The heat is here. It’s been here for months, and, depending on where you live, the next month or two, the weather will be brutally hot. Find a pool, if you can, and, when you’re looking for a playlist that will soundtrack your excursions into the heat (or hopefully to a pool or lake or river), you can always play Summer Cool in the background. Feel-good, light, fun. Enjoy, Pham. Stay cool.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #334

Even Liberals Are Over The Left

Bill Maher said he might vote for JD Vance. Van Jones told his own party to stop pooping in the punch bowl. And Hasan Piker showed up to the College Democrats convention dressed as Mao. The Left has lost its mind and old school liberals are finally speaking out. Bridget breaks down the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party, why there’s no such thing as too far left in America, and why the capitalists funding island bunkers instead of pro-America media are going to regret it. Also: a plea to David Ellison, one hundred million dollars, and a yacht for every pleb.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #391

Why The Right’s Meltdown Over The Odyssey Is Liberal - Art Tavana

Bridget Phetasy sits down with culture critic and journalist Art Tavana — a former Playboy colleague — to talk about why the Right’s meltdown over Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the most Liberal thing they’ve ever done. They dig into how both sides have been completely consumed by the same culture war brain rot, why nobody can actually win this fight, how postmodernism has infected everyone including its own critics, and what it means that we’ve lost the ability to sit down and finish a movie. Plus: The literacy crisis nobody’s talking about, Gen Z’s dead-eyed immunity to outrage, how Playboy blew its last chance at a comeback, and why Christopher Nolan is just Michael Bay in a scarf.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

Rewatching Dirty Dancing As An Adult Was A Mistake

Dirty Dancing was a huge hit when it came out. Everyone remembers the fun and the dancing. It also has a botched back-alley abortion, a 25-year-old male prostitute dancing with a 17-year-old, and a dad who was completely right the whole time. Bridget rewatches the 1987 classic and breaks down why the movie is genuinely insane, why nobody noticed because there was dancing, and why the only reason it became legendary is that the Lift at the end made everyone forget everything else. Nobody remembers the abortion.

DUMPSTER FIRE

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A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

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THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

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Bridget is the Geronimo of American culture.

A full week before the Jonathan Pageau tweet shifted discourse about Christopher Nolan’s rendition of The Odyssey, Bridget devoted an entire episode of Dumpster Fire to the idea that the scandal is more complicated than most of us had assumed. And if you’re going to war with the establishment, you better side with Geronimo.

There’s a certain defiance of the crowd involved in this. Which is not an easy accomplishment, bucking the outrage of a unanimous horde. Throughout human history, this has been a dangerous maneuver, but humanity itself owes its survival to the people willing to say, “No” when the angry mob demands total agreement.

You might even say that this mentality is the animating force of Homer’s Odyssey.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #332

How a “Passion Project” Became My Life

Bridget does an Ask Me Anything giving details on how Dumpster Fire is made, what her actual day looks like, why she threatens to quit every quarter, what prevents her from doing so, and more!

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #399

Coming Back to LA Is Like Going to an AA Meeting

Bridget checks in from Los Angeles — where she’s spending five weeks with family — and the city is not what she remembered. Empty storefronts on 3rd Street, deodorant locked behind glass at Walgreens, stores you have to get buzzed into, and a Hollywood Bowl 4th of July that felt more like a eulogy than a celebration. She and Maggie get into what it actually feels like to come back to a place you loved and see the decline in real time, why Texas feels so different, what a dead Vegas says about the country, and why the right needs to calm down about Christopher Nolan.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #333

Los Angeles Is Still A Dumpster Fire

Bridget’s back in LA and the decline is noticeable. It doesn’t have to be this way, decline is a choice.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

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Bridget checks in from Los Angeles — where she's spending five weeks with family — and the city is not what she remembered. Empty storefronts on 3rd Street, deodorant locked behind glass at Walgreens, stores you have to get buzzed into, and a Hollywood Bowl 4th of July that felt more like a eulogy than a celebration. She and Maggie get into what it actually feels like to come back to a place you loved and see the decline in real time, why Texas feels so different, what a dead Vegas says about the country, and why the right needs to calm down about Christopher Nolan.

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The day after their birthday, kids love to ask, “Do I feel different now that I’m older?” As Americans stumble out of our post-birthday haze, through a wall cloud of fireworks and Blue Angel contrails, this question is what’s waiting for us to catch our breath: Do we feel older, now that our nation is 250? When we were 249, our soccer team still had the gleam of a squad that could win the World Cup. Now we know better. The sting of finding a wall in the American spirit, the shock of realizing that our miraculous power has limitations.

All the summer fanfare served as a much-needed distraction from the midterms. Now we have to reorient ourselves toward the political spectacle of this fall’s elections. The nagging voices that fuel them will only get more plangent. Not that any of this is bad. It’s a feeling. The afterglow of a historic event, a landmark that always seemed so far ahead. Back to ordinary time. And we’re Americans, so we’ll devote the entire year to the celebration of having reached a quarter of a millennium. The weird thing about getting older is that life always remains new.

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As for our soccer team, they did a hell of a job. Even a single moment of excellence is an accomplishment. And they had many. They prayed before and after games and sang “The National Anthem” with their eyes closed and evinced the lovable American eagerness to dream big. And they did it all with dignity and humility. They won our hearts, and that’s more than most Americans expected.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #330

Most American Reaction to Losing the World Cup

The US men’s soccer team got knocked out of the World Cup by Belgium 4-1, and America responded by immediately going back to not caring about soccer. Bridget breaks down the Balogun red card, Trump calling the president of FIFA, and all the reasons why America will truly never care about soccer the way the rest of the world does. Also: two Russians illegally climbed the Empire State Building, got engaged at the top, and got arrested on the way down. She was raised in the circus. Obviously.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #398

Why The Internet Is Already Dead | Kat Rosenfield

Bridget sits down again with novelist and Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield to talk about the rise of death doulas, the death of YA fiction, and how the internet is quietly erasing itself. Kat digs into how YA fiction collapsed into “romantasy” and smut, the dead internet theory and vanishing digital archives - including Bridget’s own lost Playboy articles and Kat’s MTV News work. They also cover the Kennedy Center controversy, why Gen Z treats Trump as their political “factory settings,” why woke isn’t dead, it’s hibernating, and how people are substituting politics for personality now. Kat’s new thriller, How to Survive in the Woods — pitched as “Basic Instinct with bears” — just hit The New York Times summer reading list and is in development at MGM Amazon.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #331

You’re Going To Hate My Odyssey Take

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey hasn’t even come out yet and it’s already the most disliked Hollywood trailer since Snow White. Bridget breaks down the casting controversy, why Elon rage-tweeting about a movie he hasn’t seen is just as annoying as woke casting, and why the script is a downstream effect the collapsing literacy rates of our youth.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

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Stay safe out there, Pham. Don’t lose any limbs or appendages. If you haven’t already, check out Bridget’s Dumpster Fire episode about America 250, the part about toilet paper is humbling and beautiful.

“America” by Walt Whitman

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #328

Supreme Court Detransitions Women’s Sports

Bridget breaks down the Supreme Court Hecox ruling upholding states’ rights to ban biological males from competing in women’s sports — and somehow it took nine justices, two lawsuits, and six months to confirm that girls are girls. Also: Supergirl bombed so hard even the pirates didn’t bother, and Armie Hammer makes a comeback in a role only an aspiring cannibal could pull off.

DUMPSTER FIRE

WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #397

Title

Drinkin’ Bros podcast host Dan Hollaway joins Bridget for an uncensored conversation about all the third rail topics you could ever ask for, from why we should probably just invade Mexico, to how 20 million illegals and BlackRock turned 29-year-old home-buyers into 40-year-old renters, the reality behind the horseshoe theory that brings together “Queers for Palestine” and actual Islamists, and Zohran Mamdani’s “brown guilt.” They explore how pure libertarianism was tried and failed during the founding of the United States, the truth about Trump’s plan to bring manufacturing back to the US, why the Constitution is the best document ever written, his belief that people aren’t stupid - they’re ignorant, why a nation of strong men is a strong nation, and why he only offends people because they’re delicate.

WALK-INS WELCOME

DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #315

Happy 250th Birthday, America!

A new CNN poll says only 29% of Democrats are proud to be American. Bridget Phetasy asked her audience what they love about this country — and got hundreds of responses. The four things that came up most: free speech, the founding documents, guns, and the freedom to build your own life. The people who felt it most weren’t born here. They were immigrants, refugees, and World Cup tourists who showed up expecting the country the media described and found something completely different. This is Dumpster Fire’s love letter to America on its 250th birthday.

DUMPSTER FIRE

THE SPECTATOR

The internet is dying and so are we

There is a lot of proof that the internet is dying. People aren’t burned out of politics, although that’s part of it. They are burned out from going “is this real?” No one has the bandwidth to become an investigative reporter for each post.

THE SPECTATOR

Geriatric Mommy

A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down

Bridget Phetasy

Mar 22

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…

Read full story

THE DAILY WIRE

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.

THE DAILY WIRE

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Beyond Parody with Bridget Phetasy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A recent poll that CNN shared says only 29% of Democrats are proud to be American, but if you step outside of the news cycle and into a World Cup watch party, you’ll see a version of this country that the media has been trying to bury for 30 years.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

I love America. A lot of people do. In fact, I think most normie Americans do, and so do a lot of people around the world. Watching the World Cup footage and posts online has been amazing because so many visitors from other countries have flooded into the United States and have been posting about how blown away they are by what real America is like. Not the America they hear about in the news.

The America that’s been demonized and criticized to death for a solid three decades—at least. Being given the chance to see this country through the eyes of people who have never been here before gives us the ability to appreciate it in a new way.

I got this experience from my first husband. He was straight off the boat from Belarus. For those of you who don’t know, Belarus has been ruled since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko, who is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator.”

One night, we were watching South Park, and it was an episode where they were TP-ing some houses: “Bridget, what is this thing you do in America with toilet paper?”

And I explained that it’s a classic prank where people throw rolls of toilet paper over trees, bushes, and the roof of a house so the paper unrolls and covers everything in long streamers. It’s just a common teenage/housecoming tradition prank, usually harmless and meant to be funny, though the cleanup is annoying for the homeowner. Especially if it rains man, then it’s a nightmare.

And he stared at me. “You mean to tell me while I was standing in line for toilet paper, you were throwing it in trees?”

That line pretty much summed it all up for me, but there were many instances where living with him, I realized I’d been born into extravagant wealth and privilege most people in the world cannot begin to comprehend.

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I also realized that traveling as much as I have traveled, particularly to the developing world. Places like India, where on a bus across the country you shit in a hole in the ground because there are no public restrooms and you witness levels of poverty that are hard to imagine. Or Sri Lanka, which had rolling blackouts constantly and you never knew if you’d have wifi or power or if the country was going to erupt into civil war again. Nothing takes me back to my time in Egypt quite like the smell of burning garbage. True Patriarchies, where I learned to avert my eyes and cover my wrists and thought about how crazy it is in America I can be a mouth broad in booty shorts.

Even coming back from Spain felt like returning to a place that was wealthy beyond measure. This country is a goddamn miracle, and I think that most of the time we just take all of it for granted. But it’s our 250th birthday, and we need to take a moment to find some gratitude for this place.

First, I’d like to thank the men and women who sign up to keep this nation safe and to honor those who came before us, who gave the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, in order that we may live in this imperfect nation. And I do want to take a moment of silence for those who have fallen in the battle they waged abroad or the one they waged silently, when they returned home. You are the real heroes of this nation.

Even before the World Cup started, I’ve watched videos of people documenting their trips to America. A lot of them talked about how they were worried about how unsafe it would be. They were told it was dangerous by the media and by friends, and then they got here and they were like, “Holy shit, this is incredible.”

They love how big it is, how different all the landscapes are, how you can find beaches and mountains and deserts and bayous and farms and charming coastal towns straight out of a tourist brochure. They love the food and the yellow school buses, and the stunning natural beauty and the guns.

They LOVE the guns. Once they get here, they go to a gun range and are like, “I get it. I understand now why Americans love their guns.”

But most of all, they’re blown away by how friendly Americans are. Because we are goddamn friendly. They can’t get over how strangers will just start talking to you in a store or in the middle of the street, and you can wind up in a 15-minute conversation that ends up with an invitation over to their houses for a BBQ.

America takes a lot of shit. From the rest of the world and from its own people.

Do we have our problems? Yes. Is the history of our country a bit dodgy? Absolutely. But name me one country in the world that doesn’t have a dodgy history of its own.

When CNN reported that just 27 percent of Democrats say they’ll display the flag on July 4th and that just 29 percent of Democrats say they’re extremely, or very proud, to be an American, I wanted to know if this was just a vibe or something deeper, so I asked you guys what makes you proud. I asked: What do YOU love about this country? What makes you proud to be American? And if you’re not American — what’s your favorite thing about us?

I got hundreds upon hundreds of responses.

In going through all the responses I got from everyone about why they love America, four main themes emerged as the most popular.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

This was number one by a mile. And what was interesting is the people who felt it most viscerally weren’t the ones who were born here — it was the people who’d spent time somewhere else.

Multiple people said they’d lived in Germany, or been stationed in Europe with the military, and came back genuinely shaken by how little speech protection actually exists over there. We think of Western Europe as these enlightened liberal democracies, and then you realize — oh, you can actually get arrested for a Facebook post in the UK, which we’ve covered on Dumpster Fire.

Freedom of speech is one of the hills I’ll die on. It is our greatest strength as a country, and we have to recognize the sheer brilliance of the founders in understanding that freedom of speech is the cornerstone of a free country.

My favorite response on this: “I get to talk all the shit I want. That seems silly, but it turns out to be vital.” Yes. It IS vital. That’s the whole thing.

THE DOCUMENTS

The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. People LOVE the documents. One person bought their newly-naturalized coworker a copy of the Bill of Rights as a citizenship gift.

As many brilliant thinkers have pointed out, The Constitution does not grant rights. It secures rights that already exist. The Bill of Rights does not list everything a citizen may do. Instead, it prohibits the government from doing certain things to a citizen.

In America, the government doesn’t give you permission to exist; you’re born free, and the rules are there to keep them off your back. That was the opposite of every previous human society.

GUNS

Number three was guns. Of course it was. I asked hundreds of Americans what they love about their country, and the third most popular answer was guns. We are so on brand. I love us.

Here’s what got me though: Multiple non-Americans cited the Second Amendment as something they envied. Including this absolute gem: “I’m a Dutch import now a citizen. I came for the date and stayed for the guns.” And then there was a guy who has never even been to America who wrote: “I’ve always envied two things from you folks: freedom of speech, and the Second Amendment. Without those you’d be like any other country. Fight for those.”

There was even a recent video about this from a British dude talking about how British people are a bunch of pussies now when it comes to protecting their nation, and they’ve been totally pacified through the removal of the right to bear arms.

I’m not saying we should put a Glock on the birthday cake, but maybe just a small one next to the sparklers?

THE FREEDOM TO BUILD YOUR OWN LIFE

This one came in a lot of forms. Self-determination. Opportunity. The ability to fail and try again. Someone wrote, “America is the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Nation.” Someone else wrote: “People come here with nothing and then own stores in my neighborhood. You can start a business, or you can work for one of the big guys. You can decide to slack, or you can put in the effort and become wealthy. It’s truly incredible, and I don’t think it happens in any other country.”

And then there were the responses that didn’t fit neatly into any category but deserved their own moment. Someone wrote: “Being able to crank up Pantera at 3 am and nobody complains. Actually my neighbors will be like, ‘why weren’t we invited.’ Had cops show up and dance with us.”

Someone answered, “It’s where I keep all my stuff.” Fair enough.

Some of the best responses were from immigrants, or the children of immigrants. People for whom the promise of the American dream is a reality, it’s not just something they were born into and take for granted.

Now a lot of you might say, “But Bridget, you were just ranting about immigration.” Here’s my stance on this. It’s pretty much what the common sense stance was until about five minutes ago. I support legal immigration because America has always been strengthened by people who come here legally, work hard, learn English, and embrace our Constitution and culture.

But we've had far too much illegal immigration in recent years, and it has overwhelmed our borders, housing, schools, and hospitals and hurt the quality of life for everyone. Just ask Europe how it’s working out for them, too.

We need secure borders, we have to end catch-and-release, and deport criminals and recent illegal entrants. Assimilation is essential — immigrants should respect our laws and adopt core American values like liberty and self-reliance. Anyone who enters illegally or openly hates America and wants to replace or destroy our way of life has no right to be here. Sharia courts? Get the fuck out of here. Citizenship is a privilege, not a license to undermine the country.

Some of the most poignant replies were from people whose families fled something terrible, usually that something being communism. Because a lot of times, lately, when you ask an American what they love about America, sometimes you get: "Very little lately." But when you ask someone who escaped something — you get a completely different answer

One person wrote: "My favorite thing about America is that it gave my family a place to go after they were killed, their property was stolen, and their freedom was sacrificed to a government ideology called communism." No elaboration needed on that one.

Someone else: "I was married to a Polish man that escaped communism. My family came from Cuba. We had our lands taken. We were jailed. We were killed. So yeah, I celebrate the independence of this country because it became a haven where my family landed." And they ended it with: "I wish people really understood the power of our constitution." Me too, honestly.

A Hungarian student who arrived to study at BU in September 2001 — think about that timing — wrote: "I was taught the lesson which shaped my way of thinking forever: 'Stop saying no, János, start saying yes.' This is the fundamental difference between the old and the new world." He arrived a week before 9/11. And his takeaway was still optimism.

Still: America taught me to say yes. And this is a gift that America gives us all. Dream big. Say yes.

And then there was a Canadian who wrote in to say he watched the September 11th attacks from Calgary. "How you rallied as a people. Strangers helping strangers. As a Canadian, it was inspiring. My heart was filled with hope." He also helpfully described Canada as "the shit parts of America combined with the shit parts of Europe." God bless our neighbors.

The pattern across all of them is the same: the people with something to compare it to love it the most. The people who had to choose it — who earned it, who fled toward it — they know exactly what it is. They're not confused about it.

One guy from a Greek immigrant family put it simply: "I love the fact that we are all from somewhere else, we are all individuals, and yet somehow we actually get things done. Look how much better the world is since the ascent of America."

Look how much better the world is since the ascent of America. I promise you this--you don’t want to live in the world with a fallen America.

Happy Birthday, you beautiful, chaotic, Pantera-at-3am, free-refills-having, cheddar-cheese-loving, nobody-is-coming-to-save-you dumpster fire of a country.

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.