News We Were Liars Prime’s We Were Liars Series Has Cast Some Very Important Roles We have to go back to the island. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 30, 2024 Screenshot: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Warner Bros. The problem with talking about E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars is that it’s impossible to tell the uninitiated why it’s SFF without ruining the whole thing. But it is, promise. The tale of the wealthy Sinclair sisters, who spend every summer on their private island, it’s told by an unreliable narrator and is, well, an unreliable story. And a very good, very heartbreaking one, too. Casting announcements have been trickling in since March: First, the power trio of Mamie Gummer (Mr. Robot), Caitlin FitzGerald (Succession), and Candice King (The Vampire Diaries), playing three Sinclair sisters: Carrie, Penny, and Bess. Asher Ali then joined as Ed, Carrie Sinclair’s partner. He was followed by Wendy Crewson (October Faction) as Tipper Sinclair, the family matriarch. Somewhere along the line, David Morse (Hack) signed on Harris Sinclair, the family’s media-mogul patriarch. And now, at last, the liars themselves are assembled. Emily Alyn Lind (Doctor Sleep, pictured above), Shubham Maheshwari, Esther MacGregor, and Joseph Zada have been cast as the story’s central quartet—Lind as Penny’s daughter, Cadence; Maheshwari as Gat, Ed’s nephew; MacGregor as artsy cousin Mirren; and Zada as cousin Johnny. On Instagram, Prime shared a perfect group photo of the gang. It’s a lot to keep track of, yes, but the book makes it easy, and the series likely will too: showrunners Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie have wrangled more characters during their time on The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. Prime Video describes We Were Liars as “a tragic love story and an amnesia thriller,” which is true and also vague. The story follows Cadence, who has been struggling ever since Summer Fifteen, the liars’ fifteenth summer on the island. Now it’s Summer Seventeen, and everything on the island is strange. The house is different. Her grandfather has changed. And the liars are acting weird. No premiere date has been announced for the show, but while you wait, you can always read Lockhart’s novel if you want to know what the deal it. But fair warning: it’s … upsetting.[end-mark] The post Prime’s <i>We Were Liars</i> Series Has Cast Some Very Important Roles appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Leave Behind All Good Things at the Endgame — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Life, Itself” Discovery has come a long way from its debut seven years ago… Let’s talk about the series finale. By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 30, 2024 Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: CBS / Paramount+ There are so many ways that the series finale of Discovery could have been screwed up, and I’m pleased to say that they avoided all of them. The last twenty minutes were filmed later after Secret Hideout was informed that Paramount+ would not be renewing the show for a sixth season. So we get seventy minutes of the finale to the fifth season and then another twenty of epilogue for the show itself. Let’s start with my favorite revelation: that the people that everyone’s been referring to as the Progenitors, for lack of a better term to use, aren’t entirely accurately named. One of the oddities of this season is the notion that the Progenitors’ technology is just laying around, which didn’t seem to make much sense on the face of it. Except it turns out not to even be their technology! While the Progenitors (we never get their real name, so we’ll stick with that) did use the technology to create humanoid life as we know it, they didn’t originate the tech used. It’s this weird extradimensional space, accessed via the doodad that everyone was trying to break into last week. But the Progenitors didn’t create it, they just found it. They did use it to populate the then-much-younger galaxy, as they were the only sentient life they’d encountered, and they felt alone in the galaxy, and wanted to change that. Burnham finds this out by figuring out how to use the clue Derex left her in the archive in “Labyrinths”: it’s a math clue, one that involves the arranging of triangles and negative space. She then goes to another extradimensional place, one where time passes much differently. One of the Progenitors is waiting for her. (For a brief moment, I thought they might have gotten Salome Jens back to reprise her role as a Progenitor from TNG’s “The Chase,” but no. Then again, the woman is almost ninety years old…) Apparently Derex came to this place back in the 24th century, and decided that they weren’t ready for this power. Burnham winds up coming to much the same conclusion—at least in part because she can’t in good conscience spend time learning the technology when Discovery is in trouble. And Discovery is in lots of trouble. There’s the Breen dreadnought they stole the doodad from in “Lagrange Point,” there’s another dreadnought en route commanded by Primarch Tahal, and there are fighters going after Discovery. Tahal is taken care of by Saru, who, accompanied by Nhan, manages to outmaneuver the primarch and get her to back off with the sheer power of his awesomeness. (Burnham comments that Action Saru does it again at the end.) In a nice touch, showing how far Kelpiens have come in a millennium, Saru identifies himself as a predator and boasts to Tahal that he has studied his prey. This is a delightful inversion of Saru’s using his role as prey in “Choose Your Pain” in the first season to track Lorca down. Discovery is able to get rid of the Breen fighters using the same trick with a plasma cloud that Kurn used with a sun in TNG’s “Redemption II.” Then they get rid of the dreadnought with an absolutely delightful trick of separating the saucer, putting each bit on either side of the dreadnought, and activating the spore drive, which sends the dreadnought far away instead of Discovery. It’s one final bit of “wait, if we try this…” solutions that has been a hallmark of this show, and as usual, it’s a team effort among Tilly, Stamets, and Adira. To that end, pretty much everyone gets something to do. Each member of the bridge crew is involved in the maneuvering around the black holes. Book and Culber are the ones who put a tractor beam on the doodad to make sure that Burnham doesn’t fall past the event horizon, the latter participating by using a remnant of Jinaal that stuck in his brain meats. (This also allows Wilson Cruz to say, “I’m a doctor, not a physicist,” which is fabulous.) Saru and Nhan, as I said, get rid of Tahal. Plus, we get appearances by Vance and Kovich. We even get one final look at Bryce, Owosekun, Detmer, and Reno, who all have cameos in the epilogue. Alas, no appearance by President Rillak, which I find personally disappointing… Speaking of Kovich, we get a revelation about him that doesn’t land as well as probably everyone thought it would. Kovich isn’t his real name, his real name is Daniels. Yes, Kovich is the same guy who kept getting Archer’s Enterprise dragged into the dumbshit Temporal Cold War storyline starting in “Cold Front” and coming to a merciful (and stupid) conclusion in “Storm Front, Part II” (a.k.a. the SPACE NAZIS! episode). Kovich being an ex-temporal agent explains a lot about him, truly, but did he have to be Daniels? All his presence did on Enterprise was provoke sighs of annoyance that we were doing this dopey-ass storyline again. Ah, well—at least I can believe that Matt Winston would age into David Cronenberg. And I did like that his office shelves included a bottle of Château Picard, a VISOR, and a baseball, thus referencing TNG, DS9, and Picard. Anyhow, I like the rationale as to why Burnham eventually dumps the doodad past the event horizon so no one else can find it: they don’t need it. It’s understandable why the Progenitors used it millennia ago when they thought they were alone in the galaxy. But humanoid life is the opposite of alone in the 32nd century, and the temptation to misuse the power is too great. They also can only create life, they can’t resurrect dead life, so Moll’s hope that L’ak would be resurrected is dashed. Which is a relief—I really didn’t want a rerun of Book’s magic resurrection from last season—but also provides no kind of ending for the Breen storyline. Not that that storyline was all that and a bag of chips, but the internecine fighting among them that was such a subtext all season is just dropped as if it’s irrelevant. Which, truly, it was, but you kind of wish they’d figured that out before wasting our time with so much of it. Getting there involves a lot of action scenes, because—the fourth season mercifully excepted—Discovery always feels the need to end their seasons with a big-ass action climax. In this case, besides Discovery’s travails against the Breen, we’ve got Burnham and Moll competing for the Progenitors’ tech, then cooperating, then competing again—in both cases the competing involving lots of hand-to-hand combat. The extradimensional space includes gateways to various worlds. Burnham (and the other two Breen who came through) wind up on The Hurricane Planet, and later Moll and Burnham fight on The Anime Cherry Blossom Planet and The Active Volcano Planet. (I was hoping Burnham would urge Moll to surrender because she had the high ground, but alas…) The main part of the episode closes with two very satisfying conclusions. First, we see Saru and T’Rina married—with Saru apparently having been promoted to admiral. At the reception, Tilly mentions the notion of an Academy mentorship program she wants to start, which is probably helping set up the forthcoming Starfleet Academy show. And then Book and Burnham officially become a couple again, thank goodness. I would have liked to have seen more of Saru and T’Rina, as they’re adorable as all get-out, but I was grateful to see Book and Burnham back together. And then we have the epilogue, which doubles down on it. It’s about thirty years later (give or take), Burnham is an admiral, she and Book share a house on a planet where all the foliage is bright orange, and they have a son who just got promoted to captain. Burnham, meanwhile, has one last mission for Discovery: to send her off into deep space and await the arrival of something or someone called Craft. This is, it should be said, a very clumsy way to make the Short Trek “Calypso” continue to fit in continuity. That episode was written between the first two seasons, and once Discovery went forward in time to the 32nd century at the end of season two, it could still only fit in continuity with a really big hammer. But I appreciate that they made the effort, especially since (a) “Calypso” was really really really good, and (b) it gives Annabelle Wallis one final scene as Zora, saying goodbye to Burnham. They can’t really come up with a good in-story reason for Discovery to just bugger off like that, so they do us the kindness of not trying to shove a bad one down our throats. It’s just a thing that happens because the script says so. And hey, it gives us a chance for a very final finale, including Burnham remembering her crew (which is where we get the Reno, Bryce, Owosekun, and Detmer cameos). It’s a lovely scene, a sweet coda to the series. (By the way, I gotta say that the old-age makeup on Sonequa Martin-Green makes a bit of casting from the second season even more impressive, because I genuinely mistook the older version of Burnham for Sonja Sohn’s Gabrielle, a.k.a. Mama Burnham, on first glance.) Discovery has come a long way from its debut seven years ago. Next week, we’ll look back at both the fifth season and the series as a whole.[end-mark] The post Leave Behind All Good Things at the Endgame — <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>’s “Life, Itself” appeared first on Reactor.

Books Teen Horror Time Machine As Seen on TV?: The Watcher and Starstruck  Sometimes the lines between reality and TV get a little too blurry. By Alissa Burger | Published on May 30, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The teens of ‘90s horror usually keep pretty busy trying to solve dark mysteries and avoid murder attempts, but every now and then, they get the chance to put their feet up and watch a favorite television show or movie, hoping to take their minds off their troubles. But even the mindless entertainment of a soap opera or the latest action movie can open the door to further horrors, as the characters discover in Lael Littke’s The Watcher (1994) and Richie Tankersley Cusick’s Starstruck (1996). In both of these books, the boundaries between fiction and reality blur to the point of invisibility, as in The Watcher, Catherine Belmont loses track of the distinction between her own identity and that of her favorite soap opera character, Lost River’s Cassandra Bly,and in Starstruck, Miranda Peterson finds out the glamour of Hollywood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In The Watcher, Catherine Belmont’s obsession with Lost River is profound, overshadowing all other elements of her life. She runs from her high school to the local electronics store downtown to catch the latest episode of Lost River on the display televisions over her lunch break and she has modeled her wardrobe on the fashions of her favorite character, Cassandra. When a new guy in school comments on how much Catherine actually looks like Cassandra—a “dead ringer” (14), in fact, which is an ominous choice of words—Catherine has her hair cut to further emphasize this similarity. In uncertain situations, Catherine asks herself what Cassandra would do, adopting the fictional character’s speech patterns, body language, and mannerisms.  The lengths Catherine goes to in her attempts to emulate Cassandra are bizarre, for sure, but largely harmless and maybe even aspirational, a young woman trying on different identities and ways of being in the world as she works to figure out who she is. Things take a dangerous turn, however, when a mystery someone begins attacking Catherine in ways that mirror Cassandra’s plotline on Lost River: Cassandra’s car is tampered with and her seatbelt cut, she gets a threatening phone call, and the power is cut off to her house, with her attacker menacing Cassandra in the darkness. Similar events plague Catherine, with some minor variations: a cut seatbelt is left in front of her house; she gets the same threatening phone call, word-for-word; and when Catherine is in the auditorium for cheerleading practice after school one afternoon, the lights go out and someone torments her over the sound system. Catherine’s feelings about Lost River become a lot more complicated: on the one hand, it’s the last show she wants to watch, with its reminders of her own terrifying reality, but on the other hand, keeping up with Cassandra gives her a heads-up on what the next threat might look like.  There are several suspects, the strongest of which are Catherine’s neighbor Kade McGregor, the new boy Travis, and Britny Marsh. Kade and Catherine grew up together and Catherine views him as a brother, though he would clearly prefer something more intimate from their relationship. They live next door to each other and Kade spends an unsettling amount of time watching Catherine’s house, monitoring who’s coming and going. After Travis leaves one afternoon, Kade comes over to check on Catherine and make sure she’s okay, and when she assures him he really doesn’t need to do that, he tells her, “I like watching you, Cath” (145, emphasis original). This is creepy and made even more so when Catherine’s mother tells her about a boyfriend she had when she was Catherine’s age, Joe Sims, who “watched me … He was always watching me” (145, emphasis original), though that watching quickly escalated to murder when he grew jealous and shot T.J., another boy she was seeing. The plot thickens from there: T.J. is short for his full name, Travis Jalinsky, and he was the uncle of the new Travis who has just moved to town and become enamored with Catherine. With that new piece of information, Travis’s arrival in town and the quick friendship he has struck up with Catherine start to seem just a bit suspect. While the guys’ motivations could be possessiveness or revenge, with Britny, the cause for suspicion is jealousy and catty female competition, as Catherine assumes that Britny has her own romantic sights set on Travis and is still angry with Catherine about beating her out for the cheerleading team.  Somewhat unfortunately, none of these three are the culprit and Catherine’s real stalker is her supposed best friend, Liz, who just happens to be Joe Sims’ niece. After her uncle was institutionalized following T.J.’s murder, Liz’s mother similarly lost hold of reality. As Liz explains her skewed perspective of this cause-and-effect relationship, “His life was ruined, and hers, too. She got married and had me, but the marriage didn’t work out. She was too upset about her twin brother being locked up for the rest of his life. It made her sick, too. She’s in the same place he is now” (182). This is a flawed and potentially damaging representation of mental illness, particularly since Liz has followed the same dark path, with little awareness of or accountability for her actions.  Catherine may have lost herself in Lost River to some degree, but Liz turns to the soap opera as her playbook for what she should do next. When Cassandra is kidnapped on Lost River, Liz kidnaps Catherine, taking her to a cabin in the woods that belongs to Travis and Britny’s families, tying her up and waiting for the following day’s episode to find out what she should do next. She tells Catherine, “We’ll find out together … We’ll watch your soap opera and find out how Cassandra—and you—are going to die. The script is already written. There’s no way to change it” (185). There are plenty of flaws in this reasoning and Catherine points some of them out, including the fact that in reality, “They make changes to scripts all the time” (185), but Liz ignores all of them and carries on with her plan, only to be thwarted when in the next Lost River episode, Cassandra fights back against her kidnapper (who turns out to be one of her many ex-boyfriends, Dane). Liz is horrified, objecting “That’s not supposed to happen … No. No. No” (191). The two girls fight and Catherine is able to overpower and subdue Liz, just as the cavalry arrives, Travis and Kade coming to rescue, with clues provided by Britny’s astute analysis of that day’s Lost River episode, the cabin’s isolated location, and Travis’s missing keys.  In the closing pages, the tables seem to have turned, with the soap opera echoing art, rather than the other way around. In her final words to Catherine, Liz tells her friend “It’s still not over” (198), a line that is echoed a few minutes later word-for-word as the Lost River episode comes to a close. In soap operas and teen horror, the threat is never really bested and the danger can always return, but for now at least, Catherine seems to be (relatively) safe.  While life imitates art in The Watcher, in Cusick’s Starstruck, seventeen year old Miranda is offered a Hollywood dream when she wins a contest through On the Edge magazine to spend a week with megastar Byron Slater at his house in Los Angeles, and maybe even score a spot in his next movie. There are three winners, with these teenage girls competing against one another for Byron’s attention and affections, while being treated to fine food, shopping sprees with a personal stylist, and all kinds of social and publicity events.  There are a ton of red flags here: apparently these teens’ parents are somehow okay with sending unsupervised, underage girls to spend a week with a famous stranger. The possibilities for exploitation, abuse, and assault of these girls is almost limitless, both from Byron himself and from his cadre of hangers-on. Though there is a film role up for grabs, the screening process clearly isn’t going to be based on acting talent, since performance experience played no role in the selection of the finalists. After Byron and Miranda hit it off at their first meeting, he gives her a room in the main house, away from the guest house accommodations of the other contestants. The other so-called “responsible” adults aren’t much help either: when someone sends an incredibly revealing bikini to Miranda’s room, Lucille, Miranda’s chaperone from On the Edge, shrugs off her objections, saying “Oh, don’t be so shy. Remember, this is a fantasy trip. You can do things here you’d never do at home” (105, emphasis original). Miranda gives in, dons the bikini, and receives plenty of male attention, both from Byron and from his longtime friend and assistant, Nick Howard.  While there are already plenty of real-world dangers to worry about in this incredibly unsettling setup, no one really pays attention to those or bothers to address them at all, because they have bigger problems. Byron is certain that he is being stalked, with a crazy fan out to get him, though some members of his publicity team think he’s just mentally unstable, overreacting to a few weird phone calls, and could use a little break. Whether the truth is the threat of violence or an unpredictable superstar, it doesn’t seem like adding three complete strangers to the mix and intentionally amping up the drama with this competition is the way to go, but Byron’s publicity manager (and ex-girlfriend) Peg figures at least the spectacle will distract the paparazzi from whatever’s really going on. There certainly does seem to be someone out to get Byron: the tiger from his private zoo is mysteriously released and nearly attacks Miranda and one of the other contestants (Miranda does, thankfully, scold Byron and she overtly questions the ethics of him having a private zoo in the first place). Someone tampers with his car, causing an accident that nearly kills Byron and Miranda. There are odd phone calls and threatening notes, which are signed “Starstruck.” When the girls are presented with corsages to wear when the group all goes out to dinner, Miranda’s corsage is replaced with a bloody heart and a note warning her that “Byron’s heart belongs to me” (178). Miranda hides the heart in her bathroom garbage can, because she wants to have a private conversation with Byron before disclosing this horror to the rest of the group, with legitimate threats to her own safety apparently not factoring into her thought processes,and they head out like nothing has happened. After their dinner, the group is surrounded by an out of control group of fans, an altercation that leaves Byron’s bodyguard Harley dead and Byron himself stabbed. No matter how dangerous and apparently straightforward these threats are, however, Peg continues to downplay their severity, dismissing them as unfortunate accidents and the tragic cost of fame, as she repeatedly insists that the show must go on, adhering strictly to the fun-filled schedule she has set for the contest winners … until the moment she turns up murdered in Miranda’s hot tub.  Despite all of these distractions, Miranda and Byron seem to hit it off, having long conversations in which he confesses his fears and vulnerabilities. While Miranda definitely has a crush on Byron, she remains refreshingly level-headed. When he flirts with her, she tells him “Don’t be a jerk. I’ll have a week here, and then I’ll fly home, and then I’ll never see you again. You’ll go on being a famous star and I’ll go on being a nobody who starts college in the fall. I don’t want any misunderstandings between us, Byron. No lies or promises or heartbreaks either” (126). While she may not trust him, Miranda and Byron build a sense of camaraderie in their time together, particularly because she is the only one who believes that he’s in danger.  But Byron is actually more dangerous than in danger. Miranda may not have fallen for his romantic lines, but she completely believes the story of his stalker, who it turns out doesn’t exist. As Nick explains to Miranda, “There never was a Starstruck. He did it for the publicity—so everyone would feel sorry for him and sympathetic—but Peg wouldn’t buy it! So he had to kill her to get her out of the way! And now you’ll be Starstruck’s last victim!” (216). If this is Byron’s plan, it’s not a great one: presumably, the police would want to find and arrest this murderous stalker, who doesn’t exist. How Byron will maintain his innocence while setting someone up to take the fall remains undetailed, but is bound to be tricky. It all goes back to the fickle nature of fame, with Nick telling Byron “You’re afraid you’re on your way down—that some new star will pass you by. This whole Starstruck thing was just a stunt to keep the media attention focused on you” (217). Byron is willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to maintain his star status. Miranda runs and nearly falls over the edge of a cliff (so many conveniently placed cliffs in these stories!), but is rescued by Nick, while Byron in his hot pursuit loses his footing and plunges over the edge to his death. Starstruck’s versions of the credits roll, with Miranda and Nick on a plane as Miranda heads back home, on the precipice of a new—and hopefully murder-free—romance.  In both The Watcher and Starstruck, there is a profound dissonance between fiction and reality, whether that fiction is the convoluted plot of Lost River or the mythos of celebrity. Both Catherine and Miranda are tempted to indulge in fantasy worlds—Catherine through her affinity with Cassandra, and Miranda in the week she spends at Byron’s home—and while they begin by believing that none of it is real, the dangerous breakdown between fantasy and reality puts their lives at risk. Those fictional worlds also elide very real threats, including stalking, jealousy, and manipulation, distracting Catherine and Miranda with exaggerated fictional dramas while the real dangers get ever closer. Those lives on-screen may fulfill these young women’s dreams, but they also hold their own nightmares, ones which Catherine and Miranda are lucky to escape from with their lives.[end-mark] The post As Seen on TV?: <em>The Watcher</em> and <em>Starstruck</em>  appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Australian politics is simply a gift that keeps on giving. Over the last years, several draconian measures have been enacted, from the pandemic to free speech restrictions, and now the time has come to establish a parliamentary role the focus of which will be to change people’s behavior. Specifically – men’s behavior. This is happening in the state of Victoria, where Premier Jacinta Allan was proud to announce the role has been entrusted to MP Tim Richardson. Richardson’s official title is Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behavior Change. It’s a first in Australia, and that’s another thing Allan was happy to point out. The result of Richardson’s work should make Victoria safer for women and children, the premier stated. One of the snarky reactions to the announcement left on Instagram wondered if Richardson will, as part of his efforts to change men’s behavior, work to “teach men they cannot identify as women.” But that is highly unlikely what Allan has in mind – instead she spoke about stopping “the tragedy of deaths of Victorian women at the hands of men” and building “respectful relationships.” Yet, how is Richardson supposed to influence such things and do a better job than say, the police, or therapists? Apparently, he will deal with social media and the internet – that Australian authorities at various levels are positively obsessed with, in terms of attempts to control them. Allan said Richardson will “focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys” and their “attitudes” toward women. The MP confirmed his appointment, opting for a statement strong on sloganeering that said, “We know that the time to act on men’s violence against women is now and it starts with us men and boys.” Aside from the fact that “the time” to act against that and other types of violence is surely “always” – it remains largely unclear from these announcements how exactly Richardson’s activities will help with this matter. What has been revealed is that the Victoria MP will work with the state’s Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Vicki Ward. Australians must be hoping that Richardson will on one hand be successful – and on the other, that the “focus on the influence the internet and social media have” will not be taken as yet another formalized way for the Australian authorities to further crack down on online speech and communications. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Victoria’s Premier Unveils Controversial New Parliamentary Role To Change Men’s Behavior, Researching Internet and Social Media appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

BREAKING: Unanimous SCOTUS Rules New York Likely Infringed on NRA's First Amendment Rights

The Ayatollah Congratulates Anti-Jewish Protesters

At the Olympic Game Park in Sequim, Washington, a video capturing a unique encounter between a bear and a visiting family has captivated millions. The footage has amassed over 4.1 million views. It reveals a playful, unexpected moment that blurs the boundaries between human and animal, reminding us of the joyful surprises nature can offer.... The post Family waves ‘Hi’ to bear then captures the cutest moment on film appeared first on Animal Channel.

At the Olympic Game Park in Sequim, Washington, a video capturing a unique encounter between a bear and a visiting family has captivated millions. The footage has amassed over 4.1 million views. It reveals a playful, unexpected moment that blurs the boundaries between human and animal, reminding us of the joyful surprises nature can offer.... The post Family waves ‘Hi’ to bear only to get the most adorable response appeared first on Animal Channel.

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On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote a truly insane New York Times op-ed where he argued that the Justice Department has the right to force Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves and in the evening, he went on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront to discuss it. Burnett was not interested in challenging his looney theories, instead claiming that “you would hope” the justices would recuse themselves because the public needs to trust institutions that are under attack, not caring to notice it was her guest who was undermining that trust. Burnett began by reading from a letter Justice Alito wrote back to Raskin about his flags nontroversy, “He wrote to Congress and part of that, quote: ‘My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. My wife was solely responsible for having flag poles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.’”     After introducing Raskin, she snickered, “I don't know if my reaction was apparent to anyone watching, but 'my wife is fond of flying flags' and he asked her for several days to take it down and she didn't. What's your reaction to that? He's written a letter to Congress essentially tripling down on it's all his wife's fault.” The media doesn’t seem to appreciate the difference between blaming and explaining. Alito is simply explaining that his wife is her own person and that the upside-down and Appeal to Heaven flags were her ideas. At the end of the interview, Burnett appeared to again take Raskin’s side, “Well, it also seems, at the very least, just the perception of it, right, that you would hope the Supreme Court justices would care so deeply about that and to preserve institutions in this country, especially at a time when they're under such assault, that he may come to a different conclusion.” The Supreme Court is under attack from Democrats like Raskin because it is possible it will not rule the way they want. Therefore, they've concocted a conspiracy theory that alleges Mrs. Alito’s response to nasty neighborly abuse or flying a flag that was in the title credits of HBO’s John Adams miniseries and a desktop prop in NBC’s Parks and Recreation shows bias in favor of January 6 rioters. Burnett’s great solution to this is for Alito to cave, which would only encourage Raskin and his supporters to come up with even dumber allegations. Burnett added, “He says actually, Congressman, in his letter, quote, ‘any reasonable person’ he says who is not motivated by politics, or again, I quote, ‘or a desire to affect the outcome of the Supreme Court cases,’ any reasonable person who would conclude he doesn't need to recuse himself. Alito is correct because Jamie Raskin is not a reasonable person, but he did reply, “Well, it's interesting he uses that language because any reasonable person is basically the standard that's used in terms of recusal. The Supreme Court says, it's not a subjective test. Alito and Thomas, who's involved arguably in an even more complicitous situation in terms of his wife's political activities, but they seem to think that it's up to them. They can decide for themselves.” Underneath the surface of this story is a media contradiction that says that the January 6 rioters were insurrections out to destroy democracy, but that they should be powerful enough to appropriate a Revolution-era symbol and claim it as their own. Here is a transcript for the May 29 show: CNN Erin Burnett OutFront 5/29/2024 7:31 PM ET ERIN BURNETT: Tonight, defiant Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a rare letter to Congress saying he won't recuse himself from January 6-related cases. Alito fighting back against critics who say an upside down American flag flying over his home in January of 2021, as well as the second flag on the property, another one of his properties used by insurrectionists on January 6 show bias. Now, Alito says that his wife flew those flags without his awareness and actually in the case of the inverted American flag, which was sort of a standard bearer for the January 6 crowd, he says his wife actually refused for several days to take it down after he asked her to. He wrote to Congress and part of that, quote: “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. My wife was solely responsible for having flag poles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.” Okay. OutFront now, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, also a lawyer and a former constitutional law professor, right, and he's written an op-ed arguing that there is a way to force Alito to recuse himself from January 6 cases. And, Congressman, I so much appreciate your time and obviously, I want to get to your op-ed, that's the heart of this. But, first, I just as I was reading that, I don't know if my reaction was apparent to anyone watching, but “my wife is fond of flying flags” and he asked her for several days to take it down and she didn't. What's your reaction to that? He's written a letter to Congress essentially tripling down on it's all his wife's fault. … BURNETT: Well, it also seems, at the very least, just the perception of it, right, that you would hope the Supreme Court justices would care so deeply about that and to preserve institutions in this country, especially at a time when they're under such assault, that he may come to a different conclusion. But he got -- he says actually, Congressman, in his letter, quote, “any reasonable person” he says who is not motivated by politics, or again, I quote, “or a desire to affect the outcome of the Supreme Court cases,” any reasonable person who would conclude he doesn't need to recuse himself. RASKIN: Yeah. BURNETT: What do you say to that? RASKIN: Well, it's interesting he uses that language because any reasonable person is basically the standard that's used in terms of recusal. The Supreme Court says, it's not a subjective test. Alito and Thomas, who's involved arguably in an even more complicitous situation in terms of his wife's political activities, but they seem to think that it's up to them. They can decide for themselves. But what the Supreme Court has said is that this is an objective test, not a question of subjective introspection and will on the part of the particular judge. And any reasonable person would look at this situation and say, these judges at the very least have a deep appearance of bias in these cases, you know? And if you look at the Pennsylvania case which I discussed, that the Supreme Court decided, there, again, the court said it's not a subjective test. It's an objective test. And then in looking at it, there are a whole series of criteria that are borrowed from the ABA. And then they also said, finally, that it's not enough to say, well, it's just one justice out of nine because it's not just their vote, which would be unethically, unconstitutionally cast. It's their ability to influence the other justices as well, which is so problematic.