It’s the second weekend of August and the news cycle has gone into a death spiral.
Superman, an illegal alien, has joined ICE to kick illegal and legal aliens out of the US; ANC members are no longer allowed to sing “Kill the Boer”; some of the Amerikaners who sought asylum in the US think it may be a kak idea; the vice-president of the US had the water level of an Ohio river raised for his family’s boating trip; a dog ate an All Black’s passport; Diego Maradona’s children won the right to use his name as a trademark after a battle with his sisters; and the 2025/26 Betway Premiership winner has already been announced.
Let’s start with the latter.
Mamelodi Sundowns have been crowned without a ball being kicked, apparently. News24 led with a story quoting other PSL coaches saying it was “unrealistic to expect a new PSL champion” save for Downs. The coaches say they don’t really fear Sundowns on the park but what they possess on the bench. Why bother watching? Done. Dusted. Downs.
In New Zealand, Leroy Carter got a debut call-up to the All Blacks to tour Argentina in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship and then found out his passport had been used as a treat by his doggy. “I got my passport out to take a photo to send to the [team] manager and I just left it on my bedside table,” said Carter. “My partner went to the gym and left my dog home alone, and it’s gone down the hallway, jumped on the bed and just chewed up the passport and my teeth aligners.”
It’s the teeth aligners I’d worry about. Carter has a Freddie Mercury-esque moustache as has become the way of the fashionably unconscious. He really doesn’t need the overbite to go with it.
While we are on moustaches, Nic White, the Wallaby scrumhalf who announced his retirement ahead of the last Test against the British & Irish Lions, has decided to delay that so he can play against the Springboks in Johannesburg and Cape Town in the last few weeks of August. Get the boo machine ready. The Bok fans and the series needs a pantomime villain. I’ll put R50 on White’s fluff getting ruffled in a ruck.
Dean Cain, the actor who played Superman, is joining ICE, he told Fox News. He is a “patriot” who wants to step up. Judging by the size of him these days, Cain needs to do a lot more steps. If you were an illegal-legal immigrant you’d be happy that Cain might be chasing you in downtown Los Angeles. He’s more plane than bird.
“How woke is Hollywood going to make this character [Superman]? How much is Disney going to change their Snow White? Why are they going to change these characters [to] exist for the times?” said Cain. “We know Superman is an immigrant — he’s a freaking alien... The ‘American way’ is immigrant friendly, tremendously immigrant friendly. But there are rules... There have to be limits, because we can’t have everybody in the US. We can’t have everybody, society will fail. So there have to be limits.”
There is no limit to the news cycle these days. There was in the good old days when overnight news could wait until the morning, but the rush to smash out stories as quick and often as possible has become overwhelming and a mess.
We need a break and a handbrake from the madness, and at the beginning of this week, and over the past month or so, we had just that with a Test series for the ages. England versus India had everything T20 dreams of having. Drama, anger, it swung and swerved, postured and pouted, roared and succumbed and then it ended, “with a one-armed man, his bat more crutch than weapon, staggering, wincing on to the field of battle”.
I wrote that last line for my Substack column — All Over The Bar Shouting — and four days later it still rings true. Chris Woakes, the one-armed man, his left arm tucked in a sling under his jersey, didn’t face a ball, but he added to the mystique of Test cricket and the majesty of this series. That was all the news you needed to read this week.
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