THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2021 

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Megan Fox

Megan Fox has broken her silence on her now-infamous 2009 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, calling it “very dark.”

Speaking out in a new interview, Fox highlighted how she was mistreated by the entertainment industry, specifically calling out Kimmel, whom she spoke to prior to her firing from the Transformers franchise

“Fox had become increasingly frustrated with the blatant misogyny she was facing in Hollywood, between the mismarketing of [Karyn] Kusama and [Diablo] Cody’s [Jennifer’s Body] to focus on how ‘hot’ Fox was (which was antithetical to the film’s plot), to a 2009 appearance on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ where she described being sexualized at 15 as an extra in a scene from Bay’s ‘Bad Boys 2,’ The Post’s Ilana Kaplan wrote. “Instead of finding support when she opened up, everyone laughed.”

During the interview with Kimmel, Fox explains that when Bay discovered she was too young to hold alcohol or sit at the bar during a club scene in Bad Boys 2 — as she was only 15 years old — his solution was to have her dance underneath a waterfall “getting soaking wet.”

Both Kimmel and the audience laughed, even when Fox continued to say, “I was in 10th grade, so that’s a sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”

“Yeah, well, that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds work, but some of us have the decency to repress those thoughts and pretend that they don’t exist,” Kimmel responded.

Reflecting on the interview, Fox told Kaplan that the moment was “a microcosm of my whole life and whole interaction with Hollywood,” adding, “It was just very dark.”

The nature of past interviews of famous women has come up more than once recently, particularly with regard to singer Britney Spears and actress Lindsey Lohan.

Megan Fox opening up about her own experience highlights the fact that it isn't just about a single interviewer, but the very nature of the industry itself that makes these moment so dark, and yet so revealing.

MEDIA LOSER:
Matthew Dowd, Jesse Watters, Claire McCaskill

What do MSNBC analyst and former Senator Claire McCaskill, author and cable news regular Matthew Dowd, and Fox News host Jesse Watters have in common? They each made over-the-top comments about, or invoking, historical context.

“I have one word: Benghazi,” said McCaskill on MSNBC, in discussing the January 6th riot and capitol breach. Invoking that loss of life, which she said she did not "want to minimize," McCaskill argued it's hypocritical of Republicans who pushed Benghazi investigations to object to a select committee. But she, and host Joe Scarborough, also made it an explicit competition between the terrible events.

"Let’s compare and contrast those two events and which is more foundation-shaking to our democracy," said McCaskill.

Matthew Dowd went even further on MSNBC when he said to host Joy Reid that "January 6 was worse than 9/11."

He said it was worse than 9/11. It is not necessary to explain how that comment gets into the loser column. 

Jesse Watters on Tuesday's The Five objected to Rep. Cori Bush's own over-the-top Fourth of July remarks by going equally too far in the opposite direction.

Bush, to celebrate American independence, said that it's only "white" freedom being celebrated, that "Black people still aren't free," and that this land "is stolen."

"This land wasn’t stolen. We won this land on the battlefield and we bought it, right?" said Watters. "We purchased Spain–I mean we purchased Florida from Spain. We have the receipts. What, do you want to give Florida back to Spain?”

When co-host Geraldo Rivera asked about the Seminoles, Watters exclaimed, "what about them?”

“We won that territory on the battlefield," he added. "It was an ugly, brutal battle, but we won it."

Each in their own way invoked history out of context, whether distant past or recent memory, in crass, gross, and objectionable ways. Do better, cable news.

The A-Block

'BOOM'

During a press conference focused on a lawsuit over his suspension from social media platforms, former President Donald Trump called the events of January 6th “unfortunate” before complaining about the Justice Department’s treatment of the insurrectionists, the vast majority of which were his political supporters.

After a number of softball questions about his legal strategy, Trump was asked why he didn’t do more to stop the insurrection of January 6th. He cited a Congressional report about the events of that day, the scope of which did not cover the lead-up to the riot on that fateful day, but boasted that his name wasn’t mentioned in that report.

But after calling the Capitol riots “an unfortunate event,” he pivoted to complain about how “people are being treated unbelievably unfairly and people are in prison and nothing happened to Antifa.”

He then mentioned Ashli Babbit, the QAnon follower who was shot and killed after trying to breach the House Chamber and turned his focus on the Capitol Police Officer who shot her.

“And nobody knows who that man was,” Trump said in reference to the officer who was protecting the Capitol from an attack. “If that were the opposite way, that man would be all over, that man would be the most well known.”

He then said he believes he knows the identity of the officer, in an animated remark that you just sort of have to see for yourself.


In Other News...

Reporters Say They’re ‘Traumatized’ After Jan 6.: ‘I’m Still Not Sleeping Like I Used To’

Twitter Temporarily Restricts Professor’s Account for Mocking Chinese President

READ: NBC News Exec’s Internal Email Announcing He’s Leaving Network For SoftBank Position

RATINGS: Cable News Viewers Chose One Cable News Network Ahead of Holiday Weekend in Friday Ratings Race

Must See Clip

Remixing the Classics

Juvenile is making sure everyone is ready for hot vax summer.

In a partnership with BLK — the largest dating app tailored for Black singles — Juvenile, Mannie Fresh, and Mia X remixed the iconic “Back That Thang Up” into a pro-coronavirus vaccine anthem titled “Vax That Thang Up.”

It's kind of amazing.

Links We Like

How Eric Adams Did It
- David Freedlander, Intelligencer
Cruises Return But At What Cost?
- Kelly Heber Dunning, Salon 
Important Reading on the Critical Race Theory in Schools Debate
- Dan McLaughlin, National Review
Teen Heading To Military Raised $38k For Kids With Cancer With His 19-inch Afro
- Cathy Free, Washington Post
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