All I want for Christmas is tabs …
You don’t need a degree in journalism to do journalism, but it’s worth noting that doing this would violate the first rule you learn in the first class you would take, and I assume many @60Minutes folks took those classes. Just the most basic stuff. https://t.co/BMGUCScRja
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) December 24, 2025
Ed: It’s becoming ever clearer that J-schools and Academia are the root of the problems in news reporting, and not the cure.
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Daily Signal: “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi complained in a memo leaked to the media. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”
The targets of a story shouldn’t have a veto, but it’s not unreasonable to let them rebut “notorious” allegations. The hilarious piece of this argument is that “60 Minutes” deserves the term “investigative powerhouse.”
Back on Feb. 17, Alfonsi gushed over German officials fining and jailing people for “hate speech” on the internet. Alfonsi let them claim that punishing people for what they say online is “protecting democracy and discourse by introducing a touch of German order to the unruly world wide web.”
She asked one censor: “You’re doing all this work. You’re launching all these investigations. You’re fining people, sometimes putting them in jail. Does it make a difference if it’s a worldwide web and there’s a lot of hate out there?”
This is being a “stenographer for the state,” literally.
Ed: They’re more of a stenographer to the Left, but that’s a distinction without a difference in Europe. And 60 Minutes tried a couple of times at least to make it a distinction without a difference here as well, by cooking stories in the 2004 and 2024 presidential elections.
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The New Yorker has now deleted this post. The article itself currently admits the letter is likely fake.
Seems like a questionable editorial decision to push its contents when you know that to be the case. pic.twitter.com/5UV3STtQr1
— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 24, 2025
Ed: The Protection Racket Media™ – Pushing ‘Fake But Accurate’ Since 2004! (At least!) One wonders whether the New Yorker took down the post out of legit shame, or because they know how litigious Donald Trump gets.
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Alan Dershowitz: If all of the evidence is released with no redactions, it will become clear that the notorious Epstein case, with its “gotcha” partisan accusations from both sides, is essentially a modern replication of the awful McCarthyism of the 1950’s, which I experienced as a young student.
There are innocent Epstein victims who are telling the truth about having been abused, though many fewer than the media claims – just as there were real communists in the 1950s but far fewer than McCarthy claimed. . But there are also falsely accused innocents, as there were during the original McCarthyism.
McCarthyism destroyed lives – many of them innocent – by promiscuously hurling accusations of communist affiliation, while denying those accused any semblance of due process or opportunity to defend themselves.
Nearly all the denials of civil liberties that characterized the original McCarthyism are being replicated in the new Epstein McCarthyism.
Ed: Dersh wrote on this same theme yesterday, but he has more specifics in today’s column about the nuggets coming out of the Epstein files yesterday and today. If you’re following this story – and who isn’t – Dersh provides necessary context to the raw investigative product that should never have been seen outside of a courtroom.
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If you asked AI to write the quintessential @thehill story, this is what it would shit out. https://t.co/FrpXVfUoDR
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 24, 2025
Ed: The Hill is a trash outlet, but at least this is better than what the New Yorker tried to serve up as its Christmas goose.
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Barton Swaim at WSJ: Do purveyors of the claim that Damar Hamlin died from a Covid vaccine—his expiration now covered up by a body double playing safety for the Buffalo Bills—believe what they say? Maybe not entirely, but the thought offers a thrill. An acquaintance of mine holds the firm conviction that at least three former first ladies of the United States were men. Often have I recalled the scene in John Buchan’s spy thriller “The 39 Steps” when the protagonist, Richard Hannay, tells his true but unlikely story to an innkeeper. To Hannay’s surprise, the man believes him. “I believe everything out of the common,” says the innkeeper. “The only thing to distrust is the normal.”
If the weirder theories bubble up from the right, the more plausible-sounding and thus consequential ones prevail on the left. That Israel is perpetrating a “genocide” in Gaza is a preposterous lie, easily disprovable to anyone not determined to believe it, but a shocking number of academics, intellectuals, Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians accept the claim without qualm. Belief in a right-wing conspiracy to suppress the black and Latino vote is gospel to many liberals—not least Barack Obama—though the evidence leads overwhelmingly in the other direction. I am not the first to note that the Russia “collusion” investigation, which throttled the first Trump administration and dominated headlines for more than two years, was based, literally, on a conspiracy theory.
The trouble with most theories about conspiratorial schemes—the weird ones of 4chan and the specious ones of the faculty lounges—is that they arise from motivated reasoning.
Ed: This is a fascinating essay. I’d never heard the one about Hamlin, which is bat-guano insane on its face. Hamlin did almost die on the field, but what would be the purpose of covering it up? What “body double” could perform at a level to play in the NFL but do so under someone else’s name? Why would the Bills have bothered to find such a person? Swaim is dead-on about motivated reasoning, although I’d call it motivated speculation. Reasoning has very little to do with conspiracy theories.
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I honestly can’t believe this Politico propaganda piece is real. It would be like something you would see in a movie to show how cartoonishly evil a media outlet had become. And therefore it’s kind of funny. https://t.co/q0y1vZmjh2
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 24, 2025
Ed: Only Politico could miss the Christ in Christmas. If Politico defines the “far right” as Christians who celebrate one of their holiest days as a religious observation, that speaks volumes about how hostile the “secular Left” actually is.
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Jonathan Turley: As Santa prepares for his harrowing journey around the world, he is being closely pursued by liberal commentators protesting his race, gender, and capitalist leanings.
The perpetually outraged have finally come for Christmas.
One columnist at Slate called for Santa to be replaced by a penguin due to his race. Aisha Harris admitted that she was being a bit cheeky in pushing the penguin substitute but sought to express “my real concern that America continues to promote the harmful idea of whiteness-as-default.”
Back to Santa. The British Brighton and Hove Museums have been the focus of this debate over the reposting of an earlier column by the museum’s Joint Head of Culture Change, Simone LaCorbinière, who explained that the traditional Christmas simply will not do with a Santa who is “too white, male” and a colonizer of elves.
Ed: “A colonizer of elves”? Mollie’s right; this is so stupid and tendentious that it’s funny. On that note, though, let’s prepare for Christmas with some uplifting content …
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How many times must the Holy Spirit make Itself known and present for you to finally stop calling It’s works just “coincidence”?
Accept It this year.
Welcome Him into your home this Christmas.— Chrissie Mayr🇺🇸 (@ChrissieMayr) December 24, 2025
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Ed: We will perform this song in our parish tonight at our parish. This comes from Baylor’s Advent service at the beginning of the month.
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Throwback to Chevrolet’s first non-woke, deeply emotional Christmas ad.
I mean it when I say it’s impossible to watch without tearing up.
Merry Christmas Eve everyone 🎄
pic.twitter.com/ZMNceHEfv1— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 24, 2025
Ed: It’s getting dusty in here.
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Ed: This will be our “stretch piece” tonight, which we’re very close to getting nailed down. Cross your fingers and/or pray we stick the landing!
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At the end of THE HONEYMOONERS Christmas episode, the cast surprised the audience by breaking character and wishing the viewers at home a Merry Christmas. (1955) 🎄 A first in television history. pic.twitter.com/GtlVyz5Vza
— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) December 23, 2025
Ed: I’d never seen this before. It’s delightful.
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Ed: We’re doing this one too. I’m actually singing at two Masses tonight, one at 7 pm and the Midnight Mass. I hope this allows us to have a connection tonight of some sort as we all celebrate Christmas Eve.
Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you’re digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code MERRY to get 74% off your membership!
