How is everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Sunday Six.
It’s good to return with the Six and The Kerr Report after an absence. I will get back on a more regular publishing schedule by early February. The newsletter will look different — I’m rebranding the graphics and name of the publication. Much more on changes in the coming weeks.
Today’s Six includes articles on prominent media speaking out against Covid restrictions, the return of one of the more notorious crime families in television, just who are Tik-Tok’s top earners and what happens to workers who leave their jobs.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
Covid Restrictions a “Moral Crime,” Says Well-Known Journalist.
The return of Bill Maher’s “Real Time” show to HBO Friday night made news (I find Maher to be a bit of a tool but he is a fair interviewer and is not afraid to have on guests who he might disagree with.) Bari Weiss, a former New York Times reporter who now publishes her own Substack newsletter, came on the show and spoke a needed-to-hear truth. She admitted many of her “liberal and progressive friends” in the media are afraid to speak out against Covid restrictions for fear of being cancelled. As an independent journalist, not attached to any legacy media company, Weiss is free to speak freely and honestly. How’s this for a quote from Maher’s show: “And you realize, most importantly, that this will be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.”
Who Are The Top-Earning Tik-Tokers of 2022?
I remain fascinated by Tik-Tok and how it works beyond showing videos of half-naked teenagers wiggling and jiggling. I know there is more to it than that and hope to do some marketing on the site sometime this year. The audience is massive (recent valuation is $50 billion) and remains the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide. Young men and women are becoming multi-millionaires using the app, and this articles provides a list of the top earners as we roll into 2022.
Life After Quitting: What Happened After Workers Left Their Jobs.
The “Great Resignation” is one of the top stories of our current times. Tens of millions of Americans left their jobs in 2021, and that trend will likely continue this year (although maybe not to the scale of 2021). The Washington Post does a deep dive on the subject, but takes a personal interest angle with this article. It profiles servers and cooks from an Arkansas restaurant and asks the question, “are they better off after walking away?” Interesting narrative story from the WP.
The Dirty Work of Cleaning Online Reputations.
A good read from The Walrus magazine that takes a look inside the flourishing industry of reputation fixers, now worth an estimated $240 million. It’s a crowded field, from high-profile PR/crisis communications firms to smaller, scrappier services, like the subject of this article who charges $10,000 to $20,000 for months-long campaigns to scrub online profiles.
Life After 7-Foot-6: It Will Never Be The Same For Shawn Bradley.
For Shawn Bradley, the retired NBA center who used his 90-inch frame to block 2,000 shots, “his height is his primary hindrance,” following a bike accident on January 20, 2021 near his St. George, Utah home (Bradley was so big that the paramedics who removed him from the crash site feared the ambulance doors might not close). With deep resolve and much courage, Bradley is navigating a one-of-a-kind medical challenge. Compelling stuff from Sports Illustrated.
Ozark Returns And Does It Mark The End of The Television Anti-Hero?
Friday, Netflix dropped the first seven episodes of the final season of the hit show “Ozark.” I remember “Ozark” being the first show I binged on in March of 2020 when we everything shut down due to this virus referred to as COVID-19 (I think I watched all 30 available episodes in one weekend. A lot of Red Bull and cheese puffs were consumed over that 48 hour stretch of my life.) After a two-year absence, our favorite streaming crime family the Byrdes are back and as dastardly as ever. This is an interesting essay arguing that Marty Byrde (played with cool precision by Jason Bateman) could be the last in a long line of television male anti-heros beginning with Tony Soprano and continuing with Don Draper and Walter White. What’s next? More shows with female scoundrels? More Wendy Byrde-types may be what we see on prestige television the rest of this decade.
Have a great rest of your weekend everybody. Thanks for reading as always.
Have a suggestion for the Sunday Six? Send email to jon@jonjkerr.com