Sunday, April 18
· Recap of the Week – Daunte Wright shooting
o I appreciated John’s note that Biden’s call for “peaceful protest” reflects a sentiment that often boils down to an attitude “to protect property over human lives.”
o In truth, John only touched on the story, acknowledging that the show has done numerous stories on policing over the years and we know the lines of this appalling cycle word-for-word by now – He also mentioned that the show didn’t even have time to finishing writing a Daunte Wright piece before the Adam Toledo video came out.
o Basically? – “If you are a sentient human alive right now and you’re not angry, then I don’t know what the fuck to tell you.”
o So instead, he offered up seven minutes of goofy news stories for people who just need a break from it all for a little while.
· Happy News – World’s longest rabbit is missing, “Usher bucks,” Olympics uniforms, Canadian parliamentary member accidentally caught naked on Zoom session
o I loved John’s repeated, fascinated descriptions of the world’s longest rabbit, especially “all 51 extremely-weird inches of him.”
o John questioned why Team USA would take their diverse, vibrant team of athletes and dress them all in “the aesthetic of the bad guy in every ‘80s movie” – not a novel observation at this point, but still valid.
o I laughed at John’s compliments for the physique of the Canadian parliamentarian, both in a censored screenshot from the Zoom session and in an official (clothed) photograph – “Hey, Canada, you might want to check your emissions, because it looks like you’ve got a smokestack in your parliament!”
· And Now This – Fox News commercials
o Now, it’s not a surprise that Fox News’s late-night commercials place a heavy emphasis on male-enhancement drugs and the problem of frequent urination, but what’s impressive is just how many the show managed to cram into one short montage.
· Main Story – Personal bankruptcy
o This story began with one affected couple stating one of the prime paradoxes of bankruptcy – “We can’t afford to go bankrupt.”
o And things only got more infuriating from there – John traced the corresponding rises in credit card deregulation and personal bankruptcy, which was then followed by credit-card companies calling on Congress to crack down on “bankruptcy abuse” to keep them from facing consequences of a problem they themselves greatly contributed to.
o Very unsurprisingly (John referred to it as the cover story for this month’s “No Shit magazine,”) studies show that Black families are more likely to be pushed toward Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is both more expensive and less secure than Chapter 7
o I loved John’s comments about the names of the hypothetical couple used in the study above, speculating the “Reggie and Latisha” for the Black couple came straight out of “The Big Book of Stereotypical (But Hopefully Not Offensively So) Black Names.”
o Throughout, the continued emphasis on stigma and shaming people for going bankrupt was really gross, especially given how big a role medical debt can play in people’s decision to declare bankruptcy.
o John ended with his own version of an animated mandatory course on bankruptcy and personal finances, hosted by “the cartoon universe’s steamiest wonk” (a.k.a. himself) – I liked the very frank, “And if all this seems needlessly confusing, that’s because it is!”
No Daily Show this week. I’ve talked before, multiple times, about how well I think Trevor/the show handles the subject of policing. Last week, between Daunte Wright, 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario, and Adam Toledo, the show did three significant pieces on police, and on the one night when there wasn’t a police-related story in the episode, Trevor recorded a separate video for the show’s YouTube channel speaking extemporaneously and wondering where the “good apples” are.
Trevor has been talking about police brutality, profiling, and systemic racism in law enforcement ever since he took over the show, and unsurprisingly, it’s a subject he’s taken on even more, with increasing exhaustion, since George Floyd’s murder last year. Since I don’t have cable, I always watch the show online the following day, and whenever I wake up to see “Trevor Noah” trending, I can guess that it’s probably for his thoughtful, searing response to the latest police killing. I’ve felt for him throughout all these stories, being insightful and clearheaded as he’s called on, again and again, to speak about massive injustice.
In an odd way, Trevor’s many stories on policing can serve as a grim timeline for the state of the U.S. in the Black Lives Matter era. He came to The Daily Show a few years after the start of the movement, taking over as host in 2015, but ever since, he’s been talking about police, and six seasons in, we see how little meaningful movement there has been on this crisis. Each story he gives carries a specificity about the circumstances and the individual life taken, but he’s been bringing up the same themes since 2015. It seems there’s no way to “not get shot.” Why do highly-trained police officers panic and kill without consequence when there’s an onus on the Black civilians to stay calm with a gun in their face? There is no “right way” to protest. Who in our society is extended the grace of being regarded as human, or who is seen only as a threat? Even in the situations where someone has committed a crime, executing them in the street without a trial isn’t justice. Six seasons of stories, six years of killings and terrorizing, and even though more people are talking about it than ever before, so little has meaningfully changed in a way that will make communities safer from the very forces that are supposed to be protecting them.
No comments:
Post a Comment