(Really quickly before we get into today’s subject: Yesterday over on the Chat we talked about starting a book club to cover the classics we missed out on reading for one reason or another (I am, for instance, just now reading The Bell Jar for the first time—embarrassing!). A lot of you were also keen, which delighted me, and I know I said there’d be more deets in today’s newsletter, but I decided it was better to do a brief stand-alone post. Look for it this Saturday morning — along with a brief, unrelated note on Dennis Quaid’s dramatic turn as MAGA speaker — and in the meantime the Chat thread remains open to thoughts and comments!)

Listen, I loooove how deranged everyone's been acting recently. It's almost like celebs are using this 20-days-until-Election-Day time period to act out, knowing it will soon be forgotten. 

Unfortunately, I was cursed with a long memory and the noticing of things not meant for human eyes. 

Russell Brand, for instance. Cancel culture’s debris, if we were to believe in the existence of cancel culture (if only).

Research for this newsletter has taken me places I wouldn't go with a gun, like Brand's Twitter account, which immediately assaulted me with back-to-back images of Tucker Carlson, an interview with Jordan Peterson and, following a threatening countdown to a new spiritual-adjacent podcast, one with RFK Jr. Imagine going home and telling your mom these were your friends. Humiliating.

If you've been here a while, you might recall that I last wrote about Brand a little over a year ago, back when several women came forward in the Sunday Times to accuse the comedian (a term so loosely used as to mean nearly nothing) of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse.

Back then, I wrote:

The creation of a new, elusive, aspirational persona to shed and hide the trappings of an old one is a common thread for public figures (see: Jared Leto).

And:

The Elon Musks, Andrew Tates, and Jordan Petersons of the world (inspiringly, the largest aggregation of losers since the last Ayn Rand Fan Club meeting) are eating up Brand’s self-defense, because of course they are. You see, in this society there is no one more maligned than a middle-aged man credibly accused of a long record of sexual misconduct. 

I'm usually a huge fan of tooting my own horn, but it's too depressing to be right when it comes to this. Because as predicted, on the heels of the exposé Brand has learned to lean deeply into the right-wing conspiracy, religion and faux wellness milieus that so welcome men like him.

The thing is, if I had it my way, the aggressively V-neck tees he wears would be sufficient cause to ban him from the Internet.

Back in April, he got baptized in the Thames (a location choice that on its own should inspire an avalanche of investigations), claiming it as an "opportunity to leave the past behind." Convenient, when your past includes a slew of credible allegations against you!!! 

It’s hard not to suspect that the newfound salvation has deeper motives than just the spiritual.

Ever since Thamesgate, Brand has been pondering, in videos that have made my eyes itch, his new so-called Christianity in increasingly obnoxious ways. About a month back, he waxed poetic with Carlson (a man whose reputation, as a reminder, was deemed too toxic for even Fox News, that bastion of American journalism and progressivism) about his transformative baptism; and a few weeks ago, he presented at the — brace for this — rally to Rescue the Republic, where he stood on stage with Peterson (a persistent climate denier who has also been repeatedly chastised by his peers in the College of Psychologists of Ontario for his "degrading" public speech) and competed for the Worst Dressed Conspiracy Theorist award.

The distance from mainstream celebrity¹ to right-wing conspiracy theorist is shorter than one might think...