Tuesday, October 13
· Headlines – iPhone 12, military parade in North Korea, Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearing, unsanctioned ballot drop-off boxes in California
o Good impression of how people are so hooked on Apple, we’ll take whatever they give us – “No charger!” “I’ll take it!” “No earbuds!” “I’m in.” “The iPhone 13… will not come with a phone.” “I want two of them! The big one and the small one!”
o I agreed with Trevor on the farce of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing, in which she’s been dodging giving her opinion on anything, including things the Senate already knows her opinion on – “Basically, the whole day was like, ‘Pro-lifer says what?’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Ah, well-played.’”
o Trevor wished the extra ballot drop-off boxes in California were real, as opposed to the long early voting lines in Georgia – “If I’m waiting 11 hours in line, I don’t want to vote at the end of it; I want to be president.”
· Main Story – Trump campaign resumes
o Great line about Trump’s declaration at a rally that, because he’s “now immune,” he could kiss both men and women in the crowd – “I’m happy that Trump is now biohazard-curious. That’s cool!” (I also loved the bit about it costing him Mike Pence’s vote – “This is not the moral example we should be setting for kids, in cages.”)
o Trevor called Eric Trump “business-casual Napoleon Dynamite,” ha!
o Oh, how this sums up everything that’s been going on with Trump and the pandemic – “The real news is that coronavirus has been handled. Didn’t you listen to what Dr. Fauci didn’t say?”
· Correspondent Piece (Jaboukie) – Poll worker recruitment
o The organizer Jaboukie interviewed gave him a hard sell about signing up to be a poll worker, but Jaboukie wasn’t having it – “You mean actually go outside and… put on pants?”
o But by the end, when faced with the prospect of what a poll worker shortage could do to the election, Jaboukie was ready to shame millennials and Gen Zers into volunteering – “At least do it for the gluten-free pizza! You’ve contributed nothing to life so far!”
· Interview – Professor Anita Hill
o Looking back at her experience during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing, Hill had this to say – “Has the country changed? Yes, the country has changed. Has it changed enough? No.”
o I appreciated her point about the continuing work to be done in light of #MeToo and the Time’s Up movement – “Awareness really is the beginning of change. But then you’ve gotta get down to the hard work of looking at how those kinds of biases and that kind of acceptance has been built into our structures.”
o She hoped that Hollywood will be able to create systemic change throughout the industry that will make everyone safer, rather than only securing justice for the victims of high-profile cases.
Wednesday, October 14
· A Ray of Sunshine – A tourist waits seven months to visit Macchu Picchu, the rise of cow-hugging, a bird breaks the record for nonstop flight, a sleeping Nobel prize winner woken with the news of his win, soap operas use mannequins for social-distanced intimacy scenes
o I giggled at, “I’m sure the cows appreciate this too, because for centuries, we’ve just been milking them. It’s about time we added some foreplay.”
o Loved this reaction on the recording-breaking bird – “It is amazing that such a little bird could achieve so much. Especially since Big Bird ain’t achieving shit! This dude’s been hanging out on the same street for the last 50 years? Get a job!”
o Great impression of soap-opera execs turning to mannequins rather than just, you know, not having kissing scenes during a pandemic – “Yo, there are 2 million horny grandmas watching this show! He’s taking his shirt off and kissing something!”
· If You Don’t Know, Now You Know – Militias in America
o This was a great story, very informative.
o Strong observation about the kidnapping plot againt Gretchen Whitmer over Michigan’s coronavirus restrictions – “I gotta say, angry white dudes are truly on some other level. I mean, think about it: Flint, Michigan, had dirty water that poisoned its own citizens for years, and those people stayed peaceful. But these guys formed Pale ISIS because they couldn’t go to Planet Fitness?”
o In response to the statistic that U.S. militias grew almost 800% while Obama was in office, Trevor said, “Well, well, well, we meet again, racism. I’ve been expecting you.”
o Good point about the toxic masculinity aspect of this, that militias draw lonely men who are looking for companionship but the only “acceptable” way they know to find it involves assault-rifle training.
· Correspondent Piece (Roy) – Revisiting Roy's Black voter panel
o I understand this energy – “I would vote a cat over Trump. It doesn’t matter at this point.” (I liked that, when Roy challenged her with a hypothetical racist cat president, the panelist just asked, “How racist?”)
o Roy side-eyed the one Trump-supporting panelist’s eagerness to get back to “normal” after the election – “You mean normal like, pandemic/fire/Black people getting shot/no justice? You talking about that normal?”
o It was sobering that three of the four panelists had lost at least one family member to COVID-19.
· Interview – Actor/activist Wilmer Valderrama
o Trevor applauded Valderrama for buying his mom a house but questioned his sanity for having it be right next door to his.
o Valderrama’s Instagram series about essential workers, “6 Feet Apart,” sounded cool. I thought this was an astute observation about his local grocery clerk – “She’s always in a way been invisible to people, but now for the first time, she’s a target.”
o Great remarks about encouraging Latinx communities to be politically active – “Sometimes as immigrants, we’re still pushed into a belief system that we’re a guest in this country, and that therefore we don’t have a seat at the table.”
Thursday, October 15
· Pandemic News – Cases rise in Europe and the U.S., Trump gave early pandemic warnings to donors
o Trevor’s take on graphs showing increased cases in the U.S. – “You never want a chart that corona would be proud to show at its next board meeting.”
o So true – “If the government says everything is fine but the guys on Wall St. start building spaceships, well then, you might need to get your ass to another planet.”
o Loved this line – “Clearly you don’t understand trickle-down economics. You see, the wealthiest 1%, they get preferential treatment. And then the rest of America gets valuable jobs in the nursing and gravedigging industries! The system works!”
· Main Story – Trump campaign pushes conspiracies
o Good point about how even Facebook shut down the Hunter Biden email story – “Because normally, people are posting about how vaccines did 9/11, and Facebook is like, ‘No, no, wait, let’s hear them out.’”
o The whole “Burisma” bit was fun – “How does Trump not know how to say ‘Burisma’ when that’s all he’s talked about for years?”
· Interview – Governor Andrew Cuomo
o I appreciated that Cuomo gave plenty of credit to New Yorkers for following coronavirus guidelines, not just to his administration for setting them.
o Saying, “We’re at half time, at best, in this game,” Cuomo encouraged everyone to look at the mistakes that were made in “the first half” and learn from them as we gear up for fall.
o Despite his statement, “Nobody holds me more responsible than I hold myself,” I thought Cuomo was a little evasive on the subject of nursing homes and what went wrong there.
o “Who is going to do what in this vaccination program?” – That was Cuomo’s biggest question for the federal government, and it’s an important one. Given the colossal disorganization over testing, especially early in the pandemic, having a vaccine won’t do the U.S. much good if it can’t be distributed/administered effectively.
· Interview – Actor/comedian Nick Offerman
o Offerman discussed how his Parks and Rec character Ron Swanson has been championed by the far right – “Ron himself and the conundrum you’re talking about is part of what’s wrong with our society, because everyone is that complicated. Like, you can be someone who loves hunting and is really into gun rights for that reason but isn’t necessarily a freaky, assault-rifle Second Amendment person.”
o Trevor had similar feelings on the subject – “People are a lot more nuanced than anybody gives people credit for.”
o Wow, this was a depressing statement – “We supposedly get to pick what happens in this country, and look what we’ve done!”
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