Kanye's Horrific Single Proves Censorship Always Backfires, "Acting Harder Than Being a Working Mom" -A List Actress, Church Refuses to Resettle Refugees (The Five for 05/16/25)
Hey welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don't always make the front page.
It's Friday, so let's get into culture and commentary.
[one]
Ugh. I detest anything that approaches celebrity gossip, but Gweneth Paltrow gave us a pretty good snapshot of why actors often turn us off from seeing movies via their very, very stupid comments.
Paltrow, who grew up in opulent wealth in an elite Hollywood family, claimed this week that being an actor is way harder than being an average working mom:
I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.
It’s a very Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” moment…with a simple explanation. Paltrow is most likely “simple” herself…if the IQ stats are to be believed. A majority of actors clock in at right around an IQ of 100…with a few exceptions, like Ashton Kutcher (studied Biomedical engineering), Natalie Portman, Matt Damon (attended Harvard), Samuel L. Jackson (Marine biology major) and Ken Jeong (a licensed MD before switching to acting).
Acting is an incredible art…but memorizing something somebody else wrote and saying it out loud doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to give you a massive platform to say whatever you want.
Unfortunately, for the movie business, movie patrons actually like actors, and want to hear what they have to say. And then actors talk…and tank theatrical runs.
It might be best for the movie watching public and movie studios alike for actors to just stop doing press all together.
[two]
Zach Bryan has pulled one of the most popular songs off of his latest studio album, a duet with fellow Oklahoman John Moreland, due to Moreland criticizing Bryan’s $350 million record deal.
Yahoo reports:
The beef started with Moreland taking to Instagram and posting an image of the tattooed back of his head accompanied by the words “$350M is a lot of money to pay for the fu–in off-brand version of me. Y’all have a great day.” Moreland’s message refers to a $350 million number that was reported by Variety earlier this week as the combined value of the deals Bryan is making to renew his contract with Warner Records and sell his publishing catalog.
Zach responded with a comment on Instagram stories, announcing he was pulling the duo’s song “Memphis, The Blues,” from his latest album, down off streaming.
Unfortunately, Moreland has a history of starting hip-hop style beef in the Americana/roots music space.
Last year, Moreland posted about getting into a bar fight with musician Kyle Nix, whom he described as “the tiny fiddle player from the Turnpike Troubadours.” Moreland wrote that “if he pulls you out of your bar stool and starts kicking you in the head a few times… Don’t worry because he’s four feet tall, and it’s just going to feel like a f***ing third-grader is kicking you in the head. And then you can get up and start wailing on his face, and it’s all good. F*** that guy.” Moreland also wrote, “F**k that whole band honestly… ‘cept Hank [Early, the Turnpike Troubadours’ steel player].”
Bryan, Moreland and Turnpike are all from within an hour of one another, in the Tulsa, OK metro and surrounding areal. Bryan and Tunpike have a longstanding mutual appreciation, with Zach including this line in his song “East Side of Sorrow.”
I hear Turnpike’s back together and they’re writing songs.
One of the most beloved bands in the Americana space, Turnpike Troubadours broke up in 2019, due to vocalist Evan Felker’s alcoholism (the singer was falling down on stage due to drunkenness, unable to perform), and the band was silent for a long time, leading many fans (myself included) to wonder if they were done forever.
At that time, a then-unknown artist dropped a tribute song on YouTube, simply entitled “Felker,” to the struggling frontman. So, Zach certainly looks like the one with the moral high ground here, as he’s done nothing but support his fellow Tulsan artists (including Moreland)…and made a lot of money (which is no crime).
Felker, we need you here
To re-affirm our fears
Felker, won't you get well
You've got stories to tell
This is pretty much a soap opera, which wouldn’t normally qualify to be covered in this publication…except for the fact that a song is now deleted off the internet, save a few YouTube bootlegs. AI estimates that Moreland was making $100K or so per year off “Memphis, The Blues,” so insulting Zach hit him pretty hard financially. (Remember, Zach’s catalog is worth $350M, so the numbers pencil out). The median home price in Tulsa is $210K, so Zach was essentially buying John half a house every year.
But here’s the problem. An album is a capsule of time and place…and you can’t just yank a song out of the sequence without changing the record, any more than you can pull a chapter at random out of a novel and have the book make sense.
Zach is within his right to remove the collaboration…and it hits Moreland hard in the pocketbook. But it’s fans who pay the real price.
[three]
Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler” is fast becoming one of the most popular songs of the summer of 2025, despite being pulled from Spotify, Apple and YouTube Music.
Joe Rogan pointed out this week that banning the song…has not worked.
There's a benefit to just letting people talk, like let people say whatever the f*** they wanna say, even if it sucks. This is the benefit of Twitter. Yeah, but this is also the bad part. It's like the fucking song is so many millions of hits. Yeah. On Twitter, it's been banned from every platform. Yeah. But is it good to ban things from platforms or is it better to let it be out there?
I see what you're saying. Yeah. And let people talk about it, because if you ban it, then people want to hear it more. That's true. And then it becomes more popular, and then it kind of supports what he says, which is that there's this concerted effort. If you talk about. Jewish people that they're gonna remove you from everything.
As I wrote about last week, it’s possible to interpret the song as just a provocative statement West is making about how he’s been treated in the last few years. Or, maybe Kanye just loved Hitler. (I lean towards the latter, but I don’t know what’s in his the head of Kanye West…thankfully).
Either way, banning the song has created a cool counterculture where people are throwing up Nazi salutes on social media. The song is well produced, but lyrically stomach-turning single (not just the hook, but the rest of the song is about how Kanye is a drug addict who can’t see his kids, along with rather—unseemly details about his marriage) into something that’s appealing because “big tech” won’t allow it.
This is yet another case proving that free speech is the best policy. Censorship has taken a song that would have made a splash on social media for a few hours, only to be forgotten about…and turned it into one of the worst summer hits in the history of pop culture.
[four]
A woman blew up on TikTok this week for being extremely bigoted to the South African refugees who arrived in the US this week.
This video is for the white Africaners who are coming to the United States. I think you've already landed here, and I know that some of the folks who met you at the airport told you Welcome. We're so glad you're here. Most of us aren't glad you're here. Okay? Um, we don't want you here. We never wanted you here.
And furthermore, um, I noticed they're gonna settle you in Idaho, Ohio, and North Carolina. I will tell you, they're not our finest states. So there's, they're a good fit for you. I understand that many of you are farmers and I've seen a lot of people say, oh, that's great. We need more farmers. Sorry to say we don't, we actually need farm workers 'cause we've deported most of them.
So if you can, you know, put your picking hat on and think about, you know, picking produce. That's largely probably what you're gonna be doing here. 'cause I hear you don't have a lot of skills. I would also say that you are not gonna have to hold just one job, but probably two or three to make up for your quality of life that you had back in South Africa.
There'll be no servants working for two bucks a day. There's none of that here. So, um, you're the servant who's working for $2 a day, so enjoy that. You're gonna have to pay for your healthcare and ordinarily, 'cause you're a refugee, um, who's being discriminated against, um, you would go on Medicaid, but guess what?
So, um, you are the minority here. Um, enjoy, I, I, I really hope you like your time here. I'm gonna bet my ass that, um, you're gonna be booking it back to SA probably within the next 12 months. Have a great day.
Observations:
A). This is a mirror of the absolute worst bile that backward, racist, inbred morons have said about African, Arabic, Asian and Hispanic immigrants in the past (and if you go back a century, Irish, Italian, Slavic, etc.). It’s disgusting, no matter what group of people it’s pointed at. This woman has more in common with the KKK than she would like to admit.
B). Psychiatry Online published a paper exploring the links between racism and mental illness. I’m not a professional in that world…but I’m also not blind. If the shoe fits…
And yes, discriminating against a group of refugees fleeing possible execution, due to the skin color and country of origin of the refugees…is racism. And, according to experts, a possible sign of mental illness.
C). It’s also worth noting that the Episcopal Church will no longer resettle ANY refugees, so that they don’t have to resettle 50 people.
The church cited its commitment to racial justice as a moral imperative in a letter sent to its members Monday.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe explained to NPR's Morning Edition that the administration's request crossed a moral line, and that the church would not help while other refugee programs remain largely frozen by the White House.
"The idea that we would be somehow resettling Afrikaners at this point over other refugees who have been vetted and waiting in camps for months or even years, is unfathomable to us," Rowe, the church's youngest presiding bishop ever, said.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that white South African farmers, known as Afrikaners, are facing genocide and land seizures. The Trump administration classified the white Afrikaners as refugees earlier this year. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said: "It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa."
For the record, I agree on principal with the Episcopal churches stance that other refugee programs should not be frozen.
But in practice, refusing to help all future refugees in order to make a political statement that will be forgotten by the public within 2 weeks, takes discrimination to a whole new level of stupid.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup.
The first Superman trailer has dropped. I’m a tepid fan of the character at best (hit or miss on previous movies/TV shows), but this looks flat out amazing. James Gunn (Peacemaker, Guardians of the Galaxy) is directing this film to kick off the rebooted DCU. Opening with an “Interview” by Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fame) we’ve never a story with this angle on these characters before…feels fresh, bright and fun.
If Superman flops…Warner Brothers could lose an epic amount of money on the other DC films and shows. But if it works? Marvel should be worried. We’ll find out in July.
Owen Wilson stars in the Apple TV+ version of Happy Gilmore. Kinda. In this case, a washed up golfer takes a troubled teen golf phenom under his wing. See it 06/04.
[new music]
This isn’t the first time Bellville, IL native Nathaniel Rateliff has been featured in The Five...but his latest song and video are just so dang good…this could pass as lost footage from a vintage 1970’s western.
Rateliff’s vocals, as always, mix the sounds of vintage Stax Records and Muscle Shoals production with his signature rasp honed as an Ozarks worship leader…
Kat Hasty comes from the same fertile Texas/Oklahoma scene as Turnpike Troubadours, Zach Bryan, John Moreland (who’s music is still great, even when his behavior is not), Josh Abbott, Emmylous Harris, et. al.
The Time of Your Life is a barnburner that sounds nothing like the pop/country coming out of Nashville at the moment (that’s not a diss necessarily, just a distinction).
[podcast]
The latest interview from Bari Weiss, on how Apple moving production to China may have been a “global shift on the scale of the fall of the Berlin wall,” is an absolute must-listen. The guest is Patrick McGee, journalist behind the new book Apple in China.
Until the next one,
-sth