Sunday, August 22
· Recap of the Week – Facebook VR technology
o Great way to describe Mark Zuckerberg – “The guy who brought you ‘Everyone you went to high school with is QAnon now!’”
· Main Story – Afghanistan
o John side-eyed Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arguing the U.S. would still “basically” have an embassy in Afghanistan “in a location at the airport” – “An embassy does not belong in an airport because it’s not a fucking Wolfgang Puck.”
o Also earning side-eye? Biden’s revisionist history that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was never about nation-building – “Oh, if our mission was never nation-building, then I guess our not-mission was not-accomplished.”
o Loved this line – “It doesn’t get much more ‘the month after 9/11’ than a white Democrat in a fuck-you burqa applauding the Bush administration’s commitment to human rights.”
o Awesome response to Trump’s rosy summation during his administration that they’d have Afghanistan “spinning like a top” – “We did leave Afghanistan ‘spinning like a top’ – you know, those things that famously spin forever and never collapse.”
o John felt that the U.S. paying for helicopters that the Afghan military wasn’t equipped to use was emblematic of our whole time there – “We came in, built something on the American model almost wholly dependent on American support, and put next to no effort into ensuring it was sustainable after we left.”
o John agreed that we should have pulled out of Afghanistan but had a lot of problems with how we’re going about it – “The problem is, though, just as we went in focused entirely on U.S. interests, we are leaving the exact same way.”
o On the Trump administration’s “peace talks” with the Taliban, in which the Afghan government had no seat at the table – “You never want two people in a room deciding your future without you, especially if one of those people is the fucking Taliban.”
o Tucker Carlson’s argument against the U.S. taking in Afghan refugees was so gross – “So first we invade, and then we’re invaded.”
o Truth – “No amount of brute force or perseverance is going to clear up the clusterfuck that we helped fuck into existence. And I realize that’s a quintessentially un-American idea, to acknowledge that we can’t always control something that we want to control or achieve something that we want to achieve, but the truth is, we can’t.”
· And Now This – Tamron Hall celebrates being 50
o Mostly meh. This one made me laugh – “Listen I am- as the kids say, I am 50.”
· Finally – Jim Adler, “the Texas Hammer”
o John revisited an old ad that the show previously made fun of, about would-be macho lawyer Jim Adler, who dubbed himself “the Texas Hammer.” Why? Because an Alabama lawyer named Mike Slocumb made an eerily similar commercial, earning himself a lawsuit from Adler.
o John could see why Slocumb would envy Adler’s “clear and concise” ad campaign – “You learn two facts about him: he’s the Texas Hammer, and that is it.”
* * *
Sweet interview with Jayden Zhang Tanyi, who plays young Shang-Chi. He has some nice things to say about working with Tony Leung Chiu-wai.
Less than a week until Shang-Chi opens! I really hope I’ll be able to see it within the first couple of days. I’m gonna be watching all the showtimes on the app for my local theater and pounce on the first sparsely-populated showing I can get. I’m torn – obviously, I want the movie to do well, but I also know I won’t feel comfortable going if there’s too many people in the theater. I’ll especially keep my eye on the late-night showings. Do tons of people go to MCU movies after 9 pm on a weeknight? Can that be my in? That’s what I did with Black Widow, but not until the Tuesday after it came out. Really hoping I won’t have to wait that long!
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