Monthly Archives: April 2022

In the early 1990s, there was a lull in the lucrative tradition of college comedies. Sensing an opportunity, 20th Century Fox greenlit PCU, a low-budget film that featured a cast of largely unknown actors. Considered a direct descendent of 1978s raucous Animal House, it updated the premise by setting the movie on a campus dominated by activist politics and political correctness. At the time, P.C. was still a new cultural concept to most Americans, and as the movies hero helpfully explains, Its not just politics, its everything. Its what you eat, its what you wear and its what you say. And if you dont watch yourself, you can get yourself in a buttload of trouble.

The film was released on April 29, 1994. It flopped.

Then as the years passed, it found an audience and achieved cult status through constant replays on cable and robust home video rentals.

Written by Adam Leff and Zak Pennwho had just graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticutmuch of PCU satirized their own experiences. They attended Wesleyan during a tumultuous time that included protests over the schools investments in Apartheid-era South Africa, a push for more faculty of color, and the firebombing of the presidents office.

The movie mostly takes place over a single day as a clueless pre-frosh named Tom (played by Chris Young) visits the fictional Port Chester University. He is assigned to stay with Droz (Jeremy Piven, in his first lead performance), a fast-talking shitstarter who rules over The Pit, a former fraternity thats become the home of the schools wastoids and weirdos. The Pit is in the midst of a multi-front war. The house is loathed by the Causeheads, whose protests dominate campus life, as well as a group of radical feminists called the Womynists. They are also seen as a blight on the college by both the schools self-servingly progressive administration (represented by an acidic Jessica Walter as President Garcia-Thompson) and Balls and Shaft, a crew of preppy Reaganites led by David Spades Rand McPherson. When the residents of The Pit learn they must pay $7000 in property damages or lose their house, they plan to raise the cash with a rager that will attract the entire student body. After house band Everyone Gets Laid cant perform, they miraculously get Parliament-Funkadelic to replace them. Good times and fleeting student unity ensues.

PCU included the first major role for Jon Favreau, who proved himself to be a multifaceted talent as the writer of Swingers and, more recently, a critical component in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars television shows. Matt Ross has a small part, decades before he had more memorable appearances (like Hooli founder Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley) and transitioned into directing projects like the film Captain Fantastic and the upcoming Watergate series Gaslit. Additionally, PCU marked the directorial debut of Hart Bochner, an actor best known for playing the ber-yuppie prick Ellis in Die Hard and who recently portrayed billionaire Larry Ellison in Hulus The Dropout. Not long after PCUs release, its writers stopped working together, with Leff eventually leaving the film industry. Penn has amassed decades worth of work in entertainment, including credits on films like Ready Player One and last years Free Guy.

Almost 30 years later, many of the ideas that PCU skewered have returned as national debates on wokeness and cancel culture. These subjects have become an obsession in cable news, talk radio, podcasts, social media platforms, and political messaging. Under the clips of the film that have made it to YouTube, some commenters see PCU as a dark prophecy of societys future that went unheeded. That wasnt the movies intention, though, and its creators still dont see it that way. Instead, they were more troubled by a climate where young people turned against each other, rather than attacking the institutions that wielded power over them.

The thing that drove PCU was a messagethough it definitely is not a message moviethat we can all see each other in our different categories and hopefully still find some common ground, says Paul Schiff, the movies producer. And that common ground may be defined by the ability to laugh at ourselves, at each other, and find some common humanity in what we all share. Thats an idealistic and probably well-intentioned notion, but one that might feel out of touch in 2022.

After the disappointment of PCU, Jeremy Piven returned to supporting parts before going on to win three Emmys for his work as the agent Ari Gold on Entourage. Then in 2017 and 18, BuzzFeed News reported that multiple women accused Piven of sexual assault and harassment. Piven denies all these allegations and says hes subsequently been excluded from the mainstream entertainment industry, enmeshing him in the modern cancel culture debate. In response, he has turned to careers in podcasting and stand-up comedy.

While PCU fans are still out there, once again its presence has started to recede. Not only is it unavailable on any streaming service, it currently cant be rented or bought from Amazon and Apple.

Here, PCUs creators, the actors who played the inhabitants of The Pitand even George Clinton, king of interplanetary funktell the story of how this film was made and how its been received over the decades.

THE SCRIPT AND INSPIRATION

Zak Penn (screenwriter): I got to Wesleyan in 1986, graduated in 1990. I was actually a theater major.

Adam Leff (screenwriter): I did five years, 85 to 90. The fifth year I was there, I was just making my student film. Wesleyan back then was far more loosey-goosey. I don't think they would let a student just do a fifth year for fun anymore. We weren't paying tuition or anything.

Zak Penn: There were a lot of protests over the things that there still are on college campuses, which are violence against women and racism. And sometimes there were protests over really random things. That was part of Wesleyan's charm.

Adam Leff: It was the birth of Womanist House and women's studies. Every weekend there was a vigil outside the frat houses.

Zak Penn: One of the inspirations for the movie was one of the first classes I was in. The professor said that he was a Black lesbian trapped in the body of a white man. Nowadays, that would go over extremely poorly, but in those days it was considered radically progressive.

Adam Leff: It always seemed comical. Here we were at this super privileged liberal arts college in Connecticut, and yet the campus looked like Berkeley in 1968.

Zak Penn: I had written a bunch of plays, and then I wrote a screenplay for one of the student films. Adam and I decided to team up. As soon as we left Wesleyan, we immediately wrote a script about a giant rat in Central Park, which we decided not to show anyone. We did actually sell it years later, but whatever. A year out of college, we sold Last Action Hero and had a career. We got fired almost immediately, which is why we don't have a screenplay credit on it.

Adam Leff: We started to pursue the idea that it would be really funny to make a modern-day Animal House.

Zak Penn: We sold the pitch for PCU to Paul Schiff, another Wesleyan graduate.

Paul Schiff (producer): I had my producing deal at Fox. I had started that with the film My Cousin Vinny. Zak and Adam came into my office and we were just talking about our experiences at Wesleyan. Out of that conversation, an idea sprung up.

Zak Penn: In Hollywood, [political correctness] wasn't a big deal. Nobody really talked about it back then. We were just kind of making fun of the stuff that we had just been living with for four years. It wasn't like, Oh, we need to make a statement to warn the world about encroaching P.C. culture.

Adam Leff: I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe.

Zak Penn: It's based on my own pre-frosh weekend at Wesleyan. I stayed with a guy I knew named James Drosnes, who lived in Eclectic House.

Adam Leff: Eclectic was filled with a lot of punk rockers. They had the best parties every weekend, so we would go get wasted and occasionally score some drugs, to be totally honest.

Zak Penn: Eclectic had a great sense of humor and had great bands.

Adam Leff: They were very apolitical. They weren't actively at war with Womanist House. That's something that we invented.

Zak Penn: Almost all of the people in the movie have some basis [in real people].

Adam Leff: Pigman was based on an actual guy named Pigman. He was not constantly watching TV. I don't think he had a TV. He was constantly smoking pot.

I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe. Adam Leff, screenwriter

Zak Penn: Gutter is a dumb version of my very smart friend, Marc Flacks, who had dreadlocks and quit the football team to follow his Marxist studies desires.

Marc Flacks (sociology professor, kinda inspiration for Gutter): I grew up in the hard left. [Politically correct] was a term we used. It was a way that leftwing people would help each other stay on message and be righteous. It was never expected that somebody at Dartmouth would be politically correct. We knew that they knew they were conservative bastards.

Zak Penn: Three different people think they're the basis for Droz. It's kind of an archetypal character, a guy who always seems to have the right line and is constantly down for having a good time.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Paul Schiff: It was a very different time in the feature business than now. Fox was probably making 40 to 50 movies a year.

Zak Penn: I learned subsequently that often you sell a pitch and you're working on it for years, then it sits around and one day, a long time later, it gets made. [PCU] was incredibly lucky. It all happened really, really fast.

Paul Schiff: [Foxs] distribution pattern consisted of big-budget movies, international titles that they knew would travel, dramas, comedies, romance, action, adventure The idea of sprinkling in some lower-budget movies was very common in those days. We were able to kind of slip into the system because they had a pipeline to fill.

Megan Ward (actor, plays Katy): There were all those 90s movies that had that high-concept, low-budget thingthese mini studio movies.

Zak Penn: Paul Schiff and the studio executives were basically like, Move onto the lot and take these offices. I believe Mel Brooks had the other half of the bungalows.

Hart Bochner (director): Ive been acting since 1975. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a director. So in 1991, I wrote and directed a short [The Buzz], which was a black comedy that I got my buddy Jon Lovitz to do about a guy who gets trapped in his apartment with a mosquito. 20th Century Fox and Paul Schiff saw it, and then the campaign began to try to secure the job directing [PCU].

The more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here. Hart Bochner, director

Zak Penn: We were huge fans of his because he was in Die Hard. That's all we wanted to talk about.

Hart Bochner: Initially, I thought its not really my sensibilities, its not really my area of expertise. I had been out of college at that point for over a dozen years. But the more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here.

Zak Penn: The first draft for PCU was pretty insane. We had an ending where President Garcia-Thompson pulls off her face. It's a mask and it reveals that it was Ed McMahon. Then he pulls off that mask and its President Garcia-Thompson again. We had this crazy subplot that The Pit had been built on a Native American burial ground and also a pet cemetery. So at the end, this ghost appears and its a dog. Then they say, Oh my God, it's a ghost dog. And he was like, Non-human animal companion, please.

Hart Bochner: We steered the writers. These guys were exceptionally talented. It wasnt necessarily a joke-driven piece of material, but in its observations of campus life and political correctness, I thought we could mine it for more humor.

Zak Penn: The Simpsons had come out while we were in college, and we wanted to embrace that and do something where you just dont know quite where this movie is going to go. As we got closer to production, the studio started to have cold feet about some of that stuff and said, Maybe we should just focus on the characters and the comedy and less on breaking the fourth wall.

Hart Bochner: We didn't reinvent it. We just strengthened stuff.

Zak Penn: In the earliest drafts, theres a lot more drug-taking. Theres a whole sequence where Gutter gets really high and the heads of the studio appear on-screen and disavow smoking pot.

Hart Bochner: We had our R-rated version of the script, which was a little raunchier. When the Womynists are playing Frisbee versus the Deadheads, the women were topless. The studio said, No, no, no. You gotta deliver a PG-13. So I shot a PG-13 version.

Zak Penn: We had a lot of nudity because naked guy, who was a real guy, was always nude. We just had a lot of ironic nudity in it, frankly.

CASTING

Hart Bochner: We met all the actors of the day.

Zak Penn: We got to watch the auditions. We saw a parade of actors coming through, many of whom became big stars. I remember one day, were in this front office and John Stamos comes in. We were shocked that he was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. He was like, Have you guys read this script? So many words. Jesus. And we were just like, Yeah, we wrote it.

Hart Bochner: I talked to Adam Sandler, Ashley Judd. I was kind of dating Naomi Watts at the time, I felt she was too young. Steve Zahn was up for the role of the pre-frosh. There was an abundance of talent out there. I felt that it was critical that not only did everybody have to get the joke, but there had to be a sort of sweet innocence about all the actors. Young actors would come in that were edgy or a bit angry, and that wouldnt have worked. And there were actors like Andy Dick, who were really punctuating the humor physically, which wouldn't have worked either.

Paul Schiff: The studio was betting on new, fresh comedy voices. There were certainly discussions about bigger names, but there was no pressure of: We're not going to make the movie unless you can get a famous name.

Hart Bochner: I had seen Adam [Sandler] on Saturday Night Live and thought, frankly, he was too broad. I wanted something more grounded in reality. He has turned into a terrific actor who can play any number of personalities, which was my mistake,

Adam Leff: We had originally hoped Chris Farley would play Droz. I dont know what the movie would have been like with Farley and Spade. I think it probably would have been very funny, but in a different way.

Before carrying PCU, many of Jeremy Pivens early roles were in films starring John Cusack, his real-life best friend who he grew up with. When Piven was cast in PCU, he had a job playing a writer on The Larry Sanders Show, which he left to shoot the film.

Hart Bochner: My buddy Cameron Crowe had used [Jeremy Piven] in Singles. I thought, That guy has the right energy for it.

Paul Schiff: I remember Piven's audition very well. It was wild and hilarious and full of that great manic vibrating quality.

Jeremy Piven (actor, plays Droz): My father [the actor and drama teacher Byrne Piven] was someone who never shied away from the truth, for good or ill. He introduced me to people like John Malkovich, who as a child I got to see do True West, and he was an absolute beautiful anarchist. Of course John Belushi. I started at Second City with Chris Farley. There were a lot of great wild animals, and you draw from everything in your world.

Megan Ward: Chris [Young] I kind of knew as a peer. We were in that same pack of people who audition for the young leads of shows. I didn't know him personally, but he had done work around things that I had auditioned for. He was rising at the time.

We were shocked that John Stamos was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. Zak Penn, screenwriter

Paul Schiff: It was a hard role because he was essentially the straight man. It was played with innocence and wide-eyed wonder, walking into this crazy world. That takes a certain finesse and I thought he did that quite well.

Young left acting in the late 1990s and currently works as an executive in technology-based entertainment. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Alex Dsert (actor, plays Mullaney): I had just done The Heights. I had been working on some TV shows that would go, like, a season.

Megan Ward: Spade was famous, but I think he had only been on Saturday Night Live for a year.

Gale Mayron (actor, plays Cecilia): I'd gone to film school, so I had been trying to figure out how am I going to direct something. Acting was always something I did, but kind of half-assedly because it's such a fraught, difficult business, especially as a woman. I had done lots of tiny B-movies. I was always the girl that wound up dead, strangled alongside the road or thrown in a refrigerator. I got a job for three months at MTV. It was [co-hosting] a live TV show [Hangin w/ MTV], the before-TRL.

Paul Schiff: [Jon Favreau] was completely unknown at the time. The studio felt they needed to put him through his paces, but we knew from the get-go that there was no one else we were interested in.

Hart Bochner: The smartest guy on the set was Favreau. He had tremendous ideas. I wanted him to play it like a goofy puppy.

Alex Dsert: They gave Jon dreadlocks for the movie. [During filming] I remember going, Yo, you got to know what it feels like to be a dreadlock, and there happened to be a double feature of The Harder They Come and Rockers going. We were on the train and then this rasta walked on. He gives me the proper whats up nod and gives Jon the once over real slow and real hard, then looks him in the eye and goes, Respect, and walks away. I remember going, Youre indoctrinated!

FILMING

Paul Schiff: We wanted to make the movie in the States and find that perfect college-on-the-hill setting. There were financial pressures, and the best way to get the most days of shooting and the most resources was to go to Toronto. Connecticut at the time didnt have any tax incentives and there was no infrastructure for filming. We did sneak onto Wesleyans campus and shot a few establishing shots, just for fun.

Zak Penn: We all hung out together in Toronto and we were all around college age. It was kind of an amazing experience,

Paul Schiff: What was great about making a small movie at a studio that's making all these other projects is we didn't get a lot of surveillance.

Megan Ward: I had done a season of a series [Class of 96] in Toronto the year before, so I became Julie Your Cruise Director of Toronto for everybody.

Alex Dsert: In my head, its like the Peanuts gang walking down the streets of Toronto.

Adam Leff: Lots of times the writers get booted to the side or replaced. We were on set the whole time, which is rare in my experience and super fun. It was what I thought screenwriting was going to be like before I actually experienced it.

Zak Penn: We were there rewriting anything that we were asked to. There have only been two or three movies that Ive written that Ive been on set the whole way, and PCU was one of them.

If you remember it, you werent there. George Clinton, musician

Paul Schiff: It was their idea, and the specificity of their observations about their own experience was a big part of the project. It seems pretty silly not to have the creators there to be able to make adjustments and tweaks and fixes along the way to sharpen the writing and sharpen the jokes.

Megan Ward: [Piven] got malaria. How do you get malaria in Canada? He was literally in the hospital for like 48 hours.

Alex Dsert: Piven is just the king of improvisation, letting it flow. Whats great about that is you dont have to do too much, just react and act.

Megan Ward: So many of those lines came from Piven and Favreau.

Zak Penn: We had the whole discussion about dont wear the shirt of the band youre going to see, and Piven came up with, Don't be that guy. We were just like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. And were totally going to get credit for it.

Alex Dsert: There was supposed to be a big band [play the party], but we weren't sure who it was going to be. We thought it was going to be Stevie Wonder. There were all these different rewrites.

Zak Penn: Originally it was Nirvana. It was before they were huge, and then they got so big we couldnt get them. Then for a minute, it was going to be Anthrax. I remember going to meet with them at a hotel in LA.

Hart Bochner: It was floated by a buddy of mine who was a music supervisor, What if you got the Goo Goo Dolls? Even though they were popular at the time, it doesnt make sense for this movie tonally. We hired Ralph Sall [as music supervisor] and he said, What about George Clinton?

Zak Penn: Clinton ended up being perfect.

In the film, George Clinton and his bands bus gets lost on the way to a show in Hartford and they end up in Port Chester. Not recognizing who they are, the character Gutter asks for a ride back to The Pit. When they get there, Droz convinces the group to play their party instead, which is what causes the students to pause their in-fighting and have fun.

George Clinton (founder of Parliament-Funkadelic): If you remember it, you werent there. I do remember that they had some of the first of what they called kind budchronic and all of that. We had a ball, that's what I remember.

Alex Dsert: When they arrived, Jon, George, and I were in the van. They were driving us to set and Jon asked him, Have you ever been to Toronto before? And George looks up, takes a minute and says, "Yeah, it was 1967." And Jon goes, What was it like? And he goes, All I remember is a green pill. And that was it.

George Clinton: We went through a lot of the colleges for real, especially during 67, 68, and 69. We was living in Cambridge, around Harvard, BCU, and Amherst. We played all those colleges so much that we saw all of those actual characters that was in that movie in real life.

Alex Dsert: When they were on set, doing the playback, it was electrifying.

George Clinton: We came up with doing Erotic City, and they wanted us to do Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off). [Erotic City] was one of Princes funkiest ones and that was my boy. We always jam with his songs in rehearsals. I just knew [Erotic City] would be a slick one, just like the way Otis Day and them did Shout and Shammalamma Ding Dong from the 50s [in Animal House].

Gale Mayron: I had to do a scene with [Clinton]. The band were all hanging out for a couple of days, and I just went over and I started hanging out with them. And then I was like [to the other actors], It's OK guys, come over. Its really cool. He was so sweet. I asked for a souvenir and he gave me a couple of his dreadlocks, which I kept, and a signed P-Funk CD.

Production on PCU ended in the summer of 1993.

RELEASE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Hart Bochner: [During filming] everybody was raving about the dailies. I remember people [at Fox] saying to me, Youre our A-list comedy guy here.

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The Oral History of PCU, the Culture Wars Cult Classic - VICE

If you doubt modern leftisms totalitarian ambitions, look around.

For the first time since the 1850s, discussion of secession is spreading in the formerly United States. There is even talk of civil war. What is driving such a strange development in American politics? An attempt to transform this country into an ideological state.

History is familiar with ideological states, states where dissent from the official ideology is dangerous: the Soviet Union, Communist China, Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, etc. At times, various ideologies have attempted to draw in Americans, with some temporary success. Fortunately, none gained sufficient power to impose themselves on the countryuntil now.

By the nature of ideology itself, all ideologies seek a totalitarian state. Every ideology says that, on the basis of this or that set of abstract ideas, certain things must be so: only Aryans can do anything right and Jews are inherently evil; everything is determined by ownership of the means of production and the bourgeoisie is evil; modern Italy can be a new Rome and only Italians can make good coffee, etc. Invariably, reality contradicts the ideologys central theses. The ideologues respond by outlawing discussion of the contradictions. Freedom of thought and expression are deadly threats to ideologies, and are therefore every ideologys first targets.

The ideology now attempting to impose itself on America is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms by a think tank established in Germany in 1923, the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School. (Those wanting a quick introduction to the Frankfurt School can find it on YouTube under History of Political Correctness.) Cultural Marxism says all of history is determined by which groups, defined by race, sex and sexual orientation, have power over which other groups.

Whites, males, and straights have been on top, so they are oppressors, while some (not all) other races, women, and gays have been victims. All Marxism is loser-worship; cultural Marxism just redefines the losers. Its goal is to empower blacks, feminist women (only feminists), gays, etc., over straight white males.

If someone doubts the totalitarian ambitions of cultural Marxism, all he needs to do is look at most university campuses. Dissenters from cultural Marxism, student or faculty, are persecuted. More broadly, in todays America you cannot be a member of the elite if you defy the aspiring state ideology.

Not surprisingly, many Americans, probably a majority, reject cultural Marxism and its attempts to make them mouth lies. Weve seen that lately in parents efforts to keep critical race theory out of their kids schools. (Denials that it is being taught are lies; the whole of public schools curricula are shaped by the Frankfurt Schools critical theory, of which CRT is a subset.) These Americans are not looking for a fight, but they will fight before they bow and scrane to cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists, in turn, regard any dissenters as not merely wrong but evil. They may not be tolerated, rather they must be canceled: fired from their jobs, banned in their professions, rendered unpublishable, sometimes physically attacked. They are unpersons. Only through a groveling apology can their existence again be recognized. Trump voters, and millions of Americans who did not vote for Trump, will reach for their rifles before they go down on their knees.

While cultural Marxism is the ideological threat of the moment, another ideology, even more dangerous, is waiting in the wings; extreme environmentalism, sometimes called Deep Green. Deep Green environmentalism sees man as a curse on the planet whose duty is to eliminate himself. Other ideologies have called for liquidating this or that minority or social class; Deep Green targets everyone. It offers a perfect basis for totalitarianism because it argues that everything a person does, including eat and breathe, affects the environment. Currently hiding under the wings of cultural Marxism, Deep Green ideology is waiting to come forth if its protector falters. Again, tens of millions of Americans would rather fight than switch.

At present, no ideology from the right threatens freedom of thought and expression in this country. History shows such ideologies are possible; fascism and national socialism are examples. Libertarianism is an ideologyanyone who thinks free markets solve all problems should drive through a city that has no zoningbut it appeals only to a small intellectual clan and by its own logic cannot oppose freedom of thought and speech.

Conservatism is not an ideology. As Russell Kirk wrote, it is the negation of ideology. It rejects any and all attempts to remake man and society along lines dictated by some abstraction. It seeks a culture and a politics that is shaped from the bottom up by the experience of many generations. It manifests itself in customs, habits, and traditions, which vary widely from place to place, a variety conservatives embrace.

From a conservative perspective, ideology itself, regardless of its tenets, is the ring of power in Tolkiens trilogy. In the long run, it cannot be used for good, regardless of its promises. Our task is to bring our fellow citizens to see all ideologies as what they are, roads to tyranny, and to oppose them one and all. That is a tall order, because ideologies lend themselves to dumbing down, and dumbed down sells. But it is what we must do to redeem the time. Frodos road was not an easy one, either.

William S. Lindis the author, with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, of the4th Generation Warfare Handbook.Linds most recent book isRetroculture: Taking America Back.

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Ideology and Disunion - The American Conservative

On Sunday, Hungarian voters handed the governing right-wing Fidesz-KDNP alliance a landslide win and Prime Minister Viktor Orban his fourth consecutive term in office.

Some Western commentators suggest that the contest wasnt really free. They blame the conservative governments alleged control of the media. But far from being controlled by the government, the media market has grown and diversified since Orban took power. Progressives and liberals are free to express their opinions but without a complete, Soviet-style monopoly of ideas; social traditionalists, Christian Democrats, and champions of national sovereignty also have a voice, though they often dont enjoy a dominant position.

Conservative opinions are simply free to compete with liberal narratives, which may look like "government control of the media" to Western commentators who are used to silencing noncompliant voices on the Right. "Free media" likely means liberal-only media to them.

Not in Hungary.

Still, the international establishment never tires of warning that Hungarian media are under assault. To make it official, Freedom House downgraded Hungary to "partly free," though recently leaked documents showed former director of the Soros Foundation Andrej Nosko admitting that the ranking is part of a coordinated campaign against the "illiberal" Hungary and Poland. What, then, is the media market in Hungary, a country of 10 million?

According to media research, 6.8 million Hungarians turn to conservative outlets for information, 6.7 million to liberal sources, with 6 million reading both. Most major media companies across the political spectrum are profitable. It wasnt always this way. When Orban and his conservative government came to power in 2010, there were 33 left-liberal media outlets, mostly foreign-owned. Now, there are 43, mostly Hungarian-owned. There are also five new, right-leaning, anti-Orban outlets. Together, they represent 45% growth of the anti-government, politically relevant media on Orbans watch.

Is that what a government takeover of the media looks like?

All top media outlets are liberal. Out of 29 left-wing and 11 conservative online news portals, three liberal outlets 24.hu, Telex, 444 consistently rank highest in readership. There are three conservative and two liberal TV stations. As elsewhere in Europe, there is a major state-owned Hungarian television network, the MTVA ("Royal TV"), run by government appointees. The left-leaning RTL Klub TV attracts the most viewers. In radio news, five stations lean conservative, four are liberal, and one centrist. In print, there are five conservative and three liberal dailies on offer left-leaning Blikk and Nepszava have the highest readership. Among the weeklies, out of four conservative and six liberal titles, anti-government HVG and Magyar Narancs enjoy the biggest audience.

Despite the Hungarian media markets dynamic growth over the last 12 years, there have been losers, too. Before 2010, the ownership was predominantly foreign, mostly German. Following a flurry of domestic acquisitions, media companies are now 95% Hungarian-owned, although the 5% remaining in foreign hands represent one-third of the market by income and profit.

Ironically, the government-takeover-of-the-media narrative comes not from the oppressed Hungarians, but from foreign-owned outlets whose control over Hungarys media market was successfully challenged by local players after Orbans Fidesz came to power.

The result? In Hungary, you can criticize migration, Islam, or the LGBT-movement; you can question liberal pieties. And/or you can openly and loudly oppose the conservative government.

Far from taking over the media, the conservative government has liberalized media laws and helped create a more diverse news market. There are more choices. As Hungarians vote, their media landscape reflects the diversity of opinion that the West used to have when it was still a beacon of freedom, before political correctness and cancel culture destroyed the marketplace of ideas. After 44 years of communism, thats not the path we Hungarians want to follow.

Gergely Szilvay is a Hungarian journalist at Mandiner based in Budapest.

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Hungarian media freedom is alive and well - Washington Examiner

Amazons ham-handed PR was among the reasons why it suffered one of the biggest defeats in recent labor history, as workers on Staten Island voted to join the newly created Amazon Labor Union, which was the brainchild of 30-year-old fired warehouse worker Chris Smalls.

Hes not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position, wrote David Zapolsky, Amazon general counsel in a note that was leaked to Vice. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Amazon spent millions to defeat the ALU and hired the well-connected Democratic Global Strategy Group PA shop to torpedo the union drive.

GSG has some explaining to do, especially since it worked for the Biden campaign. Joe Biden is the most pro-union US president in years.

In a sharp contrast, GoFundMe donations funded Smalls grassroots PR campaign of texts, emails and meetings with the more than 8,000 Staten Island workers.

That effort also included volunteer support and guidance from the Communications Workers of America, UNITE HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers, Office and Professional Employees International Union, and Workers Assembly Against Racism.

Smalls told National Public Radio on April 6 that hes been contacted by more than 50 Amazon facilities in the US, Canada, UK, South Africa and India about organizing their workplaces.

That should convince Amazon founder Rocket Man Jeff Bezos to spend more time dealing with his restless workforce, rather than on his space dreams.

Amazon on April 4 announced the largest deal in the commercial space industry as it signed an agreement with United Launch Alliance (Boeing/Lockheed Martin partnership), Europes Arianespace and Bezos Blue Origin for 83 launches for its Project Kuiper internet satellites.

Theres trouble brewing in Earth's biggest store, Jeff.

Though Donald Trump watches a heckuva lot of television, hes been pretty quiet about the images of brutality, carnage, mangled bodies, corpses with hands tied behind their backs and wanton destruction transmitted from Ukraine to screens throughout the world.

The silence of the former president leads one to wonder whether he is angling for his own slot on Antifake, a new program on Russias most-watched TV network.

On April 5, Antifake featured a panel that dismissed scenes of dead civilians lying on the streets of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, as stunts staged by the non-existent Nazis of Ukraine and their allies in the west. Antifake drove home that propaganda point by running FAKE across the TV screen.

Since Trump is the guy who popularized the use of fake news, he would feel right at home at Antifake.

He could even have his buddy, Vladimir Putin, call in to rage at his perceived enemies, just like Trump does at Fox News.

Real Chemistry keeps on gobbling up acquisitions, though some signs of heartburn have started to appear.

The San Francisco-based healthcare PR firm, which prefers to call itself a global innovation company committed to making the world a healthier place for all," announced the acquisition of ConversationHealth on April 5.

ConversationHealth is the 10th acquisition for Real Chemistry since the company unveiled its partnership with NewMountain Capital in 2019.

The deal comes as Real Chemistry trimmed its workforce by about 50 people due to redundancies and overlap partly due to its aggressive acquisition spree.

McKinsey & Co. alum Shankar Narayanan assumed the helm of Real Chemistry in January from founder Jim Weiss.

CPAC loves Putin-lite. The Conservative Political Action Conference will hold its May meeting in Budapest and feature Hungarys right-wing nationalist leader Viktor Orban, who just won another term as prime minister, as a keynoter.

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson is a big fan of Orban, a close ally of Putin.

Budapests Center for Fundamental Rights invited CPAC to stage its first Continental Europe conference in Hungary.

Founded in 2013, The Center says preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions" is its mission, especially amongst the 21st centurys heightened process of "globalization, integration, geopolitical and technological changes, affecting the field of law as well.

In short, the Center wants to counter todays overgrown human rights fundamentalism and political correctness that have been affecting numerous aspects of our everyday life." It wants to turn back the hands of time to the Middle Ages.

CPAC might want to extend an invite to Putin to appear alongside his acolyte Orban. Tucker would be thrilled.

Read this article:

PR News | Earth to Jeff: There's Trouble Brewing - Wed., Apr. 6, 2022 - O'Dwyer's PR News

So on Twitter you can lie about war crimes but you cannot tell the truth about biology? That is the only conclusion one can draw from Twitters decision to leave up a vile, false tweet posted by Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The tweet says the massacres in Bucha are made up. They didnt happen. The photos and videos of dead bodies on the streets are all part of a hoax drawn up by the Kiev regime, it says.

This is a lie. Russias claim that the bodies were dumped in the streets by Ukrainian forces after Russian troops had withdrawn, all in an effort to demonise Russia as a commissioner of war crimes, is entirely without foundation. Indeed, a New York Timesinvestigation of satellite imagery has confirmed that many of the bodies were lying in the streets for more than three weeks, back when Russian forces were still occupying Bucha. Not content with brutalising and murdering Ukrainian people, the Russian regime now tries to cover its tracks with lies. This is despicable.

And yet the Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweet is still there, for the world to see. Sure, its hidden behind a warning This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behaviour but one click will take you through to the odious disinformation, to Russias lies, to Russian officials effectively dancing on the graves of the Ukrainians their military forces killed.

Lets remind ourselves that this is Twitter were talking about. A platform that permanently expelled Graham Linehan after he said men arent women tho in response to a tweet by the Womens Institute wishing its trans members Happy Pride. A platform that slapped a lifetime ban on feminist writer Meghan Murphy after she referred to Jessica Yaniv a born male who achieved notoriety when he sued female beauticians for refusing to wax his pubic area as he.

Its really worth taking stock of this. According to the moral overlords of Silicon Valley, stating biological facts is a speechcrime deserving of punishment, whereas lying about the heinous crimes you committed during your invasion of a sovereign state only requires the attachment of a warning. Saying men arent women couldsee you cast into the wilderness forever; saying Bucha is a hoax will get you a slap on the wrist.

Twitters justification for refusing to censor the tweet posted by Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs is that it is in the publics interest for the tweet to be accessible. As it happens, I agree with this. It is essential that we all know what Russian officialdom is thinking and saying right now. And we should have the right to see their lies as well as the other stuff theyre coming out with. Censorship of political representatives is never a good idea. It demeans democracy and open, informed discussion.

And yet it is also clearly in the public interest to allow feminists to express their concerns about transgenderism and what it might mean for womens rights. It is in the public interest to allow people to question identity politics, or to express scepticism about lockdowns, or to bristle against policies of mass immigration. We may agree or disagree with these ideas, but we all benefit from their free expression, because it gives us the opportunity to engage in discussion, to push back, to refine our own thinking. In other words, freedom of speech itself is in the public interest, and the sooner Silicon Valley realises this, the better.

Even Twitters privileging of comments made by government representatives is alarmingly inconsistent. Donald Trump, for instance, was notably not afforded the public interest protection that Twitter has given to the deceitful warmongers of the Russian regime. When Trump was still the sitting president of the United Stateshe was banned from Twitter after he allegedly incited the Capitol rioters. The Russian government, criminal invader of Ukraine, and the Taliban, violent oppressor of women and minorities, remain on Twitter, while Trump is still banned after he tweetedabout the 75,000,000 great American patriots who voted for me. What a terrible moral knot the internet elites have tied themselves in.

My view is very simple: no one should be banned from social media. Yes, explicit incitements to violence should be removed, given they are illegal. But when it comes to the expression of ideas and beliefs whether thats good-faith criticisms of the trans worldview or lowlife lies from a foreign government leave it up. Let us see it. Let us talk about it and make our own views known. That Twitter privileges the free expression of Russian warmongers while banning Trump and censoring feminists shows the extent to which it has been corrupted by political correctness. The social-media giants urgently need to reacquaint themselves with the ideals of freedom and reason.

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Why does Twitter think Russian lies are OK but Trump isn't? - The Spectator

Callum Wilkies first goal for the Saints in his 66th game was certainly a novelty which was greatly celebrated by his teammates who ran from everywhere to congratulate him.

Callum has admitted that in one way he wouldnt have minded extending the unusual barren run, but other Saints from the past have had longer blank scoresheets.

The most unusual example was that of the late Brian Walsh, a terrific back pocket whose 131 game career sits in the record books with not a single goal to his name.

But Brian Walsh was recorded as kicking a goal for the opposing team Carlton in a 1958 game!

He grabbed the ball 30 metres from the goal and his kick slewed off his boot and went through the Carlton goal.

He was horrified to see the goal umpire give the two-finger signal that it was a goal to the Blues. Years later, Brian recalled the bizarre incident in the book Heroes with Haloes.

It was just disbelief. When you know you have kicked it and they pay a goal. Half the time when people say they have touched it they really havent. But this time it was different. I think from memory that the goal umpire was suspended after that.

Newspapers credited one Carlton goal to Walsh. These days the AFLs records credit the extra goal to Carltons Doug Beasy in what seems to be a misguided piece of accountancy political correctness.

On the following Monday, a newspaper photographer set up a picture with wearing a mocked up Carlton jumper as Saint teammate Harold Davies and Collingwoods Ian Brewer looked on.

On one occasion, Brian thought he had kicked a goal against North Melbourne, but the umpire ruled that he had kicked the ball after the siren had sounded. He also kicked goals in post season night games, but they didnt count in his proper record.

The longest run for a Saint player without a goal is premiership defender Ian Synman (154 games) while Harold Matthews (136 games) and Keith Drinan (135 games) also exceeded Walsh. In more modern times, 1990s full-back Jamie Shanahan had 125 scoreless matches and Wayne Judson had 124.

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The Saints goal that counted... for the opposition! The odd tale of Brian Walsh - St Kilda FC

MADISON - School board races across Wisconsin will be decided at the polls next week, but Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Friday that he expects issues on education to continue to motivate voters in the fall.

"I stand with parents and parental rights," said Johnson, who is running for a third term.

Johnson convened a listening session on education issues as speakers criticized mask mandates, the use of critical race theory, and a perceived over-reliance on technology in the classroom.

Altoona School Board memberHillarie Rothwho is running in the Republican primary for the 68th District Assembly seat, lamented "woke culture that is raging through our society today."

"Our children are struggling, but are they struggling because of our supposed 'bad parenting' as some educators and school districts would have you believe? " Roth said in her statement. "Or are they struggling because of the constant barrage of political correctness and shame that is being slammed down their throats at every turn? Shame for being born white, shame for having opportunities, shame for having Christian values."

One panelist from suburban Milwaukee was critical of the amount of time schoolchildren spend on electronic devices, including computers, claiming that it connects students to pornographic images and affects their learning.

Johnson said: "This is their testimony, this is their viewpoint ... that is something that should concern parents if that is happening."

"I think there are good parts of technology and potentially bad parts of technology," Johnson said. "I think we should make sure that the bad doesn't come with the good. So I am concerned."

Johnson said he was prompted to hold the meeting because he has been listening to parents in different formats "in a completely nonpartisan way," he said. "It's interesting how many people that don't necessarily agree with me on some issues come in here and want to talk about this."

Asked about what he heard during the session, in which panelists spoke followed by audience members, Johnson said: "I think there's some real concern about our public school system not listening to parents, not hearing their voices, not hearing their concerns, a lack of accountability. That should concern us all."

On schools, Johnson said he was concerned "about the influence of national groups, teachersunions, that type of thing, trying to impose their ideology on our children."

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

Continued here:

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, running for a third term, expects education issues to motivate voters in the fall - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I no more believe in Guy Gibson's ghost than I do in Martians landing in my garden but if I did meet it this is what I should say: Thank you for all you did to keep this country free.

It is entirely due to the courage of people like you and your colleagues that I did not grow up with London draped in swastikas and concentration camps in the counties.

You died to preserve our liberty but I am afraid we have squandered that precious legacy.

We are not free to express our opinions, a right we would once have taken for granted.

Britain is now a place where people can lose livelihoods and be vilified just for disagreeing with prevailing state orthodoxy or with the views of a vocal and vindictive minority.

Indeed, the police have appeared on doorsteps to "check the thinking" of citizens who dissent.

Isn't that what you were fighting against?

After the war we set up a rather wonderful thing called the National Health Service.

But now it has gone quite barmy along with the rest of our institutions and in all seriousness asks men if they are pregnant.

Even our politicians say they cannot define what a woman is. And they run the country!

You remember the kindertransport?

Well, we are still just as kind-hearted and recently 100,000 Brits volunteered to take in Ukrainian refugees but we are now so ruled by bureaucracy and there are so many forms to fill in that most of the poor souls are still waiting for clearance.

It was the same when we had a rather nasty plague recently and former NHS workers volunteered to help: they faced a myriad of forms asking about their training in diversity.

Behold what we have done with your sacrifice.

Sorry, Guy Gibson.

------------------------------

Oh, doesn't the media just love kicking a man when he is down?

Prince Andrew has been publicly humiliated, lost all his royal roles and been ostracised by charities that were once glad of his support. But that apparently is not enough. Now he must also be vilified for accompanying his frail, elderly mother on a family occasion.

Is that really the way we thank the Queen for decades of service and pay our respects to her husband's memory?

Prince Andrew has been convicted of nothing except repeatedly appalling judgment and pomposity. While he was threatening to fight Virginia Giuffre in court the media were saying it would be disastrous in Jubilee year, would overshadow the celebrations and would bring the Royal Family into disrepute.

Now he has settled out of court, the cry goes up that he must be guilty and should never show his face again.

Whatever happened to the notion of fair play?

Camelot is reportedly appealing against the decision to award the National Lottery Franchise elsewhere.

I understand the company's dismay but gradually the lottery has grown dull and stale, with costs rising, prizes falling and chances diminishing.

I haven't played an online instant win game for some years because I eventually gave up trying to find one that is fun and interactive rather than being just a glorified version of a scratch card.

So maybe it needs fresh thinking and enthusiastic leadership that is raring to go.

Yet it would be churlish not to thank Camelot for the 45billion it has raised for good causes.

The impact on sport has been particularly beneficial and, by funding smaller local projects, it has helped communities on a scale that no government could undertake.

-------------------------------------------

I am an unashamed admirer of the late Mary Whitehouse, who never gave up on a cause despite being ridiculed for expressing concerns about pornography which today we acknowledge having been prophetic.

So I had fully intended to watch the BBC series called Banned and which examines her life and campaigns.

I saw the first episode and smiled slightly when Gyles Brandreth admitted that he had stopped working on Lord Longford's Commission on porn because he had wanted to be "fashionable".

That speaks volumes about attitudes at the time but I shall watch no more, the reason being that there were images in this programme which I wish I had never seen and which I do not want in my mind.

It makes me wonder how Mary coped.

Whatever the failings of the Parole Board, I cannot cheer the prospect of a Government minister having the final say on a prisoner's release. There is a reason for separating the judiciary from politics.

Politicians are too influenced by the need to be popular and are the least likely mortals to resist the din of witch hunts and lynch mobs, especially around election time.

If the Parole Board must be second-guessed then leave it to a senior judge who needs nobody's vote.

-----------------------------------------

Elsewhere on this page, I refer to the practice of NHS workers asking a man if he is pregnant. I can just imagine the replies they might get. What next? A farmer taking the bulls in for milking?

A stud manager looking for a male appendage on a mare?

Not all the political correctness in the world will alter the biological facts of reproduction.

----------------------------------------

It speaks volumes for our crazy society that it is sometimes difficult to spot an April Fool in the newspapers.

No story about political correctness is too ludicrous to be true nor yet any story about minute interpretation of the rule book.

Real-life is dafter than any scenario dreamed up by a comedian.

Read the rest here:

Did Guy Gibson and his mates go to war in vain? asks ANN WIDDECOMBE - Express

Heifer cow is better than none, but this is no time for puns. Groucho Marx

Or maybe this is a good time for puns. With all the stuff going on around us right now, this might just be the perfect time, in fact, for a little distraction in the form of wordplay and puns. And who better to provide us with that material than those who were among the best at it, the Marx brothers: Groucho, Chico, Harpo (even though he never spoke) and Zeppo.

These are my principles, and if you dont like them . . . well I have others, Groucho once told an associate (the quote has also been attributed to several politicians). Regardless of who actually said it, thats a good way to approach this piece; if you dont like some of the jokes, dont worry, there are plenty of others.

One of the brothers favorite subjects was women although sometimes its difficult to tell just how they felt about them. (Its also interesting to see just how much political correctness has evolved in the 90 or so years that have passed since most of this material was written.)

When Groucho told a woman that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, she asked him, Really? He replied, No, but I dont mind lying if it gets me somewhere. On another occasion, he reminded his troops, Remember men, were fighting for this womans honor; which is probably more than she ever did.

When things didnt work out, he told one date, Mrs. Teasdale (a wealthy widow played by Margaret Dumont) in Duck Soup, You can leave in a taxi. If you cant get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If thats too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.

And when insults werent enough, Groucho could always rely on the good old double entendre: We took some pictures of the native girls, but they werent developed. But were going back again in a couple of weeks.

Another time he was wooing a young blonde in a tippy canoe and remarked, I was gonna get a flat bottom, but the girl at the boathouse didnt have one.

Besides annoying the women he met, Groucho Marx had another hobby he also loved to read. I love to read, he said. My education is self-inflicted. He once observed, Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, its too dark to read.

He even revealed, I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read.

For someone who spent much of his later career hosting the television show You Bet Your Life, Groucho seemed to harbor a lot of disdain for the medium. Television is where you watch people in your living room that you would not want near your house.

One person Groucho seemed to not want near his house was his brother Chico, at least in their movies. Ive stitched together some quotes from several of their films to come up with this imaginary conversation between the quick-tongued Groucho and the equally deft Chico, who always affected a New York Italian-Jewish accent.

Groucho (explaining) Thats in every contract, thats what you call a sanity clause.

Chico You cant fool me, there aint no sanity clause.

Groucho You know, Id buy you a parachute if I knew it wouldnt open.

Chico Haha, youre crazy, Ive already got a pair a shoes. (He kicks Groucho.)

Groucho Ill teach you to kick me . . .

Chico You dont need to teach me, I already know how.

Groucho Get outta here before I get arrested.

Chico Nah, Id like to stay and see that.

Groucho Ive got a good mind to go out and join a club and beat you over the head with it.

I hope you enjoyed this look at some of the Marx brothers humor. If you didnt, keep in mind that Groucho himself once admitted, Well, all the jokes cant be good. Youve got to expect that once in a while.

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company and Ed Muskie: Made in Maine. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

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In a word: Marx Brothers: Absurd, wacky and still relevant - Lewiston Sun Journal

The Walt Disney Corp. has gone goofy. The home of Mickey Mouse has inverted its values by opposing a bill that was signed into law in Florida that prohibits public schools from teaching about sexuality and gender identity to students in kindergarten through the third grade.

The Parental Rights in Education Act has been demagogued as the Dont Say Gay Bill by the mainstream media even though it does nothing of the sort.

The text doesnt even mention gay, heterosexual or transgender people. It also doesnt disrespect or infringe upon the rights of the LBGT community, either. But the media and left-wing activists are trying like hell to convince us it does.

Disney initially took no position, but CEO Bob Chapek reversed course after feeling the heat from a number of activists and Disney employees.

Chapek previously said opposing the bill would hurt the companys ability to tell stories with LGBT characters in them. He was also concerned that Disney could be perceived as too liberal, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Instead of trusting his instincts, Chapek and Disney are now calling for the law to be repealed. In politics, that kind of 180-degree turn is called a flip-flop.

It seems like Chapek is being held hostage and that Disney has become disconnected from reality.

As the parent of two third graders, I dont want them learning about sexual matters in the classroom. I want them focusing on reading, writing, math, science, physical fitness and getting along with their classmates.

If and when my kids have questions or hear some chatter on the playground, I want them talking to me or my wife about it, not anyone else. Hows that controversial?

Also, as a nod to political correctness, Disney no longer addresses its patrons as ladies and gentlemen at its theme parks. Instead, it says, Dreamers of all ages.

Thats because the woke crowd thinks youre a bigot if you pigeonhole someone as male or female. Yes, thats how stupid the argument has become. They expect us to ignore biology.

Many of Disneys writers, animators and other creators have made defiant online posts and given interviews saying the Florida law will only embolden them to include more LGBT characters in books, TV shows and movies.

Does that mean we can look forward to The Little Transgender Mermaid or some other silly title? Its not that hard to change the channel or cancel your Disney+ subscription.

For [Disney] to say theyre going to work to repeal substantive protections for parents, as a company thats supposedly marketing its services to parents with young children, I think they crossed the line, said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Also, dont think Texas lawmakers arent watching.

Dont be surprised if similar bills are introduced when the Texas Legislature reconvenes next year.

Protecting young kids from hearing non-age appropriate material in school seems like an idea Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan and a majority of the Legislature (including some Democrats) can agree about.

Continued here:

Disney succumbs to whims of the woke left - Fort Bend Herald