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

Saturday, June 27, 2020

News Satire Roundup: June 21st-June 25th


Sunday, June 21
·       Recap of the Week – Low turnout at Trump’s Tulsa rally, Juneteenth
o   On Melania’s Juneteenth speech – “Yes, she is doing it between two 20-foot gold candelabras!”
·       Main story – Coronavirus outbreaks in prisons & jails
o   Heartbreaking story, more proof of how America treats certain people as completely disposable
o   John’s impression of prison officials assuring the mother of an inmate that everybody sleeps head-to-toe in their less-than-6-feet cells – “And when they’re awake, we tell them to breathe in opposite directions, we’re pretty sure we’ve got this covered”
o   Man, that one prison that posted signs about the importance of handwashing but still charged inmates for soap – no words
o   Then there was solitary confinement being the only place some prisons can quarantine – “Look, just tell us that you’re sick and we’ll put you in the special punishment hole”
o   For all the officials claiming that prison outbreaks were NBD because they’re “contained,” John refuted that quickly, noting all the staff who work in prisons and the constant churn of people in and out of jails – at one point, it was estimated that 15.7% of all cases in Illinois could be traced back to the Cook County Jail
o   John’s answer to the question, “Do prisons works?” was this: “They absolutely do, if your only goal is to have a lot of people in prison” – true, and painful
·       And Now This – A Father’s Day montage of Trump sharing “fatherly wisdom” with his kids
·       Finally – Fancams for racial justice
o   I’ve been following these stories for a while, but I absolutely love that K-pop fans have mobilized to flood white supremacist hashtags with fancam videos, drowning out the actual white supremacist messages
o   I especially loved the time they crashed a Dallas police department app designed for people to upload videos of protesters’ “illegal” behavior – John described the app’s resulting “technical difficulties” as it “watched 1000 videos of BTS and died of horniness”
o   The rat erotica returns! John made his own contribution for fans to upload, a cut of rat erotica paintings set to K-pop music – love it!


Sunday, June 21
·       Main story – Winner-take-all elections
o   Hasan knew that getting us to look ahead toward the election was a big ask – “Hasan, November?! Dude, I don’t even believe in Thursday anymore!”
o   One byproduct he noted of winner-take-all elections was the way the whole party has to rally behind the candidate, illustrated with GOP leaders’ comments on Trump before and after he secured the 2016 nomination – to Lindsey Graham, Hasan said, “It only took a few months to go from, ‘This is the dirtiest man in politics,’ to, ‘The bath is ready for you, my liege!’”
o   We also looked at how Republican candidates push themselves further to the right out of fear of primary challenges – “Basically, Republicans are afraid of getting canceled for not being racist enough. ‘No, I swear I did blackface in college, I lost the pictures, but you’ve gotta believe me!’”
o   The structure of our elections forces a two-party system, leaving us appalled at anyone who votes third-party – “We treat them like they just left a baby in a car!”
o   I loved that, in the graphic of the Founders, there was a picture of Lin-Manuel Miranda standing in for Alexander Hamilton


Monday, June 22
·       Headlines – Protesters tear down more statues, NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace received racist threat, John Bolton’s memoir, AMC will require masks in its theatres
o   Good point that that Teddy Roosevelt statue was probably “super woke” when it was made – “Look, I put an Indian and a Negro being led by our white savior! I’m the most liberal guy in New York City!”
o   I loved Trevor’s commentary about someone putting a noose in Bubba Wallace’s stall after he spoke up for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag, noting how that, for all the talk that the Confederate flag is about “southern heritage” and not racism, the immediate response to that flag being taken away was a racist act of hate
o   Trevor didn’t have time for John Bolton – “Donald Trump is a danger to the survival of the country, but you’re gonna vote third party?! ‘We need to do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump, except the one thing we can do to defeat Donald Trump!’”
o   Great tangent about white people in movie theaters, that cracked me up
·       Main story – Trump’s Tulsa rally
o   And another perfect addition to Trevor’s Trump middle-name collection with “Donald Juneteenth Trump” – ha!
o   After Trump’s expectations for the rally were foiled by “meddling kids,” Trevor decided, “That means Trump is basically a Scooby-Doo villain now – although at least the villains wear masks”
·       Interview – NFL player Malcolm Jenkins
o   Everyone who thinks athletes have no business talking about race or politics should sit down and watch this interview – Jenkins was on fire!
o   I liked what Jenkins said about America’s track record of trying “to put reconciliation before truth,” trying to jump ahead to a “post-racial society” without engaging with its past racist heritage to work on healing the present
o   Great remark about the necessity of engaging white people as allies – “While this movement maybe was started by Black people and carried on the backs of Black people, it’s going to be carried across the finish line on the backs of white people”
·       Interview – Actress/activist Laverne Cox
o   I appreciated Cox’s point about the double-edged sword of representation, with increased visibility for marginalized communities often being met with a backlash of increased violence (both physical and legislative) against those communities – trans folks have certainly been experiencing that in recent years
o   In calling for people to examine their own internalized transphobia or racism, Cox asked them to remember that “being uncomfortable does not mean you are unsafe” – louder for everyone in the back!

Tuesday, June 23
·       Headlines – More legal immigration restrictions, Apple Watch’s new handwash-timer feature, the CIA recruits with a new ad
o   Side note: before this segment started, I liked Trevor’s comment that, despite New York entering phase 2 of reopening, he’s not going back to the office yet because “that’s exactly where coronavirus thinks I’m gonna go. (To beat the virus, you’ve gotta think like the virus!”) Hee!
o   Good point that, rather than attacking immigration, a better way to protect American jobs would be “to build a wall around robots”
o   I laughed at Trevor taking issue with the CIA-recruitment ad including their contact info – “Finding out how to contact the CIA should be the first test!”
·       Main story – Anti-Blackness in the workplace
o   We started from the premise that, for corporations, statements of solidarity aren’t enough – “No one’s gonna stop being racist because SpaghettiOs told them so”
o   Looking at how Black people are underrepresented in so many companies, Trevor wondered who would want to work in a place without Black people – “You need at least one person who knows how to dance at the office party. And what if zombies show up? You want them to kill you first?”
o   In the clip on code-switching, my heart went out to the woman who said, “I have to be my best unauthentic self in order to relate to my white peers”
·       Interview – Professor/author Seth Stoughton
o   In studying policing and use of force, Stoughton advocates for “guardian policing” that’s built around the values of its community
o   Important point that it’s too simplistic to say that the “race issue” is in policing – rather, it’s in society as a whole and the issue gets “magnified” in policing
o   Trevor brought up fear-based training, which teaches officers to expect the worst-case scenario in any situation
·       Interview – Comedian D.L. Hughley
o   Hughley tested positive for COVID-19 after collapsing onstage at a standup show – he sheepishly accepted Trevor’s scolding for doing in-person shows during a pandemic and noted that, for it even to be possible in the first place, he “had to go to states where they clearly don’t care about their people”
o   They also discussed Hughley’s new satirical book on white supremacy, policing, and racial equity – I appreciated Hughley’s point that the police are actually doing what they’re “supposed” to: “Keep us where we are, and by any means necessary”
o   He side-eyed corporations that are making big gestures when practical everyday-change could provide a much more tangible contribution, such as Bank of America pledging a $1 billion to fighting discrimination when they could just approve more home loans for Black people

Wednesday, June 25
·       Main Story – The evolving story of Bubba Wallace and the noose
o   Great description – “A noose is like the N-word of ropes”
o   Roy joined in on this story, although he wasn’t as relieved as Trevor that the apparent noose turned out to be an innocuous door-pull for the garage door – he likened tying the rope into a noose to begin with to building a campfire in the shape of a cross (“You can’t think of a less racist way to roast marshmallows?!”)
o   Another good point, on how this door-pull was tied like a noose for months with no one noticing until one of Bubba Wallace’s crew found it – “That’s how you know that NASCAR doesn’t have enough Black people”
·       Interview – NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace
o   Wallace discussed what Trevor has talked about with many Black athletes, the notion of being embraced by conservative fans who turn on them when they speak out about race and “get political” – rather than describing his efforts against the Confederate flag as political, Wallace repeatedly emphasized that it was just him “being a human being”
o   I felt for him as he described the strange roller coaster of discovering what the noose actually was – bewildered by the quick reversal of the previous information that he’d been given, obviously relieved that no hate crime had been committed, dreading the inevitable claims that the whole thing was a “hoax”/comparisons to Jussie Smollett
·       Fake Commercial – “Blacklexa”
o   The show’s solution for white people to learn about how to be allies while sparing their Black friend from all their questions – as Trevor pointed out, “If you’re the white person with one Black friend, they’re also the one Black friend of ten other people”
o   I liked the feature of Blacklexa preventing you from watching faux-deep “feel-good” movies about racism – the white guy cheerfully saying, “Blacklexa, play Green Book,” and then not getting why his TV automatically shut off made me laugh
·       Montage – Footage of Trump saying terrible things and his staff insisting that he’s joking, including some bonus clips of him saying he’s not joking
·       Interview – John Legend
o   Legend and Trevor commiserated over the weirdness of performing without an audience present, agreeing that it was probably as strange for them as it was for the audience no longer able to enjoy the shows communally
o   Trevor noted Legend’s long-standing advocacy for criminal-justice reform – Legend praised the current protests but urged people to maintain momentum, saying, “All the times in between these big protests are when a lot of this work has to get done”
·       Performance – John Legend
o   Legend performed “Never Break,” a lovely song from his new album – really enjoyed it

Thursday, June 25
·       Headlines – COVID-19 surge in the U.S., Trump’s response
o   Great callback to the Muslim ban with news that the EU may ban entry from Americans “until they can figure out what the hell is going on”
o   Trevor, like many of us, continues to be baffled by people who think masks are a “conspiracy” – I loved his riff suggesting anti-maskers tell doctors to remove their masks and “unwash [their] hands” before performing surgery on them
·       Main Story – Depictions of police in Hollywood
o   Trevor’s translation for what cop shows really mean when they flout the law to catch the bad guys? “The Constitution is for pussies”
o   Great line – “The only way they can be effective is if they break the rules society created to protect us from the police”
o   Loved the response to an episode clip of two cops joking about a suspect they just beat up – “Yeah! That guy doesn’t deserve to see a doctor! He maybe committed a crime!”
o   Trevor pointed out that excessive force in interrogations can 1) prompt false confessions and 2) get real confessions thrown out in court because they were made under duress – “Beating a suspect to solve your case is like washing your computer with water. Yeah, the virus is gone, but so’s your laptop”
·       Correspondent Piece (Roy) – Interview with an optometrist who got looted during the Birmingham protests
o   I liked the inclusion of news footage from the community clean-up efforts after the break-in, including Roy himself!
·       Interview – Jon Stewart
o   Stewart and Trevor had a great discussion about Confederate monuments being torn down – I loved Stewart’s sly point about all the conservatives who weren’t exclaiming, “But you’re erasing history!” when Saddam Hussein’s statue came down in the Iraq war
o   Trevor noted that, while the whole world is dealing with COVID-19, the U.S. seems to be the only country treating it as “a political issue as opposed to a pandemic” – Stewart likened it to a hurricane, with a number of people inevitably refusing to evacuate
o   They also talked about Stewart’s new movie, about what Trevor called “the WWE of politics” – politicians playing up rivalries and fueling real divisions among voters when they actually get along
o   Impeccable observation – “The system we have in place to elect people is working almost antithetical to the system we have in place to try and govern people.”

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