Monday, February 7
· Headlines – Metaverse introduces virtual boundaries, Mike Pence speaks about January 6th, Trump removed documents from the White House
o Too real – “The metaverse was not designed for you to sexually harass others, okay? It was designed to distract everyone from Facebook’s other scandals.”
o This was a good bit – “How are these people even getting into the metaverse? Like, think about it: Facebook has information on everybody. How come they can’t tell who’s an Internet pervert, but then they can show me ads for crutches three days before I get hit by a car, huh?”
o So weird that the Mike Pence acknowledging that he didn’t have a right to overturn the election is seen as such a big, bold thing for him to do – “Still, good for Pence, and it’s going to be fun watching him endorse Trump for reelection in two years.”
o It’s been tough to preserve the records from Trump’s time in office, in part due to his habit of ripping up documents after he read them – “And not even to hide stuff. Just anything he was done with, he’d just tear it up and throw on the floor. Probably his revenge on paper for making him read it.”
o This whole bit made me laugh – “Honestly, I’m kind of surprised that his own letters are the only thing that Trump took from the White House. I’ll be honest. Like, when he got kicked out, I thought he’d just stuff as much stuff into his pockets as he could. You know? Like, he’d get out there and then White House security would shake him and the bust of Frederick Douglass would just fall out of his pants. ‘I don’t know who that is, but I’m learning more and more about him every day. Fantastic guy. I think we would have gotten along great. So great.’”
· Main Story – Joe Rogan’s N-word scandal
o After musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music from Spotify over Joe Rogan’s vaccine misinformation, India.Arie has done the same, with the video compilation from Rogan’s podcast to explain why.
o The first part of the video was, well, it was not great – “Whew! That’s a lot of the N-word. And with the hard “e-r” as well, which is never a good thing. If there’s ever a video of you saying the N-word that many times, you better pray one of two things. Either you’re a Black person, or you’re a dead man from history. Yeah, ‘cause then the worst thing they can do is take your statue down and move it into a museum.”
o I loved the description of the video as Rogan “dropping the N-word like he bought it in bulk at Costco.”
o In his latest “apology,” Rogan argued that all the N-words were taken out of context – Trevor allowed that but pointed out, “For the most part, as a white person, you never need to use the N-word. Right? Don’t, like, need. For example, I’ve gone this entire story saying ‘the N-word,’ and everyone has understood exactly what I’ve meant. Right? Nobody’s sitting at home going: Nutella? Neanderthal? Nelly Furtado? Why is Trevor being so vague? What is the word?”
o He continued that, regardless of their intention in using it, white people are going to be better off simply not saying it at all – “Because Black people don’t have the time to sit down and sort out the racist who says the N-word 70 times with the non-racist who says the N-word 70 times. Black people are dealing with too much shit. ‘No, no, look at how I was using it.’ No, dude, no one’s got the time for that. Just stop saying it or just be racist.”
o What Trevor really took issue with was the second part of the video, a clip of Joe Rogan describing a movie theater in a Black neighborhood as “Planet of the Apes.” And Trevor had zero time for Rogan’s “apology” here – “First of all, he says he would never say Black people are apes, but he said that. He… That’s literally what he said. If you said you walked into a Black place and it was Planet of the Apes, then you said that.”
o So true – “It’s not just racism. That’s like O.G. racism. That’s like the original old school-- like, that’s on the Mount Rushmore of racism. You know? ‘Black people are apes.’ It’s right next to burning crosses and then, like, every Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 1940s.”
o This was a great insight – “What I found particularly illuminating is when he says, ‘I wasn’t being racist. I was just being entertaining.’ No, Joe, I think you were using racism to be entertaining. You understand what I’m saying? I’m not saying you were trying to offend Black people, by the way. But you knew that offending Black people would get a laugh out of those white friends that you’re with.”
o Trevor offered this next observation from his specific perspective as a comedian – “I love all kinds of jokes, all right? I love safe jokes. I like dark jokes. I like jokes. But just because something is a joke doesn’t mean it can’t be something else, as well. Because a joke can be racist.”
o Trevor wished Spotify would just be upfront in their continued backing of Rogan, rather than saying his views “aren’t the values of this company” while paying him $100 million – He imagined a more honest statement as, “We do not believe in silencing Joe Rogan, because he makes us money. But if, at some point, he ends up costing us money, then we will drop him. Because money.”
· Interview – EPA administrator Michael S. Regan
o Trevor laid out the issue of environmental justice very succinctly – “You read the history of America. Every single time people plan where to put a factory or how the factory will affect the neighborhood, it’s never in a rich neighborhood. It’s never in a nice neighborhood. It’s always in a place where the people there have the least access to power to oppose that.”
o In turn, environmental justice was hugely important to Regan – He explained that he begins every initiative with the question, “Are we protecting the least amongst us, those who have lacked political representation and those who have not been at the table for decades?”
o This was a good statement – “Systemic racism is by design, and the environment is no different than policing or, you know, incarceration or housing.”
o I really liked this – “Here’s the reality. We are convinced that you have to choose between jobs, economic prosperity and development, and protecting people and the planet, and you don’t. It requires all levels of government working with communities to determine what’s best and how to do it.”
Tuesday, February 7
· Headlines – Emmanuel Macron/Vladimir Putin meeting, New York mayor’s vegan scandal, Las Vegas company offers “mile-high club” experiences
o Trevor described Russia’s military encroaching on Ukraine’s border “the world’s most high-stakes game of I’m Not Touching You.”
o This made me laugh – “Also, Mayor Adams is a vegan. *gasp* Yeah. No. I thought he was Black!”
o Great bit – “Yes, he’s a vegan who sometimes eats fish. But don’t get it twisted, man. Being a vegan isn’t about eating vegan. It’s about telling everyone that you’re vegan. So technically, this man’s legit.”
o Trevor didn’t think paying $1000 to have sex on a bed during a private flight counted as “joining the mile-high club” – “The mile-high club isn’t just about having sex on a plane. It’s about having terrible sex quietly without getting sucked down that toilet. That’s the experience.”
o Desi, who was the headline correspondent, had a funny bit going through the airline logistics of this mile-high club company – She had a whole list of nuisances, but my favorite was, “You gotta get all your lube in those little three-ounce bottles.”
· Main Story – Mask mandates
o I laughed at this – “Mask this, mask that. People arguing with strangers in the street about proper mask-wearing etiquette. It’s below your nose! It’s above your chin! Yours has a dolphin! Where can I get one of those?”
o We looked at a number of blue states phasing out their mask mandates, and along with that, high-profile Democrats who’ve been caught in violation of existing mandates.
o Trevor didn’t buy Stacy Abrams’s reason for posing maskless in a photo at a school event – “First of all, no little kids want to hear a speech from a politician. All right? Especially the kids doing remote learning at home. Mask or no mask, those kids are not listening to you. They’re watching Peppa Pig in another tab.”
o I loved this bit – “Abrams is campaigning for governor of Georgia, so why waste your time meeting kids who can’t even vote when you could be out in the streets meeting adults in Georgia who also can’t vote? Although, I guess this may be part of Abrams’s plan. You know? You meet with the schoolkids, and then if they line up at the polls now, they’ll turn 18 by the time they reach the voting booth.”
o I liked this response to the governor of California and the mayor of LA also posing maskless, at a crowded sporting event – “Now, look, am I saying that, oh, politicians need to always hold themselves accountable to every single law that they impose on us? Kind of! Yeah.”
· Interview – Musician Robert Glasper
o Trevor noted that Glasper is a “musician’s musician,” someone everyone wants to work with – Glasper explained some of that appeal, saying, “With all the genres that I play, I play with the masters of that genre. So when I cross over, it’s the real thing, you know what I mean?”
o Hearing Glasper describe some of his past collaborators, Trevor said, “This is like in a kung fu movie. You go and learn with all the best masters of all the different styles” – Glasper, awesomely, responded, “Exactly. I’m like the Bruce Lee of the piano.”
· Performance – Musician Robert Glasper
o Glasper performed a number called “Heaven’s Here,” joined by the singer Ant Clemons.
o Outside of specific concert band/orchestra performances, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a performing scenario like that, where the singer is there to back up an instrumentalist – it was interesting to see.
Wednesday, February 10
· Headlines – Bitcoin hackers caught
o I liked the description of Bitcoin as “the only money that doesn’t have slaveholders on it.”
o Interesting catch-22 of the FBI catching hackers who stole Bitcoin now valued about $4.5 billion – “It turns out a lot of people in the crypto community actually took this as bad news, because cryptocurrency is supposed to be anonymous. And if the FBI can trace Bitcoin to someone who might have stolen it, what’s to stop them from tracking innocent people who are just using Bitcoin to buy heroin and automatic weapons?”
· If You Don’t Know, Now You Know – Highway racism
o Loved this – The infrastructure bill is one of Biden’s greatest accomplishments as president, “aside from allowing students to keep their debt.”
o Naturally, Fox News got willfully confused at the administration’s explanations that many highways in the national interstate system negatively impacted communities of color, asking how a highway could possibly be racist – “I get why Tucker is so puzzled by this. If highways were racist, then, surely they would have been a guest on his show by now. It must be very confusing for him.”
o When Highway 94 was built in Minnesota, it displaced 1 in 7 Black residents of St. Paul, narrowing targeting Black neighborhoods for areas of construction. The news clip explaining that included the following quote – “‘Very few Blacks were living in Minnesota,’ one critic noted, ‘but the road builders found them.’”
o We also looked at how highways were designed specifically to divide white and Black neighborhoods, reinforcing segregation at the expense of what would actually be the most effective placement for the highways – “Man, racism is a hell of a drug. I mean, think about it. Instead of designing the most efficient highway, they instead made it zigzag around the city like some kind of racist Mario Kart.”
o I liked this line, explain to Fox News that this issue isn’t being discussed in order to call everyone who drives on a highway racist – Rather, “if we can understand the history of how a thing came to be, then maybe we can figure out how to make it better when we build new roads in the future.”
· Correspondent Piece (Dulcé) – Romance novels by Black women
o Dulcé decided to discuss romance novels on behalf of folks who were going to be single on Valentine’s Day.
o Funny reaction to this passage by Beverly Jenkins – “I love how she was flicking her tongue against the edges of his lips. Ooh, you know a writer is good if they make kissing sound sexy even when it’s wrong. Like, don’t be licking his lips, get that poor man some Chapstick.”
o Another industry trailblazer Dulcé highlighted was the publisher Vivian Stephens, who printed works by authors of color – “She changed the game with her publishing company Candlelight Ecstasy, which is one of those terms that only belongs in a romance novel. If you combine candlelight and ecstasy in real life, you’re gonna lose your eyebrows.”
· Interview – Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen
o Haugen came to the discoveries that would eventually lead her to blow the whistle when she was assigned to examine Facebook’s impact internationally – “Very quickly, I realized kind of the horrifying magnitude of the danger that we were facing. That Facebook’s algorithms give the most reach to the most extreme and divisive ideas. And that process is destabilizing some of the most fragile places in the world, like Ethiopia or what happened in Myanmar.”
o She clarified that the fixes she’s advocating for are about looking at the algorithms that prioritize content, not censoring the users who produce it – “It’s not about picking good or bad ideas or good or bad people. It’s about how do we change the dynamics of these systems so that you could have good speech counter bad speech. How do we give those more of an equal say at the table?”
o She emphasized that this wasn’t an overt “evil” decision made. Rather, they designed their algorithms to garner maximum engagement/profit, and then they realized that those algorithms were amplifying extreme content – “This is about Facebook making choices to not fix it.”
Thursday, February 10
· Headlines – Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, art museum security guard defaces painting, Trump’s mishandling of official White House documents, Canadian trucker protests
o While he obviously noted the terrible consequences of the “Don’t Say Gay” law, Trevor also speculated about potential “upsides’ – “I mean, it’s gonna make it a lot harder for bullies in school. Yeah. ‘Cause they’re gonna be in the hallway like, ‘You’re gay!’ And Ron DeSantis is just gonna burst out of a locker, like, ‘No! Don’t say that!’”
o This made me smile – “And I know a lot of you basic bitches out there right now are looking at the eyes on this painting. You’re saying, ‘That actually does look better.’ That’s not the point! Art is not about what looks better. Art is about confusing people with a thing that allows you to feel like you are better than them, a’ight?”
o With the news that Trump regularly clogged White House toilets trying to flush official documents, Trevor naturally tied it back to Trump’s old hatred of low-flow toilets – “‘Yeah, they’re flushing them ten times, 15 times.’ No, dude, you were flushing toilets ten times, 15 times, because you were shoving your homework down the toilet.”
o Michael made an appearance as the White House plumber giving an exclusive on Trump’s document-flushing – “I unclogged so many classified documents, they had to give me top-secret clearance.”
o After a Canadian trucker protester compared Canada’s vaccine mandates to “Hitler’s Germany” and unvaccinated truckers to the Jews, Trevor’s response was simple – “You see, this is why we shouldn’t be banning books.”
o Excellent point – “Rand Paul, Donald Trump, everyone on Fox News are coming out in support of these truckers, which I do find kind of funny. Because all of these people who are cheering on the truckers and like, ‘Yeah, shut it all down, truckers! Bring the economy to its knees!’’ Aren’t those the same people who said we shouldn’t have any COVID restrictions because the last thing we wanted to do is bring an economy down to its knees? I mean, so, basically what? It’s not worth hurting the economy to save countless lives, but it is to make a point?”
o I really liked this response to the possibility of trucker protests beginning in the U.S. – “I will say this. The funny thing about the whole protest is that when it comes to coronavirus restrictions in America, what are they going to be protesting? There’s not a whole lot left, right? I mean, coronavirus isn’t over, but everyone has already started to act like it is.”
· Correspondent Piece (Roy & Ronny) – Sports updates
o Roy was disappointed when Ronny wanted to start with the Olympics – “I thought you meant real sports, like basketball or Wordle.”
o After China tactlessly inserted a Uighur athlete into the opening ceremony, Roy and Ronny agreed that the Olympics should be hosted by “a superpower that’s not mixed up in all these human rights abuses,” then realized they couldn’t think of one.
o Ronny wasn’t here for Roy’s criticism of China’s COVID protocols at the Olympics – “I totally disagree with you, Roy. That’s such an American perspective. When the rest of the world gets COVID, they quarantine. When Americans catch COVID, they go to Applebee’s.”
o I loved this bit from Roy, on legalized sports betting ahead of the Super Bowl – “Here’s my thing—the second they legalized gambling, it was everywhere. Day one, day one. Everywhere. Gambling. The websites were ready. The ads were on my timeline. So why does every other law take years to kick in? Joe Biden, put DraftKings in charge of your infrastructure bill. By March, everybody gonna have their own bridge.”
· Interview – Musician Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
o In talking about his Oscar-nominated documentary Summer of Soul, Questlove commiserated with Trevor over their amazement that “Black Woodstock” happened in the first place – “I directed this film and I refuse to believe it.”
o Not just that it happened, though. That it happened and then was almost entirely forgotten – “I’d like to think I was a music expert, or knew things. Like, how come I didn’t know that over 300,000 people gathered in Harlem for a collective six-weekend affair with Stevie Wonder? Stevie Wonder. Sly Stone. B.B. King. Mavis Staples. Like, how come I didn’t know about this?”
o Questlove went on to say, “The question I asked is, ‘Is Black erasure this easy?’”
o And beyond shedding light on this buried historical event, Questlove also relished the opportunity to showcase something so positive in the Black community from back in the ‘60s – “For a lot of people, their first view of us was either in blackface or mired in trouble or controversy or, you know, getting arrested, getting hosed down. And… But Black joy is the component that shows that we’re human.”
No comments:
Post a Comment