America's terrorist watch list just hit the 1,000,000 mark. Yay! Sort of. Not really. Jon pointed out that Nelson Mandela was only recently removed from the watch list. He said it in a way like Mandela had no business being on the watch list on the first place, which I thought was a bit unfair. Sure, striking Mandela from the list was a move that probably should have happened over twenty years ago and his motivation was anti-apartheid, but once a guy has been the leader of a sabotage against his own government and military, that kind of makes the big boys of other countries nervous about having him around too. I'm just saying.Ah, yes, I was waiting for this. The media's response to the latest New Yorker cover has been hilariously overblown. As usual, The Daily Show handled this beautifully by sitting back for the most part and just letting the news clips do the talking, cutting in only to shout "Volf Blitzah!" and explain what the Obama campaign should have said instead of being offended: "Barack Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist, because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists, of which Barack Obama is not. It's just a f*cking cartoon!" Honestly, the real horror of that New Yorker cover is the weak color palette and lack of line variation. I mean, really. Am I right, or am I right?
The investigate the situation even deeper, big news network-style, TDS sent their boys on the street. Wyatt Cenac, Rob Riggle, and John Oliver attempted to explain satire to everyday folks with mixed results. In the end, they proved that jokes are always funnier when you completely break them down and explain each and every little bit with excruciating detail. That redhead towards the end was fantastic.
John Oliver: Do you not find that offensive? [shows cartoon]
Redhead: It's America, throwing off England.
John Oliver: Where does this end?!
Redhead: ... The American Revolution? I guess?
And I must agree: I've never noticed the New Yorker at any NYC newstand, but I know that the booty-full Vibe is always around if I need it.
The night's guest was Pierce Brosnan, one of the many stars of Mamma Mia! the movie. Hmm... Does Jon Stewart have a bit of a mancrush on the greying Bond? Just look at the picture I used for this post. That is a direct screengrab, folks. I bet fanboy Jon specifically demanded an icon-like halo strategically placed on the massive screen behind Brosnan. I must say, he looked better in this interview than his previous one, in which he was sporting a Dr. Orpheus sort of look, but not really in a good way.
The only discussion about the film itself was the supreme girliness of it all, which is kind of a given. It's called Mamma Mia! for crying out loud (literally, for crying out loud).
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-16-2008 @ 1:52PM
Zachary said...
The series of clips showing the media reporting spurious stories was funny, but really sad in a way. What kind of country is there where The Daily Show has more integrity than the media giants?
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7-16-2008 @ 5:48PM
nickmagoo said...
i REALLY hope your comment about mandela's actions in the 60s was meant as a joke - a really, really horrible joke. i would hardly call the violent and racist SA regime mandela's own government. this was a small afrikaans minority holding the blacks of south africa under their thumbs for decades with savage and brutal practices - not just physically but also socially and economically. many nations, including the US, turned a blind eye for far too long.
think of the racist jim crow laws here in the US, then multiply that by 100. beatings, murders, illegal imprisonment, economic castration, etc kept the blacks under virtual slavery and in impoverished conditions until people like mandela started to fight back. and even then it took decades for real change to occur.
mandela always preferred nonviolent protest to violence, but under the conditions they suffered through there was no choice given to them.
i'm just sayin.
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7-16-2008 @ 6:20PM
Annie Wu said...
Whoa, whoa. Sorry if that came off the wrong way, but I was just trying to point out that TDS made it sound like a Nobel Peace Prize winner was just blindly thrown into the mix with no historical context.
Yes, Mandela was a man of peace that turned to violence only as a last resort, but that's what resulted in the government getting crazy-paranoid and throwing him on a watch list.
That's all.
7-16-2008 @ 9:46PM
StillBash said...
Talk about understanding something wrong.
Annie's totally correct. It's not like Mandela was the next Ghandi. I chose the armed fight. We all know that South Africa during the Apartheit regime was just as much taken off the map as Iraq was between the first and second Gulf War.
It's just like that it's totally easy to get on THAT LIST in the first place. Most of the time you only need to have a similar or identical name as someone who actually is a "person of interest" (to put it that way and not use the T-word). The list is idiotic, that's the point. How are you supposed to actually track 400.000 to 1 million people? It's impossible. And you can bet your ass that Che Guevara for instance would also be on that list as well, no matter how much T-Shirts his face is printed on.
Sidenote: Hellboy 2 sucks.
Oh and George Bush hates Wyatt People
7-17-2008 @ 12:16AM
nickmagoo said...
annie - unfortunately inflection is impossible to read :-) one thing we can all agree on - the tsa watch list is idiotic and doesn't work. i have a friend (name...john williams - seriously) on the list. 2 years and counting, he still hasn't been able to get off it!!
as for the SA/iraq comment - while the UN officially condemned apartheid in '62, the US was opposed to divestment and sanctions. by the mid 70s some corp.s began to divest due to pressure from major shareholders (though usually ignored). campus protests in the '80s also had an influence (Univ. of Cal. removed 3 BILLION in investments). while reagan vetoed the anti-apartheid act in 1986, the repub. controlled congress surprisingly overrode the veto. finally sanctions came, albeit decades too late, and yes, they did help force SA's regime to end apartheid.
iraq sanctions, however, rather than helping end hussein's tyrannical regime, thoroughly devastated the country. between 400,000 and 1.5 million people died as a direct result. sadly, a vastly different result than what happened in SA...
7-17-2008 @ 10:07AM
StillBash said...
nick the last paragraph is a tiny bit wrong.
First of all the sanctions weren't targeted at ending Husseins regime. They were put in place to prevent Iraq from re-establishing it's military power. Maybe some politicians hoped that the iraqi people would get a new government through the embargo but you can't really believe that.
second, iraq was allowed to still sell oil to buy food and medicine with that money. unfortunately they did not use it for that but through corruption (also and in an integral part from the west) they used it to further the lifestyle of the regime and let the part of the population that wasn't important to them suffer. i guess i could go to wikipedia now and find out which is which (shiite/suuni) but i guess if you are really interested in the topic you can do that yourself.
all i wanted to express is that an embargo isn't usually targeted at having the people of a country overthrow their government, although it's a direct reaction to it and it's actions.
7-17-2008 @ 11:59AM
Argus said...
Annie! If the linework were more varied and a stronger colour pallette used, then the characitures (sp?) would stop being funny and just look creepy (uncanny valley effect.) Do you see it now?
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