WCS110: Epstein hamstrings the OG monarchy
w/: Wemby v Shohei + inside a church food pantry + local ordinances against ICE
‘Abolition would be contested and vicious. Or, the monarchy could end very beautifully.”
Yesterday, the Cad Formerly Known as Prince Andrew was stripped of his title and taxpayer-provided lifestyle by his aged and infirm older brother. It’s easy to think that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor got bounced from royalty because a newly discovered email exchange between him and JeffEp, the world’s most-discussed deceased person. (“We’re in this together,” typed the former prince.)
London’s Mail and Sun Sunday papers published these emails on Oct. 12, but the actual journalistic death blow hit on Tuesday, when the progressive New Statesman magazine published a withering story by Will Lloyd.
Over what I’m guessing is 15,000 words, “Abolish the Monarchy,” pummels the Windsor family, leaving left such a mark on the idea of monarchy that Andrew had to be stripped and evicted from royalty.
The planet’s Whitest folks have announced to the world that standards matter. And the ripples shall touch the Shit King across the pond.
Among Jeffrey Epstein‘s voluminous sex crimes was pimping out Florida child Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide earlier this year. Andrew’s involvement is appalling, yet the cover-up—as so often happens—appears worse than the crime.
Writes Lloyd:
“Forget the allegation that a key member of the head of state’s family stands accused of ordering his taxpayer-funded police protection officer to dig up dirt about Giuffre. Do not ask questions about the £500,000 Andrew paid for a ‘PR expert’ who sought to discredit Giuffre by enlisting the services of an internet troll. Blame the rot on the apple, not the orchard it fell from. Clip it from the branch. Heal.” Ha.
Almost as much as America’s pathetic, second-class obsession with the Kennedys, I’ve resented the Windsors. But in taking away Andrew’s title King Charles may have done something significant, for once. An act potentially more powerful even than an imagined Andrew incarceration.
However Chuck got em there, the planet’s Whitest folks have announced to the world that standards matter. In this crisis that matters. The ripples shall touch the Shit King across the pond.
Even through Frank McCourt I supported the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2025 my fandom for the boys in blue sits on a shelf, next to my Lakers fandom,
The stakes are too high to be soft on collaborators. Mark Walter’s Guggenheim ownership group must make some divestments if they want their international fan base back. I really hope the Dodgers lose tonight.
Multiple times each week I try to make bespoke journalism for watchers of America’s West Coast. Please support my independent journalism and analysis by recommending the Sojourn Substack, via social media or the old-fashioned ways. Email. Use word of mouth. Go postal, even.
Another, more immediately helpful idea is to support this work via Venmo or GoFundMe and/or become a paid subscriber.
Every year I improve at writing. Yet, it still takes time to make sentences worthy of your mailbox.
The criminalization is the point
Damon Jones hasn’t masterminded one damn thing in his entire life.
10 Bo Nix’s flowers have found him, wide open
The former Ducks QB had yet to get his professional due. Regarded as an aged-out placeholder in last year’s NFL draft, so-called football experts treated Nix a second-rate talent. His rookie-year success included Denver’s first playoff appearance since 2015, yet has been viewed as fluky and unimpressive.
This season, one of the shortest names in football history has won widespread approval, courtesy of signature wins over the Eagles, Giants, and Cowboys.
Broncos Wire
Last week’s brilliant performance against Dallas made Nix only the third Broncos quarterback to have three or more wins when throwing for four or more touchdowns. The others are named Elway and Manning.
“He was magnificent,” said Denver Coach Sean Payton.
Lil Hit
D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” video was, writes Damon Young, “a force of nature, a monocultural eruption of soul and sex, the virtuosic and the incarnate.” And it changed the artist.
Hammer and Hope
The Full Herb Caen
If your favorite celebrity isn’t emulating Billie Eilish by shaming billionaires, they ought to explain themselves…
It’s wild that Kash Patel said the hoops gambling case “envelopes” the NBA without presenting evidence of that, and no one’s made a fuss about the language…
American illiteracy really is the unsung villain of DJT’s takeover…
I live in Portland, baby…
One of the few citizens with a recent victory over America’s Top Sorry Motherfucker, Roberta Kaplan, offers incredibly useful advice:
As best as you can, work in the world of pure fact…
Minimize the noise…
9 Musk made Grok in his own image
In launching his ballyhooed AI, product Elon Musk has reinforced the expectation that he’ll make his personal bias a matter of fact.
On former Twitter, Grok had previously displayed big, specific faults in its facts.
Wired
The Grokipedia entry about chattel slavery includes a section outlining numerous “ideological justifications,” including the “Shift from Necessary Evil to Positive Good.” The end of this entry focuses on criticisms of The 1619 Project, which the product says incorrectly framed “slavery as the central engine of the nation’s political, economic, and cultural development.”
Grok is telling people that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic. Another bit of unsupported speculation is that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people.
Lil Hit
Now that mainstream America is finally acknowledging that Brown and Black people are in hot water, maybe the Heritage Foundation’s embrace of noxious White supremacist Nick Fuentes can help it know that the heat’s being turned up.
The Bulwark
The progressive Kansas City DA’s spokesperson ran track with me in small-town Ohio, in the guys of the Reagan Era. Our careers in media have been informed by that experience. A great podcast chat.
Jonathan Carter’s midwestern sojourn
Not to spoil the episode, but Carter joined a military that let him do hands-on journalism from the jump. Before long he was working in the same North Coast stomping grounds where Bill Jacocks one reigned.
8 Charlie Kirk, MAGA, and the Arizona Effect
The Cardinals are 0-5 since renting out their stadium for that Nuremberg rally known as the Charlie Kirk Memorial. Which makes complete sense, even before examining any part that could be supernatural.
Imagine. You’re a the blindside tackle and you’ve been putting your body on the line for three hours. You look into the stands and begin to extrapolate how many find you in adequate or subhuman. Except when you’re hurting yourself for their entertainment.
Threads
This is the part where I remind you to watch James Mason and Ken Norton in Mandingo.
The Cardinals franchise was negligent in allowing the event. It’s my belief that the most expensive team in baseball history is trailing the franchise from Canada because their enormous Latino fan base feels betrayed by ownership. Spirit matters.
Lil Hit
This look inside the ultra-low-key Harbor Area Peace Patrol—a group in LA’s South Bay that monitors ICE—is as instructive as it is inspirational.
Slate
Katie Wilson’s child care scandal
As with NY mayoral candidate Zorhan Mamdani, Seattle’s Katie Wilson is facing grab-bag attacks that seem predicated on the public’s misconception of what socialism is.
Wilson’s good-natured response features her mother.
7 The reemergence of Deandre Eatin’
Players try harder when relocated to Los Angeles. Rui Hachimura was on the road to obscurity when the Lakers obtained dude from the Wizards. The eyes of the world are upon them.
That’s why I suspected Deandre Ayton would show up big time after a shitty run with the Blazers. Portland ain’t exactly Try Hard City.
Lakers Film Room
Ayton has played surprisingly decent D. More notably, Austin Reeves’ all-but-certain Player of the Week honors owe to the big center, whose midrange skills might be better than Anthony Davis. He’s Eatin’.
We all can agree now that the seven-footer didn’t receive top-tier coaching at his second professional stop.
Lil Hit
Before Memphis rookie Cedric Coward became an NBA hipster fave, he was a minor star at Fresno’s Central East High, a Division III standout in Salem, and a famously injured Cougar-with-potential in Eastern Washington.
Andscape
D’Angelo and a bottle
Perhaps you would like cannabis. Either way, inside of 16 bars this blend will have you feeling right.
6 Shohei’s sick, but is Wemby not sicker?
I get it, yo. In terms of value, Dodger Shohei Ohtani is the equivalent of a star quarterback who can also come in on third down and dominate as an edge rusher.
Young San Antonio center Victor Wembanyama though? Dude is no less a cheat code. Offensively a 7-6—or so I’ve heard—shooting guard, his defense changes every game he enters, and in ways that aren’t quantifiable.
Reddit
I could listen to Dan Patrick mediate the arguments all day.
Lil Hit
On Sunday, the feds seized British political journalist Sam Hamdi at SFO, revoked his passport, and spirited him away to a Bakersfield ICE facility. Pretty sure he’s still there.
San Francisco Standard
Caencer Ward
In pro sports, a lot less “comes down to who wants it more” than we are led to believe…
On Tuesday, Amber Ruffin gave Mariners star Cal Raleigh a little Late Night shine when she commented on his famously plump backside…
“Now I gotta be jealous of this White guy’s butt?” Ruffin asked. “I know we’re living’ in Trump’s America…”
Good thing I have experience with hunger…
The changes in our nation are happening with breathtaking swiftness, but we gotta spend significantly less time being “overwhelmed” and “stunned”…
We interrupt this three-dot journalism for a critical message from Richmond
Polling is of limited value under a totalitarian regime…
Antifascist Project 2026 ought to mainly consist of driving down Whites House poll numbers past the margin that allows the GOP to fake election results…
At your own pace, divest yourself of football.
5 SF’s billionaires are making it worse
The filthy rich motherfuckers are running San Francisco, right down to the new “moderate” local newspaper. Former Supervisor Preston makes clear that he believes this to be a grave situation. My former Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond seconds his point, analyzing the billionaire mayor’s Trump troops negotiation.
48 Hills/Current Affairs
“[Levi’s heir Daniel] Lurie is willing to work with Trump, to be ‘very nice’ on the phone, and to act as if this is all remotely normal or acceptable,” says Redmond. “A convicted felon and pathological liar who is destroying democracy and imposing authoritarianism, terrifying communities, and arresting, disappearing, and killing people with no regard for the rule of law is not someone you should be ‘very nice’ to.”
Lil Hit
On the national stage, Maria Gluesenkamp Perez has been hailed as the future of Democratic governance. Washington residents familiar with her recent work understand that the betrayal-prone representative is nothing close to a remedy.
Current Affairs
Multiple times each week I try to make bespoke journalism for watchers of America’s West Coast. Please support my independent journalism and analysis by recommending the Sojourn Substack, via social media or the old-fashioned ways. Email. Use word of mouth. Go postal, even.
Another, more immediately helpful idea is to support this work via Venmo or GoFundMe and/or become a paid subscriber.
Every year I improve at writing. Yet, it still takes time to make sentences worthy of your mailbox.
4 Will hunger open the harsh winter?
The politics weren’t on my mind as I entered a Southeast Portland church. The modest house of worship sits down by where Powell is under a mile of repair. A couple of miles west of Gresham.
I told the minister who led me downstairs to the pantry that the visit was e out of precaution, that I expected a weekend run. He agreed there could be scarcity, on account of so many federal employees already under duress.
Portland is a shockingly generous town, but the church goods were way picked over, already. Bodes poorly. (Gov. Kotek freed up another $5 million in emergency food bank aid on Thursday.) If we’re short I cannot imagine what California’s Rush-reared Central Valley is like.
Here are a few Sojourn District free food options, for your friend whose last full meal might be behind them.
LA Taco/The Oregonian
Consider these options if you’re one of the 900,000 Washington residents who will lose benefits.
LA will have diverse food lines outside of restaurants in Watts and Silver Lake and Venice and parts all around. The Cambodian sounds worth a wait.
Have a map of where to find food assistance in Portland.
Among Bay Area businesses helping out are some San Francisco bakeries and East Bay purveyors of Asian cuisine.
DoorDash will be waiving fees and delivering free meals.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to West Coast Sojourn to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.