"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, August 24, 2019

News Satire Roundup: August 18th-August 22nd


Sunday, August 18 – Good story on efforts (particularly by the Koch brothers) to undermine public transit. I’d already known about how the automotive industry – along with various related industries like oil – works to make public transit as inconvenient and inaccessible as possible to keep more people in cars, but the specifics Hasan went into were major supervillain crap. As we’ve seen before, the Koch brothers lobby against local funding for public transit using fake “grassroots organizers” to sway public opinion, and I liked how Hasan went into the fact that this is also a race and class issue. When highways are funded at the expense of bus and train lines (one road project in Milwaukee cost as much as funding the city’s public transit for fifteen years, that’s wild,) mostly middle- and upper-class (majority white) drivers benefit, while mostly low-income (majority black and brown) public transit users are left without options.


Sunday, August 18 – After a quick bit about Trump wanting to buy Greenland (because of course he does,) John looked at the protests in Hong Kong. The white guy at the airport telling the pro-democracy protesters they were being selfish for blocking his gate was a whole thing, as was Trump’s lamentably-clueless response to questions about the situation there. Really good main story on bias in medicine, focusing on women and people of color. The misinformation about people’s bodies in the medical field was appalling (a study about preventing uterine cancer tested only on male subjects? 10% of residents believe Black people have less sensitive nerve endings than white people?), and the disproportionate deaths between genders and races was just awful. Great ending with Wanda Sykes coming out to talk solutions (including “bring a white man,” and offering a slew of recordings from Larry David to use in a pinch.)


Monday, August 19 – Fun clip show on Trump’s baffling way with words. We had confident ignorance (grocery stories require a photo ID, they say the noise from windmills causes cancer,) transparently pretending not to be ignorant (having no idea what 5G is, someone clearly having explained to him that planes currently in the air get to land before they’re grounded, and claiming our air and water “are at record clean,”) and plain inability to speak (“look into the oranges of the investigation.”) We also got ludicrous theater (waving around his “secret deal” with Mexico in front of reporters,) dubious history (does anyone even know that Lincoln was a Republican?), and obvious adjectives (Hurricane Florence is very wet.) For good measure we got two bits on the wall (in one, Trevor felt the need to check Trump for concussion, and in the other, Trump claimed he might “make Canada pay for it” instead of admitting he misspoke.)

Tuesday, August 20 – The theme of the night was “Leading Ladies,” which low-key doubled as a “Best of Desi” special. She featured on a number of major stories: the pay gap in US soccer, the pink tax (some of the disparities she saw wee just absurd, and I still love that little speech she gave about the series of “small adjustments” women make daily to live in a world not designed for them,) and men on Wall Street having the exact wrong reaction to the #MeToo movement. We also got her two-hander with Dulcé on protecting reproductive rights by “incorporating” vaginas – Republicans love to regulate women’s bodies, but not businesses. Additionally, we revisited parts of interviews with Kirsten Gillibrand, Reese Witherspoon (really liked her words on creating her own projects,) and Oprah herself, with a bonus clip of Rep. Norma Torres shadily retracting her remarks about “sex-starved males” on the House floor.

Wednesday, August 21 – Best-of special for Jaboukie. For field reports, we got his recent piece on the commercialization of Pride (fracking drilldos for the win!) and young people’s interest in socialism, featuring his interview with Bernie Sanders – I laughed again at his voiceover, “Could Bernie Sanders be the world’s oldest millennial?” Two of Jaboukie’s desk pieces were included here: giving Trump advice on his social media rut (“Stop being so damn thirsty! Look at those all-caps!”) and discussing the Jussie Smollett case (in which he brought up “gay/trans panic” as a justifiable defense for murder in 47 states and pondered how many men would be left if women could justify murder with “he was hitting on me.”) Rounding thngs off with a couple sketches, we got Jaboukie’s star turn as Smollett in the “Lifetime movie” of his case (“I’m like the gay Tupac…”) and his appearance in the “Amexican Express” commercial.

Thursday, August 22 – Good collection of clips tonight, all stories about rich people. First was Robert Kraft’s absurdly-light slap on the wrist in exchange for admitting that he would have been found guilty if his case went to trial – what even…? Naturally, the college admissions scandal featured heavily (“For that kind of money, why not just buy a smarter kid?”) We also got more with both Jussie Smollett (who paid his fake-hate-crime accomplices with a check) and socialism (Neal Brennan’s great piece on how the ultra-rich drive more people to socialism than Bernie Sanders or AOC. Still love his impression of Jeff Bezos making cities “audition” for the new Amazon headquarters: “Pittsburgh, entertain me.”) And because we can’t have a night of “crazy rich nation” stories without any from the commander-in-chief, we revisited the news that Trump lied his way onto Forbes back in the day, overstating his net worth by 95 billion dollars.

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