Aaron Judge: The 6’7” American Export Who Reminds the World That Size Still Matters By “Globetrotting” Grigor Malinov, filing from somewhere with regrettable Wi-Fi and excellent bourbon Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the news that Beijing’s smog now has its own diplomatic passport, a man named Aaron Judge—built like a Cold-War…
Don Lemon and the Global Ripple of a Very American Firing By “Cynicus Maximus,” Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—In most latitudes, when a television host is shown the door, the story is buried somewhere between the obituaries and the weather. But when CNN dispatches Don Lemon—its last primetime anchor who still pronounced “Kyiv” correctly on…
Adam Sandler: The Last American Export That Even Trade Wars Can’t Kill By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the collapse of the global liberal order and the day Netflix’s algorithm achieved sentience, the planet quietly agreed on one point of consensus: Adam Sandler is inevitable. From the air-conditioned multiplexes of Riyadh—where his latest comedy…
The Hollywood Bowl, that half-domed amphitheater squatting on a Hollywood hill like a crashed UFO made of redwood and stucco, is supposedly just another music venue. Yet to the rest of the planet it remains a shorthand for America’s most profitable export: the illusion that everyone, everywhere, is invited to the party—provided they can afford…
Walker Cup Results: When America’s Golfing Teenagers Become Collateral Damage in the Global Soft-Power Arms Race By “Lucky” Luciano Verde, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker St Andrews, Scotland – The scoreboard reads USA 14½, GB&I 11½, which is the polite, tartan-wrapped way of saying the United States has once again weaponized orthodontics and college meal plans…
Baltimore Ravens: America’s Gothic Opera, Now Playing on Every Continent By Our Man in Perpetual Transit Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic, 37,000 feet above whatever fresh geopolitical disaster is brewing below, the in-flight Wi-Fi hiccups just long enough for the passenger in 14C to miss Lamar Jackson pirouette out of a collapsing pocket and flick a…
Elle Fanning and the End of the American Empire, as Told from a Café in Sarajevo By “International Correspondent Who’s Given Up on Pretending to Be Optimistic” Sarajevo, 07:14 a.m. CEST — A thick Bosnian coffee hisses on the table, the kind that once fortified Ottoman viziers and now fuels NGO interns who still believe…
KANSAS CITY—In a world where TikTok decides elections and central banks treat recessions like seasonal fashion, it’s almost quaint that a 24-year-old Texan with a 6.7 WAR can still hijack the international news cycle by whacking a horsehide sphere into orbit. Yet here we are, and Bobby Witt Jr.—the Kansas City Royals’ shortstop-cum-global metaphor—is doing…
Dodging alien artillery or congressional subpoenas with the same square-jawed equanimity, Chris Evans has become the world’s most export-ready piece of modern American soft power. From Seoul to São Paulo, the man is less an actor these days than a geopolitical utility: a walking, occasionally shield-flinging reminder that the empire can still package its anxieties…
The Global Village Has a New Village Explainer – and He’s Still Not Sure Why We’re Here By our Special Correspondent, currently self-isolating with a thermometer in one hand and a passport in the other From a cramped flat in São Paulo to a yurt on the Mongolian steppe, the name “Brian Cox” now travels…
Paris, 03:47 local time – The Daily Telegraph, that stately British broadsheet once nicknamed “The Torygraph” by people who thought they were being original, has been having what the tabloids would call “a moment.” Not the sort of moment that involves a prime minister’s aide, a suitcase of rosé, and a Downing Street swing set—more…
UC Davis vs Washington: A Rumble on the Pacific Rim That the Rest of the World Pretends Doesn’t Matter—But Actually Sort of Does By Our Correspondent, filing from a hotel minibar somewhere between LAX and Narita To the 7.8 billion humans who weren’t invited, the NCAA women’s volleyball regional semifinal between UC Davis and the…
