First of all, here's what we have for you this week:
- Killer Grabs: Quotes from around the traps.
- Jimmy Kimmel, Abbie Chatfield and the New Cancel Culture — By Osman Faruqi
- The Good Ones: The best journalism, opinion and entertainment for you to enjoy.
It's been a big week in news and a big week for Lamestream. This week we launched our Monday podcast, which meant we were able to bring you a timely analysis of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the way it was quickly being leveraged, both as propaganda by the right to sanctify a martyr for their movement, and as a cudgel to attack their perceived enemies.
The launch of our Monday episodes now means Lamestream will be coming to you twice weekly, on Mondays and Thursdays, along with this newsletter every Friday.
Today, Os writes about how the attempt to 'cancel' celebrity figures like Jimmy Kimmel and Abbie Chatfield is not just a temporary spiral of outrage in the aftermath of Kirk's murder. He charts how concentrated media ownership, corporate cosying-up to far-right demands and global connections to Australia all feed into what we are seeing.
Meanwhile, we are working hard to bring you more. It feels like a lifetime ago that we launched Lamestream, one week before the federal election, with nothing but our own money and the goal of creating a new and truly independent voice in Australian media.
Your support as subscribers has given us the opportunity to make some big choices. How do we make Lamestream sustainable? How do we secure a future where we can stay independent?
We've decided to invest in offering you more. Our Monday shows are the first part of that, but you will also soon see improvements to our website, articles and more.
All of this is a bet, but we're confident in the bet we're making: more Australians want trustworthy and truly independent media. The task is to reach them.
We would love to hear any ideas or feedback at all, whether it's about the look and feel of it, what you want to read more about from us or how often you'd like to hear from us.
Killer Grabs
"We’re constantly told, you know, we need to see peaceful protests. Well, here’s a peaceful protest… We projected a piece of journalism on to a wall and now people have been arrested for malicious communications." — Led By Donkeys, a UK political action group.
To coincide with President Donald Trump's visit to the UK on Thursday, some images of his past were projected onto Windsor Castle.
The images were of Trump with his good friend and deceased sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, as well as their correspondence. Prosecutors will be hoping UK police somehow manage to collect more evidence on these pranksters, than they uncovered on Epstein's decades-long relationship with a member of the royal family.
"He hasn't read a single message yet, but has told us that it might be a 'psychosocial risk' to him and other managerial staff to read what you have to say." — A union email sent to journalists at the ABC this week, referring to the head of ABC employee relations.
Unionised journalists at the ABC have been collecting testimony from staff about the personal toll of racism, pay inequality and insecure work as part of negotiations over a new enterprise agreement. This week, according to an email from the staff union leadership, the ABC's People and Culture department (that's the HR department, for anyone who's a regular human) told them they wouldn't be reading any of it, because of the potential "psychosocial" damage.
It's miraculous how keen ABC management are to listen when it's in a performative town hall meeting or all-staff email, yet how reticent they are about doing it when it's part of a negotiation over actual conditions.
"I wish that I could be with you this evening to accept the honour in person, but because of my support for non-violent anti-war protest, I’m advised that I can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest." — Irish author Sally Rooney, in a statement delivered ahead of winning the Sky Arts award for literature.
This is one of the most critically lauded and popular authors of her generation. Rooney has effectively been exiled from the UK because her support of Palestine, and opposition to Israel's genocide, risks her being arrested for terrorism. Under the Labour government of Keir Starmer. You aren't going crazy, the world really is in a very dark place.
Jimmy Kimmel, Abbie Chatfield and the New Cancel Culture
By Osman Faruqi
A week. That’s all it took. That’s the time between Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the full-scale purge of Trump’s critics, most pointedly represented by the suspension of late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke criticising the President.
It actually took much less than a week for it to become apparent that this was the trajectory we were on. It was only hours after Kirk’s death that Trump sought to blame the “radical left”, less than a day before the first media figures were fired, and it only took a few days for the most powerful people in Trump’s regime, like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, to threaten the use of laws created to tackle organised crime and corruption against people who oppose the government.
