Comedy and politics

Donald Trump interviews himself (Jimmy Fallon)

Remember the line,”I can see Russia from my house”? Who said that? Chances are you said Sarah Palin; most people do. Yet, most people get it wrong. It was Tina Fey, caricaturing Palin on “Saturday Night Live.” The comedian’s impression of the vice-presidential candidate went viral and became almost better known than the candidate herself.  It’s not an overstatement to say that political satire may have contributed to her defeat.

With so many candidates this year, comedians are having a field day. Donald Trump in particular likes to be outrageous — it boosts his poll numbers. His uniquely strange thatch, the pouting contortions of his mouth and the flamboyant extravagance of his implausible claims give comics a wealth of material. Jimmy Fallon played Trump interviewing the real Trump in the mirror. SNL chose him for its season opener. They pounced on his unwillingness (or inability) to give details on policy, his megalomania (he knows what’s wrong and can fix everything) and his narcissism (“I’m very smart” and “I’m very rich”).

Seeing candidates on television is nothing new, except that they used to be interviewed by “serious” newspeople, whereas now they are found on late-night shows attempting to improve their images by trading wisecracks (when they can) with their comic hosts. Appearing with Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon or until recently, with John Stewart, is a double-edged sword: the candidates get a lot of exposure to a demographic that may have no other other opportunity to see them, but they also risk being lampooned and put on the hotspot. Late-night hosts are much less deferential than the mainstream media.

Everybody wins: the big-name politicians pull in a large audience and raise the  ratings, making sponsors and producers happy. The audience is entertained and, even if only subliminally, educated.

Getting Closer to the Levers of Power

Getting Closer to the Levers of Power by Diane Vacca was originally published in On The Issues Magazine

“How do women achieve true parity in political representation?” The question is simultaneously simple and impossibly complex, perhaps triply so, when you add progressive feminism to the mix.

What do we want from our politics? Given the relatively pathetic female percentages that Americans see among elected officials, from Congress to state legislatures, how can we insist not just on equal numbers, but also on representation that powers our overall goals as progressive thinkers? Such a demand may seem impossibly naïve after even the charismatic and brilliant politician elected president in 2008 was unable to change the toxic ways of Washington.

But that demand feels more essential than ever, given the determination of the evangelists and the hard right to drag the rest of the country back to medieval chastity belts, Victorian debtor’s jails and Cold War-era McCarthy-style accusations and inquisitions. We need seats at the table where policy is made. “If you’re going to change things,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told The New York Times in 2009, “you have to be with the people who hold the levers.” This from someone who has fought all her life for justice, and who, years before she was appointed to the bench, founded the Women’s Rights Law Reporter and ran the ACLU Women’s Rights Law Project.

Continue reading Getting Closer to the Levers of Power in On The Issues Magazine

To: Michele, Sarah, Newt, Rick, et al.

What part of this don’t you understand?

This is pretty elemental. Still, kudos to Elizabeth Warren for laying it out so clearly. She’s a teacher—explaining how things work is what she does.

 

 

In the USA, in 2011, a COMIC STRIP can be CENSORED???

Joe McGinniss wrote a book about Sarah Palin. “The Rogue,” McGinniss says,

dares to criticize a woman who once ran for vice president and then quit as governor of her state and has subsequently made millions of dollars by doing reality shows and appearing as a highly-paid political commentator on a right-wing TV channel

Garry Trudeau excerpted parts of it in his “Doonesbury” comic strip. But in order not to offend Sarah or her followers, major newspapers like Newsday, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Chicago Tribune  have suspended the strip for a week.

What’s going on here? Is the First Amendment completely dead? Is this the Bush Administration redux? When to criticize government actions was unpatriotic? Sarah’s a half-term former governor, for God’s sake!

Monday’s strip:

and two more:

Stephen Colbert enacts Sarah Palin’s version of Paul Revere’s ride

Stephen proves that Paul Revere could have ridden a horse while ringing a bell and firing multiple warning shots from a front-loading musket.

Colbert lacerates Palin mercilessly. Watch the video. Colbert at his best.

Sarah Palin imagines Paul Revere

Maybe she was improvising, taking liberties with the historical record, fashioning herself an artist like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who massaged historical fact for rhetorical effect when he composed “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

1940s illustration of Paul Revere's ride

But somehow I don’t think so.

Sarah Palin visited the Old North Church, where Paul Revere had ordered that two signal lanterns be hung to warn the colonists that the British would be coming by sea. Afterwards she was asked, “What have you seen so far today, and what are you going to take away from your visit?” To answer, the candidate(?) went into her full Katie Couric mode:

When gently confronted on Fox by Chris Wallace (“You realize that you messed up on Paul Revere, don’tcha?”) Palin refused to back down, insisting that Revere did warn the British.

Stephen Colbert vs Citizens United, ctd.

The most interesting angle of Colbert’s creating his own Super PAC is the effect he could have on GOP luminaries like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

Stephen Colbert holding money aloft outside FEC (Photo by Sunlight Foundation)

Stephen Colbert went to Washington last Friday to personally deliver a petition to the Federal Election Commission requesting permission to promote his PAC on his show. Viacom, the parent company that owns the network, is not happy about Colbert’s plan. The FEC could rule against Colbert, saying that any airtime granted by Viacom to Colbert would count as a donation.

“Karl Rove is a paid employee of Fox News, and he gets to talk about his Super PAC, American Crossroads, all the time,” complained Colbert on his show.

“Big Girls Don’t Cry” Reviewed

In a week when Nancy Pelosi—who is second in the line of presidential succession—adorned the number two spot on David Letterman’s Top Ten as the porn star “found in hotel room drunk and naked with Charlie Sheen,” can there be any doubt that sexism in America is alive and well? Well, maybe. The time when individuals in high public office were accorded, if not esteem, then at least the respect due their office is at best a distant memory, a seemingly quaint tradition observed decades ago when those officials were all men. Is this a coincidence?

“Gentlemanly” manners, once relied upon to ensure civility, also included the special treatment accorded to women, the “gentle” —  i.e., weaker— sex. Chivalry is now considered sexist, a logical outcome of the emancipation of women in our fight for equality. Yet by extension, if a man can be the butt of tasteless attempts at humor, then a woman is equally subject to such offense. I don’t think the practice is defensible, but you really can’t have it both ways.

If you can’t stand the heat . . .

Historically, people yawn through mid-term elections. But not this year. 2010 is the Year of the Outrageous—not the Year of the Woman, as some would have it. Yes, there are many women running, and they are attracting a great deal of attention. But this attention isn’t necessarily positive, and it doesn’t make traditional feminists happy. I say “traditional” to distinguish them from conservative women candidates who have appropriated the feminist label, even as they campaign against programs that benefit women.

Sharron Angle, for instance, campaigning for a Senate seat in Nevada, believes it is “right” and “acceptable” for women to stay home with their children rather than venture out into the workplace. Campaigning in the primary, Angle said she’d like to see Social Security, the lifeline of almost half of all older women living alone, “transitioned out” to the private sector. Her advice to pregnant victims of rape or incest? Turn lemons into lemonade, because their pregnancies are part of “God’s plan.”