So Jon Stewart decides when an act of malice is too egregious to joke about? It’s called pandering, people.


Jon Stewart’s monologue last night was a moving response to the racist murders committed in Charleston on Wednesday. Dylann Storm Roof’s shooting of nine African Americans was hate crime and racism pure and simple. I cheered along as Stewart declared a comic intervention: America needed to sober up to the reality of its self-perpetuating racist crimes. I’m not sure Stewart could have reacted any differently, but his comedic turn was also a reminder for me of the manipulative tool the Daily Show has always been. World events are always filled with tragedy, which Stewart highlights and lampoons, so why is the Charleston church shooting more egregious than the mosques Americans bomb every day? Is Roof’s racism any more “home-grown” than our government’s? Does Jon Stewart decide for you when the laughter starts or stops?

I applaud Stewart calling for Americans to stop laughing about racism. #BlackLivesMatter #GodDammit! #GodFuckingDammit! Now I hope in his last shows Stewart can ask his audience to stop laughing at court jesters who provide escape valves for the horrors of systemic state-sponsored injustice.

Stewart followed up his Andy Kaufmanesque cold-open with an interview of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, the compelling child star of Pakistan, as balm for his being overwhelmed by the day’s trauma. Malala of course, the poster child for the machinations of the neoliberal globalists who need to enslave Third World young women to fill their free trade zone factories with Western-education-trafficked slave laborers. So if Stewart delivers the neoliberal agenda on a silver platter, who ordered the show-stopper?

Rap News and Wikileaks thumb noses at US junta and its News World Order

I’d say Juice Media’s Hugo Farrant and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange are showing up the powers that be. Catch today’s episode of Rap News:

Some may imagine kindred discontents at MSNBC and the Daily Show, but Jon Stewart’s chatting up Obama tonight couldn’t make the facade plainer. Developments this week with the Iran War Logs from Wikileaks and here, from fellow Aussies at Juice Media, show the next generation aims to derail US military state propaganda with impunity.

O’REILLY: The number of people in the Middle East
              opposed to Democracy has swiftly decreased.

RUMSFELT: Yeah, by a million at least!

Did you know John Yoo is not in jail?

john-woo-daily-showThis is the kind of civility that I just can’t stomach. Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, author of the Torture Memos which Bushco’s blimpnecks took for their greenlight to water-board, was a guest yesterday on the Daily Show. Short of Jon Stewart orchestrating a citizen’s arrest, or reality television setting Gitmo alumni upon Woo like bears on honey, I don’t want to see the John Yoo walking free.

I could see that Stewart had planned some zingers which Yoo was able to dodge, and afterward Stewart behaved like Hannibal Lecter had just passed through, but on the whole I think hosting criminals like Yoo is ill advised. For one, you have to shake his hand. Then of course the nature of television entertainment –unless you are Mike Wallace who’s just strode into the mark’s office– has you trying to make light of the interview, the whole of which has been choreographed for laughs. Worst of all I believe, are the too-many times a host finds himself asking the audience to give it up for the guest.

When Stewart first announced the night’s guest was to be John Yoo, the audience appropriately enough did not cheer. Of course when it came time for the cretin’s entrance, the applause was obligatory. And so it followed, each subsequent punctuation. How else are the audience members supposed to show their enthusiasm? It’s true, their energy is critical to the stage energy.

Stephen Colbert solves the applaud-the-bad-guy paradox by taking a victory lap himself when the audience applauds the introduction of the guest. But usually Colbert’s show specializes in leftist guests with whom the audience is sympathetic, so the maneuver is more for bringing the studio audience unto Colbert’s role-playing for the Right. Integral to his act is an audience that mimics O’Reilly-Limbaugh ditto-heads. A veritable right wing audience could never be brought to even show civility to a guest they’re told is hostile.

And I guess I long for a little more of that genuine sentiment. It began for me when I saw Sarah Palin treated with effusive cordiality on Saturday Night Live. Again the audience was expected to applaud Palin, if in fact they were really just excited to see her roasted.

John Yoo and ilk, the whole Bush troops, must be prosecuted and jailed. That they walk about at large, free to second guess President Obama’s terrorism strategies are nothing to laugh at. I’ll cop to being humorless on this point.

NOTES:
Excerpt, March 13, 2002 Memorandum

“… neither the GPW (Third Geneva Convention) nor the Torture Convention restrict the President’s legal authority to transfer prisoners captured in the Afghanistan conflict to third countries. Although the GPW places conditions on the transfer of POWs, neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban prisoners are legally entitled to POW status, and hence there are no GPW conditions placed on their transfer. While the Torture Convention arguably might govern transfer of these prisoners, it does not apply extraterritorially.”

Excerpt, August 1, 2002 Memo

“Under international law, therefore, the United States thus is bound only by the text of the Torture Conventions as modified by the first Bush administration’s understanding.”

Daily Show censored Palestinian issues

Palestinian rights activists Anna Baltzer and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti were guests Wednesday night on the Daily Show. I know the talk show looks like a live tape, and few question Jon Stewart’s ethics, but there were some strange anomalies. For one, for the first time in its 11 years, a heckler was audible from the show’s audience. Two, according to the guests, much of their message was excised from the final tape: (1) the US role in aiding Israel, (2) the lack of adequate coverage in mainstream US media, and (3) the Palestinian-led movement for Boycott / Divestment / Sanctions (BDS) to nonviolently pressure Israel to comply with international law.

For a limited time only, you can to the Daily Show website to see the full tape of the interview. Check it out.

Baltzer reports that the Daily Show staff were very nervous about airing the limited pro-Palestinian voices which it did. She recommends giving them positive feedback, to counter the wrath they are no doubt feeling from the Jewish/Israeli lobby. You can fill out this form: www.comedycentral.com/help/questions, re. Jon Stewart.

Remember: boycott, divest, and urge for sanctions against an Israeli regime which ignores UN resolutions and defies international law. To avoid products from Israel, do not buy anything whose bar code begins with sku prefix 729 GS1. And if you feel like pressuring the Zionists Americans who are funding the lobbyists trying to coax the US to war with Iran, boycott the Wexner family holdings: The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, C. O. Bigelow, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza, for starters.

US Marines embed officer in Daily Show

Rob Riggle Daily Show US Marine
NPR just outed Rob Riggle! Maybe you knew it already, I did not, but Comedian Rob Riggle of the Daily Show is a Marine Corps Reserves Officer! The news story this Memorial Day being that Riggle just got promoted. His duty in the Marines? Public Relations Officer! On the DAILY SHOW, handling public relations, and he earned a promotion WTF!

We think of reservists like dry-season firefighters: in theory, volunteering to assist in times of crisis. Certainly “putting out fires” defines the challenges of media relations too.

Since when has it been okay to spend defense funding on making palatable what the military does? Defense Department propaganda aimed at the home front public used to be forbidden, when Josef Goebbels was still a bad example. Now we accept paying soldiers to kill civilians, and we need soldiers stationed in LA to keep us in a laughing mood about it.

So which is Rob Riggle’s day job, and which is his reservist post? Riggle’s reserve duty is mentioned in his Daily Show bio, as if he is a soldier. Basically Riggle is a military propagandist embedded with the Comedy Network.

Hand over the treasure, or we’ll burn the ship down! Arrrrrr!

First Wall St. demanded a $1T bailout, so taxpayers relaxed a bit when Paulson said it was only $700B (!) Now it looks like they’re upping the extortion to $5T. Since less than 100 million Americans actually pay Federal Income Tax, that makes your share $50,000. Just make your check out to Robber Barrons, Inc.

Hand over the treasure, or we’ll burn the ship down! Arrrrrr!

Break out the torches and pitchforks, even the Senate Republicans have turned on the Frankenstein Administration.

Newt Gingrich warns McCain not to vote for Wall St. bailout. “I don’t know how he can vote for this and with a straight face go around and say that he’s for real change and he’s the reform candidate.” Probably with the same straight face he lies with in every campaign statement and ad, “my friends,” with that creepy smile that looks like his dentures are about to fall out.

McCain suspending campaign to deal with the New Great Depression he created. Of course, by “suspending,” he means that he will make the financial crisis his own private campaign issue, and will attack Obama for “putting his campaign ahead of issues” if he even so much as talks about the bailout.

George W. Bush’s unbelievably hypocritical speech at the UN. [video]

Bill Clinton on The Daily Show.

We Are the Enemy. US Gov’t to station troops inside the US to control dissent. Hey, it worked for Hitler.

John LaBruzzo (Eugenics Party-LA) wants to sterilize the poor, and pay the rich to procreate. And people thought we were crazy when we compared them to Hitler.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 24 notes, thomasmc.com.

Evo Morales on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show

My wife loves this guy and his name because his name, Evo Morales, translates as… ‘Eve Morals’. A boy named Evo in Bolivia might have a life just a little like a boy named Sue in Oklahoma would! Who knows? Here he is on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show

Maybe Ahmadinejad should have done that program instead of visiting Columbia University? He could have done some jokes along the lines of….

There was an Imam, Pastor, and Rabbi who all went out to lunch together with God and here’s what they all ordered….

Jon Stewart certainly would have treated him with respect and dignity instead of trying to incite a war.

A. Whitney Brown and The Big Picture

Saturday Night Live Weekend UpdateEvery year or so I search online to see what cartoonist Bill Watterson might have decided to do since putting Calvin and Hobbes to bed in 1995. I showed less diligence with another favorite social satirist whom I’m thrilled to discover has returned to the spotlight. He appeared reclusive, it turns out he’s been mouthing off to great effect on Daily Kos! I can’t describe my giddy thrill to see A. Whitney Brown and his insightful Big Picture again.

In the 1980s, A. Whitney Brown was the brilliant SNL Weekend Update contributor, the archetype for David Spade, waspish and unapproachably sharp. But Brown’s deadpan sarcasm and contrarian wit elevated the public discourse above the comedy, akin to Lenny Bruce or George Carlin, and spoke to the TV audience as if the truth mattered behind the current event.

Brown published a book based on his SNL segment, THE BIG PICTURE, which remains one of my favorite recommendations. As a used-bookstore owner, I know it sold well because there are a lot of copies still floating around. But like Jack Handy’s Deep Thoughts, or Allen Smith’s Life in a Putty Knife Factory, or Fran Lebowitz’s Metropolitan Life for that matter, the popularity of comedy books does not usually survive into succeeding decades. Whenever I see that a copy might have reached our 50¢ table, I snag it to take home. Today I’m going to revisit that stash and make sure to redistribute it with the good news.

You can catch Brown on YouTube, explaining why he still supports the troops. He’s been involved with Air America Radio, the Daily Show -of course, and his own projects at myeverything.com and more.

THE BIG PICTURE still has to my mind the most lucid explanation of the economic crime that is the National Deficit. Unless Brown can get his title back in print, I hope he releases it to the Gutenberg Project, to reach everyone again. Here’s a start:

We live in a nation of 25 million illiterates. I read that in USA Today. That’s a scary thought, one out of ten adult Americans can’t even read USA Today. What are they all going to do in life? They can’t all write for it. Maybe they can dictate the editorials.

—-A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture

Well, that explains it…

Driving home just now I was listening to the radio. Over the air waves came the lyrical voice of John Tesh, doing his daily show, dispensing helpful advice to his listeners between songs. Today’s topic was anger. Do you ever get really angry at other drivers? Do you shake your fist or yell at them? Does your anger go from zero to fifty in a matter of seconds? Well, if so, you may have Intermittent Eruptive Disorder or IED. IED usually begins to manifest itself in early adolescence. It often takes the form of road rage, a desire for vengeance, or fury at one’s mate.
 
In my case, it generally involves a mad dash to the bathroom after a spicy meal, but I am glad to know that I’m not alone in my struggle.