From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Now Here It is, Your Moment of Jon
Happy birthday to Jon Stewart, the Emmy-winning "fake journalist" who ran circles around the real ones four nights a week on The Daily Show for sixteen years. After his last show in 2015, Daily Show stalwarts John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Larry Wilmore (infuriatingly canceled in the middle of the election season) and Stephen Colbert picked up the political-snark slack on their own shows as official successor Trevor Noah found the shoes waiting for him behind the fake-anchor desk (understandably) just too big to fill.
And now, Act II. Just in time to meet the Trump presidency's hideousness head-on, Stewart's animated “parody of a cable news network" appears set to debut early next year, according to HBO honcho Casey Bloys:
"In terms of Jon Stewart, he really is putting together a whole animation studio. My hope is that it’s up and running and putting out content in first quarter of ‘17. Does the election change things? I think it’s more important, now more than ever, that we have voices like that who will parse the information and call out what’s going on."
In the meantime, your local bookseller has a fresh copy of The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History, with warts-and-all reminiscences from all the major players in front of and behind the cameras. EW has an excerpt of the scramble to work through shock and sadness to somehow get the comedy show back on the air after the attacks of 9/11. ("I remember Stephen Colbert said, 'I am legitimately asking if a pie in the face is still funny. I’m asking because I don’t know.' He was not joking," says co-executive producer Stew Bailey.)
Enjoy some some Stewartisms:
"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way: I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."
"Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, once two of the most powerful men in this country, are now suffering from Ballsheimer's disease. Ballsheimer's is a terrible illness that attacks the memory and gives its victims the balls to attack others for things they themselves made a career of. There is no known cure."
"Eighteen states have passed or proposed 'religious freedom' laws to protect the real victims of discrimination: Christian florists, who gladly do business with all manner of divorced, non-mother-and-father-honoring, covetous, name-of-the-Lord-in-vain-taking adulterers, but whose damnation conveniently hinges only on the gay-marriage boutonnière business."
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Stewart: And what will Governor Palin have to do [at tonight's 2008 VP debate]?
Clip of CNN pundit: She has to prove that she can simply speak in a normal English sentence.
Stewart: So to be successful, her standard tonight is the same as a roadside sobriety test.
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"America's id is running for president. Trump is the part of your brain that's like at 3am going, Let's take a shit in a mailbox! C'mon, who's gonna know?”
"I say to you tonight, friends: the best defense against bullshit is vigilance. If you smell something, say something."
At this point we seem to have graduated past the saying something stage and entered primal scream territory.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, November 28, 2016
Note: We hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. If, instead, you had a terrible one, you'll be pleased to know that the C&J Memory Eraser 5000 is back in service. Just insert $5,000 in quarters and push the red button. We’d tell you what happens next, but our legal team says that’s proprietary information. (But you will want to disable your smoke detectors for a few minutes.) ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Human Rights Month: 3
Days 'til Silver Falls State Park's 39th annual Christmas Festival in Oregon: 12
Length of the new peace accord signed in Colombia, which its congress will vote on this week: 310 pages
Weekly unemployment claims announced Nov. 23, marking 90 straight weeks under the 300,000 level, a sign of a healthy jobs market: 151,000
Amount it costs New York taxpayers every day to protect Melania Trump in Trump Tower: $1 million
Amount that will ultimately cost taxpayers after four years: $1.46 billion
Number of times I heard "Pa rum pum pum pum" between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year before I snapped, a record low: 84
Totally Random NFL Score
New England Patriots 22 New York Jets 17
(Tom Brady ties Peyton Manning’s all-time record with win #200)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Sounds like…..
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CHEERS to the Obama recovery. As the president starts thinking about packing up his stuff and exiting the White House in 53 days, he leaves America with a parting holiday gift:
By most accounts, this holiday season is expected be a boon for retailers.
Unemployment, gasoline prices and inflation are low, while wages, home values and the stock market continue to rise. Shoppers have the wherewithal to spend, and now retailers are hoping the holiday season will give them a reason to. […]
U.S. retail spending is expected to rise 3.6 percent to $655.8 billion in November and December, the Washington-based NRF estimates. Retailers are poised to take full advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday period, now known by some as Black Week, which accounts for about 15 percent of holiday spending, according to the trade group.
Shortly after the last nog is drunk and fa-la-la is fa-la-la’d, an incoming gang of unstable racist nutball Republican billionaires will take over the executive branch and hold what's left of America's sanity hostage. So if it's not too late, Santa, there's an extra sugar cookie in it for ya if you'll scratch out everything on my wish list---”peace,” “economic equality,” “climate research,” “shipping container full of candy corn”---and replace it with "sensory-deprivation tank." Thx.
JEERS to Fidel Castro. The Cuban dictator, who promised to lead a benevolent government after overthrowing horrible-in-his-own-right Fulgencio Batista but then robbed the people blind and established a miserable regime of oppression, is dead:
Few national leaders have inspired such intense loyalty — or such a wrenching feeling of betrayal. Few fired the hearts of the world’s restless youth as Castro did when he was young, and few seemed so irrelevant as Castro when he was old — the last Communist, railing on the empty, decrepit street corner that Cuba became under his rule.
He held a unique place among the world’s leaders of the past century. Others had greater impact or won more respect. But none combined his dynamic personality, his decades in power, his profound effect on his own country and his provocative role in international affairs. […]
In his final years, Castro seemed curiously unconcerned with his image, at times lurching dangerously close to self-parody. Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, in his book Castro’s Final Hour, described a three-hour speech on Che Guevara’s application of dialectics that Castro delivered in 1991---to an audience of 6-year-olds.
Castro was 90. Let this be a lesson to you, kids: smoking cigars can kill ya.
JEERS to cutting off our precious bodily fluids. On this date in 1942, with the approval of FDR, coffee rationing began in the United States and lasted until Germany and Japan were defeated. Meanwhile, 74 years later the length of the war in Afghanistan has surpassed that of World War II by over 12 years, yet neither We The People (men and women in uniform excepted) nor our corporate overlords have been asked to sacrifice anything. Not coffee, not gas, nor rubber nor tin nor leather nor nothin'. The only logical conclusion: old man FDR sure was a mean old meanie.
CHEERS to peeking under the electoral hood. After raking in far more money than she needed (how will all that extra money be spent, I wonder), Green party candidate Jill Stein has been given the green light to proceed with a recount in Wisconsin, and the Clinton campaign will lend their eyeballs to the effort:
The recount effort is somewhat unusual in that it comes weeks after Clinton conceded---and at the request and with the financial backing of a third-party candidate, Stein, who has no chance of winning, said election law expert Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine.
Clinton, too, has virtually no chance of altering the result, given that she would have to reverse not just Wisconsin, but also Michigan and Pennsylvania, to become president, Hasen said.
The Wisconsin recounted will be conducted by county boards of canvassers, who must move quickly to meet a mid-December deadline to ensure the state’s electoral votes are counted. Stein has to file by Monday to prompt a recount in Pennyslvania, and by Wednesday to trigger a recount in Michigan. The results in that state are not technically certified until Monday.
Republicans are outraged over the demand for a full recount of a state's voting results just because the numbers are close. And in other news, Republicans aren't outraged over North Carolina Republican governor Pat McCrory's demand for a full recount of the state's voting results just because the numbers are close. This item has been sponsored by Acme Anti-whiplash Bubblewrap. Try some today!
CHEERS to rebukes from all the right places. Hey, I have a great idea! Let's see what the German government has to say about the members of Trump's base who are in the process of creating a Fourth Reich here in the United States:
"Speaking generally, whenever we see videos from anywhere showing people raising their hand to do Hitler salutes we are repulsed," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday after being asked about the clip [of neo-Nazis raising their arms and shouting "Hail Trump" at a rally in D.C. on November 19th].
"It goes against the principles and values of our politics," he added.
Seibert said the fact that the incident is being widely discussed in the United States was a good sign. "We have great faith in American civil society, media and politics to address such bad developments, such terrible events," he said.
I hope you're right, Deutschland. Because after the November 8th cataclysm, we seem to be down a few quarts in the faith department.
CHEERS to great moments in aviation. 90 years ago today, on November 28, 1922, the first skywriting demonstration took place over New York City. Anyone know what SURRENDER DOROTHY means?
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 28, 2006
JEERS to guns and more guns. Learning no lesson on fiscal responsibility from the election results, the Bush administration’s next "emergency" request to fund our military’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan will apparently amount to a giant uncontrolled slush fund. Because everyone knows generals always do their best strategic thinking in diamond-encrusted skivvies. (But no body armor on the front lines---that would spoil the grunts.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the wisdom of the jbou. The Kossack---one of several who departed this year, adding extra ugh to the horribleness of 2016---is gone but not forgotten. C&J promised to revisit his sharp George-Carlin-meets-Stephen-Wright zingers from time to time. Whaddya know, today is one of those days. Enjoy these from late last year…
“Remember, when everything is falling down around you, you should probably just set a fire & collect insurance.”
“When the Earth is uninhabitable and the last people are dying off, there will still be a few people saying settle down it's a natural cycle.”
“Don't live a life of elaborately constructed lies. The simple lies will be much easier to remember.”
“The laundromat is the great equalizer of society. The 1% should be legally required to use laundromats. Tho knowing how the one percent work this will just lead to really nice laundromats built exclusively for the one percent.”
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People in the United States are more likely to die from being shot by a toddler than by an act of terrorism.
"So let the refugees in?"
Fuck that, I'm saying deport all toddlers.
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“The one thing we can all, black, white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, or atheist, agree on is that Pat Sajak and Vanna White have had sex, right?”
“Orange is the new black. Purple is the new bacon. Walrus is the new stethoscope. The year is 2057 and words are all meaningless.”
Although, thanks to the fake-news industry, we can probably move that last prediction up. By a few decades.
On the bright side, tickets for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story go on sale today and---fair warning---I will trample any number of children and old ladies to get mine mine mine. Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine is the biggest idiot in all of Cheers and Jeers history
---Katharine Trendacosta, Gizmodo
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