‘The menu’s other highlights smack of the surreal’

‘Can Jollibee beat American fast food at its own game?’

Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic

Jollibee is “often described as the McDonald’s of the Philippines, but that doesn’t do the chain justice,” says Yasmin Tayag. It “now has about 80 locations across the United States,” and the “warm reception from the ‘mainstream’ — company parlance for non-Filipino Americans — has emboldened Jollibee to ramp up its expansion.” But Jollibee “doesn’t have to topple the fast-food giants, or re-create an era when fast food was a little more fun, to play a part in reshaping the American palate.”

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‘Never be honest in Hollywood — even if you’re Quentin Tarantino’

Dave Schilling at The Guardian

When “someone is brutally forthcoming with their true feelings about something or someone in Hollywood, it’s absolutely jarring,” says Dave Schilling. Quentin Tarantino has been “piercing the veil of Hollywood decorum for decades now, but it seems that he finally picked the wrong target” in Paul Dano. What “all of this makes clear is that no one is successful enough to be honest, and that you can be an acclaimed filmmaker and still be completely wrong about art.”

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‘In Trump’s regime, Catholics are among the most powerful — and deported’

Gustavo Arellano at the Los Angeles Times

This year “will go down as one of the best and worst years ever to be a Catholic in the United States,” says Gustavo Arellano. Catholics are in “positions of power in this country like never before.” But “people with a special devotion to Guadalupe, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino — can’t even venerate her in peace this year because of Trump.” That’s the “sad irony of seeing Catholicism have such a prominent role in Trump’s second term.”

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‘The Brits can’t seem to move on from Brexit’

Iain Macwhirter at The American Conservative

It “will soon be 10 years since the referendum on British membership of the European Union,” but “Brits just can’t seem to let Brexit go,” says Iain Macwhirter. Why is the “British government apparently seeking to revive the intense culture war that followed the original Brexit vote?” The “division over Europe became part of the wider culture war between the pro-immigration liberal U.K. elites in academia, the media and big corporations, and the so-called ‘left-behinds.’”

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