Sunday, May 16
· Recap of the Week – Vaccine incentives, Israel-Gaza strikes
o Much of John’s focus in the Israel-Palestine story was on how specific word choices by the media paint a very particular view of the conflict, such as calling is a “tit-for-tat war” even though one side has “over 10 times the casualties” of the other.
o I liked the joke about how John, “like every person with this accent,” has a plan for peace in the Middle East – “I redrew the map, and I have a lot of misplaced confidence that it’ll work very well.”
o Another example of irresponsible word choice in the media was using words like “real-estate dispute” and “evictions” to describe Palestinians being forcibly removed from their homes by armed Israeli police – “It’s like running a headline that reads ‘Matt Gaetz Reaches Out to Local Youth.’”
o Good advice for Israel, good advice for everyone – “In general, you should probably never meme a war crime.”
o And of course, we also had to look at the U.S.’s role in its unwavering support of Israel – “Holy shit, he just asked you, ‘Is child murder bad?’ This shouldn’t be hard. You just say no!”
· And Now This – Ari Melber quoting rap lyrics on MSNBC
o I know the show has done montages of this guy before – my favorite part is watching other pundits’ reactions as he solemnly quotes rappers.
· Main Story – Stand Your Ground laws
o While John began the story by invoking infamous murders that have been put forth as Stand Your Ground cases, like the murders of Trayvon Marin and Ahmaud Arbery, he emphasized that he wouldn’t be showing any video footage of these types of killings – “Frankly, we’re just one senseless murder away from HBO Max from putting us in the Endless Parade of Human Misery category, alongside Chernobyl and Entourage.”
o This story was full of awful statistics, like the fact that 70% of defendants in Florida who use Stand Your Ground defenses get off – John also pointed out that the laws themselves were often created more as a result of hypotheticals than from actual data on people who’d been sent to jail after acting in self-defense.
o We saw that states with Stand Your Ground laws have seen their homicide rates increase 10.8% in recent years, while they’ve dropped 2.3% in states without them.
o John was especially disgusted by an NRA “hero” who shot two people in the back to protect his neighbor’s property (after being repeatedly told by the dispatcher not to go out there) – “If I found out that my neighbor shot and killed two people to protect my PS5, I would move tomorrow!”
o We looked at one legal group who focuses on Stand Your Ground defenses, whose all-but-literal “get out of jail free” membership cards include handy instructions on what to say to law enforcement in the event of killing someone – “It’s basically Rosetta Stone for justified homicides.”
o Here’s a statistic we all knew was coming – white people who kill Black people are 281% more likely to be considered to have been “in reasonable fear for their life” compared to white people who kill other white people.
o Because this is what it comes down to with these laws – “They can exalt a white person’s fear over a Black person’s life.”
o John summed it up well in the end – “They’re redundant solutions to a made-up problem, and they are actively doing harm.”
Monday, May 17
· Headlines – Buzzfeed finds Biden’s Venmo account, Pentagon confirms UFO images, new South Carolina law allows electrocution and firing squad for capital punishment
o An easy joke, but I laughed – “Okay, this. Is. Shocking. Joe Biden has a Venmo account? How?! The dude is like 150 years old! I thought he paid for everything with silver dollars or some shit. I didn’t even know they had Venmo on rotary phones!”
o Valid – “I gotta say, I’m not surprised this pilot was a white guy. I mean, this guy saw UFOs everyday for years, and then he just kept on going back to work. Every single day, like, ‘Well, I wonder if they’ll be back there tomorrow! Hehe, guess I’ll find out.’”
o I loved the impression of South Carolina officials brainstorming execution methods – “…Or maybe we could could just not kill them? Haha, just kidding! How about if they get trampled by elephants?”
· Main Story – New CDC mask guidance
o Trevor admitted that experts disagreeing over the new mask guidance is frustrating/confusing, but as he pointed out, “experts have been disagreeing with each other throughout this pandemic. Is it airborne? Is it safe to go back to school? Do you have to pay for a gift for a Zoom wedding?”
o Of course we got into the problem of instituting an “honor system” that unvaccinated people will all wear masks – When one news reporter said, “The hope is that everyone’s going to be a good citizen, look out for each other,” I straight-up laughed out loud.
o So, so true – “No, no, no, there is no way you’re going to be able to trust customers with the honor system. I mean, have you ever seen the 10 Items or Less line? People will walk into that lane, look the cashier straight in the eyes, and then proceed to drop 22 items on the checkout counter, just daring them to say something!”
· Correspondent Piece (Ronny) – NFTs
o Ronny started off by wondering what NFT really stands for – my favorite was “Naked Flag Tricks.”
o That about sums it up for me – “What I really admire is how you took something really simple that people really understood and replaced it with something that’s super-complicated and is gonna make you even more rich.”
· Interview – Actor Sharon Stone
o In promoting her new memoir, Stone talked about her choice to reveal very personal, painful things about her past – “I think it’s very important to understand which things belong to us and which things don’t, just for starters. When you have trauma, you have to understand, in order to sort it out, what’s your responsibility and what isn’t.”
o On the infamous nudity in Basic Instinct, and how she dealt with the lack of consent surrounding how that went down – “I think the fact, first of all, that this thing was so sensationalized was also the hook the studio gave it to sell the movie, the hook they’re still giving it to try to sell the director’s cut release 30 years later. So frankly, I think it’s more of a publicity scam than it is in reality as big a deal as everyone made it, and the power, I think, came from me knowing that. I think my power came from me staying in my dignity and realizing that I was really great in the part.”
o I appreciated that she also, multiple times, pointed out the weirdness of everyone fixing on the film’s nudity but being totally cool with the violence perpetrated by her “sociopathic serial killer” character – so reflective of America’s warped priorities.
Tuesday, May 18
· Headlines – Police unions make a move to combat the ‘code of silence,’ Andrew Giuliani joins New York’s governor race, rise in pet returns after pandemic adoption boom
o Excellent summation – “Ever since the Black Lives Matter movement began, there has been a debate over the best way to stop police abuse. Should the police be reformed, defunded, abolished? And police have consistently replied, ‘Naw, let’s do none of that!’”
o I loved Trevor’s reaction to police unions’ new announcement that officers have “a duty to intervene” in the event of another officer’s unlawful actions – “But really, people, it’s so disconcerting that police have to be told this. It’s like the ‘Employees Must Wash Hands’ signs in restaurant bathrooms. What were you doing before this rule?!”
o This made me laugh – “‘The Giuliani name is associated with crime-reduction’? I mean, I guess if one person is personally doing all the crimes, that does reduce the number of criminals.”
o I liked this bit – “No, but seriously, people, pets are a real commitment, and I think a lot of people don’t understand that going in. Social media doesn’t help, by the way! Based on people’s posts, you think owning a pet is a stress-free cuddlepalooza. Nobody is on Instagram walking around like, ‘Hey, fam! Out on a 3 a.m. walk to watch my little fur-baby’s butthole open up. Hope he poops out the thumb drive with all my work files on it! #PetLife!’”
· Main Story – Restaurant worker shortage
o Great burn – “You can’t pay a bunch of people if they’re not doing any work! This is a business, not Congress!”
o Trevor got at the heart of former restaurant workers not returning as COVID restrictions lift – “The point is, those unemployment checks are not subsidizing laziness. They’re giving workers the rare opportunity to look for a job that’s more than just a way to survive to their next paycheck.”
o This was an awesome description of tips – “You know a job isn’t paying enough when every meal ends with a mini-GoFundMe.”
o In amongst other corporate chains upping their wages/benefits to entice workers, Trevor had a great response to Applebees “free appetizer with your application” promotion – “Damn, Applebees is confident in their onion rings! They’re out here like, ‘Forget the 401(k), guys! Just have them eat these bad boys, yeah! Get ready to meet your new coworkers, everybody! Equal rights? More like equal spice!’”
· CP Time (Roy) – Black labor leaders
o Looking at Dorothy Bolden, who started the National Domestic Workers Union – “It’s good that the maids got paid more, because do you remember how dirty white people were in 1968? Hippies were having orgies in the mud and then coming back in the house without wiping their damn feet.”
o Another leader we looked at was Curt Flood, an MLB player who successfully fought being traded to another team against his will and secured better protections for players – “Guess it’s no surprise that it took a Black person to tell white players, ‘Fellas, trust me, getting bought and sold like this is not gonna end well.’”
· Interview – Filmmaker Salima Koroma
o Trevor asked Koroma why her new documentary, about the Tulsa Massacre, is titled Dreamland – “When you tell stories about Black people in America, a lot of times the stories are dire, they are sad, they are about trauma and poverty and all the bad things that happen to us in this country. And this story about Tulsa and this massacre is a story about something bad that happened to Black people here in America, but it’s also a story about this place that was a dream, that felt like a dreamland.”
o Koroma talked about how seeing Wakanda in Black Panther helped inspire her to make the film – “It was the first time I’d seen Black people onscreen look and feel so grand, like, ‘We could’ve been that, that’s what we could be.’ And it’s like, ‘No, Dreamland, we were that, we have been that in America before.’”
o She also spoke against people’s tendency to consign events like the Tulsa Massacre to the past, the “that was such a long time ago, let’s move on” mentality – “What I want people to know is that that 100 years is still happening. The massacre is still happening through gentrification, urban renewal – what they call ‘urban removal,’ taking people out of their homes.”
Wednesday, May 19
· Headlines – The health hazards of working long hours, airlines may start weighing passengers, Andrew Cuomo earned $5 million from book on the pandemic
o This made me smile – “It’s kinda weird because working can kill you, but then you also need money to stay alive, which is why it’s so important to find the right balance… by stealing.”
o I loved the riff about how working long hours could now become something that “bad boys” do because they don’t care about the risks – (Dad Trevor in collared shirt and tie) “Young man, you can’t stay up all night working on spreadsheets! It’s not good for you!” (Cut to teen Trevor in a leather jacket, smoking a cigarette in front of a desktop) “Just try to stop me, old man.”
o Excellent reaction – “Okay, wait, hold up, hold up. Airlines could start asking passengers for their weight before they get on the plane?! No. No, no, no, you cannot be doing this right after we’ve been stuck inside for a year eating nachos in our bathtub!”
o I liked the bit about how Americans have the opposite weight-shaming issues as Africans, who would instead be roasted by the TSA for being too skinny – “What is this, eh? 140 pounds! Have you eaten? Have you eaten in your life, eh? Are you not married? Go back to the food court! Go back to the food court. Look at this one, he’s suffering, eh?”
o I loved Trevor’s response to hearing about Andrew Cuomo’s big payday for his book – “You know, after word gets out about this, there’s gonna be a lot of people thinking, ‘Huh, maybe I should kill everyone’s grandma. That’s a lot of money.’”
o The show also put together a “sexual harassment training video,” using Cuomo’s most terrible quotes on the subject – As summed up by Desi, “Being uncomfortable isn’t sexual harassment. Both parties need to agree that they’re uncomfortable. That’s what’s called ‘consent’!”
· Main Story – Capitol insurrection fallout
o Trevor was taken aback by the strategy of the Capitol insurrectionist’s lawyer who argued on behalf of his client using offensive terms like “short bus people” and the R-word – “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client seems like a brain-dead idiot who can be convinced into doing treason. I rest my case.”
o This was an interesting point – “You know what’s weird, though, is that, even though the lawyer used all these horribly-offensive words, in a strange way, his heart is kind of in the right place. Because what he’s really saying is that we shouldn’t criminalize mental disabilities, the neurodivergent, and the easily-manipulated. He’s basically the most unwoke woke person in the world, you know? Sort of like an old man saying, ‘Well, I say the Blacks are every bit as valuable as normal folk. N****r lives matter!’”
o The show also put together a fantastic old-timey educational film inspired by the GOP senators and representatives trying to revise the insurrection and insisting there’s no need for a commission to study it – Pitch-perfect narration, such as, “The sun was shining and thousands of patriots had gathered to peacefully protest, huddling around that classic symbol of nonviolence, a noose and gallows.”
o Another great line from the video, a response to Trump and Sen. Ron Johnson arguing that the Capitol rioters were peaceful – “Take it from two men who these protesters didn’t chant about hanging to death: these people were not threatening!”
· Interview – Filmmaker Barry Jenkins
o In talking about The Underground Railroad, I was interested in Jenkins’s reasoning behind the decision to make it a limited series rather than a film – “Knowing the subject of the book, dealing with the issue of American slavery, I felt like I wanted to create a work of art where the viewer had a certain degree of control. When you’re in a movie theater, you surrender yourself, you’re kind of held captive by the experience. You’re with strangers, it’s very loud and very big, you kind of can’t get away from it. Whereas, with this, if there’s something you’re seeing that makes you uncomfortable, you can pause, you can fast-forward, or, if you want to see it again, you can rewind.”
o Jenkins was sensitive to the needs of his cast and crew in filming such difficult material, and he said that they had a therapist on set at all times – He added, “We also knew why we were there. We knew that, even though some of the scenes that we were doing were very heavy and brutal and in some ways horrific, the reason for telling the story, to me that was honorable.”
o I liked what he said about the thought he put into showing vs. not showing certain atrocities, drawing the line between what was necessary to depict onscreen and what could be conveyed just as effectively through the witnesses’ reaction, instead of letting every traumatizing moment play out in front of the cameras.
· Interview – YouTuber Logan Paul
o Paul on his polarizing YouTube persona – “I’m an entertainer, and entertainers make people feel. They make people care in some way, shape, or form, and invest their time and energy into watching this person.”
o At the same time, Paul was cognizant of the dark places his fame has taken him to – “I don’t know how much you know about my career, but it f**ked me up. It turned me into a version of myself that I did not like. It was the worst version of myself.”
o I appreciated Paul’s advice to young fans who might admire and wish to emulate him – “Please do not bend who you are or who you want to become for other people. Even if you’ve found success doing that before, stay true to yourself.”
Thursday, May 20
· Headlines – Cicada emergence, decline in sperm counts, Goodwill urges people not to donate trash
o Fun line about the cicadas – “Wow, 17 years! Man, think about how different the world was the last these guys were up here in 2004. I mean, Tom Brady had just won the Super Bowl, we were getting ready to watching Vin Diesel in a brand-new Fast & Furious movie, Ben Affleck was dating J-Lo. Phew! It’s gonna be hard for them to adjust!”
o Relatable – “You know, as weird as this seems, it actually makes sense to me that they only do this once every 17 years. I mean, anytime I try to get more than three friends together, we always end up being like, “All right, all right, you know what? What does summer 2038 look like for you guys? All right, great, we’ll have brunch then!’”
o This made me laugh – “I know ‘spermageddon’ sounds like a spin-off to the Sharknado movies, but I think we have to start conserving our sperm. We can’t be wasting it anymore just because we saw someone hot in the shampoo commercial!”
o I loved this bit – “What I wanna know is who the hell is trying to donate leaking batteries? What asshole is out there going, ‘Well, I don’t like getting burned by battery acid, but maybe poor people will? I don’t know what they’re into!’”
· Main Story – Mental health issues connected to social media
o Trevor’s take on Zoom body-image issues amused me – “Zoom shouldn’t make you feel bad about your looks. It should make you feel bad about your dirty-ass living room!”
o I liked the bit comparing us to cavemen, who only knew what they looked like if someone painted them on a cave wall – “Damn, do I really hold a spear like that?”
o Interesting look at how image filters to “improve” our selfies can leave us feeling worse about our real selves – “Once you have this filtered version of yourself in your head, you become dissatisfied with what you really look like. So in essence, we’re basically catfishing ourselves!”
o Trevor was disturbed by reports of kids as young as 13 getting plastic surgery to achieve the looks that they get in filters, pointing out that our bodies and faces are already constantly changing at that age – to “prove” it, he showed a photo of Steve Urkel and said, “I mean, this is what I looked like when I was 13. You gotta let that shit play out!”
o Trevor liked the idea of ads requiring a warning label if models/celebrities were digitally retouched, but he saw no reason to limit it to just images of people – “Every fast-food burger looks great on TV, but then when I order it, it looks like it fell asleep in the hot tub!”
· Correspondent Piece (Roy) – Human rights advocate takes on Chevron
o Roy spoke with a human rights lawyer who’s been under house arrest for nearly two years after going after Chevron for the environmental disaster their waste has created in Ecuador, known as “the Amazon Chernobyl.”
o As the lawyer talked about Chevron’s “goon squad” of lawyers and PR people who attack anyone who speaks out against them, including journalists, Roy started to get nervous – He pointed out the he wasn’t even a real journalist, and the lawyer said, “I don’t think they’re gonna go after you,” to which Roy replied, “You don’t think or you know?!”
· Interview – NBA player Jeremy Lin
o I was saddened by Lin’s explanation of a long, reflective, “passing the torch” social media post he wrote recently – “There’s not much else I can do to prove that I belong in the NBA.”
o Lin cited one of his greatest regrets as not fully recognizing and appreciating the heights of Linsanity while he was in it – “If you’re not fulfilled and content during the journey, you won’t be fulfilled and content when you get to your destination.”
o He also discussed his mental-health advocacy and his work to destigmatize it by talking about his own experiences with anxiety – With most parts of the body and aspects of physical health, “People literally spend their lives building these products that give you just a little bit of health benefit. But then, when it comes to mental health, it’s like, ‘Whoa, no, we can’t talk about that.’”
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