-20 years. That’s what this is to me. If I can’t sit through just one of these guys for an hour, why would I want to subject myself to all five at once? And without any writers to give them interesting things to say.

What a bunch of dickheads. But at least the proceeds are going to their striking writers, so they can pay the bills until they can get back to making the same Trump joke over and over.

But wait, there’s more! Those aren’t the only liberal buttholes who refuse to go away and leave us alone.

Remember CNN+? You know, the streaming service that made Quibi look like Netflix. It lasted for 30 glorious days in the spring of 2022, and it was only the first time within the next three months that Brian Stelter would lose a job.

No terrible idea ever really goes away, which is why now this is happening. Brian Steinberg, Variety:

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to unveil a 24/7 live-streamed news service called “CNN Max” on September 27, and indicated the outlet would focus initially on breaking news. Anchors including Jim Acosta, Rahel Solomon, Amara Walker, Fredricka Whitfield and Jim Sciutto have been given assignments, with Sciutto set to lead breaking news in the afternoons…

CNN Max is likely to evolve over time. Among the features the company will try out are ways of alerting Max viewers to breaking news while they are watching something else on the service, whether it be an HBO series, a Turner Classic Movies selection or an old episode of Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

This is great news if you’re one of the approximately 600,000 people who ever, ever watch CNN anymore. For the rest of us, it sounds like being told to eat our vegetables. Except the vegetables are actually dog turds.

It isn’t 1965 anymore. A TV network can break into programming to tell you about some current event they think is important, but a streaming service can’t. The whole point of a streaming service is that you don’t have to watch anything you don’t want to. That’s the agreement they make with you. And if they break that agreement, you can cancel your subscription before they can say, “And now, let’s go to Anderson Cooper.”¹

These people aren’t our gatekeepers anymore, and it really pisses them off. The audience now has the one thing these creeps wish we didn’t: a choice.

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Here’s a new music video I like. And when I say “new,” I mean “literally 10 hours old.”

Royal Blood is just two guys, a drummer and a bassist/singer, but they sure make a hell of a lot of noise.

One weird thing about the video, though? Those posters all over the walls. Something seems really creepy about them. Let’s take another look.

At first glance, they look like actual movie posters. But at second glance, they’re obviously AI-generated. None of those movies actually exist. None of those people actually exist. And the titles are a dead giveaway. These machines can do a lot, but for whatever reason, they still can’t spell.

Here’s what I think happened: The director wanted to show the two band members goofing around as children, so the kids’ clubhouse had to look like it’s set in 1998 or thereabouts. He wanted to fill it with the sort of stuff prepubescent ‘90s kids liked, but he didn’t want to deal with copyright issues, so he faked some retro-looking merch using artificial intelligence. Typed “Mid-’90s action movie posters” into Midjourney or whatever, and then printed them out.

But… isn’t the entertainment industry jumping up and down right now about being replaced by software? Isn’t that exactly what this is?

How would this band like it if somebody released an AI-generated song that sounded just like them? That sort of thing is happening every other day now. And the current Hollywood strike is all about the threat of AI replacing humans.

This kind of stuff is how it starts. There’s no malicious intent. It’s just cheaper and easier to use these tools, rather than hire human beings with the skills to create this sort of stuff. If an automaton can replace a human, sooner or later it will.

Next thing you know, everything we see and hear is some weird, uncanny replica that was spit out by a robot. A superficially familiar fake. Remixed. Regurgitated. Soulless.

Still. Fun video!

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TGIF (Tanya Grapples In Fondue), and thanks for reading my humble newsletter.

My other job is still going well, and I think I’m getting a better feel for what works and what doesn’t. It just takes me a little longer because I’m an old dog trying to learn new tricks. But I’m eager and loyal, and I almost never poop on the rug.

1. But then, it’s 2023 and bad ideas just keep lingering like a bad smell. Can you believe there are people who actually want Trump to be president again? Best two out of three, I guess.