Now that the Republican primary race seems to be effectively over as far as the pundits are concerned, they will have to fill airtime and newsprint with other sources of endless and mindless speculation. Brace yourselves because from this point onwards, you can be sure that nothing substantive will be discussed and the media will lurch from one ginned-up ‘controversy’ to the next, often about the most trivial things, with each one being framed in terms of its impact on the election. [Read more…]

Have you ever wondered what might have happened if Alfred Hitchcock had tried his hand at comedy? Me neither.

But in his latest commercial, Herman Cain tries to channel the master of suspense in a remake of The Birds and ends up with an ad that I think is supposed to be scary but which made me burst out laughing. Watch out for that skeletal arm, kid! [Read more…]

The actor has become an anti-fracking, clean water activist. (Link corrected)

(This clip appeared on March 28, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

This was a well-deserved win for his brilliant expose of how Super PACs make a mockery of campaign rules by enabling hugely wealthy individuals to secretly exercise vastly disproportionate power in the election process. [Read more…]

Larry Wilmore and Jon Stewart discuss the racial implications of the Trayvon Martin case. Why is it that it is on a comedy show that one finds a relatively calm and balanced discussion of such inflammatory topics? [Read more…]

I think that the pace of campaigning is taking its toll on Rick Santorum and he has reached the stage where he is free-associating as a result of fatigue. He said in a speech about how he “read somewhere” that almost none of the California state universities teach American history. [Read more…]

The Pakistani journalist tries to explain to Jon Stewart the convoluted relationship between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US, complicated by the differences between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban. Short version: The situation in Afghanistan became a mess as soon as the US shifted its attention to Iraq without first building decent infrastructure in Afghanistan, and it is now time to leave. [Read more…]