cultural attache (12. 184)

It was refreshing how in the Roman Empire dictators would prolong their term by declaring a holiday, instead we have a president-elect in the United States as Los Angeles continues to smoulder and burn appoint three special envoys to Hollywood, not to help with repair and recovery from the devastation but rather act as celebrity legates to revitalise a failing industry and bring back its Golden Age. Ceremonial sine cure titles were awarded to actors, known for their MAGA boosterism, to Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone (see previously)—assuredly to the disappointment of others to hitched their star to that movement—Trump announced his special ambassadors to “a great but very troubled place” which has “lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries” as his eyes and ears, pledging to get done what they suggest. The equivalent of DOGE for the movies, its unclear how they might brooch this situation and what countries are undermining Tinsel Town and whether it is a problem at all and not another manufactured crisis that’s in their modus operandi to invent and then pretend to solve with a new code of standards to appeal to grievances—if anything the industry is under threat from AI, studio greed and independent cinema.