ROY’S 2026 OSCAR PREDICTIONS (FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY)

OK cats and kitties it’s OSCAR DAY! Feel the excitement! 

I've been making Oscar predictions for years, peppered with what I used to call “sucker bets” until I realized I was using that term incorrectly. What I meant was, I sometimes get so sure that one specific nominee is perfectly suited to winning that I convince myself this feeling for the justice of their claim is actually a premonition of victory. That is, I play hunches.

That has worked out for me a few times, most spectacularly with Green Book in 2019*. My strong hunch was that Roma was too much more like a museum installation than a movie (at the time, that is -- by 2021, the similarly offbeat Nomadland was able to win) and Green Book was the kind of slop the dopes like (see also CODA). 

But usually my long shots don’t work out. In Oscar as in baseball, the sabermetricians have won out -- when I look at the vast resources employed by GoldDerby or other such award handicapping sites, and how influenced they are by the Bill James method and, of course, the crunches of Kalshi and Polymarket, I feel like some old sweaty, suspenders-wearing gump out of Damon Runyon at the sports desk saying a team is “due” and “has heart” while the crisp sabermetricians run their algos and put bets in DraftKings. 

This year I’m leaning in the direction of conventional wisdom, mainly based on GoldDerby and such like. But you know what? I am more an antique Runyon than a James. If it’s not fun and a little fanciful, I don’t see the point. So I do have a few, let us say, outside choices, marked here with a 🍭 icon. Keep that in mind and remember: For entertainment purposes only! 

(My reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams.)

* year award was presented, not when movie debuted

🍭 BEST PICTURE: Sinners. I buy the theory that it’s between this and One Battle After Another. Best reason to lean Sinners’ way is the magic of the premise. That other recent black visionary film Get Out had it too, but eight years ago the voters weren’t ready (plus Peele’s application of the magic tends creepy-negative, something else voters usually avoid). This year they’re ready.

BEST ACTOR: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners. God did I want to put Ethan Hawke here!  I still have a strong feeling that he may upset and I may put down a side bet on him. But the odds are too great. Aside from Hawke, the contenders here are subtle -- that is, the performances of Moura and DiCaprio are vivid but not showy, and while Chalamet is energetic let’s just say he doesn’t show a lot of range (except from his previous more languid characterizations). Jordan’s twins are distinct in the way Jeremy Irons’ were in Dead Ringers; no giving one of them a higher voice or anything like that, just different responses to the same trauma. And he makes the sale.

BEST ACTRESS: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet. I have no Ethan Hawke premonitions for Rose Byrne, though her performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You had not only sensitivity and full character immersion but also nerve -- showing that woman’s collapse without flashy thespic signposts, just letting us see what she would do, was bold and paid off. But Buckley was excellent and she got the tears. I missed Kate Hudson, to my shame; Reinsve and Stone were excellent. But this isn’t their year.

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Delroy Lindo, Sinners. From the moment Stack, Smoke, and Sammie came upon Delta Slim with his harmonica I reveled in this old pro’s performance and I know I’m not the only one. As I mentioned in my Sinners review, the story he tells after he and the guys drive through a chain gang containing some old friends is, beat by beat, an acting lesson. All honor to the other nominees, including Sean Penn -- who is favored here, but whose expressionistic performance, while well-suited to the movie, seems to me like the kind of thing that would turns some voters off.

🍭 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another. Sort of a long shot; she was favored until Amy Madigan moved up, and was possibly pushed down by some controversy over the character’s allegedly stereotypical roots. Me? I think that’s like saying Aunt Gladys relies on stereotypes of Wiccans. Until this moment I was predicting Madigan -- yeah, I know what I just said about Sean Penn, but from what little I saw of Weapons (sorry I hate child-peril movies) Aunt Gladys doesn’t seem that out of key with the other characters -- just more interesting. All the other nominees are great but subtle, but Madigan and Taylor punched through the screen and I think Taylor’s presence in a top nominee film gets the win.

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Ryan Coogler, Sinners.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another.

No need to make this complicated. Ryan Coogler will be around a long time.

🍭 BEST CASTING: Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme. Fun new category! Sinners is favored but of all these nominees I was most captivated by the widely varied human beings who turned up in The Secret Agent -- it was like Jodorowsky meets Costa-Gavras. But the Academy voters probably know about and approve of the real-life non-actor machers Safdie seamlessly fit into his movie. 

🍭BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners. Cotton fields, rickety main street, deep dark woods, smoky club, all o’ercast with magic. The favored OBAA image-making is pretty cool, too, but with a brighter, flatter California palate, and I think Arkapaw has the edge in lushness. 

🍭 BEST EDITING: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme. Car go fast means = good editing? Bullitt/F1! Tricky storytelling = good editing? The Social Network/OBBA! But as with winners like Whiplash and Dunkirk, voters dig cutting that really feels kinetic. 

BEST SCORE: Ludwig Goransson, Sinners. Category is stacked, but the scene in which Annie and Smoke meet after years and renegotiate their union, with the blues sounds turning into something more like symphonic, did it for me. (Don’t be surprised if Max Richter’s Hamnet score leaps in, though; maybe people will attribute their tears to it.)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Frankenstein.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Kate Hawley, Frankenstein.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel, and Cliona Furey, Frankenstein

Outside chance for another win for Ruth E. Carter, the Edith Head of black cinema. But del Toro movies sure look designed.

BEST SONG: “Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters. Duh.

🍭 BEST SOUND: Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas and Yasmina Praderas, Sirat. I have an explanation! Everyone says F1 and maybe in the theater the cars sounded great but at home I didn’t feel it; plus I couldn’t make out what Javier Bardem was saying half the time and I know that was not me. As with Sound of Metal in 2019, part of idea of Sirat (I am told) is the sound. Voters love when they can recognize that.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: Sentimental Value. Nearly always, a Best Picture nomination plus a Best Director nomination makes this inevitable. 

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Florence Miailhe and Ron Dyens, Butterfly.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: Lee Knight and James Dean, A Friend of Dorothy.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones, All the Empty Rooms.

I’ve actually seen 13 of these 15 nominees, which is probably the most dangerous ground on which to predict. They're all good! I wavered on a few: Two People Exchanging Saliva is very much in the mode of the 2024 Live Short winner I Am Not a Robot (this category is very rich this year), and I loved The Girl Who Cried Pearls. But I agree with the oddsmakers on these. And maybe they'll bring cuddly old Miriam Margolyes out on stage for it. (BTW, see Perfectly a Strangeness if you can. Such an eerie little thing.)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Love them 3-D living cartoon cat people! 

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Geeta Gandbhir, Alisa Payne, Nikon Kwantu and Sam Bisbee, The Perfect Neighbor. Haven’t seen a one, but my wife loved it. 

There you go, folks! Don’t lose all your money! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: I'D LIKE TO THANK THE LITTLE PEOPLE EDITION.

Look, they can't all be winners.

One of the neat things about human beings is, we can be suffering through horrific political and societal collapse and still find fun and excitement in stupid diversions. For a lot of you it's sports -- for me it's the Oscars, which gets me to watch a bunch of movies at the beginning of the year and, when the awards are imminent (they're on Sunday night), puzzle over possible winners. I'll have those predictions by Sunday afternoon -- meantime if you wish you can pursue my reviews of the ten Best Picture nominees:  Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams. 

Also our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie this week is related; it's one of our Fun Friday, audience-participation things -- what are some of your favorite awards show moments? (BTW there are a lot of All Best Picture Winners Ranked lists out there, but let us never forget that Gone With The Wind is the absolute worst.)

OK, coffee break over, everyone back on your heads! The week in America was the absolute worst too. In Operation Epstein Fury, we killed a bunch of Iranians of all ages and some of our own servicemembers while Tubby yammered whatever contradictory ideas about what's going on went sloshing through his brain, his mouthpiece Drunky Pete snarled at the press for not printing his preferred bullshit, and Israel threw in extra war crimes for shits and giggles. Oh, and Tubby threw Putin a piece of the action. Trumpwar: Like regular war only stupider.

American conservatives are doing their part for the war effort by intensifying their usual demands that all Muslims be thrown out of the U.S., with Somehow Senator Tommy Tuberville taking the lead. (Why NPR calls Tuberville's ravings bigotry-in-quotes rather than just plain bigotry is beyond me -- haha, kidding, we all know why.) Some, like Erick Erickson, try for a Daily Double by blaming some crimes by Muslim-Americans on Democrats because they refuse to fund the DHS/ICE death machine, though it's hard to see how their ham-fisted immigrant hunts would have stopped these citizens and legally-present residents anyway -- I know their goons attack those people too, but it's a hell of a roundabout way of get at them; I guess their hope is that Tubby will just authorize outright racial pogroms, so that white people will be the ones committing all the crimes in America instead of just most of them.   

Oh, and here's your fuckface of the week, Nathan Cavanaugh, the smug little DOGE shit who fucked up the National Endowment for the Humanities for "DEI" content that, his recently released testimony in a lawsuit reveals, he identified simply by the presence of buzzwords offensive to Tubby ("because it explicitly says LGBTQ"). He said under examination that he had been made qualified to judge such material, despite no relevant experience, by "reading books and being well-informed outside of traditional experience"; under further questioning about the books that so educated him, Cavanaugh admits "there were no books." So it's fair to assume he just listened to Joe Rogan and took part in typical Young Republican edgelord chats until Elon Musk recruited him for his wrecking crew. Nuremberg II is gonna be lit. 

Oh, yeah, there's another ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, about AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood; it starts with a rundown of some of my more measured commentary on the LLM scam, which is fortunate because by the time I got to addressing the insane video they sorta-created to promote this slop-hologram my rage was incandescent and not necessarily coherent. But see what you can make of it! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IRAQ BUT DUMBER EDITION.

Doo-wop is such a deep well.

It’s Drunky Pete Warfighter time! It’s a weird war for sure, done Trump style -- no warning, no reason, and especially no serious attempt to get the public onside. I mean they’re claiming this is not a new war (or not a war at all, depending on who’s phumphering), merely Trump ending Iran’s 47-year war on us, which is so dumb only hardcore neocons can even pretend to believe it, and putting out social media video with cut-ups from war and superhero movies that even the dumbest MAGA will find insulting to their intelligence. 

Meanwhile, as we saw with his war on fishing boats, Trump bombs combatants and non-combatants alike  and declares this a great success every day, amplified by the ballwashers of the Prestige Press (e.g., “As Iran war rages, Israel seizes chance to finish the job against Hezbollah”). 

God knows you’ve seen plenty about how nuts this is, but if you want more and better, have I got a two-parter for you at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN! It’s about the similarities and differences between this stupid war and the 2003 stupid war in Iraq. Here’s Part One and Part Two. These are FREE to non-subscribers; subscribers get this kind of thing five days a week for low, low prices, just saying.

Lastly, I want to point out that Trump already showed he wants to fuck with accurate economic measures by firing people who make sure they’re accurate, so as bad as the new jobs report is? You know it’s worse. And it’s not gonna get better until we get these guys out, so check your registration, volunteer as a poll-watcher, and tell your electeds not to pass the SAVE Act or any other Trump election overturn scheme.   

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TOO GRIM TO BE FUNNY & VICE VERSA EDITION.

Ry Cooder doesn't get enough love.

If the actions of this administration weren’t so harmful to actual human beings, I could enjoy them as living satires of human folly. Kansas demanding trans people turn over their drivers’ licenses? (Now driving while trans is even more dangerous than driving while black -- and if you’re tempted to say, “well, they’re not going to kill trans drivers,” maybe check the eliminationist rhetoric conservatives have mainstreamed.) And forbidding U.S. military officers to attend Ivy League schools because they might be taught “social justice activism”? (Because once exposed to woke education -- which to a ruff tuff creampuff like Hegseth is synonymous with indoctrination, because in his conception of society no one would ever become a teacher except to bend the young to their will -- even the most tough-minded serviceman helplessly succumbs and turns hippie.)

At least we can enjoy the Ellisons’ acquisition, via the Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery,  of CNN. True, the rightwing scheme of taking over and vandalizing media entities like CBS News as vengeance for years of perceived “liberal media” persecution is disgusting, but look on the bright side: Those entities were shit anyway. Every time I come across CNN in a waiting room or rest home, it’s bawling some LCD bullshit as if trying to get the attention of hyperactive monkeys. True, whatever capacity these institutions had for investigative journalism will be wrecked, but let’s face it, their will to make good use of those resources was already fading with their ratings anyway; the real talent is all in independent media now, and the opportunity to put some muscle behind it and make a real difference is there waiting for some smart, civic-minded rich guy to pick it up -- now, if only there were more (or any) smart, civic-minded rich guys out there.

This week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie (yes, just one, this particular indie journo enterprise needs paid subscribers, and can’t be giving it away like a soft-hearted country gal in the big city) is a post-mortem not so much on Tuesday’s State of the Union as on the very idea of paying attention to Tubby’s cheeseball spectacles in the first place. I mean, the guy who’s planning to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a wrestling match is not going to show us anything except how low the country has sunk, and we know, brother, we know. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A TARIFF-IC REVERSAL EDITION.

A little spring for your step.

Tubby got defied by the usually compliant U.S. Supreme Court on tariffs, which just goes to show that in this country a Republican president can do all kinds of evil shit but he better not fuck with the shareholders’ money, because that’s more serious than death.

Being who and what he is, Trump says he’s gonna find a loophole, probably based on some stray comments by Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence with Roberts’ opinion. (It makes sense that Gorsuch, trying very hard to play the reasonable non-joiner in his filing, winds up giving Trump something he can at least pretend supports his actions.) 

It’s worth remembering that Trump’s not in there to help anyone but himself. Just because he lets billionaires continue to get off tax- and consequence-free doesn’t mean he’s actively trying to help them. He has a nostalgic feeling for Reagan-era oligarchy, and considers the rich endlessly fucking the poor to be the natural order of things, but that just means keeping the status quo -- he still needles the oligarchs for tributes and donations, and as he gets more senile and belligerent I expect we’ll see him make them carry him around in a chair like Idi Amin. 

But the tariffs only matter to him as an idée fixe -- something he’s convinced will be a big success because he’s a genius and everything he does is brilliant. He doesn’t care if the SCOTUS ruling makes his pursuit of alternate justifications even more painful for his subjects, who already chafe at the high prices the now-outlawed tariffs caused. If they squawk, that just means more people to tell “fuck you” as he steers the ship of state into an iceberg. 

The ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN free issues for this week predate the tariff ruling but touch upon the logic I discuss: There’s this one about the vandal mentality of Trump and his crew -- how positive results for his supporters are not anywhere near as important as punishment of his, and the conservative movement’s, longtime enemies -- and here’s another, a little more optimistic, on how that nihilism is affecting a lot of voters who were heretofore happy to go along with the gag.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BIG FASH AND SMALL VICTORIES EDITION.

Eatin' up suckers as if I was Pac-Man.

 Even though they lie like they breathe and are still fucking shit up in Minneapolis, the administration’s announcement that DHS is doing a “drawdown” there is meaningful because it shows that even these id monsters realize they’ve run into heavy weather. Their whole  M.O. has been smash-and-grab from the DOGE rampage to now; letting the peons see that they don’t give a shit what they think is part of the terrorization process. So when they get stopped, as opposed to just running out of things to destroy, it’s noteworthy -- it means they actually have been made to give a shit, which means their terrorism has not yet reached escape velocity, and can be effectively challenged.

Again, don’t get it twisted -- they’re still building concentration camps (which the Prestige Press still has trouble calling by their proper name, despite the obvious intended purpose of spending billions of dollars on giant prisons for brown and black people). But those camps are getting pushback even in towns not associated with “resistance” -- and by pushback I mean some towns are actually getting  those camps stopped. Yeah, they can always go somewhere else, but it's meaningful whenever someone says "no" and they can't just walk over them; their carte blanche is tarnished.

And voters are picking up on it -- which is clearly why Gallup said, hey, guess we ought to stop doing Presidential approval polling because huggermugger rutabaga synergy etc. This cowardice is discussed in this week’s first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, as is the misbehavior of  Tubby’s moll Bondi at a Congressional hearing -- which shows, among other things, that at least a few of his gang are still out there making a show of impunity; I think it’s meant to rally and reassure such adherents as they still have, because normies have all but given up on them.

Our remaining REBID freebie is a little dramatic scene, such as some of you enjoy, about how Tubby intends to fight back against growing disapproval of his anti-immigrant policies. Worth a try, anyway.

I’ll just add that The Atlantic, like the New Yorker and other classy mags before them, has shipped a Rod Dreher puff piece, taking his pseud sanctimony and Just The Tip Trumperism at face value (“’I had never been enthusiastic about Trump,’ Dreher told me, ‘but I was enthusiastic about him this time because it seemed like only somebody like him could put a stop’ to ‘wokeness and the madness of transgenderism’”). The author even tells us “the story of Dreher’s personal Calvary begins with his father,” and his divorce “took a terrible toll and left him almost entirely alone.” An asshole dad and a divorce! Can you blame the guy for being a fascist? Anyway, here and here are a couple of my old funsies at the wispy God-botherer’s expense.  Enjoy! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: LEMON, IT'S WEDNESDAY EDITION.

Sabor.

Here’s where I'd repeat the 30 Rock What A Week joke except I assume even people who never saw the show know that one by now because every week is What A Week. 

ICE and Border Patrol continue their reign of terror in Minneapolis (and elsewhere; let’s not forget they haven’t completely vacated their previous terrorization targets like Chicago and Los Angeles). I reckon this week’s historical shorthand -- i.e., what Rick Perlstein or whoever will use to portray Feb. 1-7 years hence, if we haven’t all been locked up in concentration camps -- would be feds snatching a child and being forced to give him back, only to try and snatch him back and snatch another child (yes, I know they snatch children all the time), and a federal agent kicking a puppy, which matches perfectly the purpose and character of these occupations. Some fucking drawdown. 

Also proceeding apace: The enshittification of the news. As Bari Weiss continues to sabotage CBS News, Jeff Bezos obliged Mr. Big with some massive layoffs at the Washington Post. Our first ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for non-subscribers gets into that, and the long-term revenge mission behind it. 

Meanwhile Tubby’s mayhem continues. Facing dismal polls (and some truly catastrophic special election results) he’s trying to steal the midterms with the help of Tulsi Gabbard -- whose unusual presence at the FBI raid on the Georgia 2020 election files is further proof that they need a validated trusty on hand every time they do something shady to keep the agents from blowing the whistle. And, apparently hoping to shore up his hardcore constituency, he circulated a racist video of the Obamas. 

And Trump’s shutting down the Kennedy Center for two years, allegedly for renovations (supported by his longtime lies about the building’s condition) but obviously because artists are bailing left and right because of his thuggish management. His dreams of what the place could be are the subject of our second ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie, which also alludes in the end to another Trump headline from the week -- one less damaging than the others but every bit as emblematic.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: IS IT FASH YET? EDITION.

You better run.

Tubby and his mob have been busy, seizing voting records in Georgia (presumably to manipulate in furtherance of his years-long Stolen Election scam) and arresting black journalists for the crime of covering a protest in a Minneapolis church. Looks like I was right on the money calling them Nazis well before they began their rampages.

Naturally, as they get more obvious about their fascism -- so much so that even centrists who doubted it are coming around --  their Prestige Press enablers increasingly rush to say nuh-uh. Did you guess Megan McArdle would be among them? My sympathies, you’ve been paying attention! 

McArdle is willing to admit to “Trump’s authoritarian instincts, bellicose contempt for norms and fundamental disrespect for America’s democratic traditions,” presumably because those abstractions sound much better than “Sending masked goons to abduct and murder citizens, using the Armed Forces to loot foreign countries and put the money in The Leader’s private offshore account, shaking down law firms and college for payoffs, etc.” 

But fascism? Come now, he’s no Hitler -- the courts still oppose him, sometimes, without actually punishing him or anyone else for his crimes (thanks, Supreme Court!). Though McArdle says “America looks less like a liberal democracy than it did a decade ago — much less than I would have believed possible before 2016,” she judges it impossible that in the next two or five or ten years he can surprise her yet again and make it all the way to full Hitler. Fool me twice, right? 

Anyway, McArdle says, it’s you stupid resistance liberals who are the real problem, using big fancy words like “fascist” that just confuse people:

Saying “He’s a fascist” (or an authoritarian, or a caudillo) will not do the trick. It’s more likely to be counterproductive, as people look up from our scribblings and observe that elections are still happening, courts are still demanding due process and the press is still free to complain about Dear Leader... it will be much easier to convince them that he’s just a bad president who should be replaced by someone who has different policies. 

So stop being dramatic when everything is so (relatively) normal, and count on fixing this with the free elections that will certainly be allowed once Tulsi Gabbard gets done making those seized Georgia ballots conform to the boss’ expectations! 

Here’s your ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie for the week, on what I made of the alleged “drawdown” in Minneapolis -- briefly, that MPLS people power has made the goon squad sweat, but don’t trust them to actually start acting like legitimate law enforcement now. For one thing, they lie like they breathe; for another, being (I will say it again) fascists, they are committed to breaking their enemies, which is how they perceive those who oppose their vicious and undemocratic policies, and will not stop until someone stops them. Fortunately, there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and unlike McArdle we’re not even pretending to be deceived about what they’re doing. 

One last note: Most of you know what evil brain poison Scientology is. Sometimes the story of one victim can tell that tale better than anything else, and my old boss Tony Ortega has done a great job with the sad story of Romey Beliles. Read it here. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: TAKE IT EASY BUT TAKE IT EDITION.

You got to spread a warnin' when the army they come in.

All honor and best of luck to the comrades in Minneapolis on general strike today. The ICE goons are feeling the added chill, and have sent their prevaricators and propagandists into overdrive:

Walz “is courting more ugly incidents,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page scolds. “The President has the legal authority to unleash ICE, and the agents are doing what they are told to do. The way to defeat the Trump policy is at the ballot box, not by obstructing agents in violation of the law.” National Review’s Noah Rothman argues, “What Walz is advising his citizens to do is likely to result in more violence and, potentially, more death.” Zachary Faria writes in the Washington Examiner, “What you have with ICE agents in Minneapolis is people exercising the lawful authority to detain illegal immigrants and, on the other end of that, anyone interfering with federal law enforcement actions.”

The premise underpinning this argument is that ICE is acting legally and in the service of legitimate immigration-enforcement goals. That assumption is difficult to square with on-the-ground reporting.

And that’s from Mr. On The Other Hand himself, Jon Chait! Even he smells what the Prestige Press is cooking. Meanwhile lower-end lie diffusers are trying to tell us the monstrous child abductors are actually just twyinh to hewp the widdle babies:

No one believes that -- they don’t, you don’t, even the few rage-goblins still sporting MAGA red believe that. What they do believe in is the power of the big lie. It got them this far, they reason (for want of a better word), and besides, what else have they got? So they push their flunkies in the press to uncritically repurpose their press releases and send their “influencers” to cities targeted by Trump to generate up new bullshit. They’ve even sent a few goons to Baltimore, probably inspired by Tubby’s tweeted footage of a few dirty alleys that he claimed as proof that the city was a “rodent-infested mess” in 2019. Maybe Nick Shirley will take video of the Old Town Mall and tell his rubes it’s City Hall and Brandon Scott is from Somalia. 

Like I said, it’s all they know: Hatred of cities and hatred of foreigners have worked for them in the past, and to truth and good governance they are strangers. But as both Tubby and the economy deteriorate before their eyes voters are less inclined to go for it again. 

It was another great week at ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN -- here’s a freebie for non-subscribers, about the considerable downsides to being a Trump toady, the generous pay packet notwithstanding. Speaking of money, subscriptions are cheap, treat yourself. 

Update. That the rightwing press keeps peddling claims that ICE is actually helping these children by kidnapping them -- even as they continue to kidnap children -- is merely the most outraging of all these outrages.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: FRAUDS ON PARADE EDITION.

24 years? Really?

I was grateful, in this grim and gloomy week, for the laughs afforded by Evan Mandery’s story in Politico, “They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted.” Yes, he’s talking about Bari Weiss’ University of Austin, TX scam -- which those of us who were paying attention knew was a rightwing boondoggle from the start, but Mandery and number of his interview subjects (mostly founders or early adopters who have skulked away) claim never to have seen it coming: 

Because so many of its leaders lean conservative, UATX has been portrayed in some quarters as having been a right-wing project from the start. However, the truth is vastly more complex.

A land of contrasts, you might say! Mandry admits that the founders "leaned right," but says this was mitigated by the presence of Larry fucking Summers ("had served in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet and as Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor") and "unconventional, independent thinkers" like Jonathan Haidt. This was clearly not designed to recreate the School of Athens, yet Mandery professes surprise that sugar daddy Joe Lonsdale and several hardcore rightwing creeps have stripped away the Free & Fair Inquiry veneer of the thing and left it exposed as MAGA University.:

The ultimate irony is that UATX fell prey to the very impulses that its founders and supporters so detested. “It’s easy to see when other people lack these things,” [Ilana] Redstone said. “It’s harder to see in themselves.” Redstone hastens to add this isn’t just a failure at UATX. It’s fair to ask whether any university lives up to these ideas.

Any university! Not too many institutes of higher learning, from Harvard to Fritters Community College, devolve as quickly and as utterly as UATX has. Well, Florida’s New College did, once Ron DeSantis forcibly removed all the “woke” influences and made it into a conservative consent machine as well -- one that readily agreed to the Teach MAGA or Die demand that Trump has placed on all the big schools. 

The allegedly “anti-woke but not rightwing” has in every instance turned out to be rightwing. It’s the institutional equivalent of Just The Tip Trumpers -- whether they were lying to con the rubes or to con themselves.

If only Trump’s own buffoonery were less consequential, we could enjoy that too. I’ve thought about exactly what's so annoying about his acceptance of Machado’s Nobel as if he had won it himself, and concluded that it's because this so perfectly reflects a signal aspect of Trumpism -- in a word, fraud, and by that I mean more than criminal fraud: I mean the impulse that leads Tubby to wreak havoc, for instance, among the armed forces with fraudulent tough-guy “warfighter” yak, and leads his incel creep followers to yammer about the values of Western Civilization when they’ve clearly only read the Classics Illustrated versions of the canon and don’t even understand those. That is, they are experts at nothing but fakery; so they must be wholly devoted to fraud and double down every time they’re challenged, as with their continued bullshit excuses for the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. No wonder Tubby treats the pass-along of the Nobel as the same thing as earning it by his own actions -- why sweat it, he’s got people for that. 

Speaking of Minneapolis, the ongoing rule by goon squad in the Twin Cities is the subject of this week’s ROY EDROSO BREAKS IT DOWN freebie -- it’s great that polls show the voters are catching on to the truth, but the Prestige Press is very slow about acknowledging that the administration’s lies have grown so threadbare that not even the most vapid institutionalist could possibly believe they must be respected in the court of public opinion (though not a few careerists may). The way to do it is the way Willamette Week does: By saying that ICE “asserted” something and “did not offer evidence to substantiate that account,” for example, rather than just doing steno for them. 

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