Trevor Noah and Ronny Chieng look at how random Asian Americans, even elderly ones, are being violently attacked on the streets. Trump’s racist allusions to the ‘China virus’ and ‘kung flu’ have fed into the bigoted attitude that Asians are responsible for the pandemic.
Samantha Bee talks to three different sets of people (two elderly nuns, a woman in a wheelchair, and a black man with Tourettes) who were treated appallingly by the police when they engaged in peaceful protest and contrasts it with how the violent insurrectionists were treated on January 6th.
He gave a pretty good summary of what went down.
It is interesting how the various late night talk shows are emerging from the pandemic lockdowns. Kimmel and Samantha Bee are back to what it was like before, wearing formal outfits and standing on stage in their studios, though without a large live audience. Seth Meyers is back at his desk on the studio stage but still dressed casually. Stephen Colbert is also dressed casually and in his office. Trevor Noah is the most casual. He looks like he may be still at home, though it may be his studio office. He dresses in a hoodie and is unshaven and letting his hair grow out.
I have long been an admirer of Eddie Izzard,. She is one of the few stand up comedians whose shows I can watch in their entirety without it getting a little tedious after some point. I think it is because of the way she goes off on wildly imaginative tangents with a lot of physicality involved. (Izzard has recently said that she prefers she/her pronouns.) In addition to comedy, she is progressive in her politics and raises money for charities by running marathons. But not just a marathon here or there but a series of marathons in a short period of time.
For example. look at this series of runs. (I wrote about that feat back in 2017.)
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The fact that the Republican party leadership put QAnon Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House education committee tells you all you need to know about how craven they have become. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has issued a mealy-mouthed statement about their decision not to do anything. It appears that she received a standing ovation from the Republican caucus. The Republican party leadership was willing to strip former Iowa congressman Steve King from all his committee positions for his hateful statements but is not willing to do the same for Greene although she is even crazier than he is, as hard as that is to believe. It should be noted that she has not publicly recanted her statements, instead choosing to tout her support from Trump. Her and her party’s defense is that she made them before she was elected to Congress.
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In an episode of the TV show Extras, Ian McKellen explains his acting method.
Barack Obama spoke about the need for bipartisanship when he came into office in 2008 and the Republicans used that desire to thwart his election platform goals though Democrats had big majorities in both houses of Congress. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. I was more cynical. I think he and Democrats used that bipartisanship ploy to escape having to follow through on their promises.
That scenario is being played out again. Joe Biden also made a big song-and-dance about wanting bipartisanship and now Republicans are whining that they need to be part of any policy decisions, although they and Trump gleefully rammed through their massive tax cuts for the rich and other moves while thumbing their noses at the Democrats. Ten Republican senators have demanded, in the name of bipartisanship, that Biden take seriously their ridiculously low offer of a $600 billion stimulus package which is much less than the $1.9 trillion that Biden has proposed. As part of their bipartisanship gambit, Republicans are now also shedding copious crocodile tears over the deficit, the very thing they cavalierly dismissed when their tax cuts for the rich sent it skyrocketing.
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Continuing my quest to amass evidence that cartoonists are fond of the name Bob.
Samantha Bee says that it is not a good thing that people tend to only get enthusiastic about efforts to save cute species and ignore the ones that are not as photogenic. She makes a convincing case for why we should care about the ugly ones too.
