There's a moment in episode seven of PEACOCK's LONG BRIGHT RIVER where the whole mood seems about to shift as the mini-series appears to be on the verge of toppling over into absurdity and parody. We thought about that today as two YOUTUBERS came close to doing the same with one actually toppling over the cliff.
Taylor Lorenz and Keith Edwards are the two YOUTUBERS and while we have hope for one, we are washing our hands of the other.
We were unfamiliar with Taylor's work until, following her dismissal from THE WASHINGTON POST (no, it was not a mutual decision, nor was it Taylor's decision), she ended up doing a YOUTUBE program. We'd never read her work -- not her writing at THE DAILY MAIL, THE DAILY BEAST, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE POST, etc etc.
By the time she got to YOUTUBE, we knew her name but not really any of her writing or anything at all other than she was a 'tech' writer. The only thing other than her name that we knew about Taylor was that she had been the target of gendered attacks. Out of a sense of solidarity as a result of those attacks, we made a point to catch her YOUTUBE show and post videos of it at THE COMMON ILLS.
We enjoyed the videos. She was a good host and conversationalist. Watching her discuss an issue with a guest didn't feel like time wasted. And maybe that's what she can move over to? Doing interviews? Because that's apparently all she has any skill for.
Today, she posted a very lousy YOUTUBE video. How lousy? We're scrapping the piece we wrote Sunday (it'll run in Friday's the gina & krista round-robin) about the media's attempt to create and sell a martyr so we can instead focus on Taylor and Keith. And writing a new piece meant more time and more work especially since we knew Taylor was hiding something -- much more than being fired from THE POST -- which meant we had to work the phones.
But don't worry, Taylor, we're not writing a biography about you so most of your secrets will remain safe (including your true age)
There are certain words and phrases that always stick out when you pay attention. In the video she posted today -- nearly 25 minutes of garbage entitled "The Rise and Fall of 'The Resistance'" -- Taylor made clear that she possessed no analytical skills and also strongly demonstrated why she's usually out of a job within two years.
To be clear, we were never part of The Resistance or 'The Resistance.'
We called out Donald Chump. We didn't like Donald Chump. We actually knew the Convicted Felon before he was president and didn't like him then. It's why, when we wrote about THE APPRENTICE here, we didn't lie and pretend he was a great business person. Or even a good one.
We felt the never-ending 'reporting' of his Tweets was pointless and counter-productive.
So to read the title, we thought, "This is going to be informative!"
And it was. In all the wrong ways.
Taylor has no analytical skills but she does have a ton of generational grievances.
We were told, repeatedly, in calls today that she's very proud of her targeting of baby boomers. If there was ever a reason to note Tayor's age, this would actually be it. But we'll be kind and just note that she also hates on Gen X.
She actually hates on a lot of people.
'The Resistance,' she uses air quotes, she wants you to know, were all grifters and they were never left-wing and that's why they've gone on over to the right where the money is now.
She has some examples. BrooklynDad_Defiant, she explains, felt the judicial system was biased against fathers due to his own personal experience. That's all it takes for her to insist he was a right-winger who changed to pretend he was something else.
We're not Taylor Lorenz. Meaning? We're not ridiculous enough to be a gossip columnist whose beat is social media and confuses that with reality.
Though not social media addicts, we were aware of Brooklyn Dad. Call it coincidence, luck or some high power steering us to him with the belief we'd need to know this at some point in the future, he did not wait until after the election of 2016 to post about left issues.
Why is she lying? Or is Taylor just stupid?
And why is some father feeling, based on what he went through,, that the court system is biased towards mothers a sign of right-wingery?
We have no idea what he wrote that Taylor found so objectionable -- she had nearly 25 minutes and never offered one example -- but, reality, the courts are biased towards mothers and against fathers when it comes to child custody.
That's because courts are biased towards norms, mores and, yes, stereotypes.
The one pro-bias women have legally had has been that a mother is seen as a more important parent than a father and, no (Keith), we're not going to worry about prettying that up. We're feminists, we've got a body of work behind us which predates Taylor's high school graduation. We're not going to worry about saying something we believe -- especially not when we can back it up.
Taylor can't back up much of anything.
Time and again, we marveled at Taylor's ignorance.
For example?
Brooklyn Dad has written picture books about Donald Chump. She can't offer her take on them but she does read a review from "Joe" on AMAZON. We're familiar with review bombing (is she not?) so we immediately did due diligence and "Joe" didn't even buy the book ("verified purchase" would be by his review if he had). Joe's done nine reviews. Only two are one-star reviews. He hated Brooklyn Dad's book about Chump and, surprise, surprise?, he also hated John Lithgow's book about Chump. The seven other reviews? All verified purchases.
Who trained Taylor in what she thinks passes as journalism?
Let's stay with Joe one more minute to really show you how Taylor doesn't understand research.
She quoted a review attacking Brooklyn Dad's book. A review by nobody "Joe" who is not a top AMAZON reviewer and has only done nine reviews and who is not even someone who bought Brooklyn Dad's book. If she'd read Joe's review of John Lithgow's book she would have seen that Joe hates "woke" and if she'd read this review, she would have known he was a Trumper. Do not let the title of the book fool you, it is not pro-Democrats -- it's by a DAILY WIRE writer and it's the kind of garbage the thankfully deceased Rush Limbaugh would've written (the DAILY WIRE writer guest hosted on Rush's program before Satan called Rush home). It is a book that Donald promoted and so did Ben Shapiro. Click here and scroll down but, knowing that's too much work for Taylor to do, let's just copy and paste below:
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A great book for your reading enjoyment." -- Tweet from President Donald Trump
"Thorough." -- Ben Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Bullies
“Michael Knowles perfectly documents what's inside the minds of Democrats. A real page-turner!” -- Michelle Malkin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sold Out
“I read it twice!” -- Dennis Prager, New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Commandments
“Brilliantly argued! You will not find a more enlightened defense of liberalism. Ever.” -- Jason Mattera, New York Times bestselling author of Obama Zombies
“Insightful, yet remarkably easy reading!” -- Guy Benson, bestselling author of End of Discussion
"The most efficient way to learn about the issues that Democrats really care about. This is a must read." -- Katie Pavlich, New York Times bestselling author of Assault and Flattery
"The reasons to vote for Democrats can be subtle and complex, but Knowles boils them down to their essence." -- Andrew Klavan, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Good Thing
Watching the segment and watching her co-sign on Joe's review of BrooklynDad, you have to ask if she's not the grifter and if she's not existing to help the right-wing?
It's over for boomers and Gen X, she wants you to know. And Millennials are limping off to old age as well.
They don't understand things like RUMBLE!
That's their big problem, she insists smugly -- the kind of smugness that derives from knowing nothing.
At this point in time, social media is still just a form of communication. That's all.
She may need to lie to justify her pathetic work. Maybe she has to pretend it's so much more to avoid dealing with how empty and shallow her own life and interest are?
Instead of grasping that she's no investigative reporter -- just a gossip columnist folded into the travel and leisure section of a daily paper -- she wants you to know in this latest video that Democrats are over and they're evil. They did this and they did that. And only the out of touch -- unconnected people with actual lives -- fail to see this.
And never will see it because they're aging out of 'the cool kids' generation.
The only one worried about aging out is the Taylor Lorenz who lies about her age.
The rest of us, we're pretty much okay with aging especially, as they say, considering the alternative.
But Taylor has no actual life which is why so much of her 'analysis' is devoted to Lindy Li.
Lindy Who?
She's a relative nobody who never had any real influence and whose name we didn't even know until after the 2024 election. But to Taylor, she's one of our most prominent Americans.
Time and again, Taylor makes a point to shower publicly in her own stupidity.
Sorry to break it to her, but the "famous" boy yodeling at Wal-Mart? Until today, we'd never heard of him. Your goal posts are not ours. You have wrongly decided your freakish fancies are mainstream and you ignorantly refuse to grasp that voters are not to be written off or mocked because they don't keep up with this year's MySpace.
She's a sad, troubled and deeply stupid person.
Keith?
Keith Edwards is just troubled.
We didn't realize how much until we were going to post videos at THE COMMON ILLS. We realized that YOUTUBE was recommending a lot of garbage. Again. Not sure how that works but more garbage. And while we were going through and doing "Do Not Recommend Channel Again," we realized that Keith wasn't showing on our YOUTUBE page. Had he not done anything in the last 48 hours? No. We went to his channel and he had new videos. We were going to leave a note about this on his BLUESKY feed so we hopped over there only to discover he'd written a piece "How the Big Tent Became a Gated Community: Making people feel heard is more powerful than making them feel wrong."
Keith worries that were too quick to call out bad behavior.
Keith, take a breath and think on that. When is it ever wrong to call out bad behavior?
Second, don't cite the CATO Institute if you want Democrats to take you seriously.
Third, what were you trying to say here:
Recently I watched the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, and it struck me how cool it was to be a Democrat. Madonna, Dr. Dre, TLC all embodied progressive causes. By contrast, Republicans – personified by the square, ancient (72 used to be old for a politician) Bob Dole – were the butt of every other joke. Today, it’s decidedly less cool to be a Democrat: Kamala Harris of course barely beat Donald Trump among 18-to-29-year-olds, and some of the most popular podcasts and Twitch streamers among young men are conservative.
WTliteralF do you think you wrote there?
We have no idea how to disect that? Should we go with an awards show isn't reality? Should we go with all of Dr. Dre's legal issues and his terrorizing women?
You feel like you can't express yourself. Oh, life is so hard for you. You are, right, the first person ever having to watch their words, right? No one could ever know how you feel, right? Certainly not Blacks in the south under Jim Crow. No, it's just you, just now, for the first time ever.
It was so wrong, you write, when you got push back:
Amid the recent shakeup at MSNBC, I contested the idea that the personnel changes were due to the hosts’ races. To be clear, I knew exactly what I was getting into: I’ve been doing social media for a long time, and I have a good idea when something will go viral, and a good idea when something will touch off a war in the comments. So when I pointed out that several minority hosts were in effect receiving promotions amid Joy Reid's firing, I was not surprised to receive many responses like the following (emphasis added):
The responses told him he didn't know what he was talking about. And they were right.
"Several minority hosts were in effect receiving promotions"?
One of the women 'promoted' is Symone Sanders-Townsend. She may appear Black to you; however, you are not the Black community.
She doesn't read Black. Not to the Black community. Joy did. Now Symone reads Black to a White progressive like you because she's got dark skin and she is DSA and so much more. Her speech, her points of reference, all speak to the fact that she grew up in one of the least diverse cities in the country -- the White dominated Omaha, Nebraska. She went to a Catholic school and a more-than-majority White university. She's also a liar who just announced she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an "independent." She was DSA -- that's a Socialist organization. It is not the Democratic Party.
The second female host? Alicia Menendez. Ann's dubbed her father Shady Menendez. You now Bob The Indicted Bob The Crook? She's not Black. (Cuban on her crooked dad's side, Anglo White on Mom's side).
And then you have the third host, Michael Steele. A Republican Black male is not representative of the average Black man although Republican Black males have traditionally been over represented by the media when it comes to guesting and hosting chat and chews.
So you had an authentic Black woman who read Black. And now you've replaced her with three people -- two of whom have dark skin but neither of whom reads Black.
And there's another point to this.
Most people don't realize how ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY was birthed. TV GUIDE had been a dull little publication for years and years. Then they got a little spunk and started writing truthful pieces. Like the one where JOANIE LOVES CHACHI star Erin Moran learns she's not the star of the show but cries -- tears, cries actual tears -- as she insists she's more the star of this show than she was of HAPPY DAYS. Too many truthful pieces like that led to firings and a whole group of writers free to start ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.
Do you get the point, Keith?
It's a point Don Lemon got when he was demoted on CNN. He lost his own show and was moved to mornings where he had to co-host with two others.
No, Keith, Joy hosting her own show is not the same as a three hosts hosting one show.
Keith writes:
I believe we learned the wrong lessons from the Obama years. Between 2008 and 2016, we elected a Black president, we as a country began to recognize the pernicious role of institutional racism, and gay people earned the right to get married. It became easy to believe the good guys had won the culture war, and now it was simply a matter of enforcing the new norms.
We didn't learn the wrong lesson but you clearly did as evidenced by your insisting that "gay people earned the right to get married." Earned?
Oh, well you're just so much more worthy than Jack Baker an Michael McConnell, right? Those shifty and lazy men who applied for a marriage license in 1971. If only they'd taken the time to earn it, right?
We are feminists. We are fully aware that women won the right to vote. Won.
Earned?
Maybe your fear over the response people might have to what you say stems from your inability to use the appropriate words?
LONG BRIGHT RIVER is set in Philadelphia and stars Amanda Seyfried as a police officer Mickey Fitzpatrick who is struck by the deaths of several women and seeing that they're connected. She is helped along the way by Nicholas Pinnock's Truman Dawes. SPOILER, as the series gets close to winding down, we're suddenly told that Truman's the killer. He's fortunately not. Had he been, the show would have truly jumped the shark and make us fear for the future of twist-and-turn TV thrillers. At this point, they're still somewhat grounded in reality. At this point. And LONG BRIGHT RIVER is a series worth streaming.
As for YOUTUBE?
Keith isn't as bad as Taylor Lorenz -- though both could stand to do more research. But what makes Taylor worse -- and now worth ignoring -- is her lack of common sense and her sheer stupidity. In today's video, she wanted you to know that White women were grifters as well, fake members of 'The Resistance.' She shows them marching on DC after Trump's 2017 inauguration. And then they, per Taylor, got over it. While a huge number of White women did vote for Donald Chump, the reality is that those who elected to go to DC in January 2017 to demonstrate against Chump did not, in 2024, get on board with him -- not in any serious or large number and you'd have to be an idiot to make that claim.
