March 12, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 218

ED MORRISSEY: Disaster: Disney Downscales ‘Snow Woke’ Launch.

Variety reported last night, Disney has scaled back the film’s premier to … your average press briefing at the Burbank city hall:

The afternoon festivities will include a pre-party and screening at the El Capitan Theatre with titular star Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, expected to attend. However, the red carpet will not include the dozens of media outlets usually invited by Disney to interview the cast and creatives at its premieres.

Instead, coverage will be limited to photographers and a house crew.

Some questions just answer themselves, no?

Unlike usual red carpets, “Snow White” stars Rachel Zegler, 23, and Gal Gadot, 39, will not be answering questions from dozens of different media outlets, as Disney has allegedly handpicked only a select few photographers and a house crew to cover the high-profile event.

Zegler plays “Snow White,” and Gadot stars as the Evil Queen. Both starlets are expected to attend the premiere next week.

Disney did not comment when contacted for comment. The Post reached out to Zegler and Gadot’s reps but did not immediately hear back.

Not hearing back seems to be the plan. The planned changes to the original story had already made Snow White controversial, but Zegler in particular spent the last couple of years pouring gasoline on the fire. Zegler insulted fans of the original, cheered the full-on woke revisionism of the new take on the fairy tale (as did Gadot), and infuriated nearly everyone who would normally want to go to a Disney film. After apologizing for her first round of publicity, Zegler then insulted people who voted for Donald Trump while agitating against Israel in their war against Hamas. The latter put Gadot — an Israeli — in an especially difficult position.

Does anyone wonder why Disney will only allow interviews now with a “house crew”?

And it isn’t just a PR debacle for the film’s debut in America: Disney won’t be having a Snow White UK premiere in an attempt to avoid anti-woke backlash to the controversial adaptation.

As one of the most anticipated and expensive films of the year, it would only be right for Disney to roll out the red carpet for its forthcoming Snow White.

But The Mail can reveal bosses are refusing to hold a star-studded premiere in the UK for the movie over fears of backlash over ‘woking it up’.

Despite the release date not being until later this month, the film has already been lambasted for having a Snow White played by Latin actress Rachel Zegler and not including the ‘seven dwarfs’ in the title.

What would usually be a big Leicester Square event full of lights and cameras for a £212million live action remake of the 1937 cartoon film, instead there will be no celebration on British soil in an attempt to avoid anti-woke backlash. Instead there will be a ‘handful’ of tightly controlled press events.

Including: The $270M Disney movie so woke its premiere is being held in SECRET: How backlash against Snow White remake — which dumped dwarf actors and ‘sexist’ romance — has forced producers to quietly relocate its opening to a remote Spanish castle.

The premiere for the Snow White remake has been relocated to a remote castle in Spain after Disney were forced to ‘scale back’ the promo amid backlash against its woke themes and stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot.

Film bosses had originally planned to stage a glittering Hollywood soiree worthy of the staggering $269.4million spent on making the movie – with events planned in Los Angeles, London and around the world.

Yet amid a series of scandals and PR nightmares surrounding the remake, Disney scaled back the planned lavish premieres to a ‘handful’ of tightly controlled Press events.

The biggest of these is now thousands of miles away from the media’s glare, with Zegler (Snow White) and Gadot (Evil Queen) jetting to the tiny city of Segovia, north-west of Madrid, which boasts a population of just 51,000.

Media outlets have not been invited to the event at Alcázar of Segovia, a medieval castle that rests on a rocky crag at the western end of Segovia’s Old City, which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Earlier this month, an insider told the Mail: ‘Disney are already anticipating an anti-woke backlash against Snow White and have reduced the media schedule to just a handful of tightly controlled Press events.

‘That is why they have taken the highly unusual step not to host a London premiere for the film and are minimising the amount of Press questions that Rachel Zegler gets.’

Ed Morrissey writes, “I’m surprised the film will still get into theaters. Why not just Batgirl it and take the losses? Did Disney’s insurance not cover these contingencies?” Similarly, the Critical Drinker suggests, “At this point, it probably would have been better to just abort the theatrical release Al together, short it out onto Disney+ and take the financial hit. At least that way Disney could make up some obscure combination of viewing metrics to spin it into some kind of success: ‘This film had the most number of minutes viewed on a Thursday afternoon for any live-action remake of an animated film made in the first half of the 20th century,’ instead of being confronted by the raw box office numbers which, well, aren’t looking good.”

As the Drinker concludes, “Oh well, just like those guys in the lookout tower watching that Iceberg drift closer [to the Titanic], there’s not much more for us to do now except sit back, crack open a couple of cold ones, and wait for impact. Something tells me it’s going to be an entertaining couple of weeks.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 55

MATT WALSH: Watch Sam Seder Embarrass Himself As He’s Unable To Answer Basic Questions (Video).

Related: Leftist actor Sam Seder faced off with this Christian debater on the role of religion in society (it didn’t go well for Sam).

UPDATE: With the above video as a background, check out this related Twitchy post: Business Insider Columnist Brilliantly Details the Difference Between Conservatives and Leftists.

Yes, of course. We’re all just white supremacists who want a theocracy. Well argued, Mr. Seder.

Or, you know, not at all well-argued. You just proved [Matt] Walsh’s point about name-calling being your only refuge.

The entire segment begs the question of why the left is always so inept at countering conservative arguments (or, at least, why they have become so in recent years).

The answer to that question was brilliantly explained by Business Insider columnist Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry in an outstanding thread he posted on Twitter yesterday.

In describing his ‘Ideological Turing Test,’ Gobry explains that the reason is quite simple. Conservatives understand liberals very well, while liberals do not understand — or even try to understand — conservatives at all.

Gobry smartly includes a screenshot in his first tweet showing that the favorite counter-argument from the left to conservatives is, ‘Well, they’re just stupid.’

He could have included any number of other tweets from the left that dismissed conservatives as ‘Nazis,’ ‘fascists’, ‘racists,’ or ‘bigots.’

They would all mean the same thing: nothing.

The left doesn’t get us, and it is a big reason why they are failing to reach Americans outside of their small echo chamber anymore.

The above Twitchy post is just for Salem’s VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 89

RUBIO EXPLAINS IT TO DEMS LIKE THEY’RE FIVE: Here’s Why Khalil and His Ilk Aren’t Welcome in the US.

Right on cue, Khalil’s detainment and likely deportation back to Algeria brought out the histrionics from Democrats and their lefty-loon base. How dare the Trump administration detain one of their own? Since the left is always ready to agitate, they merely removed their antisemitic slurs from their protest signs and replaced them with their boilerplate, anti-Trump sentiments. Remember, these are the people who can’t summon the will to applaud for a young cancer patient, but they’ve got all the energy in the world to advocate for a terrorist sympathizer who, as it turns out, has no right to be in the United States.

And this is something Secretary of State Rubio laid out beautifully on Wednesday, explaining to the left like they’re five years old that Mr. Khalil has more than earned his one-way ticket home.

Meanwhile, chutzpah alert:

Related:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 52

BAD FAITH IS HIS MIDDLE NAME: Michael Mann Sanctioned for False Testimony, Bad Faith.

My wife and I attended several days in court, near the end of the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg trial in Washington, D.C. We witnessed a dramatic moment, when Mann’s lawyers had introduced into evidence a document, which was blown up for the jury and about which Mann testified, that contained a list of grants that Mann allegedly didn’t get as a result of the defendants’ purported defamation. The value of one of those grants, per the exhibit, was $9 million.

On cross-examination by Simberg’s lawyer, Victoria Weatherford*, it turned out that the exhibit reflected sworn interrogatory answers that had been served by Mann, but later superseded by revised answers, also given under oath. The $9 million had been reduced to $112,000. To say that Weatherford’s cross-examination was effective is an understatement. And Mann didn’t get away with the misrepresentation, as the jury found only nominal damages of $1.

But still, the false evidence had been presented, and defendants moved for sanctions to be imposed on Mann and his lawyers. Earlier today, more than a year after the events, Judge Alfred Irving entered a long order ruling on the defendants’ sanctions motion. It is embedded below. The facts are rather complicated, but the judge’s conclusions are unequivocal.

Good.

Posted at 7:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds 33

REMEMBER WHEN LEFTIES MADE FUN OF THE OLD EUROPE/NEW EUROPE DISTINCTION?

Posted at 7:31 pm by Glenn Reynolds 88

I REMEMBER WHEN GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS WERE UNPATRIOTIC:

I feel like the Democrats haven’t thought this through.

Posted at 7:28 pm by Glenn Reynolds 177

JEFF DUNETZ: Purim In A Year Of Hate (Video).

Hate speech and Antisemitic incidents across the world have grown to frightening levels. The holiday of Purim offers lessons about how to fight the hatred facing the Jewish world today.

On Purim, every Jew is commanded to listen to the reading of the Megillah Esther—literally, the scroll of Esther. The Megillah is a first-hand account written by Queen Esther and her cousin, Mordechai, who raised her; each is Jewish.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:54 pm by Ed Driscoll 22

REPORT: According to German Intelligence, Corona came from a Chinese lab – government has kept files secret for five years.

For five years, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has assumed that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory. The BND classifies the laboratory theory as “probable” and is “80 to 95 percent” certain. Since then, the German government has kept secret the BND’s findings that the virus originated in the biolab in Wuhan . This is reported by NZZ, Zeit, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Found via Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan; translation of the above Berliner Zeitung article by Google Translate. Hans Mahncke of the Truth Over News Substack explores the ramifications of the above report:

Flashback: Washington Post Flips on Coronavirus Origin; When Does Tom Cotton Get His Apology?

UPDATE: Here’s a Reuters summary of the German newspapers’ findings that (hopefully) isn’t paywalled:

Germany’s foreign intelligence service in 2020 put at 80%-90% the likelihood that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic was accidentally released from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, two German newspapers reported on Wednesday.

According to a joint report by publications Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung, Germany’s spying agency BND had indications that the institute had conducted gain-of-function experiments, whereby viruses are modified to become more transmissible to humans for research purposes.

It also had indications that numerous violations of safety regulations had occurred at the lab, the papers said.
The spy agency assessment’s was based on an unspecified intelligence operation code-named “Saaremaa” as well as on publicly-available data. It had been commissioned by the office of Germany’s chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, but never published, the report said.

BND declined to comment. When asked about the report in a press conference, outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz also declined to comment on Wednesday.

The papers reported that the assessment was, however, shared with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the autumn of 2024.

A CIA spokesperson said in January that the CIA has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature.

The CIA said at the time it had “low confidence” in its assessment and that both scenarios – lab origin and natural origin – remain plausible.

China’s government says it supports and has taken part in research to determine COVID-19’s origin, and has accused Washington of politicizing the matter, especially because of efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate.

That last paragraph is throat-clearing by Reuters because they desperately want to keep reporting from Beijing.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 278

RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS DESTROY RAINFOREST TO SAVE PLANET: Amazon rainforest cut down to build highway for climate summit.

A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.

The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

To be fair, that’s not the craziest thing being done in the name of environmentalism right now:

Earlier: “It’s like Musk is some kind of evil genius who figured out how to separate lefties from billions of their dollars by appealing to their idiotic climate religion…and then made them despise themselves for doing it. He should get a Nobel Prize for that.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 87

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Posted at 4:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds 73