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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 showready. 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-gah-gah 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 Oct. 2024, when the Post broke with tradition and declined to endorse a candidate in the 2024 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.

The multiple annoyances of having The Big'Un in your town do not really become evident until Thursday, and sometimes even as late as Friday. That's when the rubes show up in their cheap Fanatics knockoff jerseys, clogging the airports and highways, swallowing all the restaurant reservations and generally acting like the kind of people you would emigrate to avoid. A peaceful and moderately civilized living experience is suddenly and overwhelmingly overrun by Americans, with all the turbo-ick that implies. This particular Superb Owl being played in Santa Clara doesn't matter, because everyone stays 40 miles away in San Francisco, Home Of The Thousand-Dollar Room Rate. The great failing of San Francisco, contrary to all the fulminating on the topic done by weird rich people and the conservative media that sustains their mental illness, is that everything fashionable and extortionate happens in the equivalent of six square miles, which means that the only ways to get in or out of town are two freeways and two bridges. Moving all those people to Santa Clara and back will be, as Pope Leo said the last time he saw the White Sox in person, "a comprehensive shitshow." But at this point in the week, the Owl still belongs to the NFL's small world—how the Rooney Rule, to help promote the advancement of black coaches, went from being named for Art to being named for Mickey; how Roger Goodell is planning to farm out the 16 18th games to different countries ("You are looking live from high above Ljubljana, Slovenia ... "); and now the return of the high comedy and low tea of the Hall of Fame Conspira-fest. America has not arrived yet. It's still just Football Country out here for the time being. It's a busy country, too. You already know about Bill Belichick, how he didn't get into the Hall Of Fame, and how quickly the voters raced to the internet to violate the deeply held precept of confidentiality. But having learned nothing while wading through the ashes of that hilarity, the Hall has sustained another breach of secrecy with the report that Belichick's former boss and current bête noire, Robert Kraft, also didn't get voted in despite being even more desperate for induction than his noisome former employee. 

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about fake booze, depressing old sex movies, driver’s ed in a Tesla, and more. PROGRAMMING NOTE: Today’s Funbag will be mildly truncated as I and the rest of the Defector staff prepare for Dan McQuade’s memorial later this week. I’ll be back at normal length next week, although I’ll still be quite testy that Dan is no longer with us. Stupid cancer; you’re almost worse than Trump. Your letters:

It was a bonnie morning 410 million years ago in what are now the Rhynie chert fossil beds in Scotland. The mists had begun to lift and swirl over the landscape, where hot springs burbled, lichen papered over rocks, and worms slithered as only worms can. Here, almost all life stayed close to the ground. The second-tallest organism at the time, a plant called Cooksonia, grew to a few centimeters at most. This made Prototaxites, an organism with some species that towered above these landscapes at heights of up to 26 feet, an actual behemoth. Prototaxites was a strange sort of life form. It had no branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, nor a discernable root system. Instead, it resembled a beautiful sausage sprouting from the ground. In this way, Prototaxites was ahead of its time: undeniably phallic in a time long before phalluses existed. The Rhynie Chert 410 million years ago.

Hopefully you have not already heard, but the Charlotte Hornets are one of the hottest teams in the NBA. LaMelo Ball is for once an aptonym, Brandon Miller is playing like Paul George (laudatory) instead of playing like Paul George (derogatory), and Kon Knueppel is going nuts from three. It's all working, for what feels like the first time in a decade. So this week on Nothing But Respect, we invited on Mother Jones editor Jacob Rosenberg, because he's a smart, hilarious person and also a Hornets fan. We of course began with a Dan McQuade tribute, as he is in all of our thoughts this week, and the Sixers just honored him in more ways than one. The three of us planned to talk about way more than the psychic geography of Charlotte and the bizarre, mostly awful history of the Hornets, but Jacob did so much research that the only non-Charlotte thing we got to was itself actually something that took place in Charlotte, as it involved Steph Curry.