Sunday, October 10
· Recap of the Week – Idaho governor power struggle, AT&T helps fund OAN network
o Wild story about Idaho’s lieutenant governor pulling big power moves (including asking the National Guard about the logistics of deploying them to the southern border!) while the governor was out of state – “The thing is, in Idaho the lieutenant governor does technically become acting governor whenever the actual governor leaves the state, thanks to a state constitution that was definitely written long before cell phones existed.”
o Great reaction to a political ad from said lieutenant governor – “I will say, that represents the Republican party better than anything I’ve ever seen. An elephant doesn’t quite do it for me. A swirly snake saying, “Don’t Tread on Me,” no. But a gun Bible and a misquoted Declaration of Independence? That is the Republican party that I know.”
o I loved the description of Mike Lindell as “America’s most out-of-breath pillow fetishist.”
o Naturally, John had all kinds of things to say in response to parent company AT&T’s support for OAN. My favorite was his take on their slogan, “More for Your Thing. That’s Our Thing” – “It sounds like Yoda pitching a penis-enlargement device.”
· And Now This – Brian Kilmeade on Christopher Columbus
o A Fox News host idolizing Columbus isn’t exactly a stretch, but the montage included one line I couldn’t wrap my head around – “I was almost the Christopher Columbus of this show.” What even is that?!
· Main Story – Internet misinformation in diaspora communities
o While sites like YouTube and some social media platforms are (very slowly) starting to combat misinformation, there’s very little moderation over content that isn’t in English. John likened it to Best Picture at the Oscars for every movie pre-Parasite – “Basically, if it doesn’t happen in English, it doesn’t fundamentally matter.”
o Interesting note about how misinformation in other languages isn’t solely translated misinformation from English-language sources. It can be targeted for particular communities, such as Cuban American voters in Florida being flooded with Spanish-language fake news about Biden’s alleged “socialist” ties.
o We looked at one YouTuber known as King Radio who hosts a “news” show featuring much the content that got the likes of Alex Jones banned from the platform, completely unchallenged – “This means Alex Jones could probably find his way back onto YouTube if he could just complete a Rosetta Stone course in Vietnamese.”
o In talking about WeChat as a one-stop-shop app, John found it a much simpler way to experience the worst of the internet than having a separate app for every facet of it – I especially liked the descriptions of Twitter as “one that functions as an endlessly-refreshing fury generator” and TikTok as “one that simply lets you know that you’re very old and that the world no longer belongs to you.”
o I response to one Venezuelan American lamenting the ubiquitousness of “la tía de WhatsApp,” John said, “It’s almost comforting to know that, regardless of background, every single family has one member that, when anyone gets a message from them, their first response is to go, ‘Aw shit, what now??’”
o Really interesting video of an Indian American man showing the precise “recipe” for creating a misinformation meme that will spread like wildfire among older members of his community – Noting that he made up the chemicals for his “samosas cure cancer!!!!” claim, he explained, “Our uncles and aunties have PhDs in science, but that’s no match for WhatsApp.”
o After rampant misinformation spread through WhatsApp led to real-world violence in India, the company produced a PSA about the importance of discussing reputable sources with your more susceptible family members – John pointed out, “It’s also not great when you have to produce a PSA essentially saying, ‘Look, some of what’s on our service is dangerous nonsense, and if you could help clean it up for us, that’d be really great.’”
Tuesday, October 12
· Headlines – Las Vegas Raiders coach fired, California bans stealthing, Squid Game popularity
o Trevor’s reaction to the Raiders coach, who was fired for old emails including everything from racist tropes to homophobic slurs to pushing back against efforts to reduce concussions – “Damn, this dude hit everybody! Blacks, gays, women, protesters, brain-damage victims. It’s almost like he was competing in a cancellation decathlon.”
o This made me smile – “You should not be writing racist emails. You should get up, walk over to your coworker’s desk, and say the N-word in person. It’s called ‘human interaction,’ people.”
o Good bit – “Gruden was pumping out racist emails nonstop. This guy was getting spam emails from Crate & Barrel and he would write back, ‘You know what bothers me about Nelson Mandela?’”
o There was kind of an awkward gimmick throughout the headlines of Dulcé interrupting Trevor by “practicing” hitting the buzzer for a game show she was going to be on, after which she’d add her own take on the stories – the buzzer shtick wasn’t really funny, but I liked some of Dulcé comments, especially her point about the people who received that coach’s emails and then sat on them for 10 years.
o Great analogy – “A condom is like a safety harness on a roller coaster. You need to wear it the whole time, especially when things get crazy near the end!”
o Trevor had no patience for stealthing – “You already got her to have consensual sex with you! Why have you got to sprinkle in the crime?”
o I loved this description of Squid Game – “Squid Game is like The Hunger Games, if everyone was sadder, and older, and like a thousand percent more Korean.”
· Main Story – Vaccine mandates
o I loved Trevor’s delivery on this bit – “It turns out people don’t like being told what to do. It’s the same reason that, when Moses first brought down the Ten Commandments, everyone immediately started coveting each other’s wives!”
o Trevor had a great impression of Texas’s Gov. Abbott banning vaccine mandates – “We wanna give COVID a fighting chance. Wouldn’t be sporting otherwise.”
o Hearing the news that Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving will lose $380,000 for every game he misses due to being unvaccinated, Trevor tried to put that number “in perspective” by explaining that it would take Elon Musk 1.3 seconds to earn that much – “I need to stop measuring things in Elon Musk. It really doesn’t help.”
o Trevor understood vaccine-hesitant folks’ wariness about vaccine boosters to an extent, but he pointed out that most things don’t last indefinitely – I liked him imagining an antivaxxer looking around the dinner table and saying, “Hold up, hold up, didn’t y’all eat yesterday? I’m starting to think this whole food thing is a scam!”
o Nearly every time Trevor talks about antivaxxers or vaccine hesitancy, he also brings up this point, and I appreciate that – “It’s important to remember that vaccine hesitancy is only a problem in rich countries that have the vaccine. ‘Cause right now, there’s countries all over the world that can’t afford it, and they’re looking through the window at the buffet like, ‘Oh, could you please bring me out a French fry and a vaccine?’”
· Correspondent Piece (Michael) – Free speech
o This was a field piece on a woman refusing to take down her “F**k Biden” signs outside her home (which is across from an elementary school.) After listening to the woman rail against Biden, socialism and being soft on China, Michael was amused to learn where her signs came from – “So maybe Mrs. Dick’s free speech was imported from communist China….”
o Given that the town’s objection to the signs was the profanity, not the political message, I still don’t quite follow why the ACLU got involved in this woman’s case – I agree that people have the freedom to criticize politicians as explicitly as they want, but it doesn’t seem beyond reason for local ordinances to prohibit F-bombs, for any reason, in people’s lawn decor.
· Interview – Comedian/Author Phoebe Robinson
o After praising Robinson’s “impressive resumé,” Trevor asked, “I’d love to know, what is the end goal? Are you trying to Oprah this thing? Are you trying to Shonda Rhimes it?”
o I really liked this compliment Trevor gave her on her writing – “You know what I love about your books, they sound like you hanging out with me, but on a page.”
o Robinson’s new book of essays reflects on her success as a comedian, actress, and creator, sharing some of the lessons she’s learned as a Black woman in the industry – “The biggest thing I’ve taken from any of this is just, don’t let anyone’s ‘no’ stop you.”
Wednesday, October 13
· Headlines – William Shatner goes to space, North Korean military parade, elk caught with tire around its neck
o Trevor’s take on William Shatner being the oldest person to go to space – “I don’t know about you, but I love it when old people break records. That’s why so many people support Tom Brady! I mean, your grandpa can’t throw like that.”
o Fun line – “This made me wonder: do you think Jeff Bezos is just secretly swapping us out one by one with clones?” It led into a tangent about Bezos building a secret Amazon warehouse on the moon, which he staffs with people he invites up on space flights, sending clones back home in their place.
o It was another night of headlines with a correspondent-related gimmick. This time around, it was Ronny “browsing” the bookshelf in the background behind Trevor. As with Dulcé on Tuesday night, I liked getting Ronny’s additional commentary but wish they’d do it without the stilted bit to explain his presence there.
o I enjoyed Ronny’s reaction to William Shatner in space – “It also proves how much white people don’t love their grandparents. I’d never send my grandparents to space. You know what I mean? I wouldn’t even send my grandparents to Times Square!”
o Trevor loved the martial-arts demonstration from soldiers at North Korea’s military parade – “Let me tell you guys, if the plan to defeat North Korean was to make them lie down, cover them with concrete blocks, and hit them with sledgehammers, America is screwed!”
o Great line, about the poor elk with a tire around its neck – “And nobody knows how this happened. Maybe it’s a CrossFit thing, maybe he partied too hard at a Toyotathon, maybe that’s just his outfit for the Met Gala, I don’t know!”
o Trevor was upset that park rangers had to cut off the elk’s antlers to get the tire off. Even though he’ll be able to grow new ones, I liked the impression of other elks making fun of him at the barbershop in the meantime – “Shit, you Bambie-looking ass, you ain’t got no antlers!”
· Main Story – Severe droughts in the southwest
o So one governor asked his constituents to pray for rain – “Okay, I know he’s desperate, but it’s not very reassuring when the people in charge are like, ‘Ooh, this is a tough one, I’m gonna kick this up to God.’”
o Trevor noted that the drought in this region has been ongoing for 22 years – “At some point, it’s not even fair to call it a drought anymore. Your ass just lives in the desert now.”
o Good point – “The fact is that we need water to make electricity. So if we run out of water, not only would we die of thirst, but we won’t even have the battery power to go online to bitch about it.”
o Trevor made it clear that, even though this drought is in the southwest, it affects the whole country – “That’s the lesson here: America is interconnected. The whole country depends on California to provide its food, the same way it depends on Wall Street to provide its recessions.”
· Correspondent Piece (Lewis) – De-aging in movies
o Lewis’s reaction to Dear Evan Hansen made me chuckle – “It doesn’t matter how good of an actor he is! If I see anybody that old in a high school parking lot, I’m calling the cops.”
o While Ben Platt’s dubious de-aging was done with hair and makeup, we also looked at digital de-aging in films like The Irishman. Lewis rightly pointed out the flaw in this strategy, that the best CGI in the world won’t change the fact that Robert de Niro’s performance is coming from a 70-year-old man – “Look at him trying to beat up that guy! The Tin Man is watching that scene going, ‘And I thought my joints were f**ked up.’”
o I laughed out loud at this one – “I mean, yes, Robert de Niro is one the greatest living actors, but the man is 70. Of course he’s going to move like C-3PO with shingles.”
· Interview – Actress Rosario Dawson
o Dawson was promoting her new series Dopesick, which is about Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis – Trevor pointed out that, while normally a show like this would end in the corrupt/criminal executives being led away in handcuffs, “you show the inner workings of how money from the right sources can almost fix anything.”
o Dawson spoke about her personal family connections to the opioid crisis and noted that many people in the show’s cast and crew had been similarly affected by it.
o They also discussed Dawson’s new clothing line, which sells handmade fashions made in Ghana – “We’re saying, ‘Screw fast fashion. This is slow, quality fashion. This is not ruining the world. This is ethical, it’s sustainable, all these things. We want something that says ‘Made in Africa’ to be considered to have the same quality as something made in Italy or someplace else.”
Thursday, October 14
· Headlines – New tourism guidelines, self-driving cars getting stuck in San Francisco
o Good description of tourism – “When you cheat on your hometown to spice things up.”
o This made me smile – “You can’t blame Bali for wanting to be selective about who they invite into your country. I mean, tourism is a business. If you’re running a business, would you want poor people coming in and barely spending any money? No. You’d want rich people who can pay you to cook and clean and dance for them while they laugh at how weird your local outfits are! …Wait, what?”
o Another interrupting-correspondent gimmick, this time with Michael stopping in to use the studio WiFi – Meh as usual, and none of his commentary really stood out to me.
o Fun bit about the self-driving cars – “I don’t know why everyone is so upset about this. The thing that everyone wants is for self-driving cars to become just like humans, right? And now look at them! They’re making wrong turns down a dead-end street just like humans would. We did it, people! This is artificial intelligence!”
· Main Story – Americans rethink their work
o I liked this line – “People have wanted to quit their jobs since the beginning of time, all the way back to caveman days. The guy who sharpened the stones by hitting them against other stones? He hated his job! He just wanted to dance, but music hadn’t been invented yet.”
o While people have been quitting their jobs lately for plenty of practical reasons (they want better wages, more flexible hours, the ability to work from home, better benefits, etc.), we also looked at the more existential reasons – “There’s more to life than making money, and the pandemic has forced people to reconsider whether their jobs were really how they wanted to spend their entire lives.”
o Trevor noted that some employers have changed tactics to keep workers from quitting, but he acknowledged that there’s an imbalance there – “What sort of sucks about this thing is how it’s all the white-collar jobs that are getting more flexible. Because I know anyone in any job can get burned out, don’t get me wrong, but I would love to see the staffs of Kickstarter and Bumble try to explain how burnt out they are to a group of, like, coal miners in West Virginia.”
o So sadly true – “We can’t have GoFundMe employees quitting, American healthcare depends on it!”
o This was an interesting Between the Scenes-style piece, reacting to Demi Lovato’s recent remarks that the term “alien” (as in space alien) is offensive and we should say “ETs” instead – “Look, I understand. You want to be respectful to aliens, don’t get me wrong! We’ve all seen Independence Day. When aliens cancel you, they really cancel you! But sometimes I feel, as people, we’re just changing words for the sake of changing words, you know?”
o Trevor had some good points here – “Here’s the thing: I know it comes from a good place, and maybe we have to try, but I also think we have to acknowledge that new words by themselves, they aren’t going to solve the problems.” As an example, he said that saying “unhoused” instead of “homeless” doesn’t do anything to get people off the street.
o Another interesting point was how people with developmental disabilities have had different labels ascribed to them over the years, and each one eventually becomes an insult used by jerks – “I feel like at some point, we have to admit it isn’t the words. It’s how we treat the people who the words refer to.”
o I also appreciated that, throughout the piece, Trevor never misgendered Lovato or commented on their pronouns – Some comedians would use this topic as an opportunity to mock they/them pronouns, but Trevor never made an issue of it at all.
· Interview – Musician John Legend
o Poor John Legend – In the midst of listing all the prestigious awards he’d received, Trevor also brought up the Best Picture Oscar he didn’t get for La La Land.
o Legend talked about his new initiative HUMANLEVEL – “I joked with our co-founders, we’ve gotta make local government sexy. Because what really happens and where resources get allocated, where priorities are set – you know, we notice the big bills that come out of Washington, but even those big bills, a lot of times the resource allocation happens on a local level.”
o Trevor also asked Legend about his and his wife’s choice to make certain aspects of their private lives very public with fans, such as sharing about their miscarriage on social media – “This is a whole new world, you know? Artists didn’t have social media 20 years ago. And so there’s no blueprint for how this is supposed to happen.”
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