Oh my stars! Not your stars, they're all mine! Hands off!

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□ [“Hollywood Stars May Be Getting Out of Politics, Voters ‘Tired of Celebrities Telling Them How to Think’"]

This isn't confirmed, just a few celebrities whose fame is going downhill and a couple self-appointed "experts."  To an extent I think it's true.  If nothing else, even studios have finally started realizing that they can't keep repulsing the paying audience.  Bad enough that they can't sell movies but they kill the movie franchise - Star Wars being the most obvious example - and that's more than just movies and tv.  No one's buying the toys or the fast-food tie-ins.  You're hurting other industries by having rich celebrities push the *woke* agenda.

I always cite the example of getting most of the "Avengers" to promote Kamala Harris.  If anyone decided to vote for her because they said so, it shows how weak of a candidate she was.  If anyone refused to vote for her because of their endorsement, that's bad enough.  If it didn't make any difference, it was a waste of money because they all got paid to endorse her.  Trump won all the swing-states and gained voters in every category except white female college graduates so celebrities really aren't as helpful as they think they are.

As the saying goes, 'politics is downstream from culture' so this suggests that even some Democrats might be getting a hint.  They don't know what to do about it but they're running into the differences in their own voting blocks.  A female congressional candidate in Seattle can't say anything about supporting LGBTQ or she'll lose the Muslim vote and it's clear who's more important.  This lines up with Hollywood realizing that they need to appeal to as many people as possible, regardless of politics.

So we'll see how celebrities handle this.  Several months ago at a concert, Mick Jagger started ranting something about Trump but the audience made it clear they weren't interested.  Mick didn't get this far by being stupid and immediately changed the subject.  I think that's why he recently called out Bruce Springsteen for doing such rants.  The people who think there's nothing more than politics can't even make good art and nobody's interested in them.

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□ [“Hakeem Jeffries Rejects DSA Agenda But Welcomes Them Into Democrats’ ‘Broad Caucus’"]

Another example of the party's internal struggles.  He's obviously lying to everybody, including himself.  We don't know for sure if DSA is actually in charge of the party now but it sure looks like it but here he's trying to claim they're just allowed in but everyone disagrees with him.  They need to convince the rest of the party not to run away.  He's also trying to show off to Republicans how unbeatable the party is now.  They've lost to Trump for ten years but *this time* it'll work!

There's no concrete evidence but we're at least getting the impression this really isn't working for them.  Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) gave a speech in a big room and less than ten people were in the crowd.  The problem with modern technology is that we can't be sure the video was real or that we knew when it was taken.  It was quite a distance from the speaker, there's no evidence it was actually Kelly.  But that said, if this is what really happened, it does show a serious drop in people willing to come out to support Democrats.

This lines up with how quiet the streets have been this summer.  All these years of people showing up to protest and riot the evil Orange Man and they're not here now even though he's supposedly more evil than ever.  The obvious reason is that DOGE and the Big Beautiful Bill have cut the funding for activists and that's probably a major reason for this.  But I also wonder how much of it is that the economy is actually better than leftists and their pet media tells us and the protesters have actually been able to get real jobs.  Those who aren't rich had to do something and the leftism is just repulsing enough people that perhaps some of them are out trying to be more normal.  As they do that, they realize it works better and more are encouraged to quit.  I don't know how likely that is but it sounds nice and it could explain why Democrats might be seeing fewer dedicated followers these days.

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□ [“Caitlyn Jenner Torches WNBA’s 'Hypocrisy' — Backs Ex-NBA Stars, 'XX Are In, XY Are Out'”]

I'm guessing the WNBA will cave in fairly soon if they can't even get the trans on their side.  Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone more famous than Bruce Jenner for anything other than being trans who decided to change their gender.  Jenner was an Olympic champion back when I was born, there's a limit to how famous you can get that way.  Other than that what does he do, marry the ex-wife of the guy who would be OJ Simpson's lawyer and start that bizarre Kardashian franchise?

Anyway, the WNBA is kind of stuck here.  I am not a sports fan but one benefit for those who are is that the rules are pretty clear.  Things like crossing the lines, how long they can hold a ball, physical contact with each other, these things are pretty clear to coaches, refs and fans whether you did or didn't do something wrong.  If two players do the same thing, you can't say one of them committed a "foul" because they were acting in 'bad faith.'

These are women in charge so I'm sure it'll take them a while to come to any real conclusion.  The WNBA doesn't have a real paying audience so they're funded by the NBA, they might speak out to rush this to a conclusion.  I'm sure more is going on behind the scenes and I don't know what answer they'll come up with but I suspect people are trying to get to the end as soon as possible.  If they can't even keep their own trans people in line, there's no way to win.

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□ [“Supergirl Flop Starts James Gunn DC Collapse! Four Female Superhero Projects Dumped!"]

It only took four years for Marvel to get from the first Iron Man to Avengers.  DC can't even follow that example, it's been almost as long and they have very little to show for it.  They're cancelling stuff that was announced years ago and production still hadn't even started on.  Even worse, they're watching the success Sony is having with a Marvel character right now, it just passed $2 billion worldwide.  It could be the worst movie in history but it's still a success which DC has never come close to.

A new DC tv show is debuting today, probably as I write this.  It can't be called "Green Lantern" because apparently "green" is racist or something.  Recent promotion has declared how it promotes the *woke* agenda.  I don't think anybody as at the point where we'll openly proclaim these releases to be failures in advance, just because we don't want to be wrong, but everybody expects this to be ignored.  It's also been noted that this show will only use the superhero aspect reluctantly but it's supposed to be good despite that.  Then why are you using these IPs in the first place?

To an extent, it's like Hollywood is finally realizing how limited the superhero genre is, which they used to know a few decades ago but have forgotten .  There's also the way they need to tie themselves to these decades-old corporate properties.  There's also the way these companies are tying themselves to people who are more concerned with their own image than anything else.  I don't think there really are any "c-list" characters but I'm in the vast minority on that, most people realize that he's just pushing IPs that no one has ever heard of or cares about.

Gunn is getting defensive just because he has so little success to point to at DC.  With Supergirl's failure, he, the lead actress and the screenwriter have all come out to sound at least slightly-more apologetic to the audience who didn't show up.  They always go back to saying how awful the fans are but there's at least a sentence or two about how they didn't produce anything people would pay to watch.  Not going to help but it's a start.  DC needs to figure out how it got itself into this mess, that's the only way to get out of it.

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