News Satire Roundup: July 31st

Sunday, July 31 – The best story of the night was the first, about a series of recent voter ID laws that were struck down.  I was appalled by the blatancy of the North Carolina law, whose makers requested data on voting habits broken down by race and then passed five measures that all disproportionately affected Black people – so gross.  Quick piece on the attempted coup in Turkey, featuring their vacationing Prime Minister FaceTiming news channels to reassure the people.  The main story was on the Democratic convention, and after last week’s look at the RNC, it felt a little aimless.  It hit a lot of the highlights – email leak, Sanders supporters, prominent speeches – but didn’t seem to have an overall message, no important point it was trying to get across.  Not until the very end, when John covered Trump’s bigoted response to the Khans’ speech.  Then, he really let loose and there was nothing thinly-veiled about his contempt.

No Daily Show this week – post-convention(s) breather.  In lieu of having new episodes to discuss, I’d like to highlight another aspect I like about the series.  I really appreciate how, in covering stories related to race, the show doesn’t just cover the “big” issues.  I mean, it does address hard-hitting topics like police shootings, discriminatory laws, and xenophobic claims made by presidential candidates, and it pretty much always knocks these stories out of the park, but it doesn’t stop there.

The show also looks at stories that are less devastating but which still effect the lives of everyday people in real ways.  The fact that Asian men and Black women statistically face the most rejection on dating/hookup apps isn’t something that’s endangering people’s lives or denying their personal liberties, and it’s not something that has an immediate, obvious fix, but it’s still something that happens that disproportionately affects certain people based on their race, and that matters.  It matters when a subset of the Internet loses their minds over a Black man playing one of the leads in Star Wars, and it matters when the media makes Cam Newton’s endzone dances out to be “inappropriate” and sullying the good name of football.  There can be a tendency among some to think that America has essentially “solved” its racism, that the major problems have been dealt with and “we’re all equal now.”  Even if the “big” issues mentioned above didn’t thoroughly demonstrate that that’s not true, these “smaller” stories would still show that the U.S. has a long way to go.

Additionally, commentary on race isn’t confined only to stories on race.  Pointed remarks are often woven into jokes on other topics.  For instance, in discussing a grand jury acquitting Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing, Trevor points out how remarkable this is, per the adage that “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich”; however, he then adds the caveat, “Unless the ham sandwich is a cop,” a clear reference to police shootings.  In bringing up history, the show also regularly reminds us of the racism in the heroes of America’s past.  Whether noting that the Founding Fathers were probably too eager to get back to “slave sex” to craft a better-worded Second Amendment or having the conjured ghost of Thomas Jefferson (brought in to clarify the “natural-born citizen” requirements for presidential candidates) cry out in horror that a “n*****” is hosting The Daily Show, the country’s founders are never let off the hook.