From the distant vantage point of a café terrace in Lisbon—where the espresso is strong and the collective memory of empire still lingers like cigar smoke—one finds it oddly comforting that the American culture war can still be distilled into a genealogical footnote. Specifically: the parents of Charlie Kirk. To the rest of the planet,…
Brie Larson and the Peculiar Global Sport of Watching Actors Become Ideological Footballs By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere over the Pacific It began, as most twenty-first-century international incidents do, with a tweet. Brie Larson—Oscar-winner, Marvel franchise linchpin, part-time YouTube vlogger—once suggested that film criticism could stand a wider range of voices. Within…
The Curious Case of Harrison Butker, or How One Kicker Became the Planet’s Favourite Punchline By Diego “Weathered Passport” Salazar, International Affairs Desk Kansas City, Missouri—If you had told the average Parisian, Lagosian, or Singaporean that a man whose primary job is to boot an inflated pigskin between two yellow sticks could trigger a planetary…
The Gospel According to Meagan Good, or How a California Church Dress Scandal Became the Planet’s Latest Morality Play In the 48 hours after Meagan Good stepped onto an Atlanta red carpet wearing a cut-out, silver lamé gown that appeared held together by hope and two strategically-placed rhinestones, the incident followed the classic arc of…
PARIS—While the rest of the planet argued about whether World War III would begin with a submarine ping or a TikTok trend, Lizzo—flute in one hand, disco ball in the other—managed to become a one-woman diplomatic incident on three separate continents last week. If you missed it, congratulations: you were probably busy watching glaciers file…
