News Satire Roundup: November 25th-November 29th

Okay, caught up on last week.  Now, onto this week!

Sunday, November 25 – Excellent episode on current U.S immigration policy.  While a lot of the information here was familiar, it was still sharply incisive and hard-hitting.  Lots of statistics, both on rates of deportations/reductions of the refugee cap and on crime statistics for immigrants, pointing out that, despite Trump’s penchant for talking about “bad hombres,” the main thing that’s gone up under his administration is non-criminal deportations.  I loved the Franco brother-ICE analogy, with the human-traffick-investigating branch of ICE (Dave Franco) wanting to “leave the family” because of how bad the detaining-and-deporting branch (James Franco) was making it look.  Hasan highlighted just how utterly ridiculous the idea of ISIS members hiding in the caravan is (“You have to route through Florida!”), and his summation of the administration’s whole message was great:  “Melanin monsters are coming to kill you.”

Monday, November 26 – Fun opening with some very excited NASA folks, followed by Elon Musk admitting how harsh living on Mars would be – I loved Trevor imagining white people as “slaves” on Martian fields, singing “Sweet Caroline” as a spiritual.  We covered the clash at the border, focusing on the different ways liberal and conservative media framed it:  innocent women and children being tear-gassed versus the military bravely stopping an invading horde of immigrant criminals.  However, I feel like the story missed the migrants rushing the border in part because Trump kept saying he’d refuse to let them seek asylum the legal way.  Next up was the newest climate change report, with Trump’s own government saying time is running out to stop the worst of it (and Trump very much denying that.)  will.i.am was the guest, talking about the Black Eyed Peas’ latest album, getting back to their political roots.

Tuesday, November 27 – I agree that gender-reveal parties have gone too far if they involve explosions (that then cause forest fires!), and Trevor’s vision of the uncertainty involved in funding a state government on Bitcoin was great.  I liked the bit on charity bell-ringers wearing white nationalist insignia, upset that no one was focusing on the good they were doing for the Salvation Army.  Good story on massive layoffs from GM, despite Trump’s repeated campaign promises to the contrary.  Trevor’s remarks on the Emantic Bradford Jr. shooting were really powerful, especially his refrain, “The Second Amendment was not made for Black people.”  We’ve seen so many of these senseless shootings, and he finds new ways to speak about them every time.  I always like Diego Luna, so I enjoyed his interview, talking about Narcos and its story of how drug cartels wove themselves into many aspects of Mexican society/government.

Wednesday, November 28 – First up was Paul Manafort possibly playing both sides, Trump claiming to be too smart for climate science (while insisting that Earth’s water is “at record clean,”) and Ivanka Trump insisting that her use of a private email for government business was totally different than Hillary Clinton’s, while almost using Clinton’s exact wording/explanation.  Fun story on the largest steer in the world, with Trevor pondering why all Australian animals are so weird and laughing at being “too big for the abattoir” as a definite white-people problem to have.  Ronny did a field piece “exposing” a Texas district attorney for being in a “motorcycle gang” (you can tell it’s a gang because they’re mostly Mexican :eyeroll:)  The guest, Al Gore, talked about climate change, naturally.  I liked what he said about Trump becoming the (very ignorant) face of climate denial.

Thursday, November 29 – Opening blurbs:  the last midterm race finally decided, college professors being armed with hockey pucks against shooters (“What’s something Americans care about as little as gun control?  Hockey!”), the new trend of black Christmas trees (with Dulce as a Black Christmas tree,) and an unfortunate girl whose parents named her Abcde.  Really good story on failings at the VA caused by a 50-year-old computer; it was horrible that the VA just wasn’t going to make up the payments until people got up in arms about it.  We also had Michael Cohen singing like a canary and Trump covering every base – “I didn’t do it, but even if I did, it was very legal, plus I didn’t know about it, so…”  The guest was author Lindy West, discussing the “Shout Your Abortion” movement she began to normalize abortion as part of healthcare.  I appreciated her note about how, regardless of official stance, abortion crosses party lines.