Late Night Snark: The Return of the Snarksters
They're baaaaaack…
"We're nine weeks away from election day, and things are looking up for Kamala Harris. In the latest USA Today-Suffolk University Nerds Gummy Clusters poll, Harris leads Trump 48 percent to 43 percent. Forty-eight percent—that really restores my faith in almost half of humanity. But because of the electoral college, the election might come down to just seven states: Michigan, Wisconsin, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance."
—Stephen Colbert
"Apparently, in her debate prep Kamala Harris is focusing on ways to rattle Trump. Right now she's deciding whether to wear a jacket that says 'IRS' or 'FBI.' "
—Jimmy Fallon
"[Trump] made a huge mistake with this JD Vance, who can't stop stepping in it. For a guy who wears more eyeliner than Liza Minnelli, you'd think he'd have a better understanding of women. I think Don Jr. is the one who convinced his father to choose JD Vance. Another good move, dumbass."
—Jimmy Kimmel
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"JD Vance—a man who perpetually looks like he got stuck ten percent on the way to transforming into a werewolf."
—John Oliver
"There is deliberate effort by some people to make them believe that things are pessimistic. Every time I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max."
—Gov. and VP candidate Tim Walz
"Ahead of next week’s debate with former president Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris will reportedly prepare by holding a ‘debate camp’ in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Trump is preparing by yelling at a customer service rep from Spectrum."
—Seth Meyers
And now, our feature presentation…
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, September 6, 2024
Note: "Make America Grate Again!"
—A message from your friends at the National Council of Weird Cheese People
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By the Numbers:
6 days!!!
Days 'til election day: 60
Days 'til the Lodi Grape Festival in California: 6
Percent of Americans polled by Data for Progress who believe rising prices are due to price gouging by corporations, not because of government actions: 51%
Number of small-business applications that have been submitted during the Biden-Harris administration: 19 million
Number of vehicles that used the Maine Turnpike over the Labor Day weekend, up 5.3% from last year, and blowing past predictions of a 6% decrease in traffic: 233,100
Percent chance that "the world is not obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s extreme right-wing ‘anything goes’ just because he is rich,” according to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: 100%
Age of Keanu Reeves as of Tuesday: 60
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Congratulations, bomb sniffer Barni…
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CHEERS to confirming the obvious. Oh, that wily old Justice Department. Just when you thought they were gonna let Russia stomp all over our elections, Attorney General Merrick Garland gets behind the wheel of his modified snowplow, drives it through the wall of the trolls' lair, and busts up their little disinformation operation:
Employees of the Russia-backed media network RT funded and directed a scheme that sent millions of dollars to prominent right-wing commentators through a media company that appears to match the description of Tenet Media, a leading platform for pro-Trump voices, according to an NBC News review of charging documents, business records and social media profiles.
Garland at the wheel.
The indictment on Wednesday of two RT employees, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, includes allegations that the duo implemented a nearly $10 million plan to fund an unnamed Tennessee-based company as one of their “covert projects” to influence American politics by posting videos to TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube. […]
The allegations came as part of a wide-ranging move by the Departments of Justice, State and Treasury to target what the Biden administration says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election.
Naturally, the right-wing bullshit peddlers who found themselves suddenly getting paid a ton of money to spread Russian-created messages like "Ukraine is the greatest enemy the United States has ever faced" across their social media platforms are now claiming they're the victims. Please join us in the lobby in ten minutes for the premiere of our new concert piece: Adagio for World's Smallest Violins.
JEERS to America: land of the guns, home of the gun nuts. What happens in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown Aurora Binghamton Tucson Santa Barbara Charleston Lafayette Roseburg Kalamazoo Orlando Alexandria Las Vegas Parkland Benton Pittsburgh Thousand Oaks Aurora Poway Highlands Ranch Virginia Beach Gilroy El Paso Dayton Midland/Odessa Fresno Milwaukee Atlanta Boulder Colorado Springs Chicago Buffalo Uvalde Tulsa Highland Park Colorado Springs again Monterey Park Nashville Louisville Dallas Lewiston etc etc etc Winder, Georgia (4 dead, 9 wounded at a school by a 14-year-old with an AR-15) is depressingly predictable: The community will grieve. Gun control advocates will wisely suggest that this might be a good time to review our federal and state firearms policies so that our nation's shameful record of gun violence might be improved upon. The right-wing gun nuts and media machine will claim it’s “just a lone wolf,” then blame Democrats (and their movies and video games and abortion and same-sex marriages and, of course, doors) for the carnage and urge every living soul and their pets to arm themselves to the teeth, and the NRA will insist it's "too soon" to talk about gun control as they continue scaring politicians into looking the other way by informing them that, "We'll be scoring you on your response." Like I said, predictable. Depressingly. Again.
HUZZAH to the secession squisher. Happy 196th birthday (Sunday) to General Joshua Chamberlain from the Great State of Maine. In 1863 he held Little Round Top against overwhelming odds during the battle of Gettysburg, saving the north from being ruled by Lee and the forebears of our own brain-damaged January 6 insurrection. Amazingly it took thirty years for Congress to approve his Medal of Honor:
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Happy birthday, Union saver dude.
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 2 July 1863, while serving with 20th Maine Infantry, in action at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for daring heroism and great tenacity in holding his position on the Little Round Top against repeated assaults, and carrying the advance position on the Great Round Top
Then, suffering from a host of war-related ailments and injuries, he came back home to be Maine's governor for four years (winning his third one-year term in 1868 with 72 percent of the vote). Today we consider him our state's #1 hero. Well, if you don’t count the guy from Farmington who invented earmuffs.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to undeserved free passes. Fifty years ago Sunday, President Ford committed the unconditionally-unpardonable sin of granting an unconditional pardon to Richard "I am not a crook except when I am" Nixon. He said it was absolutely necessary to help "heal" the country. To this day I still have no idea what that means. I don't remember anyone losing their shit over the Watergate hearings, do you? Everyone I knew pretty much laughed their asses off as he fled with his tail between his legs and an approval rating in the mid-20s.
Gerald Ford showing Americans how to pick their jaw up off the floor after hearing about his pardon of crook Richard Nixon.
Final verdict on the pardon: bad call. The American people were robbed of a pre-Roberts Court opportunity to see that, when the president does what Tricky Dick did, it IS illegal. Bless the late David Frost for coaxing the jaw-dropping nugget out of that dirty crook.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Tonight’s season premiere of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (8pm, The CW) is the weekend’s highlight on the teevee this weekend, with guest comics Jordin Sparks and Tiffany Haddish. Or you can catch historian and national treasure Doris Kearns Goodwin as she talks about her book An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s on Firing Line at 8:30 (PBS).
Congrats to this year’s U.S. Open mixed doubles champs Barney and Emma.
The most popular movies and streamers, new and old, are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. (The sequel to Beetlejuice, 36 years in the making, is…good!)
Sports: the first weekend of NFL concussion season starts Sunday—the list of games and times is here. You can also check out the Major League Baseball schedule here and the WNBA schedule here. The Paris Paralympics air tonight and tomorrow afternoon on NBC. The US Open women’s final is tomorrow at 4 on ESPN, while the less-important men’s final is Sunday at 2 on ABC.
And the weekend wraps up with a fresh edition of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Governor Doug Burgum (WEIRD-ND).
Also: the Vidalia Rhythm Cloggers will dazzle and delight you Sunday morning on “State of the Onion.”
CNN's State of the Union: Senators John Fetterman (D-PA) and Tom Cotton (WEIRD-AR).
This Week: Former Rep. and current Kamala Harris supporter Liz Cheney; Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (WEIRD-AR).
Face the Nation: Rep. Michael McCaul (WEIRD-TX); Weird Nikki Haley.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Senators John Cornyn (WEIRD-TX) and Chris Murphy (D-CT).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 6, 2014
CHEERS to takin' your spatulas to the street. You know a labor movement is significant when even Fox News can't ignore it. Yesterday morning I was sitting in a dentist chair channel-surfing on the ceiling TV, and there it was—an actual bias-neutral report on the fast food workers' strikes in 150 cities. There were many arrests for civil disobedience, and that increased the overall media coverage. As a former burger flipper under the golden arches (and the fastest Quarter Pounder dresser in New England, according a reliable source known as me), I think what they did yesterday was great. Namely, prevent millions of Americans from eating fast food for an entire day.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to an enduring enterprise. One way I keep my sanity during election season is a mandatory viewing of an episode of the ahead-of-its-time space saga that is the original Star Trek TV series, which does for our brain what a warm pair of slippers does for our feet. Sunday is the 58th anniversary of the premiere of what creator Gene Roddenberry called "Wagon Train to the Stars." The issues Trek took on—all handled so deftly by the writers and cast that Martin Luther King Jr. became a fan—still resonate and make the series eminently watchable today. (We still catch it every night at 8ET on the H&I network and live-tweet it for yucks at #allstartrek. Tonight’s episode is the one where Ted Cassidy—aka “Lurch”—plays an old cyborg in What Are Little Girls Made Of?) Here's how William Shatner describes it in his autobiography, Up Till Now:
The general consensus among respected philosophers is that Star Trek was successful and has endured because our stories focused on universal themes—which of necessity took place elsewhere in the universe because they were about subjects that couldn’t be easily tackled by conventional programming. Gene Roddenberry once said that the real mission of the Enterprise was to search for intelligent life on the other side of the television set.
While the grand theme of our five-year mission was always good versus evil, we also did stories about racism, sexism, authoritarianism, class warfare, imperialism, human and parahuman and alien rights, and the insanity of war. Nichelle Nichols and I shared the first interracial kiss on American television—which several southern stations refused to broadcast—although we were compelled to kiss by space aliens controlling our minds.
Today, then, is a good day to review the basics:
All I Need to Know About Life I learned from Star Trek
• Seek out new life and civilizations.
• Non-interference is the Prime Directive.
• Keep your phaser set on stun.
• Humans are highly illogical.
• There's no such thing as a Vulcan death grip.
• Live long and prosper.
• Having is not so pleasing as wanting; it is not logical but it is often true.
• Infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC).
• Tribbles hate Klingons (and Klingons hate Tribbles).
Also: Don’t be the guy in the red shirt. It never ends well.
• Enemies are often invisible—like Romulans, they can be cloaked.
• Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttlecraft.
• When your logic fails, trust a hunch.
• Insufficient data does not compute.
• If it can't be fixed, just ask Scotty.
• Even in our own world, sometimes we are aliens.
• When going out into the Universe, remember:
"Boldly go where no one has gone before!"
Also: don’t screw around with the transporter—it's not a #!!&$! toy. I realize that now. (Sorry, Grandma, wherever you and your scrambled atoms are.)
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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