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Editor’s note: Welcome to a new regular feature of our Wednesday issue — a short collection of “quick takes” on a few random items in the news…

Mourning Jimmy Carter

On Monday, outgoing President Joe Biden took a break from his unconscionable pardoning of death row felons to sign an executive order declaring that all federal government departments and agencies would be closed on January 9, and flags would fly at half-staff, to mark a National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter.

The former President died recently at the age of 100. January 9 is the date of his funeral at Washington National Cathedral, after which Carter will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

“I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter, Jr.,” Biden intoned in a statement. “I invite the people of the world who share our grief to join us in this solemn observance.”

Our grief? Not to be uncharitable, but Carter is widely considered one of America’s very worst presidents, and at the age of 100 it isn’t as if his life was cut tragically short. It’s difficult to imagine that many Americans who lived through his presidency of economic turmoil and international humiliation, and his continued, post-presidential obsession with supporting the Palestinian cause, will be shuffling about in sackcloth and ashes on January 9.

Yes, deceased former Presidents have been honored with a National Day of Mourning since JFK, if I remember correctly, so Biden’s proclamation is standard. But the Democrats’ overwrought veneration of Carter is like the inverse of their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Speaking of which, one wonders: if any of Donald Trump’s would-be assassins earlier this year had been successful, would the Biden administration have even granted him a National Day of Mourning at all, much less frame their response as “grief”?

Disney Debacle

Breitbart News reports that Disney’s upcoming (March 2025), controversial, live-action retooling of Snow White has earned another volley of dislikes and condemnation with the Christmas Day release of its latest preview.

A teaser trailer released in August for the film has been viewed 11 million times on YouTube – with only 100,000 likes. As of a month ago the downvotes stood at nearly 1.5 million. That’s quite an underwhelming ratio. The new Christmas Day teaser featured the film’s titular star Rachel Zegler singing a song titled, “Waiting on a Wish.” Within days the song picked up just 3,600 likes out of nearly a quarter of a million views.

One viewer captured the overall disapproving tone of the comments, writing, “The more you promote this, the more you make older generations hate Disney in general.” Another warned, “My children will not watch this.”

The backlash to the film began early in 2023 when it was leaked that the filmmakers had made the inexplicably ill-conceived choice to cast a multiracial group of actors as the seven dwarfs. Only one of the actors was actually, you know, a dwarf, prompting Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage to slam the decision as “fucking backwards.”

That was only the beginning. The loose cannon Zegler then went on in interviews to fatally sabotage the film’s marketing: openly sneering at the beloved original classic as misogynistic, promising that the new film will be feminist, smearing Donald Trump supporters as racists, and sharing her disdain for Zionists and support for Hamas-led Palestinians.

In a series of post-election Instagram stories posts, for example, Zegler declared that those who voted for Trump are part of a “deep, deep sickness in this country.” She added, “there is no help, no counsel, in any of them.” She topped it off with something suspiciously close to incitement to violence: “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.”

In August, Zegler declared “Free Palestine” on social media while promoting her film’s new trailer. This was interpreted by some as being aimed at her costar, Gal “Wonder Woman” Gadot, who is an open supporter of her home country Israel.

It doesn’t help the film’s chances that no viewer could possibly believe that gorgeous Gadot, as the evil queen who wants affirmation that she is the “fairest of them all,” is murderously jealous of Zegler’s Lord Farquaad hairdo. The overwhelming sentiment in the comments is that the only thing that can save this woke version of Snow White is if Gadot rides off into the sunset with the handsome Prince.

Disney is bracing itself to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on the doomed cinematic debacle.

Progressive Haters

Speaking of MAGA haters, the Washington Post’s unhinged, faux conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin smeared Trump supporters as stupid in an event at the 92NY Center for Culture & Arts this past December 15, according to Fox News.

“People ask me all the time, why is the media so mamsy-pamsey?” began Rubin, who then explained that

they are convinced that if they would just move a little bit to the right, all those MAGA readers out there — now, you’ll notice the contradiction in terms, ‘MAGA readers’ — would pick up The Washington Post, and they would have more readers. What is the logical fallacy here? Yes, reader. And there’s nothing that The Washington Post could possibly do that would have those people take out a subscription.

Fox News also noted that disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon similarly blasted Trump supporters in a foul-mouthed rant posted to his YouTube channel. “You’re so fucking stupid and you deserve it. You fucking deserve it because you’re so dumb,” said the uncouth loser Lemon.

“Yes, I am gloating over your stupidity,” he continued. “You’ve been co-opted because you’re in a fucking cult and you don’t even realize it because you have stupid MAGA brain and you don’t get it. How stupid and dumb are you?”

You may recall that Lemon was fired in April 2023 after even CNN could no longer tolerate his alienating remarks toward female viewers and conservatives. Lemon has compared Trump supporters to the KKK, defended Antifa, and raged against those who refused the COVID vaccinate for “taking up the space” in hospitals. More recently, Lemon lost his mind over Time Magazine’s choice of Donald Trump as its Person of the Year, apparently not realizing that the title is not necessarily an honor, just a recognition of the person’s impact on the world and on the news cycles in the previous year. Trump was undeniably that person, and Lemon could not accept it.

The problem out-of-touch elites like Zegler, Biden, Rubin, and Lemon share is that they are unshakably but erroneously convinced of their own self-righteousness, and deeply resent having to share the country with MAGA patriots whom they bigotedly deride as intellectually inferior. This is a fault that is endemic to the entire Democrat Party, and it showed during the election season, which is a big reason Trump led a red voter landslide in November. If Democrats had any capacity for self-reflection, they would take this lesson to heart and perhaps stop hatefully condemning their fellow Americans as moronic Nazis.

But they don’t, so they won’t.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior