Politics

CNNBill Barr, Donald Trump’s former attorney general who once said that voting for the indicted ex-president would be “playing Russian roulette with the country,” stood by his decision to vote for Trump in November while also suggesting that Trump used to regularly float the idea of executing his political rivals while in office.Barr made the nonchalant admission Friday during a CNN interview when anchor Kaitlan Collins mentioned former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin claiming that Barr was present in the summer of 2020 when Trump suggested that an unknown White House leaker should be executed.“I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn‘t dispute it, you know… The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out,” Barr said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesPastel pink and soft vignette filters, images featuring thin girls with long eyelashes, and good grades and skincare products: These are all manifestations in the world of “Wonyoungism,” a wellness trend growing rapidly online among K-pop fans that, amidst the milky images of bows and strawberries, has faced criticism for promoting eating disorders.The term Wonyoungism itself derives from the K-pop idol Jang Wonyoung, a member of the girl group IVE. At 19 years old, Jang boasts more than 11 million followers on Instagram, and has become something of a platonic ideal for fans online. Wonyoung is confident, smart, pretty, sophisticated, according to those following her; so much so that she has evolved past a typical example of celebrity idolatry and into a theology unto herself. Using phrases like “The Wonyoung Effect” and “Wonyoung Motivation,” evangelical fans online promote a message of self-improvement centered around the singer, telling each other that by making specific lifestyle changes, they can look and, more importantly, feel as seemingly confident as Jang.The trend’s first boom happened last year, after an audio clip from an interview with Jang went viral. “I don’t care—you are you, I am me,” she says, a message that drives home two key tenets of the lifestyle: confidence and effortlessness. Inspired by the clip, the hashtag #wonyoungism bloomed among the fandom soon after; now, it currently has over 292,300 posts on TikTok, and many users post in the comments about how following the singer’s maxim—and the ways developed by fans to embody it—has changed their lives.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Everett CollectionAccording to its own self-mythology, the entertainment industry is something far grander, more poetic and noble, than just a titanic money-maker. Our beloved movies and TV shows—Hollywood’s “products,” if we must call them that—are the sum of our cultural imagination, collective dreams that mesmerize and inspire.Unfortunately, that sentiment rarely seems to last when studios start looking at their balance sheets. Just ask the filmmakers behind Coyote vs. Acme.Last November, The Wrap and Rolling Stone reported that Warner Bros. Discovery planned to shelf Coyote vs. Acme—a live action/animated comedy starring Will Forte and the Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote—in exchange for a tax write-off. Days later, The Wrap claimed that, thanks to public outcry, the studio had changed its tune and invited the filmmakers to shop their project around to potential buyers. By February, however, the same publication reported that the company wanted $75-$80 million for the film and had rejected “handsome” offers from companies including Netflix, Amazon, and Paramount without allowing them to make counter-offers.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images“Bro, I already saw Tyler at Flog Gnaw,” said a guy dressed in a flowery button-down to his friend, also in a flowery button-down. Tyler, the Creator, who put on his own festival at Dodger Stadium last fall, burst through a wall, kicking off his Coachella headlining set with the buzzing bass of “IGOR’S THEME.” But by the time I met up with my friend in the crowd, the pair had already left to see Dom Dolla, the DJ playing at the Sahara stage.In a way, my friends-in-floral summarized what many, including myself, hypothesized during the lead up to this year’s fest. My doubts were never about whether Coachella would provide festival goers with exceptional music or a weekend of sweaty, sunny, sand-filled fun. My concerns were about whether this festival would matter as much as it had before.Even with a lineup of EDM rarities, ‘90s nostalgia reunions, rising pop stars, and artists from around the globe, Coachella lost a little luster without a shocking, triumphant headliner. Rumors of low ticket sales called the festival’s status into question. Headliners don’t shape the attendees’ day-to-day experience, but they do give Coachella its ubiquity and induce FOMO outside the desert. On a personal level, I, like the majority of the attendees, had a blast (Favorite sets: Militarie Gun, Chappell Roan, Tyler, the Creator, and Justice). But at the same time, it was the end of Coachella’s influence in the larger music culture.Read more at The Daily Beast.

ANDREW HARNIKThe retired cop who became the face of D.C. Metropolitan Police brutalized at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 has launched a private security business with a name evoking the attack—and is already providing services to a campaign of the congressman who helped spearhead the subsequent impeachment of President Donald Trump, as well as “major political organizations,” the pol told The Daily Beast.Federal Election Commission records show the campaign of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) paid nearly $50,000 between August and February to Lower West Terrace LLC, a venture launched by Officer Michael Fanone and bearing the name of the entrance he defended on the infamous vote certification date.As one of the managers of the second Trump impeachment trial, Swalwell committed to the congressional record Fanone’s account of the injuries he sustained during the election deniers’ bloody assault on the seat of government: Trump supporters swarmed him on the lower west terrace, tased him until he suffered cardiac arrest, and pummeled him into unconsciousness.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jeenah Moon/Pool via Reuters Donald Trump knows how to play to an audience, whether it’s the deluded millions of his MAGA base or the jurors in the first criminal trial of a former president.That was clear on Friday when Trump seized a moment in his criminal trial to seemingly comfort a witness—his still-loyal ex-assistant Rhona Graff.The jury had just finished listening to supermarket tabloid sleaze David Pecker testify about what prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by paying hush money to kill potentially damaging stories about Trump.Read more at The Daily Beast.

StarzAs much fun as Mary & George can be, what with all of Julianne Moore’s plotting and perversion as the devious Mary Villiers, it surprises when it reminds us that a soul is lurking somewhere beneath all of the show’s delectable lechery. After a bout of orgies and murder in last week’s episode, the limited series returns tonight with an installment that’s slightly more tempered, though no less packed with sex and manslaughter—you’ve got to give the people what they want! Episode 4 sees the show continuing to operate at a level higher than most contemporary series ever reach. It’s a deftly written, droll chapter in the life of Mary and her second-born son George (Nicholas Galitzine), one that pushes the show past its halfway point, but still promises plenty more action to come.Episode 4 opens in 1617, just before the show’s normal timeline, with two lowly gravediggers in Scotland tasked to dig up something from an unmarked grave. The men unearth a human heart below the soil, and, shocked, wonder what kind of demented man this organ has been passed down from. The episode makes no secret of that, cutting immediately to a sight of King James I (Tony Curran) and George in the king’s bed, naked. Why James is preoccupied with getting his hands on someone else’s ventricles and vessels we don’t yet know, but a bare heart resting six feet underground doesn’t bode well for George. James stirs and lifts George’s arm around him, stroking his soft skin, before bringing George’s forearm to his mouth and biting it like a hungry dog.When Mary meets George at the royal palace’s grounds, she balks at George’s bite mark, while George likens the force of the king’s nibble to a hunting terrier. The king approaches, overhearing their conversation, and asks who the terrier among them is. Mary, always quick on her feet, responds, “Me!” and begins to bark and growl like a dog. She’s happy to embarrass herself in this fashion if the king can remain unaware of their discussion, but when James invites Mary to toss a mouse at his prized hawk and the hawk has no response, she recoils. Whether or not the bird takes any interest in the rodent is no concern of the king’s, but Mary reacts to any social blunder like a life-threatening injury.Read more at The Daily Beast.