Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Suzy Weiss roasts the new “Avatar” film. Bill Maher explains why he’d rather have Zohran Mamdani for president than Donald Trump. Abigail Shrier offers Tough Love to a mom who doesn’t want her 22-year-old daughter to get married.
But first: a jaw-dropping personal story from Michael J. Fanuele about what it’s like to discover a family you never knew existed.
Some adopted kids long to know their biological parents. My brother Danny was one of them. He once told me he’d never be at peace until he met his “real” mother.
I didn’t have the same hole in my heart. Besides, as someone born in New York in the 1970s, my adoption records were sealed.
But then, in 2019 then-governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that radically loosened the state’s adoption privacy laws, and suddenly, information I never thought I cared about was only an online form away. And after years of looking forwards, I fell backwards—into a rabbit hole of fact and fiction.
Stories about adopted kids finding their birth parents so often end with either heartbreak or pure joy. Mine isn’t one of those stories.—Michael J. Fanuele
Harems Are Back |
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Whatever you do, do not go see the new “Avatar” film. “Watching it was like falling asleep while someone plays a video game next to you,” according to Suzy Weiss. Do not miss her roast of the movie. She also has thoughts about the very rich Chinese businessman who’s paying women in California to have dozens of his babies. (Yes, they get American passports.) | | |
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Tough Love: I Don’t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Married |
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Imagine your ambitious daughter called you up during her senior year at college and told you: “I’m engaged!” Would you be happy for her? Or would you turn to whoever’s sitting next to you and howl: “She’s way too young!” One of our readers, Lisa, definitely falls into the latter category—and she wrote to our advice columnist to ask if she should try to stop the wedding. Abigail Shrier’s reply might surprise you. | | |
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Two Drinks with. . . Bill Maher |
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Bill Maher just got his first Golden Globe nomination—for a comedy special that is all about living in an America where a normal liberal, who believes normal things, can somehow end up feeling somehow radical. Maya Sulkin visited him at home and asked if he was excited for the awards ceremony. Nope. He’s not going. “I'd be very annoyed in that room full of super-woke Hollywood people.” | | |
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Ancient Wisdom: Getting Christmas Right, At Last |
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Christmas isn’t about the presents. You hear that cliché every year, but sometimes it takes a lifetime to really get the message. As a young father, Joe Nocera learned the hard way—but click here, and maybe you’ll avoid his mistakes. | | |
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