Fremde Frau

I agree with you both. (I didn't necessarily mean civil wars in the US but wars in general around the world.) That said, most politicians and media seem to have a single definition of terrorism ("Muslim") and are reluctant to call homegrown terrorists "terrorists" (at least as long as they are white, straight, conservative Bible-thumpers), so who really knows how far off the cliff the Tea Party will manage to push the US? My perspective may be warped, since I live in Georgia. I'll be moving within a year, and I cannot wait. We need this so desperately (and not the way some news outlets seem to portray it, as a distinction between the GOP and the Tea Party).

On Fareed Zakaria's GPS from Sunday, he opened his show with comments on the rising sentiment of fundamentalist nationalism or political identity among the citizens of many nations in the world, including stable nations that aren't war zones or under economic stress. It's bad enough here in the States, with xenophobic extremists rising to positions of political power and the religious right working hard to legislate a separation of science and state and to undo advancements in human rights, but looking at the overall world picture made me think that Earth is heading inexorably towards an era of more intense wars and religious fundamentalism, to say nothing of the growing crises of climate change, poverty, and plutocracies. As an anthropologist, I am interested in the factors at play, but as a citizen of the world, I feel sick. *sigh* I need to go back to the DS archive for some pick-me-ups. This is fucking depressing.

I may have to give you my firstborn for directing me to that Cheney episode, trow. Oh my god, it just kept getting better and better. By the time Rob Corddry was delivering his "analysis," I couldn't even breathe. After watching the summer specials, I wanted to see more of the bit they did with "America 2" (the screen capture for this video) and managed to track down this gem: America 2: Now With More Freedom, Part 2 Glenn Beck's Utopia, Part 3 A Glenn Beck Holiday. It was beautiful. What a perfect deconstruction of Beck's fantasy world. (I'd forgotten all about that guy. The tag for his name has a bunch of videos listed, so I think I just found my comedy candy for this week!) I think my favorite line of the whole segment was the almost throwaway line of calling that Tea Party utopia a "freedom panic room."

That article touches on something that I don't particularly enjoy about LWT but which seems to be the aspect that the press appreciates the most: the fact that many LWT segments are styled almost like lectures, in both the preachy and the classroom sense of the word. LWT doesn't tend to assume that its audience has knowledge or interest in a topic; there is less comedic shorthand and more detailed exposition. It's sort of like the Jason Jones abroad series on TDS, where he mocks the dumb American stereotype by portraying it; LWT mocks the dumb American stereotype by pointing out how little America knows or cares, but John is also effectively speaking to that stereotype by incorporating it into his perspective of his audience. It's relevant that John is British and the focus of his show is equally distributed between international and domestic issues, but even this assumption that Americans have no interest in international stories becomes a sort of self-fulfilling joke. Anyway, my point is that, with rare exceptions, TDS or TCR generally seem to assume a certain level of knowledge and interest on the part of their audience, regardless of the topic they are covering. (I think that's their response when critics say young people get their news from them: that people wouldn't even understand the jokes, let alone the stories themselves, unless they already had at least a basic framework of reference.) I like the exposition-heavy aspect of LWT, actually, but because it is often delivered with a fairly blatant moral indignation, various segments can sometimes become a little tiresome. It's the same reason I prefer NPR, PBS, and AJA to MSNBC, even though I agree with MSNBC ideologically... which is sort of paradoxical, since I've seen LWT described as the AJA of comedy news (compared to TDS as MSNBC and TCR as Fox). I think that comparison mostly speaks to the international content of the show and not the tone of delivery. The segment on the death penalty was well done, for example, but it wasn't "can you believe this?" so much as it was "this is how we all need to feel about it." I personally agree with his point of view, but I was tired of the lecture by the end of the piece. I'd rather the writing for LWT assume that I can understand the details and form my own conclusions. That said, I disagree with some bloggers who see this as a deliberate shift away from the relative "fluffiness" of TDS and TCR, since John has stated that he doesn't intend to be anyone's champion. He's doing terrific, intelligent comedy, and he's a brilliant, hilarious host developing a wonderful interview style. I think interpreting him as an activist comedian projects too much onto him. He told Charlie Rose pretty flatly that he's just interested in doing comedy. So this seems like the same kind of press that TDS and TCR have had in years past, with LWT being the latest one placed involuntarily onto a pedestal.

That bit was more of a glancing blow to Hobby Lobby, I think, sort of like the Washington name change bit in an earlier episode. I think if the Hobby Lobby case had been the central story of the episode instead of Uganda, then he would have taken more time and dealt with more of the arguments, like the segments on FIFA and net neutrality. When he mentioned that they pay full time employees 90% above minimum wage and then said not to get on their high horse, I'd hoped he would bring up Hobby Lobby's disingenuous and belated sense of pro-life morality, given issues like their previous willing coverage of contraceptives before big bad Obamacare, their 401(k) retirement plans, and doing a great deal of business with pro-abortion, anti-human rights China. The punchline about what people can do with their craft supplies wasn't very sharp. Anyway, there is so much to take Hobby Lobby down on, it's an embarrassment of comedy riches. Maybe he will touch on it again, as he revisited the dingo bit from the net neutrality piece.

In other news: NASA has launched a second satellite to study carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since the first satellite's data couldn't be used. Good luck with that... I anticipate some fun and rage by John, Larry, Stephen, and Jon on this subject over the next few years. There should be a test before policy makers take office and are allowed to make and influence policy. Just a basic science, math, and reading comprehension test, like the GRE but for politicians. Maybe also a social sciences refresher course that includes anthropology, so that they at the very least remember (or realize for the first time) that their point of view is not the point of view.

Those "patriots" have no sense of history, do they? Among other things they lack. I'd bet that they think Emma Lazarus' poem defaces the Statue of Liberty. How was it that Jessica put it last year, in that bit about Santa? First you fix history, then you lock that shit down.

During the LWT coverage, when John mentioned that Hobby Lobby does some good (paying above the minimum wage), I kept hoping he would bring up their dependence on the working poor in China. If Jesus were real and among his (self-styled) devoted followers today, I think he'd be less concerned with legislating parts of the female body and more concerned with hypocrites who claim to be Christians standing up for the dignity of human life while profiting directly from violations of human rights. Even other Christians are calling them out. Their response:

I think the supreme court has to take religious views as they come and not fact-check them. At least, that's how one reporter described the process. AJA tried to discuss other religious beliefs, like Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, with one of the "religious liberty" advocates that they had on, but she danced around the topic and wouldn't give a real answer. LWT did look at Hobby Lobby briefly, but I'm looking forward to more extensive coverage from one or all of them. I found this brilliant coverage by TDS from a couple of years ago: The Vagina Ideologues, followed by Sean Hannity's Holy Sausage Fest.

I don't really understand all of the legal nuances, but I saw a bit just now on Al Jazeera America about the decision, and it seems like SCOTUS made a special effort to limit this decision to specific contraceptives and to "closely-held" family businesses, on the premise that the Affordable Care Act was forcing individual owners to act against their religious beliefs? The legal consultant for AJA went on to say that this wasn't the same as saying "small business," since multibillion-dollar corporations with tens of thousands of employees like Mars Inc. are also considered "closely held" family businesses. I wish I understood more of it. EDIT: Here is the story on NPR. What has Jon called it: opinion-based facts? The bit on Hobby Lobby from earlier this year has been going around social media since yesterday. I guess, until we have a change in the supreme court, ill-informed religious convictions will continue to be privileged above science and facts.

I liked that part, too. It was interesting to see how being a celebrity affects a moment like that, whether it's an awareness of class privilege or of the potential for bad press (via social media). I got the sense from the Alec Baldwin interview that it was more of the latter than the former for him, but I suppose it's ultimately a pragmatic issue for most celebrities.

It was sarcasm. The first part about Obama endangering children is what some of them are actually saying.

I unfortunately saw a bit of the spin, possibilities, and it went something along these lines: that the flawed immigration system had endangered the lives of children who travel at great lengths to get to the States, only to now be belatedly turned away. I guess Obama should have sent out a memo, and to pay for that, perhaps he could have amended the Affordable Care Act to exclude Hispanic Americans. That would be a GOP-approved plan of action, since there would be no raising of taxes and they could run on the platform that Democrats hate Hispanic voters. After finally catching up on TDS, I have to say the last couple of episodes were superb. The bit on JMU was flawless. Sometimes, I feel a little worried for how tired Jon can seem (to be specific: I'm worried that he's getting ready to retire), but that segment on "warfare queens" was made all the better by the fact that he was growing increasingly disillusioned and weary of them. That his delivery of "go fuck yourself" was so blank-eyed and emotionally drained was exactly the level of complete dismissal that they deserve. It ended up being one of my very favorite takedowns of the GOP since I started watching the show. Enjoy your time off, TDS. It's sure gonna be a long two weeks (and it has already started out depressingly enough, with the ISIS declaration of a caliphate and the Hobby Lobby decision). I'm so grateful for the website archive. Something tells me I'm gonna spend a lot of time in there until they return.

This was a fantastic episode. The interview was beautifully done, and Onziema himself is such an inspiration. I saw that documentary, too, after Roger Ross Williams' interview on TDS. As a child of missionaries (to Hiroshima, Japan), certain aspects of it struck pretty close to home. As an adult now and as an anthropologist, part of me wants to return to educate missionaries on cultural violence, among other things, but the problem is that there is no interest in true exchange or in learning. When one believes one's religion has all of the answers, there's no incentive to respect other viewpoints, and even becoming educated on those viewpoints is akin to letting the devil in. Now with religion riding so high on politics here, I think we're headed towards the next Great Awakening. Let's just hope it doesn't go internationally viral. What do we call it when a practicing plutocracy marries a theocracy-in-waiting?

That's a good point, ganesh, but then who would be Palpatine? There's no way Bush could pull that off.

I loved that bit with the Imperial March. The thing about Darth Vader, though, is that he's ultimately a sympathetic figure, no? Cheney is more of a Palpatine to me. Darth Vader is an iconic film villain with a tragic background who achieved some measure of personal redemption in the end. That's way too generous a narrative for Cheney. (Disclaimer: I've only seen the first installment of the prequel trilogy because one was enough, so I might be missing something.) Michael Che fizzled for me, too, maculae. He was so good in his first two segments (particularly the second one), but last night didn't quite work. Maybe he wasn't feeling the material. Jon tried to help generate some energy, but it was such a long segment that it became almost painful to watch. The Maher interview was odd. Both men seemed to have made a decision to discuss whatever came up in the fluffiest manner possible and then ended up enjoying the interview almost despite themselves. It was interesting to watch. I've read the Pew Research study they referenced (this one, I believe, and here is a summary of the part on religion), and I don't intend to argue with the Pew Research Center, but I think this particular study left unaddressed the particularly negative reaction that too many Americans (religious and atheist alike) have to Islam as a whole. The social and political climate in America is such that I'm not sure that, if it came down to it, the majority of Americans wouldn't vote for an atheist presidential candidate over a Muslim, no matter how important a general belief in god appears to be. Look at the ridiculous reaction with one half of the country just wondering if our president is secretly Muslim. I mentioned this last week, but, speaking as an agnostic, Maher's insistence that a rational person cannot also be a religious person, and vice versa, is really annoying. From an anthropological standpoint, evidence certainly suggests that practicing religion is as much a social behavior as a personal choice, but, for instance, practicing a religion is not the same as being spiritual. So maybe Obama is bullshitting for politics when it comes to attending church but not when it comes to his personal spirituality. There's no rule that all rational people are religious only as a social courtesy or in order to gain something. Among other factors, it is possible to compartmentalize, and since religion and science are two vastly different things, they do not automatically cancel each other out. I like how Neil DeGrasse Tyson put it, in his interview with Bill Moyers. (Here is a summary of his points on religion. The headline is somewhat hyperbolic and not representative of the distinctions he makes between fundamentalists and "enlightened religious people.")

Thank you, stacey! I found this video today (just 5 minutes long). The description states that it's an excerpt from the BBC4 show Frost on Satire, from 2010. David Frost interviews Jon, Bill Maher, and Rory Bremner on the purpose or meaning of satire, and they also discuss the lines that comedy should or shouldn't cross. Jon and Maher have such different interpretations. Jon also directly addresses the question of social change and effectiveness; I was really struck by how honest his answer was.

I didn't realize we had a forum for this show. Thank you, ! The Sarah Jessica Parker episode felt a little weaker than some of the other episodes I saw, but I'm looking forward to George Wallace this week and to Jon Stewart's episode, whenever that will be. It does seem to be a predominantly white, male show, judging from the website archive, so I hope this season's diversity is a sign of seasons to come. I haven't kept up with their careers, but has Seinfeld remained friendly with Julia Louis-Dreyfus? That would be a nice reunion, since he's had the other two on.

The Guardian article that they quoted made the same argument. This quote jumped out at me, from the Salon article: That was an eye-opener for me, as far as TDS and TCR. It's nice that LWT has freedom and doesn't have to worry about that kind of pressure. (I haven't read the Baffler article they linked to. That sounds like an interesting read.)

I'll try to remember to post about it here, maculae. I think new episodes come out every Thursday. (Next up is George Wallace.)

Oh, I haven't seen the Brian Regan episode yet. I'll have to check it out.

Thank you for the links and explanations, peeayebee, Victor the Crab, and maculae! That Family Guy joke is so vague. I wonder what else may be behind it, that set Jon off. So, Maron may or may not be genuine in his apology, but he mostly sees an opportunity to capitalize on the publicity of the whole thing? If they used to be friends, I hope they are able to work it out somehow, either over coffee or on the podcast. Speaking of coffee, I saw an ad for Seinfeld's show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and Jon's going to be in it this season! I'm not sure of the date. I recently saw a few episodes of the show, and, as someone who knows next to nothing about most comedians or the history of comedy in the States, it was pretty interesting. Louis C.K.'s was the best (if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it!), but I enjoyed some of the others too, including Leno's. I'm excited about Jon's episode; it will be neat to see him outside of the show. I watched Jon's interview with Chris Wallace, and Wallace was trying so hard to get Jon to say that he's a political player or that he's intentionally trying to direct his viewers to feel this or that way about various issues, and Jon asked him something like, "What am I doing that's so different [from comedians who came before]?" It must be frustrating for him to handle the same weight of political expectations from people who agree with him ideologically (like Maher) as well as people who disagree with him and want to use that to discredit Obama, Democrats, and liberals in general. (I hope my connection's better tomorrow; I really want to watch that Maddow interview.) There was an interesting video I saw a few months ago on the role of the court jester, titled "Punchlines for Progress" and made for a master's degree. (It's how I was introduced to Stephen's incredible speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.) Anyway, I was interested because the video's opening question asked how Jon became one of the most trusted men in America, and then it went back a few decades to trace the civil rights movement, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and so forth. I thought it would give me more information specifically about Jon, but it ended up being fascinating in its own right. That said, it was sort of an odd experience to watch because the context showed the importance of the role but not necessarily the importance of the actor in the role, basically arguing for Jon's importance and power by showing that he's not doing anything new or unique in the history of (American) comedy. When you mentioned This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Victor the Crab, and how Canada doesn't make the same expectations of Mercer as America does of Jon, it reminded me of this video. It made me wonder (and maybe with John Oliver's show taking off, I've gotten an answer), if Jon stepped down and someone else took over, would they be faced with the same political expectations, or is this something specific to Jon because of things he's personally said or done (on Crossfire or at the rally, etc.)? It was interesting to see that some people who think Jon is finished or irrelevant because John is doing so well specifically cited John's call-to-arms activism as a sign of greater relevance. Maybe John's taking up that torch that Jon never intended to hold? (I'm not that certain John wants it, either, though.)

Thank you for the links, trow! I didn't realize he had gone on Maddow's show for an interview; I'll have to watch it when my connection is better. EDIT: The general theme I'm understanding in relation to Maher and the rally, etc., is that some people want Jon (TDS) to be more politically proactive than he (TDS) is? Does he really have so much influence that it's a matter of "with great power, comes great responsibility"? (This is a genuine question; most people here in Georgia that I've talked to about TDS have heard of him, but his viewership is less than 2 million, right? It's hard for a new viewer like me to understand how he's so well-known and why so much is expected of him, without him being highly-watched with numbers more like Fallon's, etc.) That's a good point, Beatriceblake. Any chance that Fox sees to insult MSNBC is too good to pass up, I guess. It's so frustrating to see how many Fox viewers and talking heads don't realize that "most trusted" is not the same as "most accurate." I guess the average Fox viewer sees any news organization that doesn't slant conservative as having a liberal bias. My own dad was that way until he saw the light (TDS, and then BBC followed by Al Jazeera America). How many people has Jon had a beef with over the years (or how many have had a beef with him)? I hadn't heard about Seth Macfarlane, so I looked it up. I wonder what joke was so offensive that Jon would call him about it. He doesn't strike me as being petty like Trump; that was a surprise. And Marc Maron? I can't view any videos at the moment, but I looked up their names and there is some history there, too?

A Boston Gal, Maher is scheduled for 6/23 (Monday). (I linked to next week's thread.)

Thank you, trow! That Trump rant was amazing! Damn, Jon takes his pizza seriously, doesn't he? I remember there was some rant against Chicago that I saw recently, and he was calling their deep-dish pizza a "casserole." And he got mad at Bill de Blasio, too, for also using forks. (I don't think he would like the pizza I was used to in Japan.) Does Maher ever talk about Jon on his show (outside of the rally reaction), or Jon about Maher? I'm just curious if the rally thing is a central enough moment for it to still be on-topic for either one of them in this interview, or if there is enough between them--for better or worse--that it's not going to be the elephant in the room. I wonder what Maher is on to promote. His oust-a-member-of-Congress tour? (Is that still happening?)