TOKYO—While the planet’s attention toggles between nuclear saber-rattling, algorithmic hallucinations, and whatever fresh outrage TikTok has monetized today, a 5-foot-9, 180-pound American in knee-high socks is quietly demonstrating that the most reliable export the United States still produces is thirty-something-year-old men who hit spheres with sticks. Mookie Betts—first name christened after a childhood nickname, surname…
Joe Walsh: The Global Brand Nobody Ordered, Yet Here We Are Somewhere between a forgotten Eagles guitar riff and a half-remembered U.S. congressman lies the name Joe Walsh—two syllables now ricocheting across continents like a linguistic boomerang nobody asked to throw. In Berlin coffee shops, the barista hums “Life’s Been Good” while wondering if the…
Jacqui Heinrich: The White House’s Favorite Glitch in the Matrix If you squint hard enough at the daily White House press briefing—say, through the bottom of a half-empty negroni in a hotel bar in Sarajevo—you can almost see the ghost of every 20th-century war correspondent rolling their eyes in unison. There, in the front row,…
The Curious Export of Greg Gutfeld: How America’s Snarkiest Late-Night Host Became a Global Rorschach Test PARIS—On a rain-slick Wednesday in the Marais, the barman at Le Mary Celeste muted France-Inter mid-interview with Emmanuel Macron and flicked on the subtitled feed of “Gutfeld!” The move drew zero protests; the patrons—mostly advertising strategists pretending to read…
When Xavier Gipson, a 22-year-old undrafted receiver from Stephen F. Austin, took the opening kickoff of overtime 65 yards to the house against the Buffalo Bills last September, the planet did not wobble on its axis. The Amazon rainforest did not burst into spontaneous applause, and no Swiss banker adjusted his ledger. Yet in that…
The Dodgers—those perennially over-funded denizens of Chavez Ravine—currently sit atop the National League West like a bored oligarch atop a yacht, lighting Cuban cigars with the hopes of 29 other franchises. From the outside, the standings look tidy: first place, best run-differential on the planet, payroll roughly equivalent to the GDP of Fiji. But zoom…
The American League West: A Pocket-Sized Empire in a World That Barely Notices Somewhere between the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait, the planet’s most combustible shipping lanes hum with crude-oil tankers whose cargo value dwarfs the combined payrolls of the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners. Yet if you scroll far enough down the…
Cody Bellinger: A Center-Field Metaphor for the Post-Globalization West By the time the jet-lagged Tokyo Dome crowd had stopped bowing politely at his routine fly-outs earlier this spring, Cody Bellinger had already become more than a ballplayer—he had morphed into a walking, gum-chewing allegory for the late-capitalist order itself. Once crowned National League MVP, now…
Stephen Miller and the Global Export of American Dysfunction by our correspondent in the Departures Lounge, Terminal 3, World History While most nations outsource widgets, microchips, or seasonal fruit, the United States—ever the innovator—has begun franchising its grudges. Exhibit A: Stephen Miller, the 38-year-old senior advisor who looks like the last surviving barista at a…
San Francisco 49ers Dispatch from the Edge of the World By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between the 38th parallel and the 49th roster cut Word out of Santa Clara is that the 49ers have decided what every global empire eventually decides: let’s get younger, cheaper, and hope nobody notices the drop-off in…
PARIS—Somewhere between the 17th arrondissement’s endless strikes and the existential dread hanging over the Seine like cheap cigarette smoke, the name Isaiah Foskey has begun to echo in the sort of bars where expats argue about American football as if it were a UN resolution. The irony, of course, is delicious: a pass-rusher from Walnut…
**The Global Siren Song of the FanDuel Touchdown Jackpot: How America’s Digital Gold Rush Went Viral** While the world grapples with climate refugees and supply chain collapses, nothing quite captures the zeitgeist of late-stage capitalism like watching a London investment banker place bets on Cleveland’s third-string quarterback during his lunch break. The FanDuel Touchdown Jackpot—America’s…
