Monday's Final Word

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A bolt of fear went through him as tabs thundered through the sky ...

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Ed: David hit this one earlier, but the sheer idiocy of this is worth revisiting. She's all about fighting genocide, which is why she opposes Israel but forgives someone who literally tattooed the symbol of Nazi death-camp squads on his heart. This woman is a moral incompetent, and so are all of Platner's other apologists. 

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Jim Treacher: According to Graham Platner, everybody in his life knew he had a Nazi tattoo… except him. And it’s their fault for not telling him.

That’s his story. I guess he didn’t have time to come up with a better one.

Even for a Democrat, this guy is full of $#!+. He makes Obama look like George Washington.

So, yes, when Graham Platner calls Lyndsey Fifield a liar, he’s lying. That’s what Nazis do.

Adolf Hitler himself called it the Big Lie. The more brazen and audacious the falsehood, the more likely people are to believe it. Because who would have the gall, the impudence, to be so horrible?

Well, Graham Platner would.

Ed: And did, and is still doing so. That's who Platner is. The question is how many people will lower themselves to his level and attack a victim of relationship abuse just to defeat the most liberal Republican in the Senate. 

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Ed: Yeah, those 18 years with the Totenkopf on his heart was no mistake and no oversight. 

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Jeremy Carl: On one of my group chats, an occasional sparring partner expressed surprise that I had known from the beginning that Platner would produce a disastrous collection of scandals.

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But I really have no special insights that most people don’t have—save one.

Let’s call it the Platner Paradox.

(1) The Democrats perceive that they need to run candidates who are straight White Christian men to win in certain jurisdictions- and maybe even nationally.

(2) No normal straight White Christian man today would want to be deeply involved with the Democratic Party.

Ed: I'd caveat that by saying that hard-Left progressive white males would want to deeply involve themselves in the Democrat Party. Usually those are the Talaricos of the world, academics who will only handle BBQ with double napkins and who brag about taking their organization fully vegan. "Normal" may do some heavy lifting here, I grant you, but it's not just the freaks on the fringe in the urban-Academia bubbles. Some of those identify as Christians, even if their theology more closely resembles Unitarianism. 

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Ed: Let's not dwell on what Platner might do if a billionaire showed up at his house. Suffice it to say that Platner has some real fantasy issues about power and control. 

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NY Times: New Yorkers love to debate what makes someone a New Yorker. Is it how often you take the subway? Your sports team allegiances? How you eat a slice of pizza?

Some believe that spending a decade in the city or having children here cements your status as a New Yorker.

One of the most famous New Yorkers weighed in on Friday, reviving a heated debate. The actress Jennifer Lopez, who famously hails from the Bronx, said in an interview that only one factor matters.

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“You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker,” Ms. Lopez said sitting in a subway car, wearing a trench coat and baseball cap, for the popular video series “Subway Takes.”

Ed: Oh, really? By that logic, one has to be born in the USA to be American, right? J-Lo goes on to say that people who move to NYC eventually take on a "New York sensibility," but that doesn't make them real New Yorkers. That'll be news to Uganda-born Mayor Zohran Mamdani, among others. Amazingly – or not really – the NYT never brings up the issue of immigration enforcement and Lopez' argument in relation to that. Hmmmmm. (Also, you're welcome in advance for the front-page image. I could have used Platner's nipples again. I expect VIP membership signups tonight.)

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Ed: The MSM belongs in a nutshell, and that goes double for Pelley. Either he's lying about this, or he really thought he was so important that he could be insubordinate, rude, and disruptive with new management because of who he thinks he is. Neither reflects well on his work in retrospect. As Chris Cillizza reluctantly conceded afterward, how could he NOT expect to be fired after that meeting?

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Puck (via People): "It’s been over 50 years," Stahl, who boarded CBS News in 1971, said. "This was by far the worst experience I’ve been involved in, or even witnessed. I mean, firing seven people, including the entire management team over here, plus reporters and producers…” ...

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In her latest interview, Stahl said Pelley was "agitated about" not knowing why his colleagues were fired. She also addressed her conversation with Bilton at Gabriel’s on Central Park South on Wednesday, June 3, following Pelley's termination. PEOPLE previously confirmed that the new EP had spoken to the remaining correspondents and had a long dinner with Stahl last week. “It was a meeting to talk about the procedures at 60 Minutes,” she said. “I was making a plea not to change anything on the Sunday night broadcast.”

Stahl added that the decision to stay at the newsmagazine was one she and her remaining colleagues wanted to make as a unit, adding, "it was going to be the three of us, no matter what."

“It’s been overwhelming,” she said of the reactions to the ordeal. “It’s been a gush of lovely thank-you notes, just a flood. All these producers, associate producers, editors, even cameramen have just been standing paralyzed, waiting for us to tell them what we were going to do, and that really weighed heavily on us. We don’t want to leave you, these lovely people we work with every day. It’s a big part of it, and they’re thanking us, and that feels good. It feels very good.”

Ed: I bet it didn't feel very good to Pelley, who probably thought his geriatric colleagues would follow him out the door. Instead, after Bilton and Weiss made it clear who's running the show, Stahl et al fell in line pretty fast. Million-dollar salaries are few and far between in the industry, especially for octogenarians like Stahl. 

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Pelley: “Uh-oh. She, I am told, said something to the effect of why do you think the country thinks you’re biased, but she didn’t offer any kind of a metric, you know, what’s your metric? Why do you think so? Do you have a poll? Is there a – market research? What are you talking about? Because we certainly didn’t believe that, and we just felt that she was making statements that perhaps she couldn’t back up and was coming into the news division with hardened preconceived notions that didn’t seem to be thought through.”

Ed: Pelley is such a great newsman that he missed the biggest story in his own industry. Gallup's most recent iteration of its annual poll on media trust came out in October, hitting a new record low for the tenth straight year. It's now at 28%. Weiss should have fired him for willful ignorance alone. 

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Breitbart: Marvel’s She-Hulk star, left-wing actress Tatiana Maslany is demanding people join her boycott of the left-wing New York Times, claiming the paper is harming transgenders, Palestinians, and the black working class.

Maslany took to her Instagram account last week to repost a video from Queerart in which Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd, extremist transgender advocate Sabrina Imbler, and others called for readers to stop buying the Times at an event held in New York in April, dubbed the “The People vs. the NYTimes.”...

This month, Maslany took her time at the ATX TV Festival during on the red carpet event for her new AppleTV series, Maximum Pleasure, to harangue about Israel’s supposed “genocide” of “Palestinians” that the world has somehow forgotten about.

The actress was wearing a button in support of the Palis and when asked about it said, “I’m wearing this because there is no ceasefire in Gaza. There is no ceasefire in Palestine.”

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Ed: You had me at "boycott the New York Times," but lost me at the ceasefire gripes. There actually is a ceasefire in the West Bank that has held up for many years. The reason there is no ceasefire in Gaza or Lebanon is because Iran and its proxies won't disarm like the ceasefire to which they agreed requires. Anyway, no one's going to miss Woke Hulk or the actor who portrayed the character, not even the New York Times. 

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"Is God our God only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there's civilization?"

"That would mess up a lot of people."

Ed: Yawn. We get this every time a sci-fi film attempts a "serious" look at the question of creation. It came up in the wildly overrated "Contact," as well as in "Mission to Mars," a little bit in "Arrival" (which I really liked), and others of less note. Spielberg's selling his flick, so I'll cut him some slack, but Judeo-Christian faiths will not be shaken by a Hollywood speculative-fiction movie. Basically, the "position of the Church" is that God is the creator of the entire universe, and it doesn't matter whether aliens exist. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but it doesn't matter for our eschatology. And if you want to know more, read Thomas Aquinas on the nature of the universe and why it points to a single Creator, and then think about how what we know as science emerged from that as the quest to know the nature of that Creator. I'll discuss this more with Christian Toto on tomorrow's Off the Beaten Path. 

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Ed: I guess the answer they really wanted was "Nazi-tatted violent abuser."

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Saturday's lyric: "Heard It In a Love Song" by the Marshall Tucker Band.

Editor's note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments -- and support independent platforms -- why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!