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Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Saturday, February 21, 2026

"Network" turns 50 " and somehow feels more shocking, more sobering, and more timely than ever

February 21, 2026

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A newscaster named Howard Beale, drunk on prophecy and clarity, rises from his anchor's desk. Having run down everything that's wrong with the world outside our windows " unemployment, crime, pollution, a failing economy " the gentleman now has a favor to ask of his viewers.

He demands them to temporarily remove themselves from their state of perpetual isolation and become part of the collective chorus, to open their windows and scream into the void.

Say it with us. "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!"

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"The story of our nation is pockmarked and littered with atrocities, oppression, terror, and violence. History is not pretty.

Yet the one thing that a divided country can actually agree on right now is that what's transpiring, in this age of the Great Step Backwards, is not normal, regardless of how those in power are trying to normalize it.

Not even low ratings can stop it. Network gazed into its crystal ball and broadcast back a worst-case-scenario diatribe that, if you paid close enough attention, doubled as a warning.

We don't just live in Howard Beale's world now. We're stuck in a world dictated by millions of Diane Christensens.

Fifty years later, Lumet and Chayefsky's brilliant work of art is neither a satire nor reportage. It's a horror movie. It's reality."

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2026-02-21 09:30 PM | Reply

Boomers LoL....

#2 | Posted by oneironaut at 2026-02-21 11:43 PM | Reply

Too many are too bamboozled by the avalanche of social media that was spilled on society to realize the scale of the nefarious right-wing bamboozling that has happened. Millennials and older can still remember the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the beginning of Fox News

#3 | Posted by hamburglar at 2026-02-22 07:08 AM | Reply

#2

Sooners, rofl!

Have you submitted your DNA to Chinese Security yet?

#4 | Posted by Corky at 2026-02-22 10:37 AM | Reply

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