The Problem With Tabs

John Oliver won his sixth Variety Talk award in a row at last night’s dreadful Emmys (feat. That Man) so it makes some sense that when Jon Stewart was looking around for a new show concept he didn’t look much further than the concept for Oliver’s show (or Wyatt Cenac’s… or Hasan Minhaj’s…). The Hollywood Reporter ran a cover interview with Stewart, and he’s pretty defensive about criticism that his new show isn’t very funny, which is surprising because the show hasn’t started yet, aside from a July teaser skit about the Jeff Bezos dick rocket which, to be fair, wasn’t very funny. Perhaps it’s an effort to lower expectations for The Problem With Jon Stewart among the #resistance, who dream of Stewart returning to rid the world of right wing malefactors the way he ended Tucker Carlson’s career in 2004. Perhaps he’s self-conscious that the show appears to have been filmed in the corner of the old Colbert Report studio where they kept the snacks. Either way, the new logo isn’t helping:

Since last week, Gabby Petito’s disappearance has blown up online, with newborn Tiktok P.I.s collecting millions of views speculating about the smallest social media details like they were texts from the ex shared with the group chat. Petito’s final location was possibly pinpointed by another family of travel Youtubers, who realized they had captured a glimpse of the couple’s white van along the side of a road in the Bridger-Teton National Forest’s Spread Creek dispersed camping area, where Petito’s body was eventually found. At press time, fiancé Brian Laundrie remains missing in Florida, and like many others I remain both gripped by and profoundly uncomfortable with my own interest in this mystery.

“What if Covid were Ten Times Deadlier?” asks Ross Douthat, who is too stupid to arrive at the correct answer which is that since Covid’s victims are disproportionately poor and minorities, Republicans would be ten times happier. Also today in bad editorials: The solution to inequality is Amazon factory towns, suggests Conor Sen in what seems more like a mean-spirited parody of a Bloomberg take.

“Oh this old stuff?” Mailchimp’s two founders told employees, gesturing at 100% of the profitable company’s equity. “We use this for toilet paper. It’ll never be worth anything because we’ll never sell, so we’ll just hang on to it for you. Save you the storage space,” reports Insider’s Ben Bergman.

Tabs Classic™: Digiday has a story about (male) journalists (with other sources of healthcare I guess?) getting burned out and quitting their jobs. Tim Herrera now vacations in Hawaii for a living, and “[David] Rosenfeld teaches sailing lessons and charters boat rides from his sailboat.” So if you were feeling the Sunday Scaries last night, have you thought about just chartering your sailboat instead? Or working for Facebook?

What Casey Newton learned from a year on Substack. Genius, roasted. “But the racism of scientific racism is always stronger than the science,” writes Tom Scocca on New Yorker profile darling Kathryn Paige Harden and “the nice kind of calipers.” That’s a wrap on Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Player of the week: General Booty. What did Robert Durst do? Killed them all of course, decides jury. And welcome back to corn candy season:

Today’s Song: Radiohead, “If You Say the Word”

~ For a tab of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble. ~

Thanks to Tabs Senior Contributing Editor for Graphics Alison Headley for the Jon Stewart logo, and I regrettably mis-titled her on her last appearance here so I apologize for that as well. She was promoted from Senior Graphics Intern some time ago, which means that Garrett Miller has also now been promoted to Senior Junior Graphics Intern. Follow me @fka_tabs I guess?