Boy Culture Links: Puerto Vallarta Burns, Connor Storrie Down on His Knees, 'Reality Check' for Tyra Banks, Kash Patel Parties with Olympic Team on Our Dime, Trumper's Hubby Runs Afoul of Ice + MORE
FEBRUARY 23, 2026
NBC CHICAGO: State of the Union is Tuesday night. How much you wanna bet Trump strikes Iran that day or just before in order to brag about it?
PEOPLE: Top cartel kingpin killed in Mexico, leading to vengeful fires all over Puerto Vallarta. U.S. urges Americans there to shelter in place. Like so many of Trump’s moves, pushing for action like this means a terrible actor is removed — but it also brings chaos and violence.
Will Iran be the next big risk?
NEW YORK TIMES: Armed North Carolina man shot and killed at Mar-a-Lago.
HUFFINGTON POST: Corrupt, Trump-picked judge Aileen Cannon continues to do his dirty work, relegating the full Jack Smith report on Trump’s theft of confidential docs to the dustbin of history. Nothing to see here, folks!!!
GR8ERDAYS: Try to name all 113 of these CBS stars … and the 23 who are still alive 48 years later!
BBC: Rob Jetten sworn in as the Netherlands’ youngest and gayest PM.
THEM: Myha’la covers Them. The queer Industry star talks labels, stating:
“I think there’s definitely a strictness. But I feel really lucky that I’m surrounded by people where that’s never an issue. I feel really lucky that I’m no longer surrounded by people who quantify or qualify or compare their queerness to mine or to someone else’s or police how much space I can take up in any given community because of the optics or whatever. And to be fair, none of y’all know how gay my man is. Come on now. You have no idea. And you’ll never know. You don’t know nothing about us at all, really. And like you said, it’s not secret; it’s just none of your business.”
NETFLIX: Did you watch Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, the Netflix doc about the Tyra Banks-led show? It’s a deep dive into the show’s meteoric rise and moral fall, an exploration of just how different things were waaaaay back in … checks notes … 2003.
To her credit, Tyra agreed to participate with no ground rules. She shows up wrapped in a coat looking well and smiling tightly, enduring a litany of uncomfortable questions about how contestants were mentally and verbally abused, how one was filmed having sex while drunk and how another was put into a challenge with a rando who felt her up right on camera.
Tyra’s responses are sometimes uncomfortable but self-effacing, but more often than not reek of a self-serving sort of tunnel vision. Producer Ken Mok fares a bit better, and while the show’s judges Miss J, Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker elicit heaps more empathy, they can’t fully shrug off that they participated in scenarios that were often all about ratings and maintaining their jobs and rarely about worrying for the safety and well-being of a group of young women who were put into situations with little incentive to say “no.”
Check it out and LMK what you think.
INTERVIEW: In honor of Connor Storrie’s 26th birthday yesterday, Interview released another semi-choreographed “Like a Prayer” freak-out by the Heated Rivalry stud.
DNA: The new issue of DNA is here. And it’s packin’.
INDEPENDENT: Outrageously, Kash Patel took an FBI jet to Italy to party with the U.S. hockey team. Fuck the whole goddamned team, whole let this human bug hoot and holler with them and even placed a medal around his nonexistent neck.
THE WRAP: A caller on C-SPAN impersonating Trump ranted and raved about the SCOTUS decision against tariffs. The name used was John Barron, a pseudonym Trump used to use when speaking to the media to plant stories and build himself up.
NEW JERSEY STAR-LEDGER: A three-time Trump voting MAGAt now whines that Trump’s immigration policy has wrecked her family:
“‘To think we were MAGA!,’ Sandra proclaimed. The couple even attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas in 2020.
“Sandra voted for President Trump three times, believing enforcement would focus on people with criminal records — not individuals like her husband.
“Asked what she would say to him now, she paused.
“‘You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life,’ she said.”
Or — and hear me out — maybe you ARE the “worst of the worst.” Maybe you’re exactly who he was always talking about.
EXTRATV: One Battle After Another was the top winner at this year’s BAFTA Film Awards, held in London. It took Best Film, Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson and Best Supporting Actor for Sean Penn, winding up with six honors. Ryan Coogler made history as the first-ever Black winner of Original Screenplay and Wunmi Mosaku was the first Black British winner of Supporting Actress (both for Sinners) and the room audibly gasped when Robert Aramayo, a newcomer, took Leading Actor for his performance in I Swear, a biopic about a man with Tourette syndrome.
Extremely unfortunately, the real-life man with Tourette on whom I Swear was based yelled out the N-word with Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan onstage:
TWITTER: The Tourette syndrome scandal at the BAFTAs has become mind-numbingly dumb, with a bunch of randos claiming John Davidson (the subject of the film I Swear) must secretly be racist and must secretly use the N-word on the regular. Like, what? Davidson is being defended by an actor in the film and this young woman, who has the condition:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: However, why would the BBC not remove the word from the broadcast, when it was quick to remove “Free Palestine”?
INSTAGRAM: When I tell you I am in love with him … it’s real. It’s true love.
SOCIALITE LIFE: Anthony Ramos discusses going “butt-ass naked” for The Booty — I mean, The Beauty.
Borrowing Noel Coward's quip about Claudette Colbert: "Kash, I'd ring your neck - if you had one!"
Perfect description: "Tyra’s responses are sometimes uncomfortable but self-effacing, but more often than not reek of a self-serving sort of tunnel vision."