Saturday, April 25, 2020

News Satire Roundup: April 19th-April 23rd


Today, I’m staying home for Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

I’m going to try doing something a little different with News Satire Roundup. It seems like I always wind up spending most of my posts summarizing the episodes’ stories rather than talking about how I felt about them. So today, I’m going to try using more of a list format and focus more on highlighting my favorite parts.


Sunday, April 19
·       Main story – COVID-19 misinformation
o   I loved the description of Rush Limbaugh as a man “who definitely has a room in his basement his housekeeper isn’t allowed to enter”
o   Some awesome rebuttals to the right-wing media hosts deliberately touting misinformation (that note about Fox News practicing social distancing even as their coverage insisted the virus was “the flu,” yeesh) – I especially liked this one, re: anecdotal evidence about hydroxychlorquine, “Yes, anecdotally, you did get to work on time. That doesn’t mean everybody did, or even most people. It just means you did.”
o   Great point about Trump being both the subject and the target of Fox News’s misinformation campaign
·       And Now This – All-Coronavirus Inside Edition
·       Wendy Williams
o   It was an easy laugh, but I loved John calling for his 28 cats – my favorite was “Daniel Craig the cat”


Monday, April 20
·       Ray of Sunshine – training dogs to smell COVID-19, San Francisco students might all get A’s for the year, David Attenborough teaching virtual geography classes in the U.K.
o   I laughed at, “Your dog will smell that you have coronavirus, and your cat will be there to eat you when you die!”
o   The fake clip of David Attenborough getting all salty over bats was great – “Look at them, just flying around like they didn’t do shit…”
·       Headlines – Negative oil prices, NYC “snitch” line to report social-distancing violators, small business relief loans
o   OMG, the bit about white women’s glee over calling the cops for social-distancing violators! “Hello, Verizon? I’m gonna need all the unlimited data!”
o   Of course chain restaurants and places like Harvard were snatching up money meant for small businesses, of course they were :shakes head:
·       Main story – Anti-quarantine protestors
o   As with Last Week Tonight, we covered how it’s not just that these people are out protesting, risking their health and likely prolonging the very thing they’re protesting as a result. It’s that people in power are egging them on
o   Good response to Dr. Phil – “First of all, your ‘360,000 swimming pool deaths’ is off by about 357,000. Second, you’re not in danger of drowning if your neighbor goes swimming!”
o   Seriously, Trump’s administration puts out guidelines for the process of states to reopen gradually, and then Trump spends the weekend cheering for the prote"stors agitating to open things back up immediately? Great analogy to Trump being a football coach who berates the team for the field goal he told them to go for
·       Interview – New Jersey governor Phil Murphy
o   How many times do governors have to say, “The supplies for the level of testing we’re going to need just aren’t there,” before the administration gets it? Trump can’t get his economic rebound without it
·       Interview – NBA player Stephen Curry
o   It’s great to see how many public figures are using both their money/resources and their platform for good right now

Tuesday, April 21
·       Ray of Sunshine – Zoom chats with farm animals, virtual weddings, “Code Rocky”
o   I laughed at Trevor’s warning about marrying anyone during quarantine – “I spent most of last week in a relationship with a bottle of Purell!”
o   I loved a hospital discharging recovered COVID-19 patients with the Rocky theme playing in the background
·       Headlines – Kim Jong-un surgery, Nairobi’s governor includes Hennessy in quarantine food packages, Germany previews door-to-door testing
o   The Weekend at Bernie’s footage to “prove” Kim Jong-un’s good health cracked me up
o   Trevor killed me describing the Nairobi governor’s fashion sense, especially “the most ‘Florida Man’ of Kenya” and “the last king of NASCAR”
o   Good dark humor on the German police knocking on doors for COVID-19 testing – “We’re just here to test the purity of your blood- oh mein gott, that doesn’t sound good either…”
·       Main story – governors make steps to reopen their states while Trump moves to close the country to all immigration
o   I’m with Trevor – who is even immigrating right now?
o   Classy showing from the Fox News host who was suddenly worried about whether or not she’ll be able to keep her au pair. As Trevor noted, she’s fun with Trump’s policies hurting people until they affect her
·       Correspondent piece (Jordan) – interview with a survivalist
o   So-so piece. I chuckled at Jordan working out by lifting various things in his apartment
·       Interview – Rise founder Amanda Nguyen
o   Good on the show for drawing attention to domestic abuse survivors who are may be trapped in quarantine with their abuser right now
o   Rise’s work to create secret signals for grocery store workers and pharmacists to use with survivors was really cool

Wednesday, April 23
·       Interview – New York governor Andrew Cuomo
o   The whole episode was the interview – I think the last time Trevor did that was when he interviewed Obama
o   It was sobering when he talked about how direct the correlation is between the rise and fall of people not social distancing with the rise and fall in hospitalizations
o   I think all the governors Trevor has interviewed have understandably played politics when answering questions about Trump. I appreciated Cuomo freely admitting that Trump doesn’t like him, and I liked that he stressed the importance of working with Trump anyway, saying, “[COVID-19] is bigger than we are”
o   My favorite part was Cuomo’s response when Trevor asked why he chose to be so open and direct in his discourse with New Yorkers. Admitting he knew he ultimately couldn’t force a city of 19 million people to do what he told them to, he recognized that his plan “was dependent on New Yorkers buying in,” and that required being straight with them

Thursday, April 24
·       Ray of Sunshine – IKEA Swedish meatballs recipe, Banksy strikes his own bathroom, a news gaffe over a recovered COVID-19 patient
o   It was an easy joke, but I laughed at Trevor wondering what to do with the “extra screws” from his meatballs
·       Headlines – COVID-19 hit the U.S. far earlier than previously thought, cancellations of the National Spelling and Oktoberfest
o   I liked the bit that we’ll eventually get the coronavirus’s full “origin story” a la Joker
o   Good point on the loss for those spelling bee kids, especially since those skills don’t come in handy anywhere else – “I’m having a heart attack! Is anyone a doctor?” “No, but I can spell ‘defibrillator’!”
·       Main story – Chaos in the Trump administration
o   Whether or not he was lying, “I’ve never heard of the guy” is a terrible response to the abrupt firing of the lead scientist working towards a vaccine
o   I loved Trevor arguing that Trump should have plenty of time to get work done if he’s so bored he’s resorted to baseball reruns – “Baseball is boring as it’s happening! Watching reruns is like watching paint dry through a PowerPoint presentation!”
·       Correspondent piece (Roy) – making a quarantine cocktail
o   Stanley Tucci Roy is not
o   I liked, “I’m not sure white people should be saying ‘negroni,’ but it’s Stanley Tucci, so I’ll allow it”
·       Interview – R&B stars Keith “Babyface” Edmonds & Teddy Riley
o   The two guys’ history with one another and affection for each other’s music really shone through. I liked that
o   I think Trevor always does a nice job balancing things when he interviews more than one guest at a time, and you could tell interviewing two people over video-chat required extra care

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