Many people blame the troubles of the world on the news media. Many say that journalists have become out-of-touch elites, so committed to the destructive lies of leftism that their minds have become gnarled and pocked with hatred of those everyday Americans whose better values threaten to expose journalists to themselves as Gollum-like creatures eaten away by their own corruption until they look into the mirrors of their imaginations and see horrific images of their bodies riddled with leprous decay as a physical representation of the spiritual degeneracy that clearly foreshadows an eternity of desolation in bleak and endless severance from the God who created them and who now, even in his omniscience, himself turns to alternative forms of media in the hopes of getting some honest news once in a while.

Of course, many people still trust the news media and softly murmur to themselves that Walter Cronkite seems awfully nice, before they retreat into a corner of the assisted care facility and stare at the blank wall with rheumy eyes, fondly watching a parade of misty memories from a distant past that now seems much better than it really was.

Recently, unseemly revelations have detracted even more from the news media’s reputation so that trust in the honesty of journalists has now sunk to just 28% of journalists, and they’re journalists, so they’re obviously lying and don’t trust journalists any more than the rest of us do.

In formerly Great Britain, for instance, the British Broadcasting Corporation has recently become mired in scandal. The once-respected news organization, often affectionately referred to as “Auntie,” because it reminds viewers of the sort of grey-haired old lady whose silhouette can sometimes be seen at the second story window of a gothic mansion while her delusional, hectoring high-pitched rants drift down to the desolate motel below until, in the last reel, we find out the silhouette is really Norman Bates in a dress and a wig, and the real Auntie is the rotten corpse of a once respected news organization…

What was I talking about? Oh yeah…

Recently, the BBC was exposed for deceptively editing a speech by Donald Trump for a 2024 report that was clearly meant to influence American voters against Trump’s re-election. In Trump’s original speech, delivered to a group of protestors on January 6th after Trump’s 2021 election loss, Trump said, “God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above.” In the BBC version, Trump said, “Kill them all! Storm the Capitol and kill them all! Kill, Kill, Kill! Insurrection now! Destroy Democracy and kill them all!”

BBC President Cor Blimey issued a statement saying that the minor discrepancy was the result of an innocent mistake in which producers confused the Trump speech with the film “Starship Troopers” because they think of Americans as just so many gigantic alien bugs.

To be fair, not all news organizations have sunk out of sight into the BBC’s tarpit of disgrace, shame, corruption, decadence, degradation, and vice. With some outlets, you can still just see the tops of their heads for a few final moments before the tar closes over them. 

For example, the New York Times, a former newspaper, was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for linking Donald Trump’s name to Jeffrey Epstein’s name a record number of times, without once explaining that no one has ever plausibly accused Trump of doing anything wrong with Epstein. The Pulitzer Committee says it hopes the Times prize for irrelevantly linking Trump and Epstein will encourage other former news outlets to distract people from the fact that Trump has closed the border, brought peace to the Middle East, drawn in trillions of dollars of new investment to the U.S., lowered inflation and bettered our trading deals in ways that promise to cut the deficit, not to mention the fact that he barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for being a creep while sleazy journalists like George Stephanopoulos and Katie Couric were still attending dinners in Epstein’s honor.

In a statement carved into the clay of a goat-headed idol, the Pulitzer Committee said it would continue to give news outlets like the Times awards for what they do best, namely, lie.

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This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, After That, The Dark, is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan

The views expressed in this satirical piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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With this summer’s blockbuster season ranking as the least attended since 1981 and the October box office notching its lowest monthly total ever, Hollywood is in desperate need of a magic wand to save the industry from its slump. Right now, all eyes are turning to Oz as analysts predict that Wicked: For Good will reverse the trend and become the highest grossing of film of 2025.

That’s going to be a heavy lift, since the film’s two leads seem determined to do everything they can to alienate half the country. During the press tour for the first Wicked film, Ariana Grande (Glinda the Good Witch) and Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West) not only appeared startlingly emaciated, but gave bizarre, politically-charged interviews sure to turn off anyone to the right of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Erivo obnoxiously decried innocent fan art that redesigned the movie poster to look more like the Broadway Playbill, complaining that it “degrade[d]” and “erased” her. Then, in response to a reporter’s question about the stage production, she described it as part of “queer canon,” a sentiment Grande echoed.

“Oz has always been a queer place, a safe place for queer people for every different color of the rainbow,” Grande said. “The gayer the better.”

And yet, despite their red-carpet politicking, Wicked has always been a conservative fable. Yes, that’s correct: Wicked is thematically right-wing. Whether or not the creative team recognizes it, the narrative is built around skepticism of centralized power, distrust of media manipulation, and a fierce defense of objective truth.

The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is a foreign invader who arrives in Oz and consolidates control over its disparate regions through deceptive displays of strength, embodying the archetype of the globalist technocrat. He leverages a compliant, dishonest press to create false narratives that will reshape public opinion so he can impose top-down authority over communities that once enjoyed self-rule. His regime suppresses dissent, persecutes politically disfavored classes (in this case, the sentient Animals), and relies on the notion that “truth is what we agree upon,” a relativism that Elphaba vigorously rejects. She, by contrast, argues that truth and morality are unchanging, regardless of whether anyone else agrees.

Elphaba’s story arc is not, as we have seen with other villain rehabilitations like 2014’s Maleficent, an attempt to excuse evil by blaming painful formative experiences. Instead, the official Oz account was fake news all along, the cover circulated by a corrupt government — aided and abetted by a complicit media — to deflect attention away from Elphaba’s crusade to restore individual rights. She is targeted precisely because she stands between the establishment and the ordinary citizen. Elphaba is not redeemed — she is vindicated.

Unfortunately, conservative is not the same as entertaining. There, unfortunately, Wicked: For Good (rated PG for action violence and a slightly suggestive romantic scene) fails to live up to its title.

The first film largely followed the path of the stage production. So, even though Erivo and Grande’s performances didn’t come near to matching the energy and wit that Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth brought to Broadway, powerhouse ballads like “Defying Gravity” (so good Disney ripped it off for Frozen) and comical ditties like “Popular” and “What Is This Feeling?” still managed to entertain. And the pageantry of scenes like Elphaba and Glinda’s arrival to the Emerald City was visually arresting enough to hold attention through the long 2-hour-and-40-minute run time.

Wicked: For Good is 20 minutes shorter but feels about an hour longer. The plot is padded to fill out a sequel that could have been wrapped up in 30 minutes. The new songs from Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz boast none of the sly humor or subtle poetry of the originals, and the few original songs remaining to this second half of the story are performed with little apparent recognition of their meaning.

A prime example is Glinda’s “Thank Goodness.” On stage, Chenoweth turns the song into a miniature nervous breakdown, in which the audience can hear the exact moment she rejects self-awareness and doubles down on delusion. Grande sails through the same lyrics with a pretty smile and zero outward acknowledgment of the subtext in expression or voice. MacGuffins also abound. Something that is initially presented as a dire plot point, like what will become of those bejeweled shoes, is later shrugged off as unimportant.

Just like the ruby slippers, Wicked: For Good is still a candy-colored spectacle and a handful of sequences are impressive, but the substance is as ephemeral and weightless as that bubble Glinda travels around in.

By the time you get to the end, you’re simply ready for it to pop.

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