Welcome to December!

We start with a hero of the gridiron.

Utah State QB Giving Up Final Year of Eligibility to Train for Navy SEALS

A star college quarterback is giving up football to serve in the Armed Forces. Utah State QB Levi Williams announced Monday he is forfeiting his final year of eligibility to start Navy SEALS training. Williams told KSL 97.5, “I just want to be in a spot where I can protect this great country, where we get to play football with the freedom to do that. I think this is the greatest country in the world. So I’d like to protect it as long as I can.”

His fiance Tatum also gets a shout out. Says Levi, “I told her, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you about something really serious. This is what’s on my heart and where I feel like God’s calling me. She said, ‘That’s awesome. Let’s do it. I’m with you until the end.'” Military service is in the couple’s blood. Levi’s mom and grandparents served as did Tatum’s dad.

Stream editor and bestselling military author Tom Sileo has more news from our best and brightest in this week’s “Service & Sacrifice: Still a Target.”

And onward to a hero in the Senate.

Senator (and Doctor) Rand Paul Performs Heimlich Maneuver on Sen. Joni Ernst

Sen. Rand Paul, a doctor by original trade, leaped to the rescue at a Senate Lunch Wednesday to perform the life saving Heimlich maneuver on colleague Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst when she reportedly began choking on some food. Ernst was fine, later even joking about it on X.

Can’t help but choke on the woke policies Dems are forcing down our throats. Thanks, Dr. @RandPaul! https://t.co/OJDdqpQXjR

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) November 30, 2023

Now for Senate news that might make you want to gag … Sen. Marsha Blackburn claimed Thursday that Democratic Senator Dick Durbin blocked her request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs.

.@SenatorDurbin BLOCKED my request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs.

What are Democrats trying to hide?

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 30, 2023

The Great Blue Versus Red State Debate: California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Debated Last Night on Hannity

The biggest surprise about last night’s debate on Hannity? Sean Hannity let the two men get a word in edgewise. Rather than me yap about what happened, John Zmirak watched for the rest of us and will be throwing down his two cents later today. Speaking of which, who wouldn’t pay to see John debate any of these people running? Oh, that’s right. Newsom isn’t running. Wink-wink.

Disney Blues

Elon Musk told off Disney and other woke corporations in a viral, four-letter blast Wednesday, condemning the companies that pulled ads from X. “Blackmail,” he called it and told them to “(BLEEP) off.”

But I don’t know if Disney heard Musk over the resounding “NO!” from movie-goers, and the deafening crash and burn of Disney’ latest movie release Wish. The animated flick brought in only $31.7 million Thanksgiving weekend. It was projected to earn between $45 and $50 million. At a price tag of $200 million, not including marketing costs, Wish is thus one of the largest box office failures in animated movie history. And the latest in a remarkable run of Disney flops.

The entertainment press is bending over backward to explain away the movie’s failure, blaming it mostly on audiences getting used to streaming movies on Disney+ at home during COVID, along with competition from Napoleon and the Hunger Games prequel. (As if that would have bothered a family-friendly animated Disney flick in the past.)

Left out is the public’s rejection of Disney jamming its radical woke LGBTQ and progressive agenda into their films. Wish has the Walt Disney Company’s first non-binary character. As The Federalist points out, Disney has had failure after failure after failure in recent years, even managing to poison such treasures as Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Marvel. They also seem, The Federalist says, to have lost interest in hope as part of their “self-inflicted demise.”

Good riddance, you hear people say. But be honest. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if Disney went back to doing things right?

Disney admitted in a new SEC filing that its woke agenda is “misaligned” with the American public. The “environmental and social goals” of the company “often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brand.”

The question is, “Will Disney reverse course?” Or will it continue sinking to depths even the Little Mermaid can’t reach?

Transgender Professor … Teaching a Course on Taylor Swift … at Harvard

And not at Bob Harvard’s School of Pop Culture. Harvard Harvard. The most storied university in America. Oh, how American education has fallen.

A trans-identifying professor calling himself Stephanie Burt is offering the class “Taylor Swift and Her World” … for credit … in the spring semester. I suppose that those who can’t sing … teach.

Burt told local WCVB Channel 5 it’s a “literature course” that will focus on “lyrics and creative composition and how they’re connected to other page-based poets and authors” like Wordsworth and Coleridge.

And if you doubt that this is a very serious academic course, Burt told TMZ the class will cover Swift’s current relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

This is no knock on Swift (though she is no Dylan or Smokey or Lennon and McCartney — or Dolly, for that matter) … but is Harvard serious?

Then again, it is hysterical to think that Harvard pushes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Critical Race Theory, and went to court to fight to maintain the right to discriminate against white students … and the first thing they do is run to celebrate the whitest, most entitled artist on the planet.

Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas” Trails Only ESPN in Prime Time While Lifetime Turns to Sex for a Christmas Flick

Once again this year, Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas” is dropping big ratings into the cable network’s stocking. For the week ending Sunday, Hallmark trailed only ESPN in average viewership in the prime 8-11 p.m. slot, bringing in an average 1.53 million. And for the total-day average, Hallmark trailed on ESPN and Fox News. Leading the way was Sunday night’s highly-anticipated Christmas at the Biltmore, which mixes Christmas, romance, time-travel, history and old fashioned Golden Age of Hollywood glamour.

There’s one bit of coal in the cable Christmas movie world. Lifetime is boasting about one of its films having the first sex scene in a cable Christmas movie.

Not only is it distasteful, it missed the news that the current generation has little interest in sex scenes and just wants stories that connect emotionally. Also, when it comes to Christmas movies and heat between a male and female, good luck topping Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sharing a phone when talking to their mutual friend Sam Wainright in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Have a great weekend. And on Sunday a rich start to Advent.

Along The Stream

More holiday cheer. Nancy Flory brings, “Blue Water Highway and Will Hearns’ ‘Grand Ol’ Christmas Show’ Celebrates 20 Years of Family-Friendly Music and Humor”

And coming up at 9 a.m. Eastern, Tom Gilson with, “Christianity, the Anti-Ideology.”

 

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, co-author, with John Zmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and co-author of the counter-terrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.