Jason Colavito

While Meuli's argument relies heavily on folklore comparisons that are less convincing today, modern expert M. L. West agrees with the conclusion and wrote a lengthy analysis of how "The Odyssey" raided an early "Argonautica" for material.

Odyssey and Argonautica ​NOTE

But this is a great opportunity to plug the new entry in my library, my translation of Karl Meuli's "Odyssee und Argonautika" (1921), which argued that Homer built "The Odyssey" by reworking material originally part of an oral "Argonautica." www.jasoncolavito.com/odyssey-and-...

Any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered with "no." Odysseus is a character from mythology and therefore unlikely to have undertaken the literal adventure described five centuries later in a poem most experts believe to be a composite.

Funny to hear them discover in real time that all the surveillance laws they passed somehow apply to them, too.

It's not a "turn away from sensitivity" so much as it is an effort to make every social interaction a raw display of power reaffirming antebellum hierarchies in which men dominate women, whites dominate minorities, straights dominate queers, etc.

Why viewers are outraged over Netflix & Ryan Murphy's Ed Gein series' portrayal of closeted actor Anthony Perkins - Queerty In the series, Hitchock casts Perkins because he, like Gein, has a secret that's making him sick.

Queer viewers are angry about Ryan Murphy's depiction of Anthony Perkins in "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," especially the implication that being closeted is like being a killer and if not for "conversion" therapy Perkins would have become like Gein. www.queerty.com/why-audience...

The whole series appears to be made from the first Google results and A.I. summaries from the writer's internet searches. Murphy's shows have a propensity to reach back to what were presumably the stereotypes and old Freudian frauds he and his buddies absorbed as kids.

You don't see many people with Classical names of that caliber anymore!

But I have no doubt that when the next controversy occurs, the same pundits who were wrong about Kirk will continue to get the cover features and the cable news gigs and the book deals, and I'll still be told I shouldn't talk about anything but aliens.

It's only been a few weeks and already Kirk has almost entirely faded from the media conversation, and, as predicted, the Trump Administration has moved on. I haven't heard a peep about a Kirk biopic. Trump even went so far as to order his own face put on coins instead of the proposed image of Kirk.

When Charlie Kirk died, mainstream media apologists for the Right told us he would be a national hero, and the Atlantic even called him the next Malcolm X. I said there was almost nothing to support these claims. Besides, Trump wouldn't stand the competition for divinity. It looks like I was right.

I mean, I write semi-regularly for respected national magazines, and I have opinions that are more original and less hacky, so by this logic, I should be able to take over a major media outlet, too. Ah, but my opinions aren't focused on the only topic that matters, apologies for the Right.

That said, it's not at clear in the show, and the result is the apparent fetishization of Nazi atrocities.

I think those scenes were supposed to be Gein's fantasy (though there is no evidence he had any interest in her) and were drawn from pulp men's magazine portrayals of "sexy" Nazi women. However, the comic Gein reads in the show is made up and the real magazines came a decade later.

It's symptomatic of his fundamental insecurity that he keeps blathering at length. Secure men, confident in the moral justness of their actions, have no need to go on about them because they are self-evidently right and need no defense.

I don't know if Murphy has a fetish for killers or simply sees serial killing as the inevitable end of sexual repression and abuse and therefore excusable and understandable, but with each show, this theme has become more grotesque and more perverse.

By the end of the show, they have Charlie Hunnam styled and sounding like Mister Rogers as a beatific figure of sexual innocence, and it's perverse in ways even Murphy's earlier "Monster" shows never were.

I cannot convey how misguided this show was from start to finish. I see the logic of trying to trace Gein's influence on America's culture of violence and the connection between sexual repression and violence. But celebrating it is grotesque and insane.

Not only does everyone Gein knows show up to dance his soul to heaven, telling him he accomplished something great by changing the world, the show also falsely credits him with solving the Ted Bundy murders, casting him as a good, gentle corpse defiler.

A promotional photo of Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein in "Monster: The Ed Gein Story."

I finished "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," and I can't believe what I watched. Not only is it an apology for Gein, it ends by turning him into a saintly figure, benevolently presiding over the world of serial killers, including TWO fantasy sequences where famous killers salute him.

If a network wants an outsider with no real experience running a major news operation, I am more than willing to take the job with none of the baggage! After all, I have 20 years' experience doing journalism and no connections to anyone in government. Surely, that would be better than this.

I had wondered why traffic for my TV reviews had fallen 99% over the last 10 years, and it's obvious that you can't sustain interest in TV reviews when so few people are watching TV. Remember a decade ago when "Ancient Aliens" attracted 2.2 million weekly viewers?

PRIMETIME AUDIENCE AVERAGES NEWS NETWORKS FOX NEWS: 2.45M MSNBC: 853k CNN: 538k SPORTS . . . meaning ESPN: ESPN: 2.7M FS1’s average was 62k 🫣 ALL OTHER CABLE NETWORKS AVERAGING AT LEAST 400K VIEWERS IN PRIME: HGTV: 492k (49k are under 50 years old) ALL OTHER CABLE NETWORKS AVERAGING AT LEAST 350K VIEWERS IN PRIME: FOOD: 383k HALLMARK: 378k TLC: 367k fin

Cable TV has basically ceased to exist. These are the Nielsen ratings for every cable channel with more than 350K viewers--all 8 of them. The numbers are so low in a country of 340 million people that, effectively, no one is watching. theankler.com/p/cable-tv-n...

It's basically reverse Reconstruction, as if the South had won the Civil War.

I think it's fairly well established that stories tend to grow over time. If someone says absolutely nothing about a claim for several decades, and there are no other witnesses, and on top of it all what he actually said at the time is different than the later claim, then the claim is unlikely.

A Cheez Whiz ad featuring recipes for Chicken a la Cheez Whiz and Cheez Whiz Dumpling Soup.

Chicken a la Cheez Whiz with Cheez Whiz Dumpling Soup.

An ad for Kraft Mayonnaise featuring Chicken Almondzini, a recipe for chicken and almonds baked with spaghetti in mayonnaise.

"Chicken Almondzini": Baked macaroni and mayonnaise with chicken and almonds.

Only if you assume that he either lied to the reporters in 1955 or purposely omitted his own warning--and that everyone else who was there that day and talked to one or the other, or anyone who spoke to Guinness over the next 20 years, also chose to either lie or omit.

It's honestly jarring to hear how much more coherent Trump's speech was back then.

Slovakia marks ‘dark day’ as LGBTQ+ rights rolled back in parliament Amendment to constitution stipulates that male and female are the only recognised sexes and makes adoption nearly impossible for same-sex couples

Slovakia's parliament passes constitutional amendment attacking transgender rights and adoptions by same-sex partners, with lawmakers calling it their "last chance" to stop LGBTQ equality. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...