Wednesday's Final Word

It's a tab duty, a blogosphere booty, how we clicked here I haven't a clue ... 

It’s a pretty nuanced position. I don’t know why we keep misrepresenting it https://t.co/9z48b7ySGK

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) September 15, 2026

Ed: Democrats appear to agree with him about the USA. They keep embracing Hasan Piker. And if Piker doesn't like it here, to paraphrase J.D. Vance, he should get his ass back to Turkey or to France. He can take Abdul El-Sayed, Angie Nixon, and James Talarico with him, along with everyone who was supposed to play on Ed Sheeran's tour.

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TMZ: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she's hitting the mute button on Ed Sheeran ... though she acknowledges he's really only a pawn in the whole Macklemore saga.

AOC's taking Tlaib's advice ... she's boycotting Ed because she says he's complicit in Robert Kraft and other stadium owners' efforts to silence Macklemore.

This isn't about just one artist, AOC says ... it's about a system where the privileged few can use their economic power to quash the other side of the debate.

AOC says this is bigger than just one issue, too ... today it's Gaza, tomorrow it could be the rich silencing A.I. dissenters or other people with alternative opinions.

Ed: No one's silencing Macklemore. He's going to keep shouting "Free Palestine," but Robert Kraft and other venue owners won't partner with him to promote the message. AOC firmly took the side of the debate silencers five years ago in claiming to shut down "misinformation," where the government and Big Tech colluded to actually silence Americans for their political speech. Why is AOC suddenly ready to fight for Macklemore? Er ...

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If you’d like a preview of the 2028 Dem presidential debates, this is the hill AOC is currently defending https://t.co/79ocne2PWK pic.twitter.com/b5FYAdkkDX

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 16, 2026

Ed: It's all about the Jooooooooos. 

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Daily Mail: Ed Sheeran has lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers in 24 hours after fans criticised him for dropping opening act Macklemore from his US tour. ...

Sheeran's close friend Myles Smith, Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe, Danish pop band Lukas Graham, and Irish folk band Beoga – who have been serving as Sheeran's backing band on the tour – have also released separate statements announcing they will not continue with their dates on the Loop Tour.

Breaking his silence amid the backlash, Sheeran, 35, insisted Macklemore coming off the tour was the 'promoter's decision', not his. He added his audience is often young people 'from different backgrounds' who do not expect his shows to be a political forum.

While his Instagram follower count stood at 47.6 million on Monday, it has now dropped to 47.3 million.

Ed: Oh noes!!1!1!!1! Sheeran's Instagram following has dropped by 0.63 percent! If this is supposedly the metric of disapproval, why would we not also extrapolate this data by calling it a 99.37% endorsement of Sheeran's position? This is as dumb as reports yesterday that Sydney Sweeney had lost 200K IG followers after her Novig ad from a follower base of over 26 million on the platform. 

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Backing band? What a cabal of cowards.

— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) September 16, 2026

Ed: Indeed. Gutless wonders, but this rots from the top. Sheeran's the headliner, and he's insisting that he wants to keep the tour apolitical. So why did he have Macklemore as his opening act and why did he hire these musicians in the first place? When was the last time any of them, including Macklemore, had anywhere near the same level of relevance as Sheeran?

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WSJ: Security gaps at Utah Valley University allowed an assassin to get close enough to kill conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, his widow Erika Kirk said in a legal filing notifying officials that she may take legal action against the university and the state.

Ed: I'm extremely sympathetic to the claim on a moral basis, but it may be trickier on a legal basis. Universities and colleges often require student groups to provide their own security, and in fact, I'm working on another story at the moment where that is an issue. 

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Exclusive: Undercover Video Catches James Talarico’s Minister Admitting His Political Makeover Is A Lie

“I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.” @realDailyWire pic.twitter.com/vQH46DN6q7

— Jacob Wheeler (@JWheelertv) September 16, 2026

Ed: No one buys that Talarico has changed his mind at all or truly believes that his earlier rhetoric "missed the mark." He's attempting a traditional general-election strategy in an era where that kind of phony politicking is very much out of style. His minister is not just speaking out of school; she's trying to keep the radicals from abandoning Talarico for betraying them. 

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The Crimson Hub (Satire): Following revelations that his favorite Texas drag queen is Alyssa Edwards, James Talarico's campaign for US Senate has announced that he will appear as a celebrity judge on Season 19 of RuPaul's Drag Race.

The new season, set to begin filming next month, will be the latest installment in the popular reality show that first began airing in 2009.

It is unknown how Talarico expects to balance his on-the-campaign-trail commitments as a Senate candidate with the rigors of judging the forthcoming contest.

But a producer with the show speculated that Talarico's deep familiarity with drag queens and the drag scene could help him reach conclusions about contest participants' fierceness and overall drag prowess faster than a standard judge– and perhaps even RuPaul himself.

Ed: Yes, this is satire; The Crimson Hub is trying to blend satire with straight news and commentary. Satire is best when it cuts closest to reality, though, and ... this is pretty darned close. Close enough that I added the satire tag up front. 

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BREAKING….

Kevin Reddington, Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer, has federal tax liens of $2.37 million for unpaid taxes on his Marshfield mansion, according to public records on file at the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds.

Reddington bought his now-assessed-at-$2.3-million estate in… pic.twitter.com/zaO3SpaHNT

— Howie Carr (@HowieCarrShow) September 16, 2026

Reddington bought his now-assessed-at-$2.3-million estate in 2017, and has liens from the IRS dating back to 2018, through 2024.

Reddington is the public face of the free-Lindsay Clancy mob that is so outraged that the holdout juror allegedly owes $12,600 in unpaid rent, and is being evicted by his landlord in Bridgewater.

There is no record that any of the $2.37 million in IRS liens on Reddington’s property have been discharged, i.e., paid off. Reddington did not return calls seeking comment on his apparently unpaid tax debts.

Ed: Click through to see all the data. Reddington is a real piece of work, and he deserves every bit of the public scrutiny he will receive after stoking the mob against the lone holdout juror. As Howie wonders at the end, will any of the same media outlets happily amplifying Reddington's incitement report on these tax liens?

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Caitlin Flanagan at The Free Press: It’s a sleek ad featuring the world’s sexiest woman saying the word sports over and over again, and if that isn’t an inducement to the average online sports bettor (overwhelmingly young and male), nothing is. I knew that the ad was stirring up something powerful because of the moralizing terms with which the press described Sweeney’s appearance in the ad. Variety called the ad “risqué,” ESPN said the star wore “little or no clothing,” and many outlets described her as “nearly nude.” What was this, Raquel Welch wearing a fur bikini in One Million Years B.C.?

According to a central tenet of 17th-wave feminism, a woman has every right to dress or undress as she wants, and if she walks though Mall of America in a pair of pasties and a G-string, anyone leering at her is the one with the problem, not her. So what’s with all the slut-shaming? Feminism is a shape-shifter. It’s not logic and reason that determine positions; it’s how well it serves the current cause. ...

I honestly had to read through a trove of these inscrutable but strongly expressed emotions before I understood their meaning. These women thought that when Sweeney picked up the hockey stick, she was representing women hockey players, and that when she picked up the basketball, she was representing women basketball players. They thought they were being unflatteringly represented. I don’t think there’s a single person who saw Sweeney obscure her large breasts who thought, She must play professional football. The ideas behind the ad—like the ideas behind all good ads—were simple: sports, betting, sexy girl.

Ed: As Kat Timpf said last night, Sweeney isn't sexualizing women's sports – she's sexualizing gambling, and targeting its most lucrative demo of young adult males. That is why Raymond Arroyo argued that the real issue here isn't whether Sweeney is being sexually exploited or is sexually exploiting female athletes, but whether Novig is exploiting the men this ad targets. But as to the complaints from the feministst, both Flanagan and Critical Drinker correctly assess what TRULY bothers them. 

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Ed: The top comment on this video is priceless: "The way everyone is so mad at Sydney, you'd think she killed her three kids or something." Exactly. 

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Glenn Reynolds at the NY Post: There may be a few such “useful idiots” (as Lenin called them) on the left, but these last few months the masks have been coming off.

Arguably the big reveal began with the leftist celebration of Luigi Mangione, who murdered UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in late 2024. 

It was a watershed moment: Suddenly, many on the left felt free to proclaim that they saw killing CEOs as virtuous.

And in recent weeks the vitriol has flowed ever more openly.

Now it isn’t just CEOs; when Erin Placenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president, was fatally stabbed last month by a nut in Times Square, leftists cheered because she worked for a bank that had issued a “buy” recommendation for Israeli bank stocks. 

Last week, the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — which occurred while he was politely debating leftist college students in an open forum — spurred “Happy Kirkiversary” and “Merry Kirkmas” outbursts on campuses around the nation.

Ed: The masks have been coming off since the October 7 massacre. They are most certainly off this election cycle, with Democrats either caving to or outright embracing the DSA and lunatics like Hasan Piker. And now the radicals are launching yet another apocalyptic panic in an attempt to justify Marxist control of industry.

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Join our very spontaneous organic grassroots movement today and get a free stack of preprinted signs along with a download app of demonstration locations where you can win loyalty points for valuable prizes https://t.co/wIfHBnuFZJ

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 16, 2026

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Jonathan Turley: A recent Emerson College poll shows that 4 out of 10 voters between the ages of 18-29 (39%) view Mangione’s role in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.” Other polls show a troubling number of liberal voters consider political violence justified, including polls showing 40% of young people embracing political violence in some circumstances.

This week, UC Irvine instructor Matt Goldman came under fire for a posting showing the picture of conservative Nick Shirley with the menacing observation “Someone can do the funniest thing just before the Kirkiversary.” There was a time when political assassination was viewed as anathema, particularly among academics.

To put it simply, violence is in vogue.

Ed: Prof. Turley has a very good idea of who has made political violence the fashion these days, and why. The radicals want a revolution, and the money behind them wants to fund and control it. 

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In 1979, a talk show host looked at one of the most influential economists alive and told him, on live television, that capitalism ran on greed.

Milton Friedman had won the Nobel Prize in Economics three years earlier, in 1976, for his work on monetary theory and consumption… pic.twitter.com/rdiAR8SfyU

— WealthLens (@WealthLens_) September 13, 2026

Phil Donahue, host of the highest-rated daytime talk show in America, asked him directly whether the concentration of power and profit under capitalism had ever given him a moment of doubt.

Friedman didn't pause before answering. "Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed?"

Ed: I had never seen this until a friend sent it this morning. It's a must-watch takedown of the anti-capitalist nonsense of that time and of this time. 

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Last night's lyric: "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Glen Campbell.

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