Boy Culture: 'Traitors' Winner Revealed, Trump's Plan to Halt Elections, Right-Wing Paramount Set to Swallow Warner Bros., Hockey Player Blasts White House Meme + MORE
FEBRUARY 27, 2026
EXTRATV: Microdramas, inspired by China, are taking hold in the U.S. They’re “like soap operas on steroids.” Sample title: Knocked Up by My Boyfriend’s Billionaire Uncle.
THE CUT: Rob Rausch kicked ass on The Traitors — and that’s no surprise. His fellow contestants’ inability to conceive of him as a backstabber was perplexing. Was it just that he is so cute? (He is.) But at least once it was all over, most of them realized this was just a game. It’s baffling to me to read people freaking out online about broken pinky swears in a game that is supposed to be about betrayal. (And would you hand half of a $200K prize to some rando you just met? After taxes, you’d be scoring like 60 grand.)
ABC NEWS: Trump is said to be considering a lies-backed initiative to suspend 2026 elections based on his phony belief that the 2020 election was stolen by China. If he suspects elections, blood will flow in the streets. I just can’t see people taking it as another development.
HUFFINGTON POST: Trump is about to attack Iran to distract from the Epstein Files and his sinking-like-a-stone approval. A decisive and effective strike would bolster him, he thinks, and he does not care about the wider war it could (?) kick off.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Jonathan Majors, who assaulted his ex, is finally going back to work — and it’s with Ben Shapiro. Why are conservatives so pedophile-friendly, sexual assault-friendly and now, seemingly, domestic violence-friendly?
VARIETY: The “It’s Over” headline runs deep — Paramount Skydance is now poised to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery after Netflix could not top the new bid. This will put a slew of assets and outlets — including CNN — under the auspices of rabidly right-wing Trumpers. You won’t be able to escape supporting their content, and most people will be deluged by right-wing messaging of the variety we’re already consuming from CBS.
Blows my mind that James Cameron and a ton of film fanboys have been approaching this entire business drama from a standpoint of “oh, Netflix isn’t good with cinema!” when we’re talking about a fully funded right-wing takeover of a huge chunk of all media and news.
From a Huffington Post summary:
“President Donald Trump has a close relationship with the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount’s CEO David Ellison who is heavily backing Paramount’s bid to buy Warner. And Paramount’s aggressive push to acquire Warner arrived just months after Skydance closed its own buyout of Paramount in a contentious merger approved just weeks after the company agreed to pay the president $16 million to settle a lawsuit over editing at Paramount’s “60 Minutes” program on CBS.”
TWITTER: California’s AG Rob Bonta is holding out hope that the deal could still be stopped. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) is also stating that Dems will break up all these monopolies once back in power.
ABC NEWS: Hillary Clinton spoke about her testimony regarding Jeffrey Epstein, noting she doesn’t remember meeting the man, never went to his island or offices, and was never on his fucking plane. She wound up being asked about UFOs and Pizzagate
THE AP: Brady Tkachuk, U.S. hockey player pictured in White House-shared deep fake disparaging the Canadian team, is incensed that Trump shared this:
“It’s clearly fake because it’s not my voice and not my lips moving. I’m not in control of any of those accounts … I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. I would never say that. That’s not who I am.”
NEW YORK TIME: “I’m So Used to Gay Tragedies That I Almost Missed Romance.”
AMERICA: A gay, Black priest. Like … why? It’s like inventing new ways of self-flagellation.
CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS: A gay-specific boutique hotel for Chicago.
THE AP: Two women arrested in Uganda for … kissing in public.
OUTSPORTS: Anti-gay former Colts coach Tony Dungy shit-canned at NBC.
YOUTUBE: Please subscribe to my channel here — I’m about to post my interviews in podcast form. Last night, I attended an FYC screening of the Oscar-nominated queer short A Friend of Dorothy. With feature-film production values and an affecting turn by Miriam Margolyes as an elderly woman mentoring a young gay man, it’s delightful.
Here is writer-director Lee Knight’s brief intro and a long Q&A moderated by Jonathan Van Ness:
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: Only known copy of a long-lost Méliès film from 1897 containing the first filmed reference to a robot has been found:
