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NEW YORK — In the days before the Westminster Dog Show, I could not stop saying the phrase, "33 Pomeranians." There’s a pleasing rhythm to the phrase—better spelled out as thirty-three Pomeranians—that lends itself to any multitude of cadences. Excitedly: thirty-three Pomeranians! As matter-of-fact as one might say 101 Dalmations: thirty-three Pomeranians. Baffled and/or aghast: thirty-three Pomeranians? This was, of course, because there were 33 Pomeranians in attendance at the Westminster Dog Show, though the Pomeranian participation metrics still did not quite match up to the delegations of Retrievers, Golden (52), or French Bulldogs (48!), or Chihuahuas, of both Long Coat (23) and Short Coat varieties (18). Which is a way of saying that there’s no getting over the absurdity of, as the official press release says, 3,000 CHAMPION DOGS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD TO COMPETE AT THE HISTORIC 150th WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB DOG SHOW. Champion, in this case, means a dog that has obtained at least 15 points in competition, with two major wins under different judges. The Westminster Dog Show is a competition of champions—to participate is to already be a winner, though of course there are always bigger horizons.

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Late afternoon football is the best football. The NFL regular season can make you forget this evergreen fact, because the 4 p.m. slot is custom-made for viewers to steal a nap while one shitty AFC West team battles another. But then the playoffs arrive, and you and I are reminded of what makes twilight football—outdoors and on grass—special. You start off in broad daylight as both teams fuck around for a quarter or two. Then the sun slowly begins to bleed away, taking all distractions along with it as it sinks below the horizon. Now we’re in primetime, when everyone is watching. Now every player on the field is in the spotlight, and you, the viewer at home, are dialed in. Our long afternoon’s journey into night is over, and shit is starting to get intense. Shit is starting to matter. Also, it’s cocktail hour.

The understanding that we have reached when we've talked about it, to the extent we've talked about it at all, is that The Distraction should try to be a good hang even in bad times. This is dependent, of course, on the extent to which Drew and I are capable of managing that, and also relative to how bad the times in question are. We are, in every facet and on every front, in a real test of how well we can follow through on that goal at this moment. The general thrust of The Bad Times you are no doubt familiar with; we have written about them at the site and talked about them in every episode of 2026, but also presumably you have a phone, or a window. But also, as you read this, much of the Defector staff is in Philadelphia for the funeral of our friend and Defector co-founder Dan McQuade. We have celebrated his life and work on the site in the week since he passed. There is a massive team-written remembrance of him on our front page right now; last night, some of us told stories about him in a bar in Philadelphia while "November Rain" played on the jukebox, which was both moving and kind of preposterous in a way I think he might have found funny. A lot of things have felt like that of late. This episode is like that, too.

Today is Dan McQuade’s funeral. To celebrate our friend, we wanted to give the people he worked with a place to explain what they loved so much about him. If you would like to support Dan’s widow Jan, and his son Simon, you can do so here. David Roth, Defector Editor Dan was always into…

NEW YORK — “I don’t think that bitch looks fit,” a woman next to me murmurs. She’s carrying a Louis Vuitton bag, wearing Hermes riding boots, and speaking, of course, about one of the three female Cane Corsos still in the ring. It’s not exactly an unwarranted thing for her to say; she does have a dog in this fight. Two, to be precise. The two fitter bitches both belong to her. With the way the judge has physically sorted the field, it’s clear that a male is about to be picked Best of Breed, and that means the likelihood of one of her dogs winning Best of Opposite (the award given to the best dog of the opposite sex) is pretty high. Like many of the women around me, the Cane Corso owner is wearing a tweed suit. As I’ve learned from many handlers over the course of two days, those suits speak to the prestige, perfectionism, and traditionalism of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. It matters if the bitch is fit because that’s the name of the game. Sure, many of these dogs are born perfect; high-level breeders can often tell from puppyhood if a dog has potential to become show ready. They have to be champions just to get to Westminster. But in order to stand out here, at the “Super Bowl of Dog Shows,” the dogs need every edge they can get: a freshly cleaned coat that is maintained every few minutes, flawless posture, and, yes, a handler that has strategized their outfit around the canine they’ll be presenting.

The Washington Post is being gutted. Jeff Bezos, one of the handful of wealthiest people on the planet, is through pretending to be a conscientious steward of the 150-year-old newspaper, and is now radically remaking it into what could only seem appropriate to a profoundly incurious and patriarchal investor freak. The Post is wiping out its Books section, functionally euthanizing a once-proud and robust Sports section, downsizing dramatically its international operation, and restructuring an already neglected and starved Metro section, amid deep and disfiguring cuts to the paper's editorial staff. A Post worker who was laid off Wednesday told Defector the paper is cutting more than 300 people from its newsroom. The cuts extend beyond editorial: In all, a whopping third of Post staffers are being shoved out onto the street. For all of his grandstanding horseshit, Bezos has pretty quickly lost interest in operating a publication that might ever, even by accident, express or defend or otherwise illuminate ideas that oppose his own. Less than a year ago, he abruptly remade the Post's Opinion section, narrowing its focus to the defense of personal liberties and of free markets, and refusing to allow "viewpoints opposing those pillars" to appear henceforth inside his newspaper. Anyone with the brain cells necessary to produce a thought more nuanced than goo-goo-ga-ga considered this devastating to the paper's credibility, there being, after all, plenty of room for considered critiques of libertarianism and capitalism. But the more painful blow to the Post's business, in terms of lost subscription revenue, came months earlier, in October 2024, when the Post broke with tradition and declined to endorse a candidate in that year's presidential election. Though this was defended by CEO William Lewis, hysterically, as "character and courage in service to the American ethic," the Post itself reported that a planned and drafted endorsement of Kamala Harris was axed by Bezos himself. That decision led to 250,000 cancelled subscriptions. These could be thought of as failed business decisions. But considering these maneuvers, including today's, as matters of business—even for the fleeting shit-hearted thrill of depositing them on Bezos's doorstep like a flaming bag of turds—extends to Bezos the misguided presumption that he is operating in anything like good faith. He did not buy the Post to make money. He does not need money; he was already so overwhelmed with surplus wealth back in 2018, a full five years after he purchased the Post, that he could no longer imagine ways of spending it on this planet. In April, Bezos spent more money than you will earn in your lifetime to send his girlfriend on an 11-minute thrill ride. The Post, once a vital journalistic institution, is simply a thing he owns, and even after having steadily warped it beyond recognition, it continues to behave in ways that do not suit his interests. Because he is a centibillionaire and thus accountable to not one single person or entity on Earth, he gets to divert institutions for the pursuit of his own interests, even to the extent of utter destruction.

MELBOURNE — “I just want him to be a pure tennis boy,” the journalist behind me said to their neighbor as we waited for Carlos Alcaraz to come to the main interview room. They were saying how they hoped well-paying exhibitions wouldn’t distract the world No. 1 from his main job, his ATP Tour gig. Alcaraz had just arrived from South Korea, where he’d played a hit-and-giggle with Jannik Sinner that paid out at $2 million, and he’d gone to Saudi Arabia for the lucrative Six Kings Slam in 2024 and 2025, but I took the point. Alcaraz is such a smiley champion that it’s more fun to think of him grinning on the practice court than cashing large checks in petrostates. He lacked his usual happiness when he walked into the room, though, wearing an oversized Nike baseball shirt and a cap pulled over his eyes. He’d abruptly split with longtime coach Juan Carlos Ferrero the previous month, after the best season of his career so far. Ferrero had given his side of the story, and various reports had blamed friction between Alcaraz’s family and coach, or Ferrero’s desire to travel less, but we were yet to hear from Alcaraz beyond an Instagram post. Why had a seemingly summery partnership met its end? It was time to find out. I tried to make my question as blunt as possible, inevitably clumsy phrasing notwithstanding: “There's been a lot of reporting about what happened with Juan Carlos. I think a lot of people are still kind of confused about what happened. I would love to ask you: What happened?” He ducked the question, saying the split was a mutual internal decision—the many interviews Ferrero has done in the past month were much more specific—and that they still had a good relationship. He didn’t expand much in other answers. A representative soundbite: “As I said, I have the same team that I had last year. Just one member missing.”

As the parent of a toddler, my TV watching habits have lately tended more toward Peppa Pig and Ms. Rachel than Heated Rivalry or The Pitt. I would like to keep abreast of whatever the internet is buzzing about, but when my child finally gets to sleep at the end of the day, I am a shell of a middle-aged human who is only able to muster the attention span necessary to fall into an old familiar comfort watch. (Lately that’s Law & Order, though it does more watching me than I do it.) Still, I always make room for The Traitors. I agree with Kelsey McKinney, who once declared it the best show on television, and I would further argue that this current season, Season 4, is the best yet. Not because the cast is better—though I was absolutely thrilled to see the inclusion of two of my all-time favorite Real Housewives, Candiace Dillard Bassett of Potomac, and Lisa fucking Rinna of Beverly Hills—or because they’ve improved the gameplay, or because Alan Cumming continues to dig deeper into the bit as a combination of campy philosopher and dominatrix. It’s because this season has delivered one of the greatest moments in TV history: the public humiliation of Michael Rapaport. When last year's initial casting announcement included Rapaport, I wasn’t sure I would want to tune in. The one-time actor, now full-time piece of shit, has spent the past several years being a loud and proud racist in defense of Zionism, justifying the Israeli government's genocidal campaign that has forced millions of Palestinians into starvation, violated so-called “ceasefire” agreements, and killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. Wherever there has been defense of Palestinian life, whether on the Columbia University campus or the site formerly known as Twitter, you could be certain that Rapaport would show up to ensure there was someone present to give a full-throated defense of the slaughter. He’s posted numerous videos of himself online, becoming a Zionist influencer of sorts, espousing his views, sometimes with colorful titles such as “The Erotic Sick Dream of a Free Palestine whatever the fook that means ain’t happening ever.” He appeared in a video shared by the militant pro-Israel group Betar US, which last month agreed to halt operations in New York after the state Attorney General’s office determined that their ongoing harassment constituted a civil rights violation. In that video, Rapaport praised convicted terrorist Meir Kahane, saying, “Kahane was always right.” In recent months, you could find Rapaport disparaging vocal critics of Israel, like when he called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “shit stain,” or made light of Rep. Ilhan Omar after she was attacked at a town hall meeting. 

James Harden, who demanded a trade from the Houston Rockets in 2021, the Brooklyn Nets in 2022, and the Philadelphia 76ers in 2023, has demanded a trade from the Los Angeles Clippers. The language is more couched than that—per Shams Charania's latest runic dispatch, "Both sides are aligned in conversations together and with interested teams"—though as always, any such reporting will take the form of what an agent demands, and also, the Clippers have no other reason to suddenly start shopping their 36-year-old point guard around. Harden has two plausible reasons to try to get out before Thursday's trade deadline, neither of which have anything to do with wanting to win a championship. Even among recent, strange Clippers seasons, this has been a particularly weird one. The story of the NBA offseason was owner Steve Ballmer's alleged under-the-table payments to Kawhi Leonard via a baroque greenwashing scam, an issue that is still not resolved and which obviously hangs over the franchise's head. The team retooled its bench around a bunch of old guys, all of whom started the season playing clunky, slow basketball. Their beloved coach Ty Lue got into a huge fight with would-be retirement tour participant Chris Paul that ended with Paul being publicly called a nuisance and sent packing. The Clippers were 6-21, in position to send the Thunder a generational player, when a guy tweeted about eating some paper and inadvertently turned the team around. Leonard has maybe been the best player in basketball for a month. The Clippers have gone 17-5 in their last 22 games and even re-signed GM Lawrence Frank, which is certainly, uh, notable given his involvement in signing Leonard to the deal currently under mega investigation. As the bottom of the Western Conference has fallen out, they are all but certain to at least qualify for the play-in.

Like its more tangible products, Fanatics' apologies are shoddy and practically worthless, yet Michael Rubin's sports apparel company keeps issuing them anyway. In this latest instance, Fanatics is sorry for its shitty Super Bowl merch that is definitely not worth the listed price. Here's the company's statement, posted Monday night: NFL fans, we've seen your jersey feedback, and we take it very seriously. We’ve let Patriots and Seahawks fans down with product availability – we own that and we are sorry. This Super Bowl matchup has created unprecedented challenges for us because of the massive surge in demand we saw from Patriots and Seahawks fans. Both teams went from missing the playoffs last season to being in the Super Bowl, an incredibly rare occurrence that led to these two fanbases buying nearly 400% more jerseys since Thanksgiving vs. last year. Even though we ordered substantially more jerseys for these teams than ever before, we’ve struggled to meet the overwhelming demand to keep team color jerseys in stock, which we know is your expectation. As sports fans, we understand your frustration and we will work tirelessly to be better. We are bringing in more team color jerseys daily and offering alternative options in the meantime. We’ve heard questions about the quality of these alternate jerseys and can assure you that, despite some unflattering photos, these jerseys are identical to the standard Nike replica “Game” jersey – one of the highest consumer-rated items we carry built on the core template that has been unchanged since Nike took over NFL jerseys in 2012. That said, if you’ve ordered any product that you’re not fully satisfied with, including one of these alternate jerseys, it can always be returned free of charge via the Fanatics app – part of our long-standing return policy. Fans who purchased online via NFL Shop or the Patriots/Seahawks team stores can do the same. We want you to know that we’re listening and we’re ready with a deep assortment of jerseys and fan gear for whoever wins on Sunday. There is nothing better than serving passionate sports fans and we value your feedback above all.