Last night, Bradley Cooper basked in the warmth of an adoring audience. It didn’t happen at the 96th Academy Awards, where his film Maestro had been nominated in several categories—and ultimately went home winless. Instead, at the beginning of the latest Abbott Elementary episode, which aired immediately after the Oscars, Cooper sauntered into a Philadelphia classroom’s show-and-tell at the behest of a student who excitedly introduced him as “a famous person I saw outside.

If you’re looking for an image that perfectly showcases the confusion and chaos of a choose-your-own-reality information dystopia, you probably couldn’t do better than yesterday’s portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales. In just one day, the photograph has transformed from a hastily released piece of public-relations damage control into something of a Rorschach test—a collision between plausibility and conspiracy.
For the uninitiated: Yesterday, in celebration of Mother’s Day in the U.K.

Must songs written for movies be serious? Each year the Oscar for Best Original Song nominations over-index on hushed ballads and motivational anthems—music that’s built sturdily, predictably, for utilitarian purposes. “I’m Just Ken,” the Barbie track performed by the actor Ryan Gosling, takes that tradition and skews it. Part piano confessional and part prog-metal rockout, it’s a deeply silly song about self-seriousness.

William Whitworth, the editor of The Atlantic from 1980 to 1999, had a soft voice and an Arkansas accent that 50 years of living in New York and New England never much eroded. It was as much a part of him as his love of jazz, his understated sartorial consistency, and his deep dismay when encountering the misuse of lie and lay, a battle he knew he had lost but continued to fight.

This year, the mission of the Academy Awards was, more than anything, to avoid catastrophe. The most-discussed ceremonies in the last decade have been marked by jaw-dropping viral moments—none of which had much to do with the movies supposedly being celebrated. The wrong Best Picture was announced. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, then gave a rambling acceptance speech for the Best Actor award.

The Oscars are not built for somber appeals about current events, though the show has tried in the past to balance celebration with seriousness. Sometimes that effort has worked: In 2002, after 9/11, Tom Cruise opened the evening with a vague but elegant speech about needing movie magic “more than ever,” which eased the apparent anxiety in the room.

You know you’ve delivered an Oscars speech for the history books when your fellow nominees are getting teary. Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who won the Best Supporting Actress trophy tonight for her work in The Holdovers, spoke about her career with such earnest passion that she received no shortage of weepy faces from her competitors: Jodie Foster could be seen welling up, as could America Ferrera.
Randolph thanked her mother, her acting teacher, and even her publicist—a funny role reversal.

When Senator Katie Britt of Alabama gave the Republican response to the State of the Union address last Thursday, she introduced herself to America with a bizarre, dramatic speech. Set in a stark kitchen, and veering between folksy and distressed, it was ripe for parody. Naturally, Saturday Night Live would tackle it. But unexpectedly, it did so with the actor Scarlett Johansson—a much more familiar face to many Americans—who handled Britt’s odd performance brilliantly.

Former President Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent’s lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. “Wasn’t it—didn’t it bring us together?” Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. “‘I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,’” Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.
Trump has made a new habit of this.