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Patton Oswalt looks happy. Traversing the stage at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his latest Netflix special, I Love Everything, the comedian cant help but burst into a giant grin repeatedly over the course of his set. Even during his complaints about the horrific nature of the healthy breakfast cereals he now makes himself consume in his 50s (Im eating cereal that tastes like an unpopular teenagers poetry), Oswalt is all smiles. It may seem surprising to longtime fans who still recall the royally pissed-off nerd who launched salvo after whip-smart salvo in the culture wars during his early comedy albums like Feelin Kinda Patton or Werewolves And Lollipops. But the man who once raged against the appalling nature of 80s hair metal seems to have made peace with thingswell, except maybe Dennys.

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Patton Oswalt

May 19 on Netflix

Actually, this newfound joy might sound even stranger to those who remember Oswalts fiercely cathartic set addressing the 2016 death of his wife, writer and journalist Michelle McNamara, as detailed in his most recent stand-up special, 2017s Annihilation. Since then, he has remarried, and rediscovered the joy of everyday living. After acknowledging that he had initially assumed he would just exist after McNamaras death, he urges the audiencein the most earnest and emotional moment of I Love Everythingto seek out the best reason for living: If you find love, run toward it. And all of the jokes that surround that exhortation are suffused with that sense of uplift. Does it sap some of the vicious bite from his wit? Undeniably so. But it also makes it awfully hard not to like spending an hour with the comic; hes gone from being the antisocial malcontent holding hilarious court at the end of the bar to the funny friend who makes you feel better just by being around. Its a fair trade.

I Love Everything, for all its easygoing charm, is still instantly recognizable as the work of Oswalts free-associative comedic persona. Whether riffing on how the blandly organic makers of his aforementioned breakfast must have begun (Sorghum Farms was born outside a Phish concert in 1990) or inventing lengthy backstories for the tragic-looking characters on the kids menu at Dennys, his penchant for following narrative curlicues down absurdist rabbit holes remains undimmed. But where the punchlines used to live in the outrage that seemed to continually simmer below the surface of every acid observation he made, now Oswalts humor is laced with a relatable world-weariness that comes from having been through the wringer, coming out the other side, and being confronted the fact that maybe its not worth getting so pissed off about the little things, no matter how irritating. This is comedy borne of fascination, not rage.

Thats not to say some things dont still make him mad. But Oswalt largely passes by the Trump-shaped elephant in every room, pointing out the nigh-futility of joking about this administration by comparing it to an eighteen-wheeler full of monkeys and PCP that crashed into a train full of diarrhea. And everybodys watching it, like, Holy shit, look at this! And then you as a comedian walk up and say, Hey, wanna hear a joke I wrote about this? Instead, he saves his ire for things like having to miss the Hollywood premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story, complete with a life-size recreation of the Millennium Falcon you could wander around in, because he had to attend his daughters second grade art show. Though even this gets shrugged off with the subsequent realization that his younger self would be fine with this trade-off, given it means he will have sex at some point in the future.

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Oswalt ends it all with an epic thought experiment about the time he took his daughter to Dennys as part of a Daddy-Daughter Day, a closing bit that demonstrates the comedian fusing together all the things he does bestunexpected wordplay, imaginative flights of referential fancy, and cutting assessments of humdrum corporate actions that might just be far more sinister than they appear. Its funny, smart, and imaginative in all the right ways, with a generosity of spirit underlying the cutting nature of the humor. (That generosity extends to his fellow comedian Bob Rubin: Oswalt has attached the stand-ups set to play right after his.) Patton Oswalt is changing into a different, more empathetic type of comedian, but for those willing to follow along on his new path, there are ample rewards.

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Happiness looks good on Patton Oswalt in the charming and wry I Love Everything - The A.V. Club

Jes Macallan, Caity LotzPhoto: Jeff Weddel (The CW)

Heres whats happening in the world of television for Tuesday, May 19. All times are Eastern.

DCs Legends Of Tomorrow(The CW, 9 p.m.): Its an inevitability in a time-travel story: Eventually, your heroes will find themselves in an apocalypse. So here are the Legends Of Tomorrow, stranded in the U.K. and surrounded by zombies.

Look for Allison Shoemakers recap of the fittingly titled I Am Legends tonightan episode that seems likely to continue the shows hot streak.

Can you binge it? The first four seasons await you on Netflixand when you reach the crossover episode each season, you may want to zip over to the other Arrowverse shows for context.

Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., comedy special premiere): Patton Oswalt looks happy. Traversing the stage at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his latest Netflix special, I Love Everything, the comedian cant help but burst into a giant grin repeatedly over the course of his set. Even during his complaints about the horrific nature of the healthy breakfast cereals he now makes himself consume in his 50s (Im eating cereal that tastes like an unpopular teenagers poetry), Oswalt is all smiles. It may seem surprising to longtime fans who still recall the royally pissed-off nerd who launched salvo after whip-smart salvo in the culture wars during his early comedy albums like Feelin Kinda Patton or Werewolves And Lollipops. But the man who once raged against the appalling nature of 80s hair metal seems to have made peace with thingswell, except maybe Dennys. Look for the rest of Alex McLevys review on the site today.

The Flash reunion (Stars In The House via YouTube, 8 p.m.):The Flash wrapped up its season just last week, but if youre already pining for Grant Gustin and company, todays your lucky day. Gustin will be joined by fellow cast member Jesse L. Martin, Danielle Panabaker, Candice Patton, Tom Cavanagh, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Nicolet, and Hartley Sawyer, and like all streams from SITH, the event will raise money for The Actors Fund.

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After the Dance with Stephen A. Smith: A SportsCenter Special and The Story Of Soaps (ABC, 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.): Tonight, ABC airs a pair of non-fiction specials intent on shedding light on other TV events and entertainments. First, ESPNs Stephen A. Smith tries to wring just a little bit more out of The Last Dance with this wrap-up special, which will feature a discussion with Magic Johnson and more surprise NBA legends.

Thats followed by The Story Of Soaps, a documentary special chronicling the evolution of the soap opera. (Yes, Susan Lucci will appear.)

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The Legends Of Tomorrow get stranded during an apocalypse, naturally - The A.V. Club

The exchange was tense between the customer and Jesse, a Trader Joes employee sporting a white face mask and a flowery Hawaiian shirt.

Why arent you wearing the mask? Jesse asked the customer on a recent day at a store in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. I am not here to question what you believe in. These are the rules. I am just asking you kindly to wear the mask.

The customer, Genevieve Peters, who was recording the entire exchange, refused. We are in America here, she said, land of the free. Then she turned her camera on other shoppers, who were less than amused: Look at all of these sheep that are here, all wearing this mask that is actually dangerous for them.

Jesse, identified only by his first name in the video, telephoned police, who did not arrive. Finally, when Peters left the store, others customers burst into applause.

As more parts of the country reopen businesses, many retail workers have reluctantly turned into de facto enforcers of public health guidelines, confronting customers who refuse to wear masks or to maintain a wide distance from others. The risk of a violent reaction now hangs over jobs already fraught with health perils.

A Target employee in Van Nuys, California, ended up with a broken left arm after helping to remove two customers who refused to wear masks.

A cashier told a man refusing to wear a mask that he could not buy a pack of cigars at a convenience store in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. He punched her three times in the face.

In San Antonio, a man who was told he could not board a public bus without a mask shot a passenger, police said. The victim was hospitalized, and the gunman was arrested.

And in a confrontation that turned deadly, the security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, Michigan, was shot and killed after insisting that a customer put on a mask.

Meegan Holland, spokeswoman for the Michigan Retailers Association, said stores were caught in the middle. People can get belligerent when being asked to do something that they do not want to do, she said.

Masks have been recommended by public health officials as a key way to diminish the spread of the coronavirus, with at least a dozen states requiring them and many others issuing a hodgepodge of county or municipal orders.

They have also turned into a flashpoint in the countrys culture wars, with some defending their right to not wear one.

We have individual rights; we dont have community rights, said Peters, 56, the customer at the Trader Joes store, in an interview this week.

Public health experts said this argument was misguided.

I never had a right to do something that could injure the health of my neighbors, said Wendy Parmet, director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University.

Mask opponents generally overlook the fact that such regulations are meant to protect other people, not the person wearing the mask, she added.

Americans are navigating a patchwork of conflicting national and local guidance on masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, initially downplayed the efficacy of masks but now recommends them.

And they have become a ready symbol for those dubious about giving government officials wide powers for an extended period.

Retailers find the confrontations over masks a minefield.

It is a very hot-button issue, said Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokeswoman for Trader Joes. The company declined to allow Jesse, the employee involved in the confrontation, to be interviewed.

We do not want to put our crew members in the position to have to enforce something like that, she said, noting that customers overwhelmingly wear masks.

In all its 505 stores, Trader Joes has put up signs recommending that customers wear masks, not least to protect its employees, Friend-Daniel said.

Refusing is not grounds alone for being ejected from a store, she said, even where wearing masks in public is the law, but creating a disturbance that bothers other customers is.

Target, in places where masks are the law, has stationed security employees outside its stores to remind customers to wear them, said Jake Anderson, a spokesman.

Stores are not the only businesses involved. Uber announced that starting Monday, drivers and riders must wear masks, and those who refuse can be kicked off the platform.

Smaller retailers feel especially vulnerable to balancing the need for safety and the need to revive their bottom line.

In Charleston, South Carolina, at M. Dumas & Sons, a 103-year-old mens clothing store, employees wear masks in line with a city requirement while customers are offered them at the front door.

Gary Flynn, the owner, estimated that 50% of his customers would walk away if required to wear a mask.

I want whatever I can get right now, he said, with business inching up but still only 25% of what it was a year ago.

He acknowledged that his workers were putting themselves in harms way to generate sales. So its a slippery slope, and its a moral challenge every day to try to figure out whats the right thing to do, he said.

Farther up King Street, Las Olas Swimwear boutique was doing brisk business in bathing suits, for beach-starved customers, as well as face masks. The store has sold more than 500 masks produced by a New York swimwear supplier.

Daniel James, the owner, stated unequivocally that he would fire any employee not wearing a face mask but said masks were voluntary for customers.

In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made masks mandatory in late April and allowed stores to bar customers who refused. But she did not criminalize such refusals, so police have only intervened when confrontations turned violent.

In Illinois, Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, compiled a list of episodes that took place in the first 48 hours after masks became mandatory May 1.

One customer threatened to get a gun from his car to shoot the worker insisting that he wear a mask. Several employees were hit, while others were verbally abused. Sometimes customers fought each other. The list has only grown longer.

Some police departments refused to respond when stores asked for help, Karr said, while various retailers were fined $750 for not enforcing the ban.

In Warwick, Rhode Island, a police union initially announced on its Facebook page that it would not enforce Gov. Gina Raimondos mandatory mask order, calling it overreaching and bound to destroy the bridge of trust built with the community. The police chief then issued a statement saying the department would act.

Lawrence Gostin, the Georgetown University professor who wrote the draft public health law adopted by many states, suggested that in the absence of national guidelines, retailers should develop one policy for all their stores and stick with it, whether it has the backing of state law or not; that way the rules would be clear for all customers.

Some experts also suggested it was overkill to involve police in the general enforcement of public health measures.

The issue should be treated like wearing seat belts or not smoking in public, which eventually became habits, Parmet suggested, but such consensus must develop much more quickly given the danger from COVID-19.

In Hawaii, that consensus is emerging because neighbors are confronting anti-maskers themselves, said Tina Yamaki, president of the Retail Merchants of Hawaii.

It is the other customers in the stores that are shaming them to put it back on or commenting, she said.

Yamaki compared the mask dilemma to trying to ensure that a young child keeps wearing a hat: One minute it is on, and the next minute, after you look away, it disappears.

We cannot be policing that all the time, she said of the masks. We are not that type of law enforcement.

Correction:An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of a woman who was part of a tense exchange in a Trader Joes store. She isGenevieve Peters, not Powers.

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Whos enforcing mask rules? Often retail workers, and theyre getting hurt. - Boston.com

TikTok has seen its Play Store rating plummet to two stars as a flurry of low reviews landed over the past 24 hours. Despite reviews citing issues with the apps algorithm and content, the real reason for the poor rating is linked to culture wars, fanboys and disturbing viral videos. Settle in, because the story of TikToks sudden fall from grace isnt a short one.

Theres an ongoing battle between TikTok and YouTube in India, which allegedly started when influencer Amir Siddiqui posted a video on TikTok saying that the platform was was better than YouTube. Amir has since deleted the video, but it sparked a war between the platforms fans, which eventually resulted in a YouTube influencer putting out a roast in response.

Related: TikTok scoops up the man behind Disney Plus

Enter the ring: CarryMinati. On May 8, Carry published a video called YouTube vs TikTok: The End that royally took the mick out of Amir Siddiqi. It was wildly popular, becoming the most-liked video in India, but the platform pulled it down.

Its not clear why YouTube decided that the video violated its community rules, but the most popular theory is that the video constituted cyber-bullying and harassment. Republic World has also reported that the video contained homophobic slurs, so it could have also been pulled for this reason.

Either way, it wasnt a popular move among Carrys fans. Their response? Take out a bit of their anger on the TikTok app rating. The app was already suffering because of the ongoing culture war between the platforms, but now Carrys fans started to increase their attempts to get the TikTok rating down.

But the controversy doesnt end there. Another influencer has also has a role to play in this debacle: Faizal Siddiqui.

Recognised that name? Faizal is the brother of Amir, who (arguably) started the war between YouTube and TikTok. Faizal is pretty popular in his own right on TikTok or at least he was until he posted a recent controversial video on the platform.

Related: How to delete a TikTok account

That video shows Faizal pretending to confront a woman who has betrayed him. He throws a glass of clear liquid at the woman, whose face is then shown behind a splattering of make-up that looks a lot like acid scars.

Theres been a huge backlash against this, and public figures have condemned the video, saying it glorifies acid attacks. TikTok reacted by banning Faizal from the platform, stating that he had violated multiple community guidelines.

But the online community in India still werent satisfied, citing previous examples of poor taste videos that had been posted on the app. This is where the latest flurry of bad reviews comes in, with multiple citizens leaving bad reviews and encouraging others to do so.

We wont know how this affects user figures for a while, as negative reviews dont reflect these statistics. And its not clear if the sudden influx of poor reviews is directly related to the tasteless video, or if CarryMinati loyalists have co-opted the movement.

What is clear is that India has grown a sudden distaste for the platform and the shine has certainly been taken off TikTok because of this latest storm. Weve reached out to the company for comment and will update this piece with the response.

Senior staff writer

Ruth started her career at Metro newspaper, working as a staff writer for the features section. After a brief stint working on a new channel for VICE UK, she joined the Trusted Reviews team in 2019 as

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A TikTok backlash in India has ruined the apps rating - TrustedReviews

Many of the cultural skirmishes Mr. Hunter started writing about in the 1990s remain at the center of politics, including abortion, campus speech codes, multiculturalism, and religions place in public life. And as he warned they might, the disputes have grown more vituperativethrough Clinton hatred, through Bush hatred, through Obama hatred and through every Supreme Court opening.

Thats because culture is not a marginal concern, as many educated people profess to believeeven as they often espouse their own dogmatic cultural positions. Rather, culture is about systems of meaning that help make sense of the world, Mr. Hunter says, why things are good, true and beautiful, or why things are not. Why things are right and wrong. Culture provides the moral foundation of a political order.

Amen to that. When people complain about the culture wars as a phony conflict ginned up by their opponents, it almost always means that they wish their opponents would just shut up and agree with them. Liberal Thomas Franks book Whats The Matter With Kansas? wondered why it was that ordinary Kansans voted for Republicans and against their perceived economic interest. His thesis was that they were being baited by fake culture war issues. This is only true if you believe that economics ought to matter more than culture, and/or if you believe that there are no good-faith reasons to hold conservative views on culture war issues. Frankly, whether they are on the left or the right, I admire someone whose cultural values matter more to them than material advantage.

In this interview, Hunter says that conservatives may have a culture war advantage in government, but have badly lost elsewhere. To use a Marxist term, liberals control the major means of cultural production (the news and entertainment industries, the academy, etc.).

Because liberals control the credentialing institutions of our society, he says, those who want to get to a middle or upper middle class life are going to have to kowtow to liberal culture a culture that likes to think of itself as open, but which is as closed as any other. Hunter:So the Harvard Law School prides itself on its diversity, but its a diversity in which basically everyone views the world the exact same way.

Heres the key insight: Hunter believes that the total dominance progressives have in the culture-making institutions of our society means that their vision is going to win in the long run. One last bit from the Journal piece:

Yet he doubts that reason and science are any better suited than fundamentalist religion to provide a stable basis for morality, even if the West continues to secularize. One challenge of the Enlightenment he says, is that reason gave us the power to doubt and to question everything, including reason itself. That throws us back upon our own subjectivity. ... You have your truth, I have mine.

This is important for a couple of reasons.

First, the victory of progressives in the culture war will not bring peace, because it cannot bring peace. Religious and moral conservatives may well be sidelined in defeat, but that only means that the culture war will rage on other fronts. As Hunter avers, there is no way to settle these issues absent a shared source of cultural authority. Dont forget Ross Douthats warning: if you dont like the Religious Right, wait until you see the Post-Religious Right.

Second, its important that conservatives understand that because politics is downstream from culture, we are going to lose in politics, eventually. You only have to look at the polls on what Millennials believe and dont believe to see that. And if orthodox Christian beliefs are a barrier to full participation in the middle and upper middle class, then a lot of people are going to cast them aside.

We conservative Christians ought to be preparing ourselves and our children for this eventuality. When being a Christian costs us something in terms of social access, professional success, and economic prosperity, then we are going to see far fewer Christians. If there are far fewer Christians, the plausibility of the Christian faith is going to be much less. This is going to have a substantial impact on the ability of Christian parents to pass the faith along to their children. Whether we consciously retreat from the public square or not, we are going to be moved out.

And we are going to be moved out because a lot of the younger generation of Christians is going to be doing the pushing. As Daniel Cox pointed out:

Nearly half (48 percent) of white evangelical Protestants under 30 say that their church should adjust traditional beliefs and practices or adopt modern beliefs and practices.

As for young Catholics, huge numbers of them are leaving the church entirely, and those who remain disagree with their church strongly on issues where church teaching conflicts with the Sexual Revolution.

This is the world we are in now, and the world shortly to come, as I argue in The Benedict Option. A lot of Christians living inside Christian bubbles dont want to see it. Heres an extreme, but popular, example. Recently I became aware of the Trump prophecy, something that a Florida firefighter said God told him in 2011. Theres a feature film about it coming out this fall, produced in part with Liberty University. Below is the alleged prophecy:

Full Text of Mark Taylors April 28,2011Trump Prophecy:

The Spirit of God says Ive chosen this man Donald Trump for such a time as this. For as Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel, so shall this man be to the United States of America, for I will use this man to bring honor, respect and restoration to America. America will be respected once again as the most powerful, prosperous nation on Earth other than Israel. The dollar will be the strongest it has ever been in the history of the United States and will once again be the currency by which all others are judged. The Spirit of God says the enemy will quake and shake, and fear this man I have anointed. They will even quake and shake when he announces he is running for President. It will be like the shot heard across the world. Then you will say what shall we do now? This man knows all our tricks and schemes. Weve been robbing America for decades. What should we do to stop this? The Spirit says, ha, no one shall stop this that I have started, for the enemy has stolen from America for decades and it stops now. For I will use this man to reap the harvest that the United States has sown for and plunder from the enemy what he has stolen, and return it back sevenfold to the United States. The enemy will say, Israel, Israel, what about Israel? Israel will be protected by America once again. The Spirit says yes, America will once again stand hand in hand with Israel and the two shall be as one, for the ties between Israel and America will be stronger than ever and Israel will flourish like never before. The Spirit of God says I will protect America and Israel, for this next President will be a man of his word. When he speaks the world will listen and know that there is something greater in him than all the others before him. This mans word is his bond and the world and America will know this, and the enemy will fear this, for this man will be fearless. The Spirit says when the financial harvest begins so shall the parallel in the spiritual for America. The Spirit of God says in this next election they will spend billions to keep this president out. It will be like money down the toilet. Let them waste their money, for where it comes from is being used by evil forces at work, but they will not succeed. This next election will be a clean sweep for the man that I have chosen. They will say things about this man, the enemy, but it will not affect him and they will say it rolls off of him like a duck. For even as the feathers of a duck protect it, so shall my feathers protect this next president. Even mainstream news media will be captivated by this man and the abilities that I gift to him and they will even begin to agree with him, says the Spirit.

The self-deceiving triumphalist fantasy here Donald Trump as secular savior and sower of the seeds of Christian revival is gobsmacking. That so many Christians are eager to believe this is a sign of how desperate our position has become. According to this prophecy, having voted for Trump, America will be great again, rich again, powerful again, and will experience a spiritual revival.

It is easier for a lot of Christians to believe this Big Rock Candy #MAGA nonsense, this dream of restoration, than it is to prepare themselves and their children for the realities of life in exile.

James Davison Hunter published a book back in 2010, To Change The World, in which he considers how Christians can live faithfully in a post-Christian world. The book was quite good in its diagnosis of the problem, but failed to provide any clear prescription. This is understandable; its very hard to figure out how to do this. The point is, though, that we had better get serious, real fast, about trying.

UPDATE: Reader Michael GC:

I came across this quote from James Davison Hunter the other day in an article discussing the ramifications of the pending Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision, and found it so notable that I saved it:

The capacity of a social group or movement to make its particular preferences and practices seem natural is the key to its control; these particularities become standard throughout society while shrouded in a cloak of neutrality.

The key to its control. The standard of marriage is now such that two men wanting a wedding cake is so natural that why would anyone in their right mind even pause to think twice about it? Just make the cake and shut up! Whats wrong with you anyway?

For us donkeys on this Animal Farm who are stubborn about relinquishing their memories to fall for the favored lie of the moment, time for decision will be upon us. Do we say what we know and lose status or play along for our livelihood and our childrens well-being? There is another option, the Benedict one. It has to be; otherwise, even when we win, well lose. Consider the Boy Scouts of America (now just Scouts, BSA). They won their case legally but surrendered to the culture, regardless.

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Culture Wars: Where Are We Now? | The American Conservative