The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

ONE YEAR. A year ago today I moved into my studio apartment in Ravenswood, embarking on my second term as a Chicago resident. It’s been a fine year filled with music and exploration, jobs I wouldn’t have thought about, and carving out a solo existence as a Man of a Certain Age. I dug my place enough to sign on for a second year and am now considering buying a bed so I’m no longer that same dude sleeping on his couch.

All things considered, it was the right move. As I wrote not too long ago, you can’t go back to who you were but you can go back to where you belong. Chicago is a place I feel most at home. I love the streets, the people, the broken politics, the museums and parks, the music scene, the arts in general. When I go out for a walk I feel in a sacred space where I am supposed to be.

Not just in survival mode but in thriver style, this coming year should be fun.

EVERYONE DANCES. It serves as no surprise at all to see Meta and Amazon and Google, Walmart and Target and McDonald’s, all reversing course when it comes to their DEI initiatives. These are carrion feasting on our dead and decaying self determination and desperate need for ease and convenience so to see that hopping on the barge of performances used to appease the Economy of Virtue was just as performative as a kid with $1,200 phone wearing a t-shirt decrying child labor.

Less obvious and more damning is the same quick discard of these initiatives by corporations who, until recently, lauded them as the Next Big Thing in American Reparations—PBS, NPR, and MSNBC. I’m no fan of Joy Reid but to pull her show and shitcan both black women anchors in the same week feels pretty noxious.

MSNBC finalized its revamped schedule on Monday, promoting progressive anchors Jen Psaki and Symone Sanders-Townsend to primetime while booting its largely non-white weekend lineup of hosts off their namesake shows.

Anchors Jonathan Capehart, Katie Phang, and Ayman Mohyeldin are losing their eponymous weekend shows. Capehart and Mohyeldin will instead be one of multiple hosts of separate editions of The Weekend at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively, while Phang will remain with the network as a legal correspondent with no anchor slot. Its other Miami-based anchor, José Díaz-Balart, will also lose his show, though he will remain as host of NBC’s weekend edition of Nightly News.

Businesses are in the, well, bidness of making money. As disappointing as it is to see a lot of corporations reveal that the dance of virtue in the face of cultural shifts was just that—a jitterbug—the media shouldn’t cave so quickly. I mean, at least pretend to have meant it. Reid is a divisive figure. Her show was a constant drumbeat of racial exclusion and whiteshaming but she was hugely popular and her ratings were solid. Dumping her can only be seen as an ideological reversal or a capitulation to the realities of a backlash to more radical perspectives.

Let’s face it, gang. The Fourth Estate is in serious trouble. Long, LONG gone are the days of Woodward and Bernstein. Speaking of All the President’s Men:

Wednesday morning, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos posted to social media that the newspaper’s opinion section will no longer present a range of views, but instead will be “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” adding that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job. … I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

Oi. Free markets and personal liberties.

NAZI SALUTES. How odd that this is a new hill to die on—the resurgence of notable Trump figurines sporting the ‘Heil Hitler’ arm wave has the usual suspects losing their minds and burning their hair-shirts. “SEE!!!,” they scream. “SEE. They were Nazis all along!!”

Nah. These stiff-armed salutes are not expressions of sincere Nazism but of an oppositional culture like Judd Nelson raising his defiant fist at the end of The Breakfast Club not realizing in the moment that no one gives a shit cuz he’s gonna bang the Prom Queen in a few days.

There is no grand ideology behind the modern Nazi salute. It isn’t a solemn oath to a long-dead führer or the ceremonial reverence of true believers marching in lockstep toward the Fourth Reich. No, the 21st-century variant is something much dumber, much lazier, and somehow much worse: it’s a performative troll, a gesture designed not for allegiance but for attention.

It’s a cheap thrill, a rancid little joke with just enough plausible deniability to keep the sender smug and the audience enraged. Some suburban malcontent, high on Red Bull and boredom, flings his arm skyward at a rally, a football game, or some PTA meeting gone off the rails. He’s not quite a Nazi—not really—but he knows that everyone watching will think he is, and that’s enough to get the blood pumping. The goal isn’t ideological conquest; it’s a reaction. It’s about watching the world foam at the mouth while he leans back, chuckles, and shrugs, “What? Just stretching.”

This is the new fascism: one part irony, one part nihilism, and a generous helping of desperate attention-seeking. It doesn’t have the conviction of the old goose-steppers, but it doesn’t need it. In a world where outrage is currency, the modern right-wing troll isn’t storming the gates of power; he’s farming engagement. He knows the media will amplify his stupidity, the left will howl in predictable agony, and his allies—equally unmoored from meaning—will share it like a trophy kill.

The more one side pretended that innocuous things were harmful, the more the other side pretended that harmful things were innocuous. This putrid attempt at trolling the Left is a carnival of empty gestures from men who long for the comfort of power but lack the spine to fight for it. They don’t read Mein Kampf; they read memes. They don’t study history; they binge-watch podcasts that boil the world down into dopamine-fueled culture war. The salute is just another move in their jagoff repertoire, a low-effort middle finger dressed up as political theater.

The real danger isn’t that these clowns are plotting a Fourth Reich—it’s that their constant shitposting might stumble into something worse. Fascism has never needed discipline to spread; it only needs a critical mass of people who think the whole thing is funny until it isn’t. Today’s ironic Nazis are tomorrow’s useful idiots. The same arm that flies up for the LOLs today might find itself doing it for real once the right demagogue comes along, offering something more intoxicating than online attention.

The clowns might be ridiculous, but the circus they’re building? That’s real. And if we’re not careful, one day, they’ll wake up and realize they actually believe in it.

THE MEMORY OF A GOLDFISH. After eight years — four of them spent in prison for fraud — scammer Billy McFarland still hasn’t given up on Fyre Festival. In fact, he’s working on a second iteration of the infamous disaster that will apparently run from May 30 to June 2 in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. “Fyre 2 is real,” he told Today in a new sit-down interview. “My dream is finally becoming a reality.”

The thing is, there will absolutely be idiots ready to drop thousands of dollars for a chance to enable this grifter to fuck them over. The young can judge the old for dumping cash in the offering plates of televangelists who take the money to buy their mistresses more Botox but they’ll drop the same ducats to worship at their own religious alter: The Church of FOMO.

I can’t wait for the next Netflix doc on this shitshow because can barely remember the schadenfreude-like glee I felt watching these wealthy kids sleep in tents and eating cheese sandwiches.

EMBARRASSING AND DANGEROUS. Watching Trump and his Renfield gang up on Zelensky wasn’t outrageous, it wasn’t surprising, it was par for the course for the Reality TV/Pro-Wrestling President. I’ll bet Putin got a raging hard-on watching it.

PRE-OSCAR VIEWING. I almost always try to catch all the Best Picture nominees before the ceremony. I’ll confess, I’m not much on about artistic awards given the highly subjective nature of art but I like the spectacle and having a list to go over is fun. Of the ten films on that list, here are my thoughts:

Anora (Neon)—watched it, loved it! Yeah, a movie about a prostitute might hit close to home but as I’ve said, it ain’t the fucking, it was the lying. Minus the controversy of other films, great chances it walk away with this year (although Conclave received major love from the SAG Awards.

The Brutalist (A24)—probably the film that will last the longest in our historical perspective. A truly amazing achievement, beautiful, tragic, and maybe just a tad too close to the collected fiction of Ayn Rand to resonate for the top pick. Harder to scale because it’s eighteen hours long. One of the most seriously ambitious films made since The Master.

A Complete Unknown (Searchlight)—still haven’t had the chance to see this. I’ll catch it later on streaming.

Conclave (Focus)—solid mystery, stacked cast. This is an old school film with extraordinary performances but this isn’t a normal Hollywood year. SAG loved it but the Academy wants something edgier.

Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)—amazing. Epic, perfect second to a trilogy. Great performances. Misunderstood by those who haven’t read the damn thing and think that Paul is the hero of the story.

Emilia Pérez (Netflix)—terrible. Man, this is bad. I had to watch it twice to get a sense of exactly how awful this film could be. Talk about an incredibly tone-deaf musical attempt.

I'm Still Here (Sony Classics)—still haven’t seen it but I will.

Nickel Boys (Amazon/MGM)—brilliant but difficult to watch. The filmmakers shot the whole story from a first-person point of view and challenges how we watch movies as well as being a lovely script with amazing performances.

The Substance (Mubi)—spectacular body horror with a very pointed message. The ending is both so disgusting yet so drawn out it felt like I walked out of the theater covered in ooze.

Wicked (Universal)—won’t see it until the second act comes out. Like Dune, the main character turns out to be evil (or wicked) regardless of why so I’d rather watch the whole movie once. Also, a bit like a Marvel film with singing. My niece is crazy about it.

THE BEST PICTURE OSCAR GOES TO: Anora.

THE BEST PICTURE OSCAR SHOULD GO TO: The Brutalist.

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It’s gonna be a busy coupla weeks so get your steps in, eat lots of protein, get a spa day in if that’s your jam, and watch some movies that make you smile. Me? I’m looking forward to finding a KingSpa day in here soon. As always, thank you for reading.