Sunday shorts

The lawsuit itself doesn’t matter. The threat is the point.

Deep of pocket, thin of skin and lacking the cognitive capacity to fight barbed humour on its own turf, the writ-happy Trumps are big on lawfare. The oval office tangerine has already threatened comedian Trevor Noah over a Greenland jest …

Song of the Year – that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.

… but first lady Melania, herself no slouch at the intimidating writ game, has her own team of dedicated litigators. So when the same Trevor Noah, one of the biggest names in comedy and hosting the January 2026 Grammy Awards at NYC’s Beacon Theatre, deployed a double entendre on the word, ‘barely’ – “Donald says he barely knew the guy but that’s how Melania met Epstein” – her legal posse rode in with a billion dollar lawsuit.

But have they misjudged the situation? Over at the Strategic Zone YouTube channel, in a slightly repetitive ¹ but cogent eighteen minutes, here’s someone who thinks so. She’s smart and lucid and knows the law. No less important, she understands the first rule of bullying: stick to folk who, lacking the wherewithal to fight back, make for easy wins.

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My next offering is the Duran duo of Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou, as a Washington bent on regime change in Tehran – or failing that, on Iran balkanised – put on a comedy show of negotiating in Oman. To those who know corporate media to be systemically incapable of approaching such a topic in an adult or even logically coherent manner, and are looking for a crisp overview in under fourteen minutes, your search is over.

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My third and final offering is short in name only. I deem The Big Short, released in 2015 and featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, the best of the Hollywood offerings (and some – Wall Street, Margin Call, Wolf of Wall Street – have been very good) on the casino capitalism of that rentier oligarchy also known as the United States of America. ²

More specifically, if you were confused about the 2007/8 crash, well, you’re supposed to be. This film goes no small way towards correcting that. Enjoy.

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1. That repetitiveness I’ve come to recognise as a frequent sign of AI generated content I in turn associate – not always but often – with telling audiences what they want rather than need to hear. Could Melania’s hand be stronger, and Trevor’s weaker, than suggested here. Pass. Caveat emptor!
2. Hollywood is no less corporate America than Wall Street or Silicon Valley. That it can offer such as The Big Short, and Amazon a raft of titles giving withering critiques of modern imperialism, is what Harold Pinter was getting at in his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech:

   The crimes of the USA have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but few have talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

   See also my January post on how fiction advances empire agendas.