Tag: sausage grinder of snark

Feb 10 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (What is it good for?)

Hurray.  Well, in a meta sense, we know 3 of the 4 panel members today Michael McKean, Wes Moore, and Kimberly Dozier.  I predict that the question will not be whether the U.S. should be a global bully, but where with all of those tempting targets like Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, and Korea just waiting for a little “suck on this.”

We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble…. What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!” That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

Who says our elite media is full of genocidal maniacs?

Keeping it 100 Larry?  Suck on this-

Continuity

HIHOL

What?  Hebrew International House Of Latkas.  This is a Billion dollar franchise opportunity I’m telling you.

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

I dunno.  Is Thursday something besides Abraham Lincoln’s birthday?  Still no guest.

Patricia Arquette will be on promoting… Boyhood?  That’s getting a little old though Oscar season is right around the corner.  CSI: Cyber is slated to debut March 4th so there is that I suppose (oh, and if you want a hack toolkit let me recommend DEFT, Digital Evidence & Forensics Toolkit, currently in version 8.2.  Your target computer will have to support a DVD though).

Other than that the question is how will Jon handle the Brian Williams scandal.

Jon Stewart’s Brian Williams dilemma: How will “Daily Show” handle a friend becoming a punchline?

by Sophia A. McClennen, Salon

Monday, Feb 9, 2015 08:30 AM EST

Of all TV news icons to fall, though, Williams is in a unique spot. Williams, perhaps more than any other TV news anchor working today, has been particularly visible in popular culture. Williams has consistently attempted to court a younger audience and cultivate a “hip” vibe by making regular appearances on late night comedy. He has been on David Letterman’s show numerous times, he appeared on “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live,” and he has made appearances on Conan O’Brien’s show as well as on “30 Rock.” In each of these cases he has traded his gravitas as a news anchor for laughs and for a chance to reach a wider audience.

But now as we reflect on what the revelations of his exaggerated experiences in Iraq (and possibly elsewhere) mean for his career, it is worth wondering what we can learn about Williams’s special connection to comedy. Certainly in hindsight these stunts reveal a degree of parody and performance that are much less funny in light of his diminished integrity.

One of the best examples of this heightened parody is his repeated appearances on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” A few months after Fallon stepped in as host in 2014, his staff created a mash-up of Williams where he appeared to rap to hip-hop. The show made a few of these mash up videos and they repeatedly went viral. But even funnier- and even weirder in light of recent events – are the “slow jams” Williams did with Fallon, where he read news to music and Fallon sang and made puns. The slow jam with Fallon was funny because it was a parody of Williams as a serious reporter. Now that we know the truth – that Williams was less serious and more egotistical – the slow jams seem more like examples of shameless self-promotion.

It is important to point out, though, that this story is about more than the inflated ego of one nightly news anchor. Instead, the decline of Williams needs to be read as part of the ongoing blurring of entertainment and news. TV news has long been in decline as a trusted source of information to the public. Numerous studies show that network news is decreasing as a source of information for the U.S. public, especially among younger viewers. Williams, who won a Peabody for his reporting on Katrina (reporting that is now also being called into question) may have been one of the most visible TV news journalists, but his presence as a public figure was nothing in comparison to TV anchor predecessors like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

The real news below.

Feb 06 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Use The Force Luke)

Tonight’s topic is three parent babies and there’s a lot of confusion about just what those are.

Cells are not just undifferentiated masses of goo, they have microscopic structures similar to the organs of multicellular organisms and one of those is the Mitochondria.  Now the principal function of  Mitochondria is to convert Glucose and Fatty Acids (cell food) into Adenosine triphosphate which can be used either for energy or to construct cell structures.  It also, to a lesser extent, produces a similar chemical, Cyclic adenosine monophosphate, which carries intracellular signals and regulates the conversion of ATP into energy or structural elements.

In addition to supplying cellular energy, mitochondria are involved in other tasks such as signaling, cellular differentiation, cell death, as well as maintaining the control of the cell cycle and cell growth.

To assist in these tasks Mitochondria have their own DNA which both disassembles the incoming Glucose and Fatty Acids and assembles the ATP and AMP designating whether the ATP is to be converted to energy or used by Nucleic DNA for further processing into more complex proteins.

Mitochondrial DNA is unique and distinct from Nucleic DNA, is passed only from mother to offspring, and has no bearing whatever on the unique characteristics of the multicellular organism (what we would normally think of as genetics like hair, eye, and skin color).  If damaged or defective though it can produce several diseases related to Cellular respiration (it’s been implicated in Juvenile Diabetes for instance).

The British Parliament has recently approved a procedure that in cases of In Vitro Fertilisation will allow for Doctors in cases where damage to the Mitochondrial DNA is detected to replace that DNA with DNA from a donor, creating a “three parent baby”.

Of course Conservatives are up in arms as they are about anything regarding sex, but a surprising number of supposedly intelligent people are also buying into the concept that this minor procedure opens the door to eugenics and “designer babies”.

We’ll see tonight if Larry is fooled.

Do you know what Mitochondrial DNA is?

Just keeping it 100.

Continuity

E. Coli Nation

Next week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Bob Odenkirk will be on to pitch his new series Better Call Saul which premieres February 8, 2015.  I was never into Breaking Bad, the original series that spawned this spin off, so I can’t say from personal knowledge, but critics I’ve read say it’s not nearly as dark as the original and the advertising and preview clips seem to bear this out.

The 2 part web exclusive extended interview with Wes Moore (ugh) and the real news below.

Feb 05 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Not Just Cos)

For years now I’ve been kinda pissed off at Bill Cosby, not because of the rapes (I simply didn’t know about them, celebrity gossip is of very little interest to me even if true) but because I felt he was unduly critical of, and set unrealistic expectations for, black fathers.

If you listen to his early work you’ll realized that his relationship with Big Russell (his dad) was dysfunctional and violent and even the warm and fuzzy stories he told about his interactions with his wife and children were abusive power struggles, at least in the mental and emotional sense.

And then he spent 8 years as TVs favorite Dad, a loveable curmudgeon straight out of the 50s, tough but fair.  Not just that, but rich too.  He a Doctor, his wife an Attorney, they owned their own Brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.

1%ers.

Needless to say this is not the life experience of most U.S. citizens, let alone African-American ones.

The pont of the show in Cosby’s mind was to show how to raise successful children with the measure of that success being college graduation.  After that you were on your own as he frequently proclaimed and demonstrated in his later treatment of Sondra and Elvin.  When Denise started becoming independent she pretty much got exiled and finally disappeared altogether.

So that’s your TV view of the epitome of black fatherhood.

What I will call the myth of black fathers being irresponsible arises I think partly from the abuse of slavery where slave owners considered their property cattle and bred and sold them as such.  Before the Civil War there was an entire vein of Abolitionist literature about loving families broken by evil masters and fathers escaping and struggling to reunite with their loved ones and liberate them, most often ending in Romantic Tragedy as all perished.  Afterwards there arose the fiction of the nobility of ‘The Lost Cause’ and the excuse making for the horrific practices of slavery and propoganda of the happy, inferior African-American, content with field work and incapable of anything else- first because we are ‘Exceptional’ and nothing we do is ever wrong, and second because it helped justify continued and pervasive Jim Crow discrimination both North and South.

And narratives of the irresponsible underclass, whatever race or ethnicity, were always popular with the elites who used them to validate and rationalize their continued oppression.

Another expression of this in modern times is 1965’s The Negro Family: The Case For National Action by every racist conservative’s favorite “Liberal”, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  While there are many flaws and entirely valid criticisms I propose two for your consideration- the first is that the Report focuses only on ‘out of wedlock’ births as a symptom of family dysfunction and doesn’t properly correct for class bias (including all poor families as a group) or recognize other symptoms of dysfunction which vary by culture (inbreeding and domestic violence and child abuse for example).

The second is simply- who gives a rat’s ass about getting married now anyway?  Certainly not 1%er White folk.

Oh, gays.

So my question for Larry is-

Why are you buying into this?

Continuity

Every Day Is Exactly The Same

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Wes Moore is the next Colin Powell.  He was a Captain in the 82nd Airborne, served as assistant to Condoleezza Rice, and worked at Citigroup.  He currently hosts his own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.  If he’s not pitching the show he’ll be whoring his newest book, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters.

Bonus video and the real news below.

Feb 04 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Adam & Steve)

So tonight’s topic is Gay Marriage and all I’ve really got to say is we’re talking about it why?

Oh, Mike Huckabee said something stupid and bigoted about it and he’s thinking about running for president (again).  Well, he’s a stupid bigot so of course he says stupid and bigoted things and he’s not really running for president, he just wants to scam some more money from the stupid and bigoted people he represents and also those deep pocketed Billionaires who think the stupid and bigoted vote is an important part of the Republican coalition and want to keep the rubes in line by throwing them a bone.

You see it’s all about the ick factor and if any of these Bozos had the least scrap of religious integrity they wouldn’t be picking and choosing which parts of Leviticus to honor.  Thank goodness as an Atheist I think it’s all superstitious non-sense and don’t have to do any thelogical contortions to justify my regard for blended fabrics, cheeseburgers, and any number of delicious things made from pork and non scaly water life either singly or in combination.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not militant about it.  I’m perfectly content to let you fester in ignorance, salving life’s numerous disappointments and injustices with the laugable belief that there’s some sugar daddy in the sky with a big rock candy mountain and you’ll get you piece of the pie bye and bye, bye and bye.  That’s why Marx called it the opiate of the masses.  Why worry about how much your life here sucks and who’s to blame for it if by your slavish worship and utter conformity you’ll live in eternal bliss.

After you’re just a little too dead to enjoy it of course, but we don’t make the rules.  Oh wait, we do!

Were I really keeping it 100 I’d ask Larry why so many of the poor and minorities buy into fundamentalism, but I think for the most part I’ve just answered that question.

Personally I don’t think there’s a lot of grist in this mill for Larry to work with and I wish they’d get him better topics but maybe we could stand to loose the weight.

That’s called portion control.

Continuity

The Magic Gap

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Tonight’s guest, Bill Browder, has a very sad tale to tell of how his friend and attorney was arrested, tortured, and killed by Putin at the behest of Putin’s oligarch friends and how he, as a true patriot, stood up to evil D.C. State Department bureaucrats and with the help of a few brave Senators, forced the administration to accept truly effective sanctions on those nasty Russ.  It’s the subject of his new book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.  Don’t judge this one by it’s cover.  Bill Browder is a hedge fund manager who got booted by Putin in 2005 for corruption so he has his own agenda working and I’d take this with enough salt to show up in my bloodwork (and that’s quite a bit, my Sodium levels are rock steady).

Martin Short’s 2 part web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Feb 03 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Phat)

Actually, tonight’s topic is obesity and it’s arguably the #1 public health problem in the United States today, not that it kills you directly but because it’s a contributing factor to many other things like coronary disease and diabetes.  I don’t mind admitting to you that my doctors have strongly advised I drop at least 20 pounds and I think I could lose another 20 and feel much better than I do.

A major part of it is my sedentary lifestyle.  As a writer and a computer tech I spend waaay too much time staring at screens and tapping keyboards and when the weather breaks (6 weeks from now Punxsutawney Phil assures me) I’ll have to start walking on a regular basis, not the least because I’m planning on doing some sightseeing again this summer and while there was a time that 5 miles didn’t seem like much my goals are now more modest than that.

Another item that puts this subject in the news is the recent death of Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds, and her obituary in Murdoch owned The Australian the first half of which commented unflatteringly on her weight and physical appearance and only added as an afterthought her amazing accomplishments as a teacher, librarian, journalist, and neuroscientist (including 10 years as a Professor at Yale Medical School).

Oh, and she was only like the best selling Australian author ever with over 25 books to her credit.

I expect that might come up at some point, as well as the fact that proper nutrition declines with income level as the foods that are the cheapest and easiest to prepare are also the ones that promote obesity and in many urban neighborhoods markets are long and difficult journeys using public transportation while there’s a fast food joint on every corner.

What I’d ask Larry to keep 100 is this-

If your wife could look like Halle Berry would you want her to?

This is actually a trick question because Halle Berry is severely diabetic and has to use Insulin, a very strict diet, and daily exercise just to survive.

Now Some More Jokes About Balls

Continuity

Would You Marry A Republican?

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Martin Short got his start on SCTV which was screamingly funny and much better than Saturday Night Live except under the original cast and the original cast with Bill Murray.  He’ll be talking about either his work in Inherent Vice, his TV show Mulaney, or his upcoming Broadway role in It’s Only a Play.

Sarah Chayes 2 part web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Jan 30 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Competitive Advantage)

So tonight we talk about lying in sports and of course the only answer is if you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.  Seriously, this is why they have refs.

If this were the only NFL scandal it might be worth noticing but in a year punctuated by child abuse and domestic violence along with the continued problem of blunt force concussion it’s hard to really care that much.

And of course the NFL is hardly the only sport effected, if you really want to talk corruption what about Formula One, the Olympics or World Cup.  Their governing bodies are pure graft from bottom to top which is why the sailors at Sao Paulo will be competing in an open air sewer and soccer players in the simmering oven that is Qatar to say nothing of the police brutality to hide the homeless in Rio or the Shia majority in Bahrain or the Nepalise slave labor.

So we’re not even all that exceptional and unless the conversation is sparkling and goes in a different direction than I expect this won’t be the most exciting Nightly Show in the series and the Koch last night was a little flat.

Continuity

Kristen Schaal was pretty funny though.

Show us what we’re fighting for

I’ve never understood why guys talk about their ‘man parts’ as if they were someone else.

Next week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Sarah Chayes is a former reporter for NPR and advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Recently she’s been working to get Afghan farmers producing perfume precursors instead of Opium.  She may have a thing or two to say about the SIGAR Report on waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan the the Pentagon is now trying to suppress by refusing to co-operate with the Special Inspector General.

As always the real news below.

Jan 29 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (New Koch)

So the brothers don’t like Rand and are prepared to dump a Billion in 2016.

I wish I could say this is news or a surprise.  Things that don’t go better with?  Democracy.

Tonight’s question?

Where are the ‘liberal’ Billionaires?

Keeping it 100 and being f#@ked up with your answers are not mutually exclusive.

Oh and I don’t trust the government or Tuskegee either and I’m never giving up comedy.  Sorry kids.  On the other hand I think I’ll keep my day job.

Continuity

Friends don’t let friends broadcast drunk

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Sigh.  Tonight’s interview with Oscar Isaac is the sort of thing that used to be right in Stephen’s wheelhouse.  He’s an X-Wing pilot, Poe Dameron, in The Force Awakens AND En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse but he’ll probably only talk about A Most Violent Year which opened New Year’s Eve.

Below the fold is Jill Leovy’s web exclusive extended interview as well as the real news.

Jan 28 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Vaxxers)

You know, what is so dumb about the anti-vaxxers is that most of them grew up when eating lead infused paint chips was a popular pastime for toddlers.

What?  You didn’t eat paint chips?  Well, you breathed air didn’t you?  And TetraEthyl Lead was only phased out as an additive to gasoline in the early 2000s.  Feeling a little stupid and ragey now?  Join the Romans who liked lead waterpipes because it was malliable and easy to work with and sometimes lined their wine goblets with it because it imparts a sweet taste.  Like asbestos it was everywhere and Atrios (who’s an economist not a Doctor Jim) attributes the decline in its pervasiveness to our falling crime rate.

Leeches and bleeding were once the cutting edge (c’mon, get the joke) of medical practice just as they are of public policy today.

Anyway, I give you-

Pig Killing

Yup.  Animal sacrifice makes just as much sense today as it did when Abraham strapped Isaac to Mount Moriah.  Some Supreme Being you’ve hitched your metaphysical wagon to folks, but as a militant atheist I can hardly be expected to understand the sacred nature of your belief in Invisible Pink Unicorns (How do you know she’s pink?  Because she’s invisible.).

I’m too busy laughing which is going to get me burned at the stake someday.

It’s a fair cop.

Below the fold we have Julian Castro’s web exclusive extended interview (not that I think he needed it, also the real news

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Jill Leovy is the author of Ghettoside which I think goes too far in excusing the egregious behavior of out militarized police.  There is a reason people don’t trust cops and it’s abundantly justified.  There are three phrases to remember-

  • Am I free to leave?
  • I will not talk without my attorney.
  • I do not consent to any search.

You’ll probably get shot or tazed anyway, but at least you did the right thing.

Jan 27 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Top Shot)

You know, if I had to pick a military specialty (outside of Supreme Commander for which I’m eminently qualified, just ask me) it would be a sniper because I have a keen appreciation of a well aimed kill from outside the range of immediate relatiation which is why when people like me are captured we’re generally executed on the spot as the cowards we are.

Alas my eyesight barely qualifies me for bayonet work and my natural distrust of authority makes me a poor match for the military and besides, I can’t drink with them.

No, seriously.  I ran into some Navy recruiters one night and I woke up in a parking lot miles away with no idea how I got there.  It’s my only black out and an experience I’m not willing to repeat because I could just as easily have found myself in Shanghai and as much as I appreciate the history of the oldest culture on earth I have no desire to visit as a victim of a press gang.  I do my own reporting and don’t need no stinkin’ paparazzi.

We’ll be talking tonight about Chris Kyle, the racist mass murdering asshole celebrated by the senile Clint Eastwood who was so stupid (how stupid was he Gene?), so stupid he gave a guy suffering from extreme PTSD a gun and turned his back on him.

Got a Darwin Award for that he did, but maybe he wanted to die.

We could have asked Larry anything about Veterans including why we treat them like crap when they’re no use as soldiers anymore, but we missed our window of opportunity.

Tonight’s panel- Irving Nicholas, Paul Rickhoff, Matt Taibbi, Sabrina Jalees.

Continuity

It’s because they’re Black Jon

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

No, not the colostomy Castro, the twin who couldn’t get elected and is now HUD Secretary.

Jan 23 2015

The Daily/Nightly Show (Sometimes It’s Just A Cigar)

What do we know now?

Not as much as we thought we did about tonight’s panel.  Can’t find the list anywhere.  I see the Kinks are still with us.

Couldn’t think of a thing to ask about Cuba either, though on reflection it would probably have been something stupid like-

Are the Cigars as good as they say?

I wonder if someday he’ll be able to get Cornell West or Glenn Ford on the panel.  They would have fit right in.

Since it’s the end of the first week I feel compelled to make a snap (the yet unheard of Zorro in flying Z formation) judgement about what we’ve seen so far.

The show is very fast paced and you have to pay close attention.  The humor, such as it is, is very dry and Larry doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up.  The panel discussion is highly intelligent and sets a standard that makes the Sunday Shows look like the vacuous preening and hackneyed cliches that they are.  Even the Republicans attempt to make sense and there is only a hint of ‘bottiness, mostly from the white guys.  ‘Keeping it 100’ should be a staple of every talking head program- it really reduces the clueless disconnectedness of most panels by exposing, or threatening to expose, it.  Larry Wilmore is a nice, likable character (who knows what he is in real life) who comes off as super smart but laid back and inofficious.

Continuity

We’re correspondents on a basic cable fake news show

That’s the waiting tables of being on television.

Next week’s guests-

The Daily Show

Jennifer Aniston will be on to talk about her Oscar snub for Cake and her new film, She’s Funny That Way.

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