Tonight's guests are Zephyr Teachout on The Daily Show and Viggo Mortensen on The Colbert Report.
Zephyr Teachout is an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University who ran against Andrew Cuomo for the 2014 Democratic Party nomination for Governor of New York. She is also an author and her latest book is Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United
When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to “corrupt” Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption—rooted in ideals of civic virtue—was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention.
For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.
In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.
It sounds like a good book and I hope it will be a good interview. I think she is worthy of a double segment or at least an extended interview on the web.
Viggo Mortensen is an actor best known as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He recently stopped by Huffington Post and told them
"I take an interest. I do listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Mike Savage, and I do watch Fox News once in a while. I can only take small doses of it because they're so appallingly shallow and manipulative. ... It's like watching a really bad movie. It's like watching an Ed Wood movie and going, 'Wow.' Well, now that's an insult to Ed Wood, actually. But, you know, like a horror movie -- just poorly made."
You can say that about so-called left-wing radio -- it's generally talking points as well. But I think there's more of an effort to deal with facts, even if maybe there are sins of omissions and so forth on the left as well. It's generally not as brazen of a form of lying as you get from Fox," Mortensen said.
Anyway, while he and Stephen will probably have to discuss LOTR a little bit, he is on to promote his new movie
The Two Faces of January
A thriller centered on a con artist, his wife, and a stranger who flee Athens after one of them is caught up in the death of a private detective.
Screenwriter Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove, Drive) makes a stylish directing debut with this sleek thriller set in Greece and Istanbul, 1962, and adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel. Intrigue begins at the Parthenon when wealthy American tourists Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his young wife Collete (Kirsten Dunst) meet American expat Rydal (Oscar Isaac), a scammer working as a tour guide. Instead of becoming his latest marks, the two befriend him, but a murder at the couple's hotel puts all three on the run together and creates a precarious bond between them as the trio's allegiance is put to the test.
rottentomatoes.com
It sounds like another movie I would enjoy watching. Maybe my local library will end up getting it on DVD.
Note the change in guest for The Daily Show tomorrow, Bill Clinton.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW
Th 9/18: Bill Clinton
THE COLBERT REPORT
Th 9/18: Terry Gilliam