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One of the great canards of the culture wars is that you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today. It’s a half-truth that disguises a bigger lie. There are a thousand and one reasons why it would be hard—though, as Django Unchained proved, not impossible—to get a movie like Blazing Saddles made in contemporary Hollywood, from the declining public knowledge of the Western genre conventions it parodies to the general demise of big, mainstream comedy movies from the major studios. But the idea that you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today is not about any of that. It is, more than anything, about the prodigious number of N-words the film jams into 93 minutes. “You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today” is the rallying cry of people who think politically correct cancel culture is a major force in American society even as the U.S. slides deeper and deeper into Christian-nationalist fascism. The irony, of course, is that were Blazing Saddles to be erased from memory Yesterday-style and then unleashed on the world afresh tomorrow, Elon Musk would spend more time crying about it on X The Everything App than he has about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey having Black people in it.

Shortly after Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) went live on X to defend himself against recent reporting by Mother Jones documenting allegations of domestic violence against his ex-wife, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) posted his first in-depth public comment on the matter, saying Miller is unfit to hold office. “As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs […]