Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appears keen to clutch pearls and hold President Donald Trump to a different standard than Walz did the previous president — especially after Trump called Walz “seriously retarded.”

Quick background

During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump leaned into his criticism of Somalia, the rampant fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, and Somalia’s top spokeswoman in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

‘This is on top of all the other vile comments.’

“Somalia, which is barely a country, you know, they have no, anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure,” said the president.

Somalia is a Sunni Muslim nation on the easternmost part of Africa with a population of just over 19 million, a high rate of female genital mutilation, a GDP of $12.94 billion, and an adult literacy rate of 54%.

The country is a haven for crime and terrorism, ranking 34th out of 193 countries for criminality on the Global Organized Crime Index. With 10 being the most severe, Somalia scores 8.5 for human trafficking; 8 for human smuggling; 9.5 for extortion and protection racketeering; 9 for arms trafficking; 7 for financial crimes; and 7 for trade in counterfeit goods.

Trump appears to suspect that America imported some of Somalia’s chronic problems when accepting its refugees.

Following a report detailing instances of alleged and confirmed fraud perpetrated by numerous members of the Somali community in Minnesota, Trump announced on Nov. 21 that he was terminating the Temporary Protected Status designation for Somalia.

RELATED: DHS to increase operations in Twin Cities region as Somali fraud becomes unignorable

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions every year. Billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88%. They contribute nothing,” continued Trump. “I don’t want them in our country; I’ll be honest with you. Some might say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too.”

Trump added, “We’re at a tipping point. I don’t know if people mind me saying that, but I’m saying it. We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

“Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work,” Trump said, leaving no room for ambiguity.

“These are people who do nothing but complain.”

— (@)

Walz whines, gaslights

Walz made a big show on Thursday of denouncing Trump’s remarks and calling on others to do likewise.

“Donald Trump’s calling our Somali neighbors ‘garbage’ and the state of Minnesota a ‘hellhole’ is, I’m assuming, is unprecedented for a United States president,” said Walz, who has bent the truth to his benefit on numerous occasions.

The use of the term “garbage” by an American president in reference to a group of people is not unprecedented. In fact, Walz downplayed former President Joe Biden’s use of the term to describe nearly half the country just last year.

When stumping for then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October 2024, Biden fixated on a joke made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe about Puerto Rico during a humorous speech at a Trump rally in New York City — a rally that Walz had likened to a Nazi rally. Rather than brush off the joke, Biden apparently tried to outdo Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” smear.

“A speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something,” said Biden. “In my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

After Biden suggested that the over 77.3 million who would ultimately vote for Trump were “garbage,” Walz downplayed the remark when asked in a “CBS Mornings” interview whether that comment and others like it undercut the Democratic campaign’s “closing message of unity.”

“No, certainly not,” said Walz. “I think that the frustration we’ve seen since January 6, the frustration with Donald Trump’s rhetoric of division, it does fire passions.”

After suggesting on Thursday that Trump’s “garbage” remark was a first, Walz, a champion of racist DEI initiatives, said that “demonizing an entire group of people by their race and their ethnicity — a very group of people who contribute to the vitality, economic [sic], culture of this state is something I was hoping we’d never have to see. This is on top of all the other vile comments.”

The Democratic governor said that any officials in Minnesota who would not condemn Trump’s “vile attack” are “complicit in it.”

— (@)

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“Pop singer Karen Carpenter died this morning from complications of anorexia nervosa,” said the perfectly made-up anchorwoman on KTLA while I sat at the table eating my Raisin Bran.

It was one of those bright Southern California mornings in 1983. There’s something jarring about hearing awful news in a chipper tone of voice when the sun is out and a new day is starting. Of course I was sad to hear about Karen’s death; she was that nice lady with the prettiest voice in the world who sang “the Sesame Street song.”

I fear we’re watching a replay of what happened in the 1970s and ’80s, when anorexia nervosa spread rapidly through the culture.

Sing of good things, not bad
Sing of happy, not sad

A voice from God

It wasn’t until many years later that I felt a deeper sadness and loss when I contemplated Karen Carpenter’s death at 33. She had a voice from God that comes along once in a century if we’re lucky. We had all watched her slowly kill herself right there on television. Like most deeply troubled people, Karen denied that anything was wrong, even as she sat under the interview lights as a skeleton in a sweater.

We’re seeing the same thing today in our “stars,” but unlike the early 1980s, grown-up America seems to think it’s normal. Maybe even “empowered.”

“There are rumors, though, that you were suffering from the slimmer’s disease, from anorexia nervosa. Was that right?” a British interviewer said to Karen in 1981.

“No,” said Karen, rolling her eyes inside a face that looked like a moving skull, all jagged planes and bone surfaces shining through translucent skin.

No looking away

Two years later, Karen died on the floor of her mother’s upstairs closet in Downey, California, before she made it down for breakfast. Despite having recently been treated for anorexia and gaining back a modest amount of weight, the long-term damage Karen did to her heart and organs made them give out.

And everyone knew it would. Everyone talked about it. Most adults in that era had looked on with worried skepticism at the gaunt Twiggy when she became a top model in the 1960s. Everyone knew women on TV or at the office who dieted a little too hard. But America had never seen something as extreme as what happened to Karen Carpenter.

There was no looking away, no denying it. Karen stood on stage with Ella Fitzgerald for a TV special. She was barely able to stand up, and if she weighed 90 pounds, I’ll eat my hat. That velvet syrup voice was almost enough to distract from the approaching death, but not quite.

Do we even notice when our stars kill themselves in public today?

The Ozemporexia nervosa era

We’re entering our Ozemporexia nervosa era. As usual, few people are saying out loud what everyone already knows: People with troubled minds and troubled relationships to substances including food are taking the drugs to cover over, or to enhance, an eating disorder. The semaglutide injectable diabetes drugs work in part by chemically controlling appetite, so the primary reason these drugs are prescribed today is, of course, weight loss.

If you have turned on a computing device or entered a store within the past few months, you cannot avoid noticing the oversaturation of advertisements for the movie “Wicked: For Good.” This is the sequel to the movie “Wicked,” based on the long-running Broadway musical, itself based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel.

Maguire tells the story of the young Elphaba, the innocent green-skinned girl who would go on to terrorize Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West. Maguire’s novel pioneered what has now become commonplace in our entertainment: recasting the evil, the sinister, and the villainous as misunderstood and traumatized wee harmless ones who are actually the heroes.

RELATED: Out-of-control Ozempic use means sad, saggy future for TL;DR generation

PHAS/Getty Images

Folie à deux

Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba, although her knife-edged cheekbones and six-inch acrylic talons are less witchy and more “Nosferatu.” The actress certainly seems to have the strange, self-absorbed charisma of a vampire, wasting away before our eyes even as she mesmerizes Hollywood into all manner of unnatural acts. Like casting her as Jesus in “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

But it is in Erivo’s jarring relationship with fellow extreme ectomorph Ariana Grande — who co-stars as a young Glinda the Good — that we really sense the vampiric.

Like Erivo, Grande seems much frailer than she did just a few years ago. The two appear in public as if they were sewn together at the hip. In nearly every press interview for their “Wicked” movies, Erivo clicks her claws around Grande’s neck and head, fiddling with her jewelry in a creepily proprietary way. Or the two are holding hands as if they were waifs being introduced to grown-ups for the first time outside the orphanage.

Celebrities looking and acting weird. Big shock, right? This is Hollywood we’re talking about. The town is a magnet for dysfunctional people. Neglected, abused, and exploited children run for the big city lights so they can be beautiful, adored, and good enough in a way they could never be for their parents.

Eating disorders, addiction, and declining mental health all stem from these childhood circumstances, and they are worsened for those who choose fame as a means of “getting over” them.

The influence of anxiety

This is not to say that Erivo or Grande suffer from any of this or even that they use Ozempic. But their alarmingly thin bodies and their brittle, performative intimacy do not exist in a vacuum. While young people have been entranced by celebrity culture since the mid-20th century, the desperate absorption and imitation of every star’s psychiatric distress by ordinary American kids has never been as extreme as it is in 2025.

One can make a reasonable argument for using the semaglutide drugs to lose weight when one’s health is in jeopardy and other methods have not worked. Every patient has to run that calculation for herself and consider it with her doctor.

But I fear we are watching a replay of what happened in the 1970s and ’80s, when anorexia nervosa spread rapidly through the culture and clinicians noted that the intense public focus on Karen Carpenter’s illness seemed to accelerate the trend.

But this has a pharmaceutical assist that will give a “normal” brand name to what is just old-fashioned self-starvation.

All-ages contagion

British researcher Gerald Russell first described bulimia nervosa (binge eating, followed by purging, usually vomiting) in some of his anorexic patients in a paper published in the 1970s. He later shared his alarm that his paper, and the spread of terms and diagnostic language around the condition, may have caused it to spread among women in the Western population.

Russell was arguably correct, though he can’t be blamed for trying to help sufferers. Young women are especially vulnerable to trends and fads; they will do almost anything, no matter how potentially dangerous, to keep up with what their friends are doing. If Becca manages to keep her figure by discreetly puking up her lunch, why shouldn’t Caitlin?

Michelle Obama has recently displayed an alarming weight loss on a frame that didn’t have much to lose. On her Instagram she shared an behind-the-scenes image from her recent shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitiz.

At 61 years old, Obama is dressing in teen-style distressed jeans and clingy, skin-baring tops, showing off how her female curves are melting away.

Look at her face. Does this woman look healthy or happy?

No one left to notice

The problems that celebrities, normal young women, and some men and boys face about body image aren’t about a particular drug or a time-limited fashion trend. What we see today in Hollywood is not different from what we have always seen in the entertainment industry and among the kids and teens who consume it.

The problems begin at home — the home that no longer exists. Fatherlessness, divorce, and normalized neglectful, hands-off parenting have left today’s kids even more vulnerable to self destruction than those of my generation in the 1980s. And if you are old enough to remember what that was like, you remember plenty of screwed-up kids from screwed-up families.

It’s worse today because we’re pretending that it’s not wrong, that it’s not unhealthy. It has brand names and “rizz,” and besides, everyone is doing it. How can it be wrong?

In 1983, adults spoke about what happened to Karen Carpenter with alarm, and they said it out loud. Today, cool moms get glammed up along with their daughters in officially licensed Wicked(™) outfits and stand in line for tickets to watch the actresses perform “fun” while their minds and bodies decay.

Isn’t modernity wonderful?

​Celebrities, Karen carpenter, Anorexia, Ozempic, Semaglutide, Wicked, Cynthia erivo, Ariana grande, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Culture, Ozemporexia nervosa, Intervention 

Actor Simu Liu is begging Hollywood studios for more race-based casting — specifically, his race.

The Chinese-born, Canada-raised Liu recently took to social media to share a collage of screenshots of some of his fellow Asian actors lamenting how hard it is to land leading roles.

“Put some asians in literally anything right now,” Liu added as commentary. “The amount of backslide in our representation onscreen is f**king appalling.”

‘We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. And most days it SUCKS.’

White on rice

Citing Hollywood’s apparent fear that Asian-centric films are “risky,” Lui pointed out the success of movies like his 2022 Marvel debut, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” as well as 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians,” which grossed $174 million in 2018 against a $30 million budget.

“No asian actor has ever lost a studio even close to 100 million dollars,” Liu ranted. “But a white dude will lose 200 million TWICE and roll right into the next tentpole lead. We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. And most days it SUCKS.”

RELATED: ‘The Acolyte’ star: Asians need a Tom Cruise of their own

Chinese checkers

Liu’s cries of systemic discrimination did not receive the eager welcome they might have just a few years ago.

On X, investigative journalist Robby Starbuck noted that the film industry in Liu’s native China largely employs Chinese actors.

“Almost none are White. Is that some kind of unfair prejudice too?” he asked. “No, it’s not.”

As Fandom Pulse reported, others mocked Liu’s apparent recycling of “woke talking points from 2018.”

Another reader stated, “Speaking as an asian: representation does not matter. Good stories matter. The right casting for the roles matter. Good acting matters.”

Asian persuasion

Back on Threads, however, Liu received a plethora of support from women who agreed that more Asian men should be in lead roles.

“The stories of Asians in the US go deep … the stories deserve to be told,” wrote Karen Johnstone.

While Jayne Nelson added, “I swear it’s slipping back to ‘third henchman from the left in a big fight scene’ and COME ON. It’s not the 1980s anymore.”

One of the actors cited in the original post Liu shared was “The Good Place” star Manny Jacinto, who complained about being cut out of a Tom Cruise movie in 2024.

“It’s up to us — Asian-Americans, people of color — to be that [for ourselves],” Jacinto said at the time. “We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves.”

The other actors cited as making remarks were John Cho (“Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”), and Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”).

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​Racism, Align, Hollywood, Asian, Production, Studios, Representation, Woke, Entertainment 

The 45-year-old male accused of slapping a New York University student’s backside and knocking her to the sidewalk while she was on her way to class earlier this week is a repeat sex offender who was paroled in September.

James Rizzo was arraigned late Wednesday night in Manhattan Criminal Court, WCBS-TV reported.

‘I let NYU security know to let students know that this man is going around doing this to other women.’

Rizzo — a Level 2 sex offender with 16 prior arrests and a history of violence against women— was paroled in September after serving time for sex abuse, the station said, citing the New York State Department of Corrections.

Police told WCBS that Rizzo kept on attacking women while he was out on parole.

RELATED: Illegal immigrant repeat offender arrested for rape — just days after his early release from jail for indecent exposure

The station said Rizzo appeared emotionless while pleading not guilty to three new assaults — all the victims women — at his arraignment. WCBS said the judge remanded Rizzo and that he is scheduled to appear in court again next week.

The station said the most recent alleged attack occurred Monday in Greenwich Village; surveillance video shows NYU student Amelia Lewis walking to class when the suspect slaps her backside and shoves her to the ground.

RELATED: Homelessness official melts down after board member objects to having ‘repeat sex offender’ who allegedly touched her inappropriately on their committee: ‘This is about equity!’

Lewis, 20, spoke about the incident on a Wednesday podcast, WCBS said.

“I wanted to report this, and after I did tell the cops I let NYU security know to let students know that this man is going around doing this to other women,” Lewis said, according to the station. “They also told me they were already aware of the man in the blue towel around his neck running around the city.”

Officials told the New York Daily News that Rizzo’s criminal history stretches back to the 1990s, when he stabbed a 74-year-old woman in the face during a burglary in Brooklyn.

The Daily News said Rizzo cut through a screen window at a home on East 83rd Street on June 13, 1997, and punched and stabbed his victim in the head before ransacking the residence. The paper, citing police, said a neighbor found the bloodied victim lying on the floor.

Cops arrested Rizzo and charged him with attempted murder, the Daily News said, adding that he ultimately pleaded guilty to burglary and was sentenced to up to 54 months in prison.

More recently investigators told WABC that Rizzo randomly punched a 59-year-old woman on Mercer Street in December 2023. That same month, Rizzo was arrested for forcible touching when police said he groped a 33-year-old woman on Greene Street in Greenwich Village and asked, “Oh, you want more,” WABC-TV reported.

On Thanksgiving Day last week, Rizzo allegedly attacked 68-year-old Dianne Brazell from Houston as she was walking in Midtown Manhattan, WABC said, slamming her into glass.

“I have a laceration in my forehead that required six stitches,” Brazell said, according to WABC. “I have a bruise on my left leg from my knee to my ankle. I have a bruise on my left shoulder. I bit my tongue.”

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