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Nearly a year ago, the restaurant chain Hooters announced that it was rebranding to become, ahem, family friendly.
The brand, built on the morally dubious theme of objectifying beautiful young women, had been struggling in recent years, and its motives were clear. It needed to change to stay afloat in the age of OnlyFans.
It’s less clear what a recently announced rebranding of Ashley Madison aims to accomplish.
Established as a “dating” service for married people — read, adultery — Ashley Madison now wants people to seek its services for “discreet dating.” A press release said the rebrand “reflects the company’s changing membership, along with a cultural shift prioritizing discretion,” and that 57% of new members in 2025 “identified as single.”
There’s so much to unpack here.
Ashley Madison is known for two things: its provocative ads that said, “Life’s short. Have an affair,” and a data hack that released information into the ether on married people who were seeking affairs.
Now the company is trying to attract new users by touting its secrecy.
Also, it would have us believe that there is a trove of worthy life partners populating the site, people who just happened to have stumbled across Ashley Madison without knowing its history, and who have benign and noble reasons for needing “discretion.” And they’re single, to boot! Or at least they “identify” as single, and there’s no reason at all that we shouldn’t trust them, right?
There is much to be skeptical of here, but also maybe there’s a glimmer of hope. Are business models based on vice and sin struggling to stay afloat? Is the world healing, as the memes say?
Ryan Burge and others have challenged the idea that we’re in the middle of a spiritual reawakening, but as Kevin Brown wrote for the Deseret News recently, there are other factors to consider besides Sunday morning head counts.
Vibes matter, said Brown, the president of Asbury University in Kentucky. And fewer people ogling the waitstaff at Hooters and perusing the Ashley Madison website would be a very good vibe and an indication that there is, in fact, some sort of moral refurbishment of the nation underway.
Now if only OnlyFans would announce a rebranding. Perhaps OnlyPets.
America is healing, in two tweets
First, Tampa International Airport started pushing back on travelers in pajamas. Pajamas-in-public shaming seems like something much of America can get behind.
Second, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who is now more popular with Republicans in Pennsylvania than with his own party, wore a suit and tie to the State of the Union.
Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Fetterman has famously shunned traditional standards of attire at the Capitol, often showing up for work in shorts and hoodies.
Last week, however, Fetterman said he wore a suit in order to express respect for the office, and he was reportedly the only Democrat to shake hands with President Donald Trump.
This prompted a Pennsylvania newspaper to report on the handshake, saying that Fetterman was “defending” his brief interaction with the president.
Most of us liked it better when the simple act of a Democrat senator shaking the hand of a Republican president didn’t make headlines.
Names, please
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a conversation on The Guardian’s “Politics Weekly America” podcast, revealed over the weekend that a couple of prominent Democrats who were scheduled to be on the show pulled out after he had Charlie Kirk as the first guest.
That conversation with Kirk, so poignant now, was a year ago this week.
As Fox News reported, Newsom said, “the condemnation I got for having Charlie Kirk on was off the charts. I could give you — and I won’t — but there were two or three well-known Democratic politicians that canceled. They were coming on next. They were my next guests. They all canceled right after that.”
Newsom didn’t name names, but that’s information much of the American electorate would like to have.
Recommended Reading
In the hours after the United States and Israel began military operations in Iran, Shima Baradaran Baughman observed criticism of the strikes on her homeland.
“I’ve seen prominent commentators and news outlets condemn the strikes as reckless or unlawful. I also understand that instinct. As a lawyer — and as someone who usually sees nuance in nearly every political question — I am rarely comfortable declaring anything morally simple. But this moment feels unusually clear," she writes.
A turning point for the Middle East
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was among those who drew the president’s ire by ruling with the majority on tariffs. Judge Thomas B. Griffith and Joshua Topham point out one paragraph, written by Gorsuch, that might be the most important point throughout 170 pages of the opinion and dissents.
“The framers did not view pluralism as a problem to be overcome through forceful legislation or oppression. They designed a system that shows us how to work together even while we disagree.”
Justice Gorsuch’s powerful lesson for the United States
There’s no question that America is politically divided. But Samuel J. Abrams recounts two recent encounters that left him convinced that the country is going to be just fine if we continue to take responsibility for each other.
“Modern civic debate often treats belonging as something institutions must engineer or governments must mandate. Yet genuine belonging rarely emerges from directives or slogans. It grows instead through repeated human encounters in which individuals experience welcome without coercion and difference without threat.”
Here’s why American society will continue to thrive
End Notes
Bari Weiss hasn’t said she’s trying to make CBS News lean to the right — she says she wants to ensure the network is fair. That hasn’t stopped her critics from saying that CBS has become “Fox Light” under her leadership. One Democrat recently said on X that CBS News “is being turned into a more polite, less polarizing Fox News.”
Fox News has taken notice of the comparison and wants it known that CBS isn’t anything like it in terms of ratings. Last week, Fox News trumpeted that it bested CBS in prime-time “with (the) strongest monthly performance in a year.”
Comparisons of CBS to Fox, in other words, have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, it’s likely comparisons to ABC and NBC that are most worrisome at CBS, where the network has long lagged behind its legacy competitors. There, Tony Dokoupil is still lagging behind competitors in his time slot (4:30 MT), according to TV Insider.
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