- Losing My Perspicacity
- Posts
- Losing My Perspicacity, August 8, 2025
In partnership with
Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me.
I’m currently on vacation in Northern Minnesota, but, as I have ads scheduled to run today, I am forced to write something, though I have probably had too many rum runners to do so. Ah, capitalism.
Nevertheless, we persist. However, today’s newsletter will be brief.
I’m happy to report that, while Paramount has reportedly assigned a babysitter to keep an eye on South Park, it doesn’t seem to be … interfering with Trey and Matt’s vision.
South Park melts ICE 🤣🤣🤣
— Morgan J Freeman (@mjfree.bsky.social)2025-08-07T19:14:06.754Z
I haven’t seen more of the episode than the above, but I’m not sure we need to. Absolutely savage. As I’ve said before, I have taken issue with the libertarian politics (and, too often, downright cruelty) that South Park has fallen prey to in the past, but I’m usually pretty thrilled when it’s on my side.
And anyway, this is what they did to JD Vance:
He’s Tatù!
There’s a TikTok out there of a guy in California describing how most liberals feel about Gavin Newsom: He says Newsom is the annoying, mean rich kid who can make your life miserable in high school, but sometimes he turns on the teachers or the principal. Then, he’s fantastic to have on your side. That’s how I feel about South Park. So welcome to the Resistance, SoPa!
Is your social strategy ready for what's next in 2025?
HubSpot Media's latest Social Playbook reveals what's actually working for over 1,000 global marketing leaders across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.
Inside this comprehensive report, you’ll discover:
Which platforms are delivering the highest ROI in 2025
Content formats driving the most engagement across industries
How AI is transforming social content creation and analytics
Tactical recommendations you can implement immediately
Unlock the playbook—free when you subscribe to the Masters in Marketing newsletter.
Get cutting-edge insights, twice a week, from the marketing leaders shaping the future.
If you’d do me a solid and click on the ad above, I’d appreciate it! It helps me keep the lights on here at LMP.
Today: The WNBA’s “creep” problem; “Alligator Alcatraz” is on a time out; Big Balls comes back to bite us in the ass; The High Note.
Here we go.
The WNBA has a creep problem
The headline on this story is actually “How Does the WNBA Solve Its Sex Toy Problem?” But that’s not really the case, is it? The problem the WNBA has is that a particular kind of man is attracted to it in a really pervy way. The Venn diagram between the men who would throw a sex toy at WNBA players and who think the league is discriminating against Caitlin Clark “because of her race” is a flat circle.
Not that the league is at fault for that. Society is at fault. But headlines like that one don’t help. This is what the Barstoolification of sports looks like.
In the past week and a half, sex toys have been thrown on court during games in Atlanta on July 29, Chicago on Aug. 1 and Los Angeles on Aug. 5, with the most recent object nearly hitting Fever guard Sophie Cunningham during Indiana’s game against the Sparks. Sex toys were also thrown at games in New York and Phoenix last Tuesday but didn’t reach the court. Police say another toy was thrown at a game in Atlanta on Aug. 1, although it’s unclear if that one reached the court.
Take a moment and think about all the women who have battled and fought to get women’s sports to the point where people are tuning in, after decades — Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, Toni Storm, Mamie Johnson, Connie Morgan, Cheryl Miller, Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Michelle Akers, Brianna Scurry, Diana Turasi, Sheryl Swoopes — and then think about the fact that, in 2025, men are walking amongst us who think this kind of public denigration of women and their sport is funny.
As the disturbances pile up, those on the court have become increasingly frustrated.
“Everyone is trying to make sure the W is not a joke and it’s taken seriously, and then that happens,” (Fever guard Sophie) Cunningham said on her podcast after nearly being hit by one of the sex toys on Tuesday. “I’m like, ‘How are we ever going to get taken seriously?’”
No other professional sports leagues have faced sex toy disturbances like this. It has started a conversation online about the perpetrators’ choices to throw them during games in a women’s league and a league with a high-profile amount of lesbian and queer players.
“This has been going on for centuries, the sexualization of women. This is the latest version of that. It’s not funny. It should not be the butt of jokes,” said Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve Thursday. “The sexualization of women is what’s used to hold women down, and this is no different.”
Cheryl Reeve always tells it like it is, and good for Sophie Cunningham for speaking out. Next time some idiot bro does this during a game, I hope the entire crowd turns on and holds him for authorities after covering him in cold nacho dip and the dregs at the bottom of the popcorn bag. It’s the sports version of tarring and feathering someone.
And the WNBA needs to get its security teams sorted.
“Alligator Acatraz” gets put on a federal time-out
This feels like a good news/bad news situation:
MIAMI — A federal judge has issued an order temporarily halting construction at an immigration center in Florida's Everglades.
The judge said the addition of lighting, paving, fencing, fill, and other building on the site must stop while she hears a challenge to the facility brought by environmental groups. However, immigration detentions and other operations at the facility will continue as the legal process moves ahead.
In a lawsuit, Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Miccosukee Tribe say the rushed construction of the facility — dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' by state officials — without public input or an environmental impact statement violates federal law.
I suppose asking the federal government to shut down the Florida Everglades Immigration Center based on human rights violations would be asking for too much.
Big Balls has come home to roost
I just had a feeling we hadn’t seen the last of Big Balls, and I was right.
President Trump has ordered an unspecified number of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in Washington, D.C., days after threatening a federal takeover of the city and claiming that crime there was “totally out of control.”
Washington’s crime rates — ranging from violent crime to thefts and burglaries — have been falling significantly, but the order follows the president’s effort to paint the nation’s capital as rife with violent crime. Mr. Trump highlighted the beating earlier this week of a prominent Department of Government Efficiency employee by a mob of young assailants in an attempted carjacking.
“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, “we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City.”
What does that have to do with Big Balls, you ask? Well, he was the DOGE employee who was attacked and who made Trump think that America’s urban centers are something out of The Warriors.
The White House announced on Thursday that it will use federal law enforcement officers to help police Washington D.C.
The move comes one day after President Donald Trump threatened to take over the city’s police force in response to an attempted hijacking that left one Trump administration staffer injured.
“Big Balls, come out and plaaaaaaaaay….”
Of course, crime in DC is verifiably down, as in other big cities across the country:
In 2024, violent crime in the city hit a 30-year low, according to federal data, and is down another 26 percent so far this year, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Still, Washington has long had an issue with gun crimes. In 2023, it had the third-highest rate of gun homicides among cities with more than 500,000 people (after Memphis and Baltimore), according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
Gosh, I wonder what we could do to bring down the rates of gun crimes? What a headscratcher. I’ll have to have a good think over that one.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Since I’m up in the Great White North this week (far closer to Canada than to Minneapolis), I thought I’d share a sampling of what it sometimes sounds like here after dark:
And, finally, because Great White North:
Survive and advance out there today. Don’t let the bastards get you down. I’ll see you all again on Wednesday.
Reply