FASHION:
Lauren Sherman gathers the gossip from the CFDA Awards and solved the industry’s I.P.O. debate.
WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan questions Ray Dalio’s radical transparency.
and…
Eriq Gardner investigates a case remaking the art world.
MEDIA:
Dylan Byers surmises Will Lewis’s first moves as WaPo C.E.O.
HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni digs into David Zaslav’s latest debt-servicing strategy and, along with Jonathan Handel, presages the town’s next labor war.
and…
Julia Alexander imagines Hulu under Iger rule
SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer breaks the news on Sam Altman’s Biden alternative.
WASHINGTON:
Julia Ioffe offers the definitive analysis of the unspoken impact of the Israel-Hamas war.
and…
Peter Hamby conveys the Biden bounce while Tara Palmeri reports on the divide he’s sparking across D.C.
and…
Abby Livingston has all the Capitol Hill dish on what people are saying about Tuesday night.
PODCASTS:
If you haven’t already, for some totally insane reason, please enjoy the entirety of Julia Ioffe’s limited series, About a Boy: The Story of Vladimir Putin.
and…
Matt Belloni chats with Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national director, about the denouement of the actors strike on The Town.
and…
Tara Palmeri and Michael LaRosa, the former Biden official, talk about the president’s challenging poll numbers on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter Hamby and Teddy Schleifer discuss S.B.F.’s post-conviction playbook on The Powers That Be. |
| By now, loyal Puck readers have probably come across a mention or two of a recent and infamous New York Times/Siena poll suggesting that Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five consequential swing states—an eerie harbinger for Democrats that the 2024 election will likely be as close, unpredictable, and complex as the 2020 race.
The post-poll freak-out among many on the left, which was undeniably exacerbated by a provocative David Axelrod tweet questioning whether Biden should step aside, was both predictable and justifiable. Biden’s popularity has been softening for months, despite immense legislative achievements, and now the quiet conversations about his age and popularity among core constituencies—Black, Hispanic, and Gen Z voters, in particular—are making their way into the public sphere.
Panic, to be sure, is a core emotion of election season. The difference this time around, however, is that it isn’t leavened by enthusiasm or exuberance, the other feelings that tend to define this moment on the political calendar. Instead, we’re entering a political environment consumed with fear and subterfuge. As Tara Palmeri notes in the brilliantly fun and dishy The Biden Bunker Mentality, Democratic operatives throughout Washington are growing increasingly vexed with the Biden inner sanctum, many of whom they feel are resistant to reason and political science regarding the electoral hopes of their boss.
In fact, as Teddy Schleifer notes, that vexation has spread to some active bundlers and kingmakers eager to explore other options, too. In President of the Biden-Skeptic Billionaires, Teddy reveals that Silicon Valley’s au courant star, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, will potentially throw in his lot with the insurgent Dean Phillips, who is challenging Biden from within his own party.
There’s little doubt that Phillips, an opportunistic heir turned congressman, is a piece of gum on Biden’s shoe. But his very entrance into the race, and his belief that he can primary the president by leaning hard into the gerontocracy argument, is a sign of the uncertain times we are living through. (By the way, read Peter Hamby’s excellent conversation with Phillips, Dean Phillips’s Prairie Home Rebellion, if you want to get the true flavor of the guy.)
These are transitional times, after all—a theme that we return to often at Puck. I was reminded of this leitmotif again this week, as Julia Alexander artfully explained why the $9 billion-plus that Bob Iger must pay Comcast to outright acquire Hulu will likely pale in comparison to what he’ll need to fork over to ensure that Disney’s streaming business keeps pace with Netflix during the next decade. Iger’s Real Hulu Price Tag is a careful examination of just how pricey streaming has become. It’s a point reiterated by Matt Belloni’s typically acerbic assessment of David Zaslav’s recent decision to license some of Warner Bros. Discovery’s top-shelf content—The Batman, Joker, Aquaman, etcetera—to Netflix. As you might recall, Iger once noted that selling content to Netflix was like arming a Third World country—commentary that resonated around the industry. Alas, things change, especially when Wall Street prioritizes debt service over topline subscriber growth.
And yet, of course, these storylines pale in comparison to the tumult roiling the Middle East as the Israel-Hamas war enters its second devastating month. If you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d sincerely turn your attention to Julia Ioffe’s searing and startling new essay, Horror in the Holy Land, which brilliantly elucidates the tragedies in Israel and Gaza, how it has paralyzed so many of us and turned us against one another, and where we can go from here. It’s a series of hard truths, so elegantly conveyed, and precisely the sort of essential and poignant work that you should expect from Puck.
Have a great weekend,
Jon |
