Column Anime Spotlight Forbidden Bodies: The Summer Hikaru Died and the Desperate Terror of Queer Adolescence  Your best friend’s been replaced by a eldritch entity… but that doesn’t change your feelings for him. By Leah Thomas | Published on October 31, 2024 Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics I am haunted, however lightly, by one pivotal instance of feeling like a creep as a teenager. I was at my best friend’s house for the thousandth time, and she was fast asleep on the old waterbed we shared whenever we stayed at her place. I was awake because sleeping through the night has never been easy for me, and the hot sticky rubber of a waterbed didn’t help. Even though we were exhausted from staying up until 4am filming Buffy reenactments on her dad’s old camcorder, I was awake; my best friend was not. And I looked at her and felt a sharp, undeniable stab of possessiveness overtake me as I looked at her sleeping face. I was awake, and I was being creepy, and I was deeply ashamed of myself. We were in high school, and she had started dating boys; a terrifying crevasse only I could see was steadily forming between us. I knew, on a deep inexpressible level, that I was some kind of queer; I knew she was not. And I knew that I was a disgusting little monster for developing these jealous, unspeakable feelings. In fifth grade, my mother had sat me down in her bedroom for “the talk” after a boy passed me a love note and she found it. She told me that to love someone means wanting to have sex with them, and suddenly affection seemed incredibly sinister to me. She also added, “I will love and support you even if you are a lesbian, but I hope you aren’t a lesbian, because if you are you’ll have a miserable life.” I internalized these messages, especially the latter one. I refused to be gay because I did not want to be miserable. I refused to be gay, so instead I was a creepy girl staring at her “normal” best friend. I have never, ever spoken about this. I write about it now because I am older and tired and I know that most queer kids go through similar and far worse agonies throughout adolescence. Queer kids are told, both directly and indirectly, not only that their affections are wrong, but they are disgusting, life-ruining, and disturbing. This also appears to be the case for Yoshiki, the teenage protagonist of The Summer Hikaru Died. Yoshiki lives in the genuine inaka, stuck in the cicada-laden, mountainous countryside of Mie prefecture. His world is composed of hot summer days, thick green forests, studying, and, most vitally, daily hangouts with his best friend Hikaru. The trouble is that Hikaru is actually dead. He goes missing in the mountains in the late winter, and the thing that spends summer days with Yoshiki, though it has Hikaru’s face and voice and memories, is not Hikaru. An arcane mountain creature akin to a god has taken up residence inside Yoshiki’s best friend; a Lovecraftian mass of worming spirals and fleshy paisley writhes beneath his skin. Yoshiki, who knows Hikaru better than he knows himself, is not fooled. In the manga’s very first chapter, he confronts not-Hikaru. “You’re not really Hikaru, are you?” Upset and tearful, the innards of Hikaru’s replacement leak from his left eye socket and he throws his arms around Yoshiki. “Please don’t tell anyone!” he sobs. “I don’t want to kill you!” Well, that’s a pretty brutal coming-out.  But Yoshiki is, on some level, reveling in the embrace. And Yoshiki, despite it all, has no intentions of sharing this horrifying secret. Because the monster occupying Hikaru is similar enough to the real Hikaru to ease his grief but different enough that he relies on Yoshiki to feign humanity. And this new Hikaru is deeply infatuated with Yoshiki in ways that the real Hikaru never could be. Though it disturbs Yoshiki to acknowledge it, in a way, this devotion from Hikaru is more than Yoshiki ever dared dream of. Given the choice between not-Hikaru and no Hikaru, there’s no choice at all. With The Summer Hikaru Died, fledgling mangaka Mokumokuren is doing more than expanding the definitions of what BL and horror manga can become; they are also writing one of the most painfully relatable, beautiful but disturbing queer coming-of-age stories I have ever been privileged to encounter. The Walls Have Eyes Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics Mokumokuren started writing The Summer Hikaru Died when they themselves were a teenager, but it was not until they shared panels on social media after their high school graduation in 2021 that the publishers of Young Ace Up offered them serialization. Like many mangakas, Mokumokuren prefers to keep their identity and gender private, but I find their choice of pen name compelling. Mokumokuren is the name of a yokai (I wrote a lot about my yokai fixation in my Natsume Yuujinchou essay). The name means “many eyes,” and these yokai are watchful eyes that grow on neglected shoji screens and tatami mats.  In Kubitachi, the claustrophobic village Hikaru and Yoshiki call home, it’s hardly any wonder the boys feel like they are being watched. Small towns can be incredibly invasive and gossipy, and Yoshiki’s parents are notorious for their abusive arguing, which gives the neighbors plenty of fodder for gossip. This, combined with the unspoken feelings Yoshiki is coping with, reinforces the idea that their hometown is a place that must be escaped from. Even as a young boy, he confesses to Hikaru that he longs to run away to the city. Hikaru, playing in a stream, disagrees, because he enjoys the country life. To comfort Yoshiki, he tells him, “Whenever you feel like you wanna go to the city, you should come to my place!” Hikaru does not know what those words might mean to Yoshiki, the doomed hope they instill in his young heart. Years later, when not-Hikaru relies on Yoshiki to keep his monstrous nature a secret, his words are direct and indisputable rather than suggestive. He shoves Yoshiki to the floor and climbs on top of him, enacting the most sinister kabedon. Not-Hikaru truly means it when, black abyss pouring from his facial orifices, he cries: “I know it ain’t right but I still like you! And I can’t stop my feelings!” After, he literally recomposes himself, withdrawing the abyss. He begs Yoshiki, “Please don’t hate me.” But Yoshiki could never hate not-Hikaru, no matter how terrifying he is. That’s the whole dilemma. The thing about fear and romance is that they both rely on tension; under Mokumokuren’s brilliant pen, that tension is exploited. Is Yoshiki gasping beneath not-Hikaru because he is terrified, or because he is aroused? Is it both? Is not-Hikaru desperate to coat his beloved friend in his creepy innards to smother him in darkness, or in affection? When Yoshiki gazes at raw chicken during home economics class and remembers how those innards felt like cold meat, is he sweating at an uncomfortable memory or, well, a horny one? If all this weird speculation is making you uncomfortable, that’s perfect. Then you’ll have some inkling of how these characters feel.  While the story is mostly focused on the central pair, other characters also have roles to play. A classmate with a mild sixth sense knows something is off with the pair of them. And there’s Rie, a local woman and occasional exorcist who indulged a similar monster from the other side to a disastrous end. She warns Yoshiki that he shouldn’t remain friends with not-Hikaru for long, because if he does, they will end up… mixing. But even though she warns him, she’s not surprised the warning goes unheeded. She’s been there. What teen in the world hasn’t heard warnings about some friend or another being a terrible influence? Yoshiki, who has long since internalized his queer feelings as disgusting, decides that the negative influence is mutual. It is wrong to spend so much of his time and energy on not-Hikaru, and wronger still to touch him. But Yoshiki is helpless to resist. In the P.E. storage room, he plunges his hand into the gaping pit that opens up in not-Hikaru’s torso and at first it feels awful, and then it feels good. The encounter is strange and a little nauseating but also undeniably erotic. Such forbidden interactions are only as horrific as they are sensual. They serve as troubling and true analogies for the experiences an infinite number of queer kids have lived through. Scenes like this, for my money, firmly establish The Summer Hikaru Died as a masterpiece in the making. Weird as it may seem, countless readers will agree: it is hard not to root for this fucked-up young couple. Sure, one of them is essentially John Carpenter’s The Thing with a much cuter person suit. No one’s a picnic during puberty. And somehow, there’s an unspoken, unsettling optimism underneath it all. You can’t bury your gays if the gays are already undead. He’s Growing on Me Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics After Yoshiki establishes that not-Hikaru an incomprehensible being from elsewhere, he can begin to reevaluate not-Hikaru as his own person. Not-Hikaru is emotional and codependent, and delights in new experiences. Though he has Hikaru’s memories of festivals and fireworks, not-Hikaru has never experienced these things for himself, so those memories may as well be a movie. While the mystery is still being solved, it is clear that the being inside not-Hikaru spent decades or centuries or longer as a cursed god, ritually trapped on a mountain. It was incapable, of enjoying even the humble charms of rural life. Yoshiki realizes that not-HIkaru is, in some ways, like a child. He clings to Yoshiki like a toddler, sobbing into his shirts, begging for affection and forgiveness: “I wish creepy stuff would stop comin’ out of me when I get all shook up.” Unfortunately, like very small children, not-Hikaru has yet to develop empathy. Initially, he kills a villager who recognizes his inhumanity. He visits her home at night and later she’s found dead and there’s no mystery there. Yoshiki suspects as well, and when at last he asks not-Hikaru directly, Hikaru sees no reason to lie. “Bein’ dead, bein’ alive, is there really that big a difference?” When Yoshiki vomits in response, not-Hikaru recoils. He does not understand, but he is trying to. Cats kill mice and fish eat worms. Every damn creature on the earth defends itself when cornered. When not-HIkaru acts, it is usually to defend his secret or to protect Yoshiki. He is so far almost incapable of being duplicitous. He is honest when confronted, but his memories are garbled, and he himself is confused about what manner of creature he is. Though he lacks empathy, his affections for Yoshiki, however wrong and intense, are genuine. It’s a toxic codependency but not a heartless one. It helps that not-Hikaru’s point-of-view is nearly as prominent throughout the manga as Yoshiki’s. Because we are privy to Hikaru’s thoughts, we empathize with the creature he has become. He can see the dead and the living too; he sees through people to their souls and thinks that Yoshiki’s soul is beautiful. Souls exist separately from their mortal bodies, he says. So is it any wonder that he doesn’t understand the fuss when someone dies? For so long he had no body, and even now he is an undead creature, and if the soul carries on, why are people so upset? Yoshiki wonders, “What qualifies a person to be themselves? Their memories? Their cells? Their experiences?” So far, the manga has made an excellent case for the “experiences” angle. And if not-Hikaru is growing as a person, becoming more empathetic and less violent, he is doing so by choice. Isn’t that laying the groundwork for a great protagonist? They Haven’t Killed the Cat Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics An aside: it’s a tired trope that only true masterpieces like Alien avoid: any cat who shows up in a horror movie will be killed for dramatic effect. I can report that so far, thirty chapters in, the monster in this story has not killed the cat. It sounds minor, but I think it is another deliberate choice, indicative of how wonderfully subversive this work is as a whole. Mince-aniki is a fat neighborhood stray who gets spoiled by the local butcher and doted on by all those who stop by the local corner shop. While Mince-aniki is fond of Yoshiki, who is known to be good with animals (and eldritch beings, too, apparently), the cat, like all chubby furballs worth their salt, senses immediately that not-Hikaru is a monster. He reacts accordingly, hissing and biting his outstretched hand. The first time this happens, Mokumokuren draws a furious gleam in not-Hikaru’s eyes. Oh great, I thought while reading, wincing with dread. Now it’s time to cut to the scene where a cat has been slaughtered. But color me surprised. Instead, in a later chapter, not-Hikaru tries once more to woo the stubborn cat, this time guided by Yoshiki. They entice him with an irresistible tube of Churu. “I really want to touch that cat!” not-Hikaru declares.  At last, he has his chance, and he chooses to poke Mince-anikie in the side. The cat is mortified and vanishes. Yoshiki laughs, saying, “That’s some way to touch him!” “I bet he liked the old Hikaru,” not-Hikaru says, disappointed. But Yoshiki says otherwise.  “Nah, he hated him too.”  As of this writing, Mince-Aniki remains alive, fat, and fluffy.  It’s Catching Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics Near the end of volume four, an exorcist named Tanaka is called to Kubitachi village to root out the monster that has descended from the mountain. The trouble with the eldritch being abandoning the mountain is that its very essence attracts creatures and spirits from the other side, and now those creatures are drawn to the villages.  If that isn’t another fantastic allegory: the fear that one “aberrant” individual will attract more aberrant individuals. Unfortunately for the people of Kubitachi, unlike queerness, which is decidedly not contagious, the arrival of not-Hikaru does seem to herald the arrival of many more creatures from the other side. A wig monster invades Yoshiki’s family bathroom, and a ghost haunts the local railroad crossing. More will come, for as long as not-Hikaru remains in Kubitachi. But not-HIkaru can’t be killed by traditional methods, as Yoshiki discovers the hard way. And Yoshiki still doesn’t want him gone.  Consensual Corruption “…wanna try feeling it again?” not-Hikaru asks, after Yoshiki finds himself staring at the cold meat in home ec class. And Yoshiki relents, and later the tentacles inside not-Hikaru crawl up his arms and thinks, “This has to be all kinds of wrong, but why does it feel so good?” But when Hikaru lets the darkness overwhelm Yoshiki a little too much, Yoshiki asks him to stop. Not-Hikaru does so immediately, face burning in shame.  See, this otherworldly creature, though murderous and emotionally stunted and lacking a soul of its own, is a decent enough person to understand consent. Even from the very beginning, when the eldritch creature first discovers the original Hikaru’s body on the mountainside, bleeding from a head wound after a fall, it waits for an invitation. The cursed god only takes over Hikaru’s body after Hikaru, with his dying wish, asks it to: “Take my body and look after Yoshiki.” This series is ongoing, and an anime version has just been announced, and more horrors and wonders are to come. When Mokumokuren first published The Summer Hikaru Died, they described it as a Boys’ Love story. That label, however fitting, cannot encapsulate how the manga has continued to defy genres, subvert themes, and exceed expectations with visionary aplomb. We are told that those who mix with the darkness will attract more darkness. Yeah, yeah, okay; if you’re a closeted boy and an unfathomable undead monster falling in love, you’ll have a miserable life. Somehow, despite warnings like this, gay people keep on falling in love.  Though I cannot guess how this story will end and I know that it would be foolish to assume the ending will be anything but tragic, I cling to some twisted hope, just as Yoshiki and not-Hikaru cling to each other. Maybe these two, whatever else they destroy and become, will get out of Kubitachi and make for the big city, and live how they want to live. Who cares if all the creatures from the other side wreak havoc in their wake; cities are large and monstrous already, and neither of these kids asked to be what they are. Maybe it’s wrong of me to daydream about such an unlikely, cheesy, romantic ending. But you know what? I’m not a teenage girl in love with her best friend anymore. I’m a tired, asexual adult who has learned, time and time again, that what’s “wrong” is often subjective. And maybe, for once, it would be nice for the creepy eldritch horror to unlive happily ever after. Credit: Mokumokuren / Kadokawa Comics Note from the Author: Right, so I originally said this article would be broadly about body horror, but this manga is so damn good that it deserved its own dissection. Instead, expect the body horror essay next time, as a sort of post-Halloween companion piece!  One of my favorite aspects of this manga is how it defies preconceived notions of what Boys’ Love stories can be. A few years ago, I wrote a YA novel that was soundly rejected by my own publisher because it was a creepy horror story and also a queer coming-of-age story. I was told it was too difficult to mix those genres; YA audiences wanted either a gay love story or a horror story, but not both at once. Welp, I would like to think the world has evolved, and now Mokumokuren has done what I could not, and done it better than anyone I have ever seen. Are any other queer, genre-defying manga or anime on your rosters?[end-mark] The post Forbidden Bodies: <i>The Summer Hikaru Died</i> and the Desperate Terror of Queer Adolescence  appeared first on Reactor.

Is the Media Getting the Message Yet?

New Trump Ad Drops: 'You Can't Lead America If You Don't Love Americans'

Someone finally did the numbers.

Communication with the craft was interrupted, but Voyager 1 itself found an unorthodox solution.

Get in the Halloween spirit with some scary, creepy, and fascinating science.

This brings a whole new meaning to getting ratted out.

In a recent and unexpected twist, Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), found himself at the center of controversy after showcasing a photo he believed depicted a massive ‘UFO mothership’ over Romania. However, within days of presenting it to an audience at a private event in Philadelphia, Elizondo issued a public apology when it was revealed the image was actually fake. Elizondo has been a prominent advocate for transparency around government-held UFO information, often criticizing official handling and alleged cover-ups in the field. In a recent private ticketed event, former DoD counterintelligence agent Luis Elizondo showed this photo of a “UFO” from Romania in 2022. As a former US Army counterintelligence specialist, he has gained a substantial following, with many hoping his insights might finally shed light on the UAP mystery. During the Philadelphia event, he presented a series of images, one of which appeared to show an enormous craft partially hidden within the clouds. Almost immediately after the photo leaked online, speculation swept across social media, with UFO enthusiasts debating its legitimacy. However, John Greenewald Jr., a well-known government transparency advocate and founder of The Black Vault, quickly stepped in to conduct a reverse image search on Google. His findings? The mysterious ‘mothership’ was, in fact, a chandelier reflected in a window. Soon after, Elizondo addressed the incident in a post on X (formerly Twitter), taking full accountability for the misstep. “As you all know, I am always happy to be my own worst critic,” he wrote. “A photo provided to me by a friend in Government a couple of years ago was presented by me… Looks like we can put this one to bed, as our friends on Twitter solved this one, major bravo to you!” He continued, thanking the online community for catching the error, underscoring the need for vigilance, and admitting the image was not scrutinized as thoroughly as it should have been. “As folks at the show will attest, this is precisely why I showed the first few slides at the beginning with an example of a fake UAP,” he added. As you all know, I am always happy to be my own worst critic. A photo that was provided to me by a friend in Government a couple of years ago was presented by me two days ago at our engagement in Philadelphia. Looks like we can put this one bed, as our friends in Twitter… — Lue Elizondo (@LueElizondo) October 30, 2024 How many other instances like this might slip by without scrutiny, fueling public fascination with UFOs yet muddying the waters of genuine disclosure? Incidents like this one not only provide fodder for skeptics, but also raise serious questions about standards of evidence in the UFO community, a field already fraught with claims that can be difficult to verify. So, was this simply an honest mistake? Or does it point to deeper issues around the credibility and rigor of disclosure efforts? And with Elizondo noting that the photo was given to him by a government “source,” some may wonder whether there’s more at play here—perhaps even a calculated attempt to discredit a prominent figure in the movement. What are your thoughts? Is this just a stumble in the pursuit of transparency, or could it hint at a larger struggle within the world of UFO research? The post Luis Elizondo Apologizes for Presenting Fake ‘UFO Mothership’ Image at Private Event appeared first on Anomalien.com.

While CBS’s Stephen Colbert’s colleague Tony Dokoupil was never explicitly mentioned, he loomed over Colbert’s Wednesday interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates as the duo discussed reaction to his anti-Israel book on The Late Show. Coates, for his part, was unrepentant as he defended the decision to leave out any mention of terrorism when discussing the current situation in the West Bank. With the context of Dokoupil calling Coates a “radical,” Colbert asked, “You went yourself to go over there and you saw what you saw and you write it in this book, and it's quite harrowing and it's heartbreaking, at times enraging, but regardless of what someone's critique might be of your journalism, this is really a journal of what you experienced over there. Do you have any surprise about being perceived as writing something radical? Because the facts of what you are seeing are not in dispute, it's why didn't you balance it?”     Coates replied that he wasn’t “the implicit thesis of that essay is that an entire group of people, that being Palestinians, have been pushed out of frame, that they don't exist as narrators of their own stories. If that is true, and if it's true of most major media, as I contend, then it makes sense that people in major media would not be happy about that. So no, I wasn't surprised.” At that point, Ed Sullivan Theater’s fire alarms should’ve gone off from the burning strawman. One of the critiques Dokoupil and others made is exactly the opposite, by omitting the fact that the Palestinians have said no to peace time and time again, instead choosing violence, Coates turns them into robots who have no control over their future. Still, Colbert asked, “You talk about the power of writing, you talk about the importance of journalism and you also talk about how the mainstream media misuses that power in your opinion on how they tell this story. Why do you think that is being misused? Why do you think they don't tell the story that you saw?”     Coates responded by analogizing the West Bank to segregation, “I think it’s extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to orient yourself to two things. The first is that there is segregation there, and the second is that the group of people who are doing it are the descendants in collective of one of the greatest crimes ever committed in human history. We would like to believe that when people do harmful or hurtful things, they are just mean people doing harmful and hurtful things. It's much more disturbing to orient yourself around the idea that victims are actually victimizing. That's, I think, tough — that's a very generous — that's the most generous interpretation.” Colbert then finally brought up the obvious, “You've been criticized because, for quote, ‘Not showing the whole picture,’ you don't talk about Hamas, you don't mention Hamas, you don’t talk about the massacre and the horrors of October 7th or the violence against Israelis or their fear about the existence of their own state. Why did you decide to write this book this way?”     Coates self-righteously replied that context doesn’t matter, “First of all, this is not—this is a 250-page book. It's not a history of Israel/Palestine. It is a writer seeking to answer a question, and that is how did he get it wrong, how were his views so different from what he actually saw, and so a large part of that… was because the very people who were communicating to me what the situation was there—I lost trust in them, and so when you lose trust in the media that actually trains you, you have to find your own way, you have to find your own method, and the thing that I was not seeing was the Palestinian perspective, and I made a very, very conscious choice to center that.” He then tried to turn the tables on his critics, “We are always leaving something out. Some of the very people and outlets that criticize me, I would be very interested in how many Palestinian writers they've published and how many Palestinian journalists they've had on their air, whatever the media outlet is. It's not as if they are giving a complete picture either. No one can. We make choices. I can defend, you know, what mine were. I don't know that they can defend theirs.” Coates probably doesn’t want to play that game because one of CBS’s producers was recently exposed for wondering if Jews are even humans. Coates can claim he isn’t writing a historical narrative, but wars and conflicts are informed by history, which didn’t start when Coates took his field trip to the West Bank, and it didn’t start in 1967 either. Here is a transcript for the October 30-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 10/31/2024 12:28 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Let's talk about the thing that's gotten the most attention here is that, you know, speaking of the stories that we tell ourselves, we in America, those of us who don't have a chance to go to Israel or the Palestinian areas around Israel, we don't know firsthand, we have stories told to us about what's happening there. Some stories are meaningful to us, some of them aren't, some stories are shocking and heartbreaking to us, some stories aren't.  You went yourself to go over there and you saw what you saw and you write it in this book, and it's quite harrowing and it's heartbreaking, at times enraging, but regardless of what someone's critique might be of your journalism, this is really a journal of what you experienced over there. Do you have any surprise about being perceived as writing something radical? Because the facts of what you are seeing are not in dispute, it's why didn't you balance it? TA-NEHISI COATES: Right. No, I'm not surprised because the thesis, the implicit thesis of that essay is that an entire group of people, that being Palestinians, have been pushed out of frame, that they don't exist as narrators of their own stories. If that is true, and if it's true of most major media, as I contend, then it makes sense that people in major media would not be happy about that. So no, I wasn't surprised. COLBERT: You talk about the power of writing, you talk about the importance of journalism and you also talk about how the mainstream media misuses that power in your opinion on how they tell this story. Why do you think that is being misused? Why do you think they don't tell the story that you saw? COATES: Just to be clear about what I saw. What I saw was roads that were segregated, roads that, on the West Bank, were set aside on the west bank for Palestinians and others that were set aside for Israelis. I saw different color license plates, one color license plate for Palestinians, another color for Israelis. I saw settlements where water was plentiful and then I saw areas where Palestinians lived where they didn't know when they were getting water and they were not. This obviously as an African American, this struck me in a particular kind of way and the only word I had for it was segregation. I think it’s extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to orient yourself to two things. The first is that there is segregation there, and the second is that the group of people who are doing it are the descendants in collective of one of the greatest crimes ever committed in human history. We would like to believe that when people do harmful or hurtful things, they are just mean people doing harmful and hurtful things. It's much more disturbing to orient yourself around the idea that victims are actually victimizing. That's, I think, tough — that's a very generous — that's the most generous interpretation. COLBERT: You start that chapter, you start this chapter with a powerful description with a visit to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust museum and memorial in Israel, but you've been criticized because, for quote, "Not showing the whole picture,” you don't talk about Hamas, you don't mention Hamas— COATES: Right. COLBERT: — you don’t talk about the massacre and the horrors of October 7th or the violence against Israelis or their fear about the existence of their own state. Why did you decide to write this book this way? COATES: Well, I'll say two things. First of all, this is not — this is a 250 page book. It's not a history of Israel/Palestine. It is a writer seeking to answer a question, and that is how did he get it wrong, how were his views so different from what he actually saw, and so a large part of that– COLBERT: The views you had before you went there personally? COATES: The views I had before and in large part that was because the very people who were communicating to me what the situation was there — I lost trust in them, and so when you lose trust in the media that actually trains you, you have to find your own way, you have to find your own method, and the thing that I was not seeing was the Palestinian perspective, and I made a very, very conscious choice to center that. We are always leaving something out. Some of the very people and outlets that criticize me, I would be very interested in how many Palestinian writers they've published and how many Palestinian journalists they've had on their air, whatever the media outlet is. It's not as if they are giving a complete picture either. No one can. We make choices. I can defend, you know, what mine were. I don't know that they can defend theirs.

There’s no doubt that the liberal mainstream media is relentless in its obedience to Kamala Harris — but one major leftist newspaper, the Washington Post, has faced swift ostracization for its refusal to endorse the vice president as president in 2024. “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Jeff Bezos wrote in an WaPo op-ed. While Stu Burguiere of “Stu Does America” believes Bezos op-ed is a “step in the right direction,” he notes that every other mainstream newspaper “basically endorses a Democrat or Kamala Harris.” It’s also quite clear, despite Bezos' non-endorsement of Kamala, that the Washington Post is a clearly partisan paper intent on showing Democrats and Kamala Harris in the best light. “I would prefer a movement away from this approach, at least by some of these more mainstream publications. Come out and just be nonpartisan and actually cover the news correctly. A solution to this though is not stop endorsing candidates but still be liberal on everything. That doesn’t solve any problem,” Burguiere explains. “In a way, it’s trying to make their left-wing activism a little more subtle, a little more stealth,” he adds. After the Washington Post’s non-endorsement, the newspaper’s very own Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Anne Telnaes created a cartoon of absolutely nothing, just a blacked out piece of paper, titling it “Democracy dies in darkness.” “They literally believe they are owed the endorsement of every single media organization in the United States or democracy is dead, and they will tell you it’s dead by some gray paint, something on a page,” Stu says. “Like, all right, stop being so self-important. You want to write a piece that says ‘I don’t agree with this decision, here’s why,’ that’s one thing. To act like democracy is dying in darkness because the Washington Post, one of the most liberal publications in the United States, didn’t explicitly say they want Kamala Harris to win is just dumb,” he adds. Want more from Stu?To enjoy more of Stu's lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.