Doom Report (Week 88: Reduced to the Equivalent of Bees Buzzing)

This week, the opposition to the Paramount-Warner-Brothers merger fell apart.  California Attorney General Rob Bonta had sworn to oppose the merger to the end ... or at least until he could wring some serious concessions from the Ellisons, rightwing nutjob billionaires of the Trumpiest order.  But, in the end, he just ... caved.

Why?  Well, we can never know for sure what’s in a man’s mind, but there’s a good chance it’s because the Ellisons threatened to move Paramount to Nashville.  Basically, they said they would pick up the entire studio and physically move it across the country, taking all the jobs with it.  This was a ridiculous thing to threaten, because it wasn’t even remotely realistic.  Paramount was already in danger of having to pay penalties for every day they didn’t complete the merger—back when they thought Trump was the only thing standing between them and completion, they were willing to agree to some ridiculous stuff to get the merger done—so the idea that they would incur additional costs of multiple millions of dollars just to spite a few states’ attorneys general was ludicrous.  Trump had been in their pockets—or they were in his—or maybe both; doesn’t matter—so the resistance from the 12 states AGs, including Bonta, was unexpected.  And they were about to be hemorrhaging money, so this threat of “let us do what we want or we’ll bleed even faster!” didn’t seem to have a lot of actual force to it.  But then Gavin Newsom, current governor of California, started saying Bonta should settle.  And then Xavier Becerra, soon to be next governor of California, said Bonta should settle.  Then Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, joined in.  And, eventually, Bonta caved.

There are some pro forma concessions, but most of them lack any teeth.  Best coverage on this from Adam Conover, who has a personal stake in it, being on the board of the Writers Guild.  Short version: because of all the debt Paramount is taking on due to the merger, layoffs will be unavoidable.  So, while “you’ll lose jobs if you don’t let us do this” seemed pretty implausible, “you’ll lose jobs now that you have let us do this” seems almost inevitable.  And, look: while I live in California, and even very close to Hollywood, I don’t personally know that many people in the industry ... I’m unlikely to be personally impacted by this decision.  But I’m still royally pissed off at Newsom, radically disappointed in Bonta, and Becerra just lost my vote.  (Not that I’ll vote for Hilton, of course—I’ll just have to leave that race blank on my ballot.)  This is a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

And I have just one request.  In two years, there will be a crowded primary for the Democrat candidate for President, and I can almost guarantee that Gavin Newsom will at the head of that pack, begging for your vote.  He will want you to forget about this merger altogether, and, if anyone brings it up, he will want you to believe that all the jobs that will inevitably be lost, all the lowered wages from lack of competition and all the lost opportunity from movies not getting made, and all the loss in news coverage by having CNN run by the same idiots that have crushed the reputation of CBS News—all that, Newsom will claim, all that was Rob Bonta’s fault.  Nothing to do with him.

Let’s not let him get away with that bullshit.

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Other things you need to know this week:

• Hey, remember when the OBBB (which I promptly redubbed the “Outlandish Bloated Beastly Buttfuckery) came out and we talked about how it would only start screwing people over after the midterms?  Well, former astronaut Terry Virts, filling in for Adam on Wednesday’s “Kinzinger Report”, explains why it’s screwing people over early, and how that’s likely to impact Republican races.  Plus, Trump’s unhinged UN speech, even Repubs want to subpoena Don Jr, and more.

• Then, on Thursday’s Kinzinger Report, Adam is back, and covers the judge who blocked Trump’s press ban, but, more interestingly (at least in my opinion), the MAGA podcasters talking about Trump less and less, and the shifting landscape of the Senate races.  Plus, as always: more.

• In a surprisingly short Takes™, Jamelle Bouie puts a nail in the coffin of those who are already calling for the Democrats not to start impeaching people.  Normally I have a great deal for respect for Senator Duckworth: immigrant, veteran, first female disabled Congresswoman, first woman to give birth while serving in the Senate.  But I’m stunned to hear any prominent Democrat recycling that same old bullshit that we’ve heard ever since Nixon, through Bush and Trump’s first term: “we just need to look forward.”  Happy to see Bouie dismantle that dangerous delusion so efficiently.

• Adam Conover did a another short(ish) video this week, this one looking into just how many children Elon Musk has killed with DOGE.  Informative, chilling, and it will make you want to seriously hurt someone.  But probably just Elon.

• More Perfect Union has some ideas on how to tax the rich.  It’s not “tax wealth not work,” but they’re good ideas anyway.  Worth checking out.

• Last week’s Last Week Tonight has John Oliver covering why UnitedHealthcare is so bad.  Remember when that really hot guy shot a corporate CEO way back in week -7 and everybody cheered him on instead of condemning him?  This explains why, much better than I did at the time.

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In petard-hoisting news, Trump fucked around and found out what happens when the press refuses to cover you.  The now-classic NewsMax clip where Trump sounds like a hive of angry bees due to the lack of microphones is covered eloquently by Desi Lydec at The Daily Show, Brian Tyler Cohen in “Another Day”, and Seth Meyers in “A Closer Look”.  If you want more in-depth coverage on what Trump himself literally called “the ban on the Free Press” (and people say he never tells the truth), you could try Jon Stewart from Monday’s Daily Show or Monday’s Even More News, but, trust me: there is no greater satisfaction than hearing this admission from the flustered NewsMax announcer:

Okay, so there is no microphone because—there’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there.  So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit.

Or, as Desi responds:

I’m sorry.  You’re going to have to speak up.  I can’t hear you over the sound of you stepping on your own dick.

The Republicans may have lost their ability to detect irony (and to feel shame), but the universe, it seems, has not lost its ability to mete out a bit of poetic justice.