Netflix Shouldn't Be Trusted with Lord of the Rings or Dune, "Antisemite of the Year" Award? is a Bad Idea, Comedian Punches Down on a Brain-Injured Girl (The Five for 12/11/25)
Plus, the biggest memoir of the year glorifies attempted murder. Jon Bernthall (The Punisher, FURY) in a Netflix crime drama looks like a must watch.
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 dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Well, Netflix may not actually get Warner Brothers/HBO, and that may be a win for consumers.
The first factor in play is is Paramount’s attempt at a hostile takeover.
On Monday, Ellison’s Paramount Skydance announced it has commenced an all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of WBD for $30 per share — the same terms it offered in a Dec. 4 bid submitted to the Warner Bros. Discovery’s board. Paramount’s proposed transaction is for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, including the TV business with CNN, TBS, TNT and other networks.
Paramount’s announcement, taking its bid directly to WBD shareholders, comes after Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery revealed their binding agreement Friday under which Netflix would buy Warner Bros.’s studio operations, HBO and HBO Max for $72 billion (with an enterprise value of $82.7 billion).
According to Paramount, its all-cash offer equates to an enterprise value of $108.4 billion (including assumption of debt) with an equity value of $77.9 billion. In contrast, the Netflix proposal entails “a volatile and complex structure” valued at $27.75/share in a mix of cash ($23.25) and stock ($4.50), subject to collar and the future performance of Netflix, equating to an enterprise value of $82.7 billion (excluding the TV biz), per Paramount.
Paramount said its deal offer for WBD would close within 12 months, compared with Netflix’s projected 12-18 months for completing its deal. WBD is required by law to inform shareholders within 10 business days whether it will accept or reject Paramount Skydance’s $30/share offer. Paramount’s tender offer, which was approved unanimously by its board, is scheduled to expire at 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 8, 2026, unless the offer is extended.
The other thing in Paramount’s favor…is that both Republicans and Democrats are looking to kill this merger with anti-trust actions
The deal would see Warner Bros. acquired by one of its biggest customers: In addition to its massive movie studio, Warner Bros. makes television shows for various networks and streamers – including Netflix.
Meanwhile, the deal would consolidate No. 1 streamer Netflix with No. 3 HBO Max (Amazon Prime Video holds the No. 2 spot), just as companies are raising subscriber prices in response to slower growth.
Although we subscribe to Netflix (bundled with HBO Max through Verizon, the pair are only $10/month), it frustrates me that the streamer puts out so much garbage content (really poorly done movies, bottom of the barrel reality TV), and I can’t see how it’s going to handle franchises like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Willy Wonka, DC, The Matrix, Mad Max and DUNE with any sort of care.
My gut says that it’s better for movie fans if Netflix does not wind up gobbling up WB/HBO.
[two]
Ms. Rachel, an internet personality who’s a rock star to toddlers, was named “Anti Semite of the Year” by stopantisemitism.com…which is a bit complicated. She’s not innocent, but…well, let’s dive in.
From City Journal:
Ms. Rachel admits to being a neophyte when it comes to the world’s most volatile region. In an interview with left-wing journalist Mehdi Hasan, she acknowledged that she “didn’t know much” about the Middle East before Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks.
Still, that has not stopped her from using her various platforms to construct a simplistic narrative of the conflict. Her Instagram, followed by more than 4 million accounts, reads like the product of an anti-Israel activist who happens to wear bright colors and overalls.
There is nothing wrong with advocating for children suffering during wartime. It’s the content of her advocacy that raises questions.
First, despite telling Hasan that she was “horrified by October 7,” Ms. Rachel had little to say that day about the harms to Israeli children. Her only Instagram post from October 7—long after Hamas’s live broadcast of its rampage of murder, torture, and kidnapping—is a hairdo tutorial. That silence continued for weeks even as the extent of Hamas’s atrocities became clear.
Ms. Rachel has no obligation to weigh in on all the world’s suffering children, a policy she continues to honor when it comes to China, Africa, and Ukraine. But she eventually broke that silence.
The second giveaway that Ms. Rachel is not merely engaged in children’s advocacy is her repeated, selective use of blame. Though she started with vague hopes for peace that did not mention Israel or Hamas by name, Ms. Rachel has gradually begun including “analysis” in her Instagram posts. She informed her followers that Israel is committing “genocide,” accusing it of “murder[ing] 4 year olds!” and blaming the world for dehumanizing Palestinians to excuse Israel’s conduct.
The surest sign that something is amiss in Ms. Rachel’s advocacy is that while she has regularly called on Israel to stop its just war, she has never once (as far as I can find) called on Hamas to lay down its arms. (She has “condemn[ed] HAMAS” in the same post as she “condemn[ed] the Israeli government.”) Indeed, she has recently dropped the pretense of hating Israel on behalf of the suffering children of Gaza and now regularly posts anti-Israel messages unrelated to children’s welfare.
I’ve never been to Gaza, but a couple of counter points worth noting.
The first is that the bombing devastation is…quite shocking.
The second is that…according to the National Security expert I trust the most (who’s on the political left) there was not a genocide in Gaza.
And finally, there is the matter of Ms. Rachel boosting pro-Hamas (not pro Palestinian, pro Hamas) photographer Motaz Azaiza and using doctored and misleading photos in her social media (such as starving children…who are not in Gaza).
She also thinks…she’s God, apparently. What is this garbage? No, my kids are not your kids, you moron.
There’s nothing wrong with Ms. Rachel advocating for children maimed or killed in war, like the clip below. But it’s worth noting that she isn’t worried at all about Igbo, Nigerian Christian children burned alive by Muslim terrorists.
…or Turkish Muslim children in forced labor in China. Or how about the Sudanese children caught in the crossfire of that nation’s civil war, which has already killed 150,000?
To be fair…it’s possible Ms. Rachel connects well with toddlers because they’re on her intellectual level.
But as far as being “Antisemite of the Year,” she’s not even in the same ballpark as Fuentes:
Piers Morgan: “Do you think Hitler was ‘very f**king cool?’”
Nick Fuentes: “Yes, and I’m tired of pretending he’s not”
Of course, Fuentes, who’s basically a White Supremacist version of a Kardashian and believes public attention is oxygen and without it he will have a stroke and die, says he feels “snubbed” he did not get the award…so maybe the best thing here would be to just drop this business all together. When the racists WANT recognition, you’re in Streisand effect territory.
[three]
A trans comedian figured the best way to launch a comedy career…was to make fun of a high school girl’s partial paralysis.
Well…it did go viral.
Another girl. They’re trying to make a, the face of the anti-trans movement. Her name is Peyton, and she’s the girl who got hit in the head with a volleyball by a trans woman while she was playing volleyball. Right. Crazy. They bring her to hearings. The whole argument is. She suffered catastrophic brain damage, right?
That she’ll never recover from. She’ll never be able to have a normal life. And this is with her in the room. They’re just, they’re like, look how slow she is. She’ll never be able to drive. And they don’t, they don’t ever wanna show the clip of what happened because it’s pretty funny. Actually, it’s a seven second clip.
And it’s a girl, it’s a, a trans girl, presumably, I’m told, goes up to, to do a spike and I can’t tell she’s trans. Her form is perfect. She looks good at sports, right? And then there’s Peyton. Sitting back like, I don’t know, six feet from the net flat footed with her hands down like this, and then she just gets hit right in the head and falls over like a toddler.
And I’m like, oh, she was really like this before. I don’t know if there’s a nice way to say this, but she should have been wearing a helmet. She shouldn’t have been out there with the normal people.
It’s probably worth you seeing the footage for yourself.
While I’m no medical expert…what we can know for sure is what McNabb testified before Congress:
Medical professionals informed me and my family the heavy news that I suffered a traumatic brain injury, a brain bleed, and my body was experiencing partial paralysis on my right side.
The doctors couldn’t confirm how long it would take for my body to recover — it could take months or even years, and they couldn’t confirm whether I’d ever be 100% back. While I’ve learned to navigate my new normal, there are several challenges that I deal with on a daily basis — severe headaches, balance issues, vision impairment and, as my mom has said, I’m just not the same kid.
Again, I can’t be sure of McNabb’s injuries (or lack thereof), but the penalty for falsifying testimony before Congress is five years in prison, so that makes it significantly more unlikely that Peyton is just making this up.
One user on X summed it up well:
I realise comedy is subjective & certain people will find this amusing.
But I put it to you that this is nothing to do with comedy.
The truth is that there are NO JOKES here.
Listen to it. Properly. No satire, no irony, no parody, it’s not observational, it’s not self-deprecating, not slapstick, not surreal, not even dark, as that needs substance. No timing, no concept of delivery, no intelligence, no wisdom, no craft.
This is a man, mocking a young girl for being left partially paralysed by another man, who badly injured her, during a sport he had NO BUSINESS participating in.
This is simply a man laughing AT that reality.
Hey, at the end of the day, I’m for free speech. Comedians are gonna…say stuff. Offensive stuff.
But, while there’s no doubt that trans people are bullied, vicious counter-bullying aint really gonna solve that problem.
[four]
YouTuber and pro-corporate-medicine Physician Dr. Mike went on Surrounded by Jubilee (one of the best series on YouTube, regularly featured in this publication), and got absolutely wrecked by one opponent.
Americans are fat and they are sick, and it is not getting better and taking more and more money and continuing to flush it down. The toilet is not going to solve the problem. We know what will stop cancer dead in its tracks. We know what will stop all chronic disease, dead in its tracks. Do you know what it is?
Lifestyle changes, lifestyle changes. The American Heart Association has known about this for years. The most important predictor of longevity, risk of chronic disease, all cause mortality is VO two max. So why aren’t doctors? Why isn’t the government creating a public health system that says, you know what?
We’re gonna focus on VO2 max because even if we stopped every dollar we had putting it into cancer research right now, and we took that money and we said, let’s get people moving, let’s increase their VO two max cancer has stopped dead in its tracks. So the question is, when is enough enough to admit that the system you are a part of has drastically failed Americans in RFK Jr.
By the very fact of how he looks in his seventies, does more to encourage people to live a healthy. Lifestyle and truly make America healthy again.
I'm not in the business of telling anyone else what to do…but I get a physical once a year, get told I’m fine, and seek out health and fitness knowledge on my own.
Over the last 40–50 years, the share of U.S. adults with chronic disease rose from roughly one-third to well over half — while per capita health-care spending increased from under $400/year (1970) to about $14,570/year (2023), and total national spending climbed to nearly $5 trillion.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Millie Alcock (House of the Dragon) steps into the cape as SUPERGIRL. She’s a bit different than her cousin Clark Kent in that she’s more—well, alcohol dependent and cynical. In theaters 06/26.
A spy gets his brain hacked…cool premise. Simu Lui (Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Barbie) looks like a strong lead here. Could be fun. On Hulu 12/27.
Out in February if this is your thing.
Tessa Thompson (CREED, Thor: Ragnarok) and Jon Bernthall (FURY, The Punisher) as a reporter/cop husband and wife looking into a murder. Cool.
And more spy stuff. Tom Hiddelston (Avengers, Kong: Skull Island) as the lead? all I need to know.
[read and learn]
Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem (who are nearly universally loved by Millennials, Gen Z/X’ers, skip if you need to) goes deep on growing up in church, being a BMX racer, and how Bruce Springsteen and The Goo Goo Dolls helped him re-form his band.
I did this for you…so you don’t have to. I dove headfirst into All the Way to the River, the latest memoir from Liz Gilbert, of Eat. Pray. Love. fame. To her credit, Liz is one of the best alive at the craft of writing.
And…to her detriment…she’s a legitimate psychopath. Gilbert starts off the book by saying “either we are all innocent, or none of us are. And I choose to believe we’re all innocent.”
She then goes on to tell the reader about how she’s wrecked every relationship she’s ever been in, lied, stolen, double-crossed…and then, planned to murder her last lover, her hairdresser-turned-girlfriend, Rayya, who was dying of when Liz blew up her second consecutive marriage due to infidelity for this whirlwind romance, which was only supposed to last six months. Rayya lived 20 months…which became a problem, apparently.
Liz then enabled Rayya, a recovering drug addict, with lots of drugs. Then, when Rayya behaves like a drug addict, Liz plans to force an overdose and murder her.
That’s not to say you should read it, as the mix of therapy coded blah blah blah wallpapered over decisions that common sense says will result in terrible results (in this case, first degree attempted murder)…
…make this the most 2025 book of 2025.
Until the next one,
-sth