Thomas Jefferson wrote some of the most famous words in the history of freedom. He also owned hundreds of human beings, forced them to work for his benefit, and fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman he owned. He spent decades enjoying the privileges of a slaveholding aristocrat while presenting himself as a champion of liberty. His defenders point …
George Washington is celebrated as the father of the United States, the general who defeated the British and the first president who supposedly embodied freedom and democracy. There’s just one rather inconvenient detail in that patriotic fairy tale: he owned human beings, profited from their forced labour and spent much of his life enforcing a system that denied Black people …
Christopher Columbus is often presented as the brave explorer who discovered America. Except millions of people already lived there, and Columbus never even reached mainland North America. What he did do was help launch a brutal era of European conquest, enslavement, forced labour and colonial exploitation. His expeditions opened the door to a catastrophe for Indigenous peoples, while his own …
President Donald Trump has announced a sweeping new visa category for British citizens, the GB-1 “Only Send Your Best” Visa, after concluding that the United Kingdom’s recent cultural exports no longer meet the “tremendous, world-class standard” America deserves. Under the plan, every UK applicant will be assessed not on skills, family ties or employment, but on whether they are “Bond-tier, …
Jada Pinkett Smith has spent years humiliating Will Smith in public, discussing their sex life, exposing their marital problems and turning their relationship into a personal publicity machine. Her memoir, Worthy, gave her yet another platform to tell her story, while Will became the punchline to an endless stream of headlines about his own marriage. From her relationship with August …
Ellen DeGeneres spent nearly two decades telling millions of viewers to be kind to one another. She handed out money, surprised struggling families, danced with celebrities and presented herself as television’s friendly neighbourhood fairy godmother. Her entire brand was built around the idea that she was one of the nicest people in show business. Then people who had actually worked …
Ja Morant is one of the most spectacular basketball players on the planet. He is also living proof that having a world class jump shot does not guarantee that anything sensible is happening between your ears. The Memphis Grizzlies star has spent years turning what should have been a celebration of his extraordinary talent into an exhausting parade of gun …
Andrew Tate has made a fortune selling young men a fantasy. In this fantasy, women are possessions, kindness is weakness, money is everything, and a man becomes an alpha by shouting loudly enough about his cars, muscles and supposed superiority over everyone else. It is the worldview of a teenage bully who discovered cryptocurrency, bought a pair of sunglasses and …
The WNBA has spent decades fighting for attention, and now that it finally has an audience, it seems determined to turn basketball into a never-ending argument about race, sexuality, victimhood and politics. The league’s public image is increasingly defined by its outspoken Black players, prominent lesbian culture and a political atmosphere in which questioning the prevailing narrative can get you …
There is a particular breed of political activist who appears to believe that waving a Palestinian flag, shouting a few slogans and glowering at America automatically makes them an intellectual heavyweight and a moral giant. They have discovered the perfect combination: a fashionable cause, a ready-made villain, a crowd to hide in and an endless supply of social media opportunities …
PLUS… Find out how to spot a gluten-intolerant person and how to avoid them It’s official: the results are in. After a widespread survey covering all of the UK, including Wales, we can now say that 90% of gluten-intolerant people are actually intolerant people, with most individuals in the UK finding them hugely unbearable. Scandal HQ’s recent survey asked a …
Stephen A. Smith has turned shouting into a career, outrage into a business model, and his own ego into the main event. The ESPN personality doesn’t simply give his opinion. He delivers it like he’s addressing a room full of idiots who should be grateful he’s bothered to explain the world to them. Every raised eyebrow, exaggerated pause, theatrical monologue …
