Colbert/Stewart/oliver

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see john oliver

MERRI OK

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capt 219 see dailyshow bak

neglected, tho fighting to good fight

msnbc post rachel Last Word always includes in montage; staple on AN

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colbert told to not have tex xian talarico sp so YT

2 26

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mma

### Sean Hannity dismisses Trump’s involvement in Kimmel suspension: “Trump was in England when all of this happened”

09/19/25 7:38 PM EDT

### Right-leaning podcasters of self-categorized nonpolitical shows are split over Jimmy Kimmel's suspension

09/19/25 6:43 PM EDT

### Fox News guest on Jimmy Kimmel: “It's an attack on the First Amendment for the FCC chairman to speak almost like a mafia boss”

09/19/25 5:09 PM EDT

### Steve Bannon: New Paramount boss David Ellison “should pull Colbert tonight from CBS for his arrogance and his hate”

09/19/25

===

CORP BAD ACTOR PARAMOUNT CBS SETTLE CANCEL COLBERT BRIBERY

AN 7 25

'Insane!' CBS blasted for cancelling Colbert's 'Late Show' days after he ripped settlement

Carl Gibson

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'Big balls' Musk fires back at Mike Myers and SNL for mockery in 'far-left propaganda' skit

AN 3 25

Saturday Night Live (SNL) opened its latest episode with a satirical sketch mocking the controversial Oval Office meeting between PresidentDonald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The meeting, which took place on Friday, was widely criticizedfor its chaotic and contentious tone, raising concerns about U.S. support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.

In the cold open, James Austin Johnson portrayed Trump, Bowen Yang played Vance, and Mikey Day took on the role of Zelensky. The sketch humorously exaggerated the real-life tension, with Trump and Vance berating Zelensky for his perceived lack of gratitude for U.S. aid.

The sketch also poked fun at Trump's disdain for Zelensky's casual attire, with Trump sarcastically thanking him for "dressing like casual Star Trek."

In a surprise cameo, Mike Myers appeared as Elon Musk, bursting into the Oval Office dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, wielding a chainsaw. The sketch also mocked the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) alleged budget cuts.

Following the broadcast, the real Elon Musk responded on X (formerly Twitter), dismissing the show as "far-left propaganda" and claiming that DOGE has advocated for hiring more air traffic controllers, not firing them, according to Newsweek.

===

an 7 24

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart on Monday night slammed ex-President Donald Trump, 2024 GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance (R-OH), Republican lawmakers and commentators' inability to make a strong case against Vice President Kamala Harris in her pursuit of the presidency.

"You're going to have to shift gears — recalibrate," Stewart said, referring to the fact that the GOP's constant attacks on President Joe Biden's age no longer stand. "You've had 'Crooked Joe' and 'Sleepy Joe' on speed dial. You're going to need a new line of attack," the late-night host added.

Stewart played a clip of former Fox News host Megyn Kelly on right-wing political commentator Ben Shapiro's show, saying, "It is relevant when a young candidate tries to sleep her way into politics and into power. And that is what it appears Kamala Harris did.

Shapiro added, "She never earned or won anything. She was legitimately handed her original post in California state government because she was sleeping with [former San Francisco Mayor] Willie Brown. And then he backed her in her race for San Francisco DA."

Stewart then said, "I don't know, guys. You're being awfully subtle here. Isn't there a grosser way you can say that?"

"Does anybody have a substantive critique? he added. "Nobody believes Kamala Harris is the second coming of Karl Marx. And even when they get substantive policy critiques, they undercut them immediately."

Stewart then pointed to the fact Republicans can't decide whether Harris is too soft, or too tough on crime.

"People, we open in three months!" Stewart yelled. "You're flailing! Dig deep!"

Stewart then played a clip of far right podcast host Mark Levin criticizing Harris, saying, "There's one final thing that nobody talks about: She's hated by people who work for her."

The Daily Show host screamed, "Are you kidding me? Your candidate's Donald Trump. His catchphrase is literally, 'You're fired!' Donald Trump hired 44 cabinet members — 75% of them want nothing to do with the guy. His Secretary of State called him a f—ing moron. His chief of staff said 'He's the most flawed person I've ever met.' You know why he needs a new vice presidential running mate? I'll tell you why. He tried to get the last one killed.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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1st responders 911 air

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/john-oliver-republican-election-deniers/

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10 22

"Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver focused his main story Sunday on "problems" that Republicans create so that they have something to solve.

Republicans are desperately trying to take over the House, Senate and a slew of offices that allow them to control elections in an effort to usher in restrictive election laws to put in more Republicans and eliminate any policy delivered by a Democrat for the past century.

Republicans pledged for almost ten years that Obamacare must be repealed and replaced, only to be outed for being unable to come up with the replacement. They have placed judges in top posts to eliminate the personal freedoms and medical privacy of women. They invented an idea that Kindergarteners are being taught they are evil for slavery and were convinced that any mention of LGBTQ should be banned from schools in Florida and other states that have followed.

Oliver focused on another top issue for the GOP: transgender sports. While there are many, many issues facing Americans, indeed the world, Republicans are concerned that one or two transgender people could bring down sports.

He began with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who ran a campaign ad claiming that she personally saved girls' sports in the state. There was one trans student about ten years ago in South Dakota, but Noem zeroed in on the possibility that one person ten years ago could one day be millions of trans students in the sparsely populated state.

Oliver pointed out that there were more girls playing sports in the Noem ad than there were trans kids in all of South Dakota sports. So, while Republicans like Noem complain about failures around inflation, healthcare and other problems they blame on Democrats, their solutions are focused on transgender sports.

Noem isn't the only one. A whopping 18 U.S. states have spent the past few years passing legislation to regulate who can urinate in a stall next to each other. While most people simply enter a bathroom, do their business and get out, in the mind of Republicans, restrooms are nefarious places where liberals are ushering in a plot to bring down society. They have yet to find any evidence of it, but they can't stop their minds from turning to anarchy as a result of a kid using the restroom.

The positive piece of Oliver's report is that he first reported on transgender rights nearly a decade ago and things have gotten a lot better. The crisis for the right-wing is that the American public has decided that they are accepting of same-sex marriage, eliminating a key issue that they have desperately clung to for years. Trans rights have now taken over that same desperate attempt to create a villain, make people afraid of him and then pass laws to protect children from him.

See Oliver's full segment in the video below:

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cruz fist bump ---- PO'd b/c passed CHIPS bill

burn pits, passed 84-14 a mo ago, 180 for spite after manchin 180 jon s livid

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/jon-stewart-veterans-health-bill/

// agent orange

on newsmax msnbc fox turned down]

Comedian Jon Stewart appeared on the right-wing media outlet Newsmaxon Thursday and shredded the Republican Party's blockage of a United States Senate Veterans Affairs Committee bill to provide health care to veterans who were exposed to poisonous substances while serving overseas.

The filibuster of the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (PACT) was led by retiring Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania).

"It's not just not true," Steward said of the GOP's claim that the legislation contains "unrelated spending."

Republicans, Steward continued, "don't like that it's mandatory as opposed to discretionary. There isn't unrelated spending to it. They're saying, 'there could be if there isn't oversight.' But that's what the Senate's job is. The bill itself is incredibly detailed and prescriptive about what it's for. It's about treating and preventing the different conditions that veterans are coming home with including cancers and chronic bronchiolitis and all these other issues from their exposures in Iraq in Afghanistan. And to push back on what they're saying, they're saying, 'what if this creates a slush fund?' Right? So, are you familiar with something called the OCO – the Overseas Contingency Operations Fund?" Steward asked anchor Shaun Kraisman.

"Fairly, yes," Kraisman replied.

Stewart underscored why that obscure statute – and its backing by lawmakers – is significant.

"So every year, 50 billion, 60 billion, 70 billion dollars is added to what's called the OCO on top of the 600 billion, 700 billion, 800 billion that goes to the Defense Department. That OCO fund is actually a slush fund. Sixty to 70 billion dollars every year – no oversight, no guardrails – and every one of those Republicans that voted against healthcare for veterans voted for the slush fund for the war," Stewart explained.

"They don't support the troops; they support the war machine," Steward added. "And that's gotta stop. The value of the US military isn't in the toys. It's not in the hardware, it's not in the tanks. It's in the men and women. And until they start supporting them in the manner that they purport to online, they are hypocrites."

Watch below or at this link.

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Oliver discussed OAN during a segment on the Sunday, October 10 broadcast of his HBO series "Last Week Tonight," humorously taking a jab at AT&T for playing a role in the launch of OAN back in 2013.

Oliver told viewers, "You may remember that we covered (OAN) last year. It's a far-right channel that peddles COVID misinformation and conspiracy theories. Well, this week, we learned some pretty unsettling news."

After showing a clip of CNN's Jake Tapper reporting on the AT&T/OAN connection, Oliver humorously added, "Yup, turns out AT&T has been up to some shit. And it is worth noting: AT&T is still technically our business daddy, making OAN our business stepsibling — and not in a hot way."

Oliver, drawing on reporting from Reuters, added "OAN founder and Chief Executive Robert Herring, Sr. has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives. 'They told us they wanted a conservative network,' Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters…. With that help, OAN has grown into the toxic network that it is today — one that's happy to give a platform to batshit election fraud theories from America's most out-of-breath pillow fetishist (Mike Lindell)."

Oliver showed a clip of OAN's Pearson Sharp calling for mass executions of Democrats and election workers he believes stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.

Maintaining his humorous but edgy tone, the "Last Week Tonight" host said, "Look, AT&T, I know our relationship is a little awkward…. Let me just say this: You're a terrible company. You do bad things, and you make the world worse.

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maher goes right? fox has gutfeld?

jon s has new show one subject per episode 10/21

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an 621

when Dave Chappelle released his latest stand-up comedy special 8:46, he did not hold back when it came to sharing his unfiltered opinion of controversial conservative commentator Candace Owens. But during his latest podcast segment,the comedian asked for a thorough assessment of his work.

"There is no possible way that I owe Candace Owens an apology, is there?" Chappelle asked. To which, cohosts Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey," responded with a resounding "F--that!"

Then, Chappelle, Kweli, and Bey began their verbal assault on Ownes. "mascot for colonial interests in America today," Legend said.

"So the verdict is no apology, right?" Chapelle asked. Then he went in for the kill. While onstage during his slams session, Chappell also lambasted Owens and her platform to exploit Black people while supporting problematic conservative policies that serve no one outside of the Republican base. Chapelle believes Owens is "mascot for colonial interests in America today."

"That rotten b---h, she's the worst," Chappelle said on stage. "I can't think of a worse way to make money. She's the most articulate idiot I've ever seen in my f--king life."

"So the verdict is no apology, right Chappel asked while highlighting some of Owens' worst political remarks. Chappelle referred an "often spoken but unwritten rule" of comedy that "you shouldn't apologize for jokes," calling it a "very bad precedent to set."

"It's like Rachel Maddow crying on the news," he continues. "If you cry about one story, you're going to have to cry about all these shits." Chappelle defends his trolling of Owens "in the p---y" by explaining how "cruel and dangerous" her rhetoric was at the time. While "it's not illegal to be an asshole," he says, he found her comments about George Floyd "particularly cruel."

At one point, Jon Stewart entered the discussion and offered a response to Owens' relatively positive remarks about Chappelle despite his stark rebuke of her.

"We've arrived too suddenly into a culture where people can't laugh at themselves, or want to restrain comedians. I will never be a part of that culture," Owens tweeted at the time, adding, "@DaveChappelle—you are legend and I'd love to meet you and challenge you to say any of that to my face! All love!"

"Here's why you were so effective in what you said about Candace Owens," Stewart said . "Because they have held you up as an avatar of truth-telling, because you're willing to speak your art in the way that you want to speak it." Speaking about Owens specifically, he adds, "Her life is provocation, her brand is provocation, that's how she makes her money." Rather than a "genuine offer of argument and exchange of ideas," it's a "provocation and a troll that's meant to increase brand recognition."

Although Owens admitted she would love to meet Chappelle, he took one more jab at her that suggests he completely disagrees.

Stewart joins veterans in DC to demand attention for a deadly policy killing US troops

Aysha Qamar / Daily Kos

12/09 climategate

By December 1, the flap had even made The Daily Show [100]. "Poor Al Gore," mocked Jon Stewart. "Global warming completely debunked via the very internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!"

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-different-are-sean-hannity-and-samantha-bee-a-media-scholar-explains-how-right-wing-outrage-and-left-liberal-satire-have-reshaped-our-world/

no lnx

How different are Sean Hannity and Samantha Bee? A media scholar explains how right-wing outrage and left-liberal satire have reshaped our world

Written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon December 8, 2019

Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are masters of outrage — not just the emotion, but a genre of political theater — just as Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are masters of ironic satire. They’re poles apart, and yet — ironically or outrageously — they’re profoundly similar, both in how they’re impacting their audiences, and why their genres emerged when they did. That’s perhaps the central thesis of “Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States,” by Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, who’s both a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware and an improv comedian with the troupe ComedySportz Philadelphia. That’s among the many different hats she wears.

The idea for the book, Young explains, came from two decades of research on the effects of late-night comedy, and always encountering the same question: “How come your examples are all from liberal satire?” Of course, she also knew that the political talk genre was dominated by conservatives, and as she read the work of scholars who studied that genre the same way she studied satire, “I started seeing these sort of parallel tracks,” she recalls. “And that opened up this possibility that perhaps these are the natural genres to which each of these sides are drawn.”

I was hooked on her premise from the first time I saw her tweet about her forthcoming book, many months ago. Young had so much to say that I’ve split our interview in two: The first part focused on the book’s central findings, the second on a range of examples — mostly in pairs — that illustrate how her insights shed light on different facets of our political media culture, as well as facets of ourselves. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Your prologue talks about Samantha Bee bringing Glenn Beck on her “Full Frontal” show shortly after Trump was elected. What happened there, and why did you use it to open with?

I used Samantha Bee to open the book because she invited former outrage host Glenn Beck onto her show to have that sort of weird coming-to-Jesus moment, and I think it was actually useful for both of them. I am interested in what it reveals to us that Samantha Bee decided to invite Beck onto the show, and decided to go public with his line that she was turning into him.

I think her willingness to go there, and admit that, speaks to some of the themes I’m talking about the book. Which is that these are two genres that seem to be on two different planets — in terms of the goals and the internal spirit of the genre — but they’re not that different in terms of what they provide to their viewers.

I find Samantha Bee to be a particularly interesting example in the era of Trump, because it often seems that when you watch her show, she is authentically angry. She will use jokes intermittently, but many of her jokes are drawn not from irony, but from hyperbole, She does a lot of exaggeration-based humor, but you come away feeling her anger, and that to me puts her in a different category from some of her more mainstream counterparts.

That’s a way in which she’s not being satirical.

Exactly. The definition of satire I go with in the book is that it’s a kind of rhetoric that is playful and meant to induce laughter, but it aims at a target and it issues a judgment. That judgment tends to be not just at institutions, people or policies, but also at the society that has given rise to those. So I think she does that latter part really well. I think she is playful. But there are times when it feels that she is leading with her politics. I think that a lot of the most successful political satirists — successful in terms of their broad appeal — they lead with the laughter, they lead with the joke. And she is often leading with her politics. I’m not making a normative judgment on that, it just changes her categorization a bit.

The core of the book involves political and psychological issues, but you start off with somehistory that’s really crucial to set the stage. Our current political media environment began in the late 1990s, you explain, but the pattern was set more than a generation earlier. So how is that pattern expressed in the late ‘50s and ‘60s? How did it first emerge?

Once I started digging into this, I realized this really was the first chapter of the book, because there are things that we would consider to be the roots of, or the precursors to these dominant genres as we know them today. What was super helpful here on the right was the book by media historian Nicole Hammer, her book “Messengers on the Right” really traces this back through the 1950s.

She points to these radio show hosts that had these small followings, usually they were funded by sponsorships. They were almost like preachers — very fire-and-brimstone — talking about anti-desegregation movements, talking about how the United States needed to exit the United Nations.A lot of them were concerned about communists lurking inside the Supreme Court, or inside Washington and Congress. I’m talking about people like Clarence Manion and Dan Smoot. When you listen to these original broadcasts, they have a similar kind of clear, didactic, angry, imploring tone that is reminiscent of what we hear from our outrage hosts today.

These kinds of radio shows were really taking hold at the very same moment as our formative ironic satirists — those to whom we still refer today, and those to whom our top satirists today say, “They are the reason I got into this business” — when those individuals were engaging in their craft. We’re talking about the late 1950s into the 1960s, folks like Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl who pioneered an entirely new spirit of social and cultural commentary that was quite radical, not even liberal but radical in its orientation.The fact that those two moments coincided was something that just seemed like — this can’t be just a coincidence, that this is how these two things are articulating themselves, and that they look so similar to what we witness today in our bifurcated cable landscape.

I was struck that the outrage on the right was specifically reacting to social changes they don’t like, they feel threatened by, while on the radical side these same changes are opening up and exposing contradictions in the status quo that they probe and engage with.

They engage with them and start asking more questions about them. And the way that they’re exploring these issues is not to try to put these constructs back into boxes, but to really unpack them, and say, “Wait! Why do we even …” There’s a wonderful example I got from Ed Greenberg who’d been in The Committee and talked about the show The Cockettes, who were these sort of gender-fluid, cross-dressing men, and when he described it, he just described like just being mind-blown, thinking about “What is gender? Is gender a social construct?” To be thinking about that in the 60s like that, that is forward thinking — unpacking some of these things that we used to think of as fixed identities and exploring their truth value. That’s what I think satire is particularly gifted to do.

So, moving on to the 1990s. A lot happens from that early period to then, but what’s most salient to explain what happens to create today’s genres on the left and right?

Just as we look back in the ‘50s and say, “Look at these two ideological genres crystallizing at that moment,” the fact that Bill O’Reilly and “The Daily Show” emerge on cable within three months of each other also strikes me as something that shouldn’t be thought of as a coincidence. We have the erosion of trust in media, that has been catalogued through the 1980s into the ‘90s, and that in turn sets us up for the possibility of people wanting alternative sources of political information in new places where they can derive political meaning.

To understand that decline in trust, we have to go back to everything from changes in media technology to changes in media regulations. Massive deregulation in the 1980s under Reagan changes the media enterprise into one that is well-suited for profit, and that comes to affect the news industry in ways that change the mandate placed on news from serving the public good to generating profits for shareholders. That comes to shape what news looks like in important ways.

All of this is happening at the very same moment that the two political parties — who have experienced this sort of realignment into the 1970s — then come to put their flag in the ground on issues that are not just generic policy issues, but are issues related to social and cultural politics. We witness this cleavage with the notable moment of the “Contract With America” in 1994, and increasingly the parties separate from each other at the elite level, which then signals increasing division to the public.

So we have polarization happening in the public, a lack of trust in news organizations that is, in part, because of media deregulation and changes in news, and all of these lead to the possibility that the appetite for partisan-oriented political content is going to be great.That, combined with cable and Internet advances, means a media ecosystem that has a gazillion places for people to go and also a gazillion outlets that need to be filled with stuff. And so, with the lower-stakes game, we have experimentation and the creation of new kinds of programming and it’s sort of a perfect storm. Voilà! Fox News and “The Daily Show.”

The patterns are repeating. Conservatives feel threatened by change, but this time their obsession with media plays a much bigger role. They see it driving the threatening changes, promoting if not causing them — so they double down, as it were. While on the progressive side, the response was bifurcated, or layered. With the cultural substance they were still using the new to explore contradictions in the old, but regarding the media’s erosion of journalistic values, they were going back to the old to probe contradictions in the new.

That’s interesting, yeah. Some wonderful scholars have explored the way in which “The Daily Show,” in particular, adapted a sort of journalistic lens more akin to what we would think of as the dominant lens in the 1950s and ‘60s where there is a knowable truth, we can articulate it and we can advocate for it in ways that the news media in the 1990s were not willing to do, because they were so wedded to the sense of media “objectivity.”

Folks like Geoffrey Baym [“From Cronkite to Colbert“] and Jeffrey Jones [“Entertaining Politics“] have done a nice job on how what we got from Jon Stewart in his years on “The Daily Show,” even though it was an entertainment show, was almost a Walter Cronkite-type sense of: People might be trying to pee on your shoe and tell you it’s raining, but it’s actually pee. This is actually what’s happening, in a way like Cronkite ending his broadcast, “And that’s the way it is.”

We don’t have that kind of journalistic or moral authority from our newscasters anymore, except for in our partisan news outlets. I think it’s kind of interesting that the fact we don’t have journalistic authority from folks who are nonpartisan, perhaps, is part of the problem. Because there is an unwillingness to “take a side,” when truth does have a side.

People generally have a sense of what irony and satire are, but how do you define them precisely, so people know exactly what you’re saying?

The definition of irony that I’m using is that is a form of rhetoric that issues an argument that has a literal and an implied meaning that are at odds with one another. So the valence of the statement is inverted. So if you say something is wonderful, it means it’s terrible, if you say it’s terrible, it means it’s wonderful. That is way oversimplified, but when you really boil it down, that is how ironic juxtapositions are generally used in satire.

Satire itself is more broad. It’s playful, it invokes laughter, it has a target and it makes a judgment. Now, irony is a wonderful way to deliver a satirical text because irony invites this layered meaning between the way the world is and the way the world really ought to be. So by describing the way things are as though they’re perfect, when they’re clearly terrible, or by describing the ideal world as though it is what we’re living in, when it’s clearly not, both of those kinds of juxtapositions invite us to issue these sorts of societal judgments in ways that really lend themselves to satire.

You have also said that in satire the argument is delivered through the joke, not in it. Could you elaborate?

One of the things I loved about studying the psychology of humor is just how magical it is. Hundreds of years ago, the satirist was considered almost like a sorcerer, because people can’t understand, “How this person criticizing the king and not getting beheaded?” Well, because they’re doing it through jokes. When you start thinking about how jokes are constructed, it becomes clear that the power of the satirist is in the fact that they do not issue the judgment themselves, they create some kind of clever juxtaposition, almost like a riddle, and it is in the solving of the riddle that the audience issues the judgment. [METAPHOR: TARGET DONOR DOMAIN MAPPING]

One of my favorite jokes that I unpackin the book is when Conan O’Brien says that Trump’s numbers in the poll are slipping, but there’s good news: he’s polling No. 1 among Germans from the 1930s. So when you listen to that joke, it happens all very quickly, it feels like it’s easy. But it’s not particularly easy. Your brain has to go back and say, “Wait a second, what was Germany in the 1930s? OK, that was the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. OK, so what does that mean, if he is polling No. 1 among those people? Oh, OK, so that means he’s appealing to the same things that were used to appeal to them. OK, so that’s what? Racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, right?”

So you’re filling in all these blanks, it’s not as though Conan O’Brien states, “Donald Trump is a racist,” or “The people who like Donald Trump are Nazis.” He doesn’t say that. Because that’s a completely different kind of equation in terms of what that’s going to do to your audience. He invites the audience to issue that judgment. And that to me is the most delicious piece of understanding satire.

On the other side, what’s most important for us to understand about outrage, as you are treating it?

Outrage in this context is directly tied to a prior work called “The Outrage Industry,” by Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj. I’m not speaking about outrage as the emotion, I’m talking about outrage as a genre, which they define explicitly as a genre that usually has a solo host who has a clear political point of view and whose opinions drive the editorial content of the program. They engage in didactic speech, slippery-slope language, and usually that brings us into the land of hyperbole — so the land of overstatement and exaggeration. The nature of the content of what they’re saying is generally slanted towards theidentification of threats — threats in the form of the people, policies and institutions — but they’re doing it in a way that has profound moral certainty. They’re morally serious, and they are certain about statements they are making.

What’s also important for the case that I’m building is that outrage has the trappings of news. It is supposed to be processed through the lens of serious information, not entertainment but serious information. Now sometimes these “analysis” programs, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Judge Jeanine Pirro, they’ll say, “No, no, no, I’m not a news show, you don’t have to hold me to the same standards as a journalist. I’m a talk-show host.” But then in the next breath they will double down on their seriousness and how important they are in terms of breaking news and providing important serious insight.

That is profoundly different from the kind of self-reflection we get from late-night comics and satirists, who really do not want to speak of their importance to the political process. They downplay their own moral seriousness, they downplay their importance in the political process.

So you’ve touched on how outrage and irony fit the psychologies of right and left. I’d like you to bring it center stage. What’s the most important thing we’ve learned?

In the last two decades, political psychologists have done experimental and survey work, and even physiological work, that has consistently pointed to distinct psychological traits between the left and the right.Liberals tend to be higher in tolerance for ambiguity. That means they are more comfortable with situations, schedules, routines and contexts that are uncertain, and they tend to have higher need for cognition, which simply means that they seek out and enjoy the process of working through information that is complex.

On the other hand, conservatives tend to be higher in need for closure. They are less tolerant of ambiguity, they are less comfortable with uncertainty, they like constructs, routines and situations that are predictable, ordered and fixed. They are lower in need for cognition, which, as I always say, is not an indication that conservatives are not smart. It’s not an indication that they don’t know things. It is an indication that they have a different motivation as they process information in the world. They are governed by peripheral cues, which are heuristics or shortcuts that allow them to efficiently tap into gut reactions or emotional reactions, and they do it in a way that is consistent across judgments over time. So they respond to things quickly and efficiently in a way that liberals do not.

Right. That makes sense.

These two packages to me seem to tap in intuitively to these genres — not only how they frame their arguments, but the entire spirit, aesthetic and package that they are delivered in. On the one hand, you have ironic satire, which as I have said is incomplete until the audience chimes in. It’s cognitively taxing. We know from studies with an fMRI machine that irony is actually quite complex to unpack in the brain. We also know that it is inherently an explicitly hybrid form of information, where political satirists are often delivering information and even news stories, but they’re framed as play and as entertainment. For liberals who are more tolerant of ambiguity and more comfortable with uncertainty, the fact that they’re kind of a hybrid — a little serious, a little play — they’re more open to that. They also really enjoy the process of unpacking and understanding and comprehending information that is layered, like irony.

On the other side, the reason that conservatives have a lower tolerance for ambiguity and a lower need for cognition is in part attributable to differences in brain structure and physiology that is more like a well-oiled machine designed to monitor for threat and respond to it. So conservatives are just more skilled at efficient quick responses to threats. That is what many psychologists believe leads to these psychological traits on the right.

Conservative outrage is so threat-oriented and presents information very clearly, very didactically. You don’t have to work to understand what Sean Hannity is saying.You don’t have to work to understand who he thinks we should be angry at, who we should fear, and what we should do about it. It’s very, very clear. He also — someone like Hannity, especially — presents himself as morally serious and as certain, as news for someone who would perhaps be less comfortable with that hybridity that you have in the world of satire.

Hannity, while he may technically be a hybrid show because he’s a little entertainment and is not really a journalist, he does everything he can to hide that from you. He speaks like someone who is to be trusted, there’s no room for questions. He has the information. Between that and the constant orientation toward threat, it’s really a fascinating kind of content to observe through that lens, because it really works so consistently with the conservative psychology. Sometimes when I was writing this book, I thought, “Doesn’t everybody know this already?” Because it feels like it works so well and it just makes so much sense.

Our conversation continues in Part 2, coming soon.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/13/if-john-oliver-wants-be-funny-about-science-non-profits-i-can-help-write-better-material-13303

berman acsh claims total transparncy; oil conf

10/18 RAGA

Oliver points to RAGA (Repulican Attorneys General Association) and DAGA (Democratic Attorneys General Association), the partisan associations that “sound like twins from Dutch folklore that teach children right from wrong” and raise funds via somewhat questionable ties to corporations. Further, AGs belonging to one party have increasingly teamed up across states to sue the federal government (blocking actions such as the Medicaid expansion under the Obama Administration) and this has become a point of pride for some, such as Texas’ Greg Abbott (“I go into the office, I sue the federal government and then I go home”) and his successor, Ken Paxton, a man seriously outshone by his wife, the “pistol packin’ momma.”

Diving further into how Paxton’s conservative views have affected his work in office, and later on the surprising statistics of how few people actually vote for AG when confronted with the choice on a ballot, Oliver makes his case for awareness of these races.

“So please, before Nov. 6, just think about your AG race. You can do it, you’ve got nine days left,” said Oliver. “I know we’ve all been asked to think about a lot this year from Supreme Court nominations to gun control, to the energy of Pete Davidson’s penis—it’s been a lot and now I am adding research your state AG race to the list—but it is honestly worth it. If you do it, you’ll frankly be amazed at the kind of tidbits you may find.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-comedians-like-jon-stewart-are-redefining-patriotism/

an 519

Last weekend, Bill Nye appeared on Last Week Tonight with John Oliverfor a segment about climate change. Nye issued a blunt warning that action must be taken to reign in climate change, or else there will be unavoidable dire consequences. The segment went viral, and, predictably, right-wing media lashed out at Nye:

While an onscreen chyron read "Climate Hysteria," Fox host Jesse Watters said of Nye: "If it was a real crisis, he wouldn't be joking like that."
Frequent Fox guest and climate-denier Joe Bastardi: "It's just crazy, are you angry?"
NRATV's Dana Loesch: "If the planet is on 'blanking' fire, and we're all going to die in 10-12 years, then how is it that the only action you want to take is to take people's money?"
Redstate ran the segment under the headline: "WATCH: Fake Reporter John Oliver and Fake Scientist Bill Nye Try To Sell You a Fake Crisis"
Glenn Beck's The Blaze: "Bill Nye loses it and melts down over climate change, goes on expletive-laden rant during late-night show"

Meanwhile, climate change is still pitifully undercovered in mainstream media.

aha: provocateurs are mirrors/ crypto?

Frosty the Slowman’: Why climate scientists are reveling in this Daily Show segment ripping Trump’s stupidity

by Andrea Germanos February 2, 2019

Climate scientists gave a round of applause Thursday night to a segment on Comedy Central‘s “The Daily Show” that quickly—and with an appropriate level of frustration—showed the ignorance of President…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/arts/television/jason-spencer-sacha-cohen.html

...Spencer isn’t quite as prominent as the other lawmakers that Mr. Cohen has fooled, including Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, and Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent. But you might have heard his name before.

Mr. Spencer, a 43-year-old physician assistant, was elected to the Georgia House in 2010 from Woodbine, near the southeastern tip of Georgia. This is his fourth term, and his last, for now at least. In May, he lost his primary election to a political newcomer, Steven Sainz. He had a reputation of being combative and a knack for attracting negative attention, which may have been what brought him to the attention of Mr. Cohen.

In 2016, shortly after President Trump won the election, Mr. Spencer filed and then withdrew — following an outcry — a bill that critics said would have effectively banned Muslims from wearing veils in public.

Last summer, Mr. Spencer got into a Facebook exchange with a former Georgia lawmaker, an African-American attorney named LaDawn Jones, who supported the removal of Confederate statues. In a comment that had threatening racial overtones, Mr. Spencer told Ms. Jones: “Looks like you are afflicted with the same poison you claim to fight against. I can guarantee you won’t be met with torches but something a lot more definitive. People in South Georgia are people of action, not drama.” He added that people who want the statues removed “will go missing in the Okefenokee,” referring to a swamp in Georgia.

---

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/24/headlines/georgia_state_rep_jason_spencer_caught_yelling_n_word_in_sacha_baron_cohens_tv_show

Republican state representative from Georgia, Jason Spencer, has been caught on tape shouting the n-word in the latest episode of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s show “Who Is America?,” in which Cohen impersonates characters in order to spoof famous people—from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney. For Republican Jason Spencer, Cohen impersonated an Israeli terrorism expert training him how to outwit militants.

Sacha Baron Cohen: “In America, there is one forbidden world, the n-word. Now, I am going to be the terrorist. You have three seconds to attract attention. Go.”

Jason Spencer: “Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!”

Sacha Baron Cohen: “Are you crazy? The n-word is noony. Not this word. This word is disgusting.”

Sacha Baron Cohen: “Show me your weapon, go!”

Jason Spencer: “I’ll touch you. I’ll make you a homosexual right now! You drop that weapon. USA! USA!”

That was Republican Georgia state representative Jason Spencer, believing that ISISmilitants are so afraid of gay people, that he could escape a kidnapping attack by dropping his pants and “attacking” the man with his bare bottom.

sasha b cohen sp roy moore, then palin? 8/17

comedian and chameleon provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen has been traveling the country and duping clueless Republican lawmakers and their supporters has been known for weeks, but as his new show—titled "What Is America?"—readies to drop its first episode for Showtime on Sunday night, clips have surfaced in which actual adults are seen endorsing the preposterous idea of arming children as young as three and four years old with guns in order to possibly intervene in case of a school shooting massacre.

According to Reuters:

In the first episode of “Who is America?”, previewed for media by Showtime, Baron Cohen poses as an Israeli anti-terror expert who gets two U.S. congressmen to voice support for his fake “Kinderguardians” scheme for children as young as three. The scheme includes a fake instructional video featuring children’s songs and “gunimals” — weapons adorned with soft toys — that would purportedly help kids confront the school shootings that have plagued the United States for the past decade.

Republican congressmen Dana Rohrabacher of California and Joe Wilson of South Carolina, along with former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who is now a lobbyist at a Washington law firm, are shown enthusiastically backing the idea, alongside gun rights advocates and a former congressman-turned-talk radio host, Joe Walsh.

While official trailers have not been released, some on social media have been posting portions of the episode:

In his reviewfor Variety, television critic Daniel D'Addadario says the show is Cohen's best work in some time:

“Who Is America?” feels both as richly comic as anything Baron Cohen has done in the decade-plus since “Borat” and urgently resonant with our own era. The show’s format—using four new Baron Cohen personae in order to expose the nature of contemporary American culture—is particularly effective, moving as it does beyond the boldface names who’ve come forward to say they’ve been pranked by the comic. The first episode, for instance, puts gun lobbyists in conversation with Erran Morad, a former Israeli colonel played by Baron Cohen. “Morad” is traveling the U.S. to learn more about gun policy and to share his full-throated support for a particularly libertine understanding of the Second Amendment; by episode’s end, gun lobbyists as well as past and present members of Congress are on tape endorsing his “Kinder-Guardians” program, designed to teach children of three and four how to shoot.

...

https://www.alternet.org/think-gop-lawmakers-arent-unhinged-enough-endorse-program-called-kinderguardians-puts-guns-hands-4

sam b atr grover norquist

2/28/12

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/qzl2j5/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-grover-norquist-s-taxpayer-protection-pledge

---

https://www.alternet.org/culture/science-satire-and-lies-watching-colbert-can-fight-right-wing-brain-rot

In a National Rifle Association (NRA) TV ad from February of this year a man stands in front of a TV screen that airs a series of clips. Among them is a shot of John Oliver saying the words “National Rifle Association” and another of Alec Baldwin impersonating Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live. The rest of the shots are of talk shows, pundits or cable news reporting. As the clips roll, the man takes a sledgehammer to the TV and smashes it. Then a slogan appears: “The truth is our greatest weapon.”

It is a stunningly stupid ad. And it helps explain why the right keeps going after comedians.

It’s also a pretty funny ad, because what better way for the NRA to expose its penchant for aggressive hyperbole and its snowflake logic than to have a man sledgehammer a TV and equate that act with the “truth”? So according to NRA logic, their weapon is the truth, which is a sledgehammer that they will use on anyone who says things they don’t like. This is the ad they use to suggest they are being misrepresented as aggressive lunatics. Its irrationality is only outdone by its irony.

This weird habit of freaking out over comedians and suggesting that they are threatening the truth isn’t just the domain of the NRA. It’s a right-wing trend.

No one needs reminding of Donald Trump’s incessant agitation over Alec Baldwin’s impersonations of him for "SNL." Recall that Trump wasn’t just upset at the way that he was being presented as a bombastic fool (hardly a creative stretch); Trump also suggested that folks were “forced” to watch the impersonations, that the comedy was “one-sided” and “biased” and that he deserved “equal time.”

But one of the best recent examples of the right-wing witch-hunt over late night comedy came from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, who didn’t take kindly to a recent sketch Stephen Colbert did on “The Late Show” that mocked him. Colbert traveled to Washington, D.C. to grill lawmakers about the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. While there, he released his own redacted memo about Nunes.

Nunes later called into Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business show and called Colbert’s jokes a “danger” to the country. “Conservatives in this country are under attack,” Nunes said. “They attack people who are trying to get to the truth.”

Many of us are aware of the fact that Donald Trump is the most-mocked president in U.S. history. But the other side of the story is that this is the first time in our nation's history that comedians have so consistently been under attack across such a broad range of venues and in such a public way.

So, what is it about these comedians that has the right in such a tizzy?

Clearly, they don’t like being ridiculed. But that isn’t the main reason why these comedians feel like a threat. Instead, the real challenge comedians pose is to the right-wing version of the “truth” that is actually grounded in lies, B.S. and faulty logic. And what really makes the right’s antagonistic attitude towards comedians interesting is the fact that the comedians aren’t just challenging right-wing truth claims; they are thwarting the cognitive processes that lead us to accept right-wing falsehoods as true

Many of us have pointed out that the real threat to our nation caused by the Trump era is the mind warp it is causing. This is not only true for those who exhibit extreme belief bias and simply accept everything they hear on Fox News; it is also a problem for those of us who would like to remain critically analytical.

We now have significant evidence that the Trump era has created a cognitive load — a mental exhaustion on the nation — one that is so significant thatfake news headlines can be taken as true if repeated enough. One study by Gordon Pennycook, Tyrone Cannon and David Rand on the cognitive processing of fake news stories showed that “increased perceptions of accuracy for repeated fake news headlines occurs even when the stories are labeled as contested by fact checkers, or are inconsistent with the reader’s political ideology.”

Back in early 2017, Maria Konnikova wrote a piece that explained what happens to the brain when it has to incessantly process lies. She cited research that shows that the brain has to first accept a lie as true, only to analyze it, then refute it. Over time, the brain tires of that process and slowly starts to accept the lies as true. She refers to a fascinating, if disheartening, 2015 study, that showed that if people repeated the phrase “The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth” enough times, the Atlantic Ocean started to seem like the largest ocean on Earth.

This is all to show that there is now proof that the mainstreaming of lies in the Trump era is indeed rotting our brains. It was first thought that one way to prevent the spread of false information would be to flag it by third-party fact checking, but the study cited above showed that that effort did not sufficiently help.

And that’s where the comedians come in. Thus far there have been no studies that have compared cognitive processing of satire with cognitive processing of falsehoods. But there is significant research to show that it may well be true that the best cognitive defense against Trump era falsehoods is satirical comedy. We know, for instance, that those who consume sarcasm are smarter, more creative and better at reading context. All are useful tools to process lies.

What is most interesting is that processing falsehoods and processing certain types of satire appears to follow a very similar cognitive path. In both cases, the brain has to be able to distinguish between what is said and what is true. And in both cases the brain has to reconcile ambiguity, incongruence and the misuse of words. It further has to process tone, context and body language to infer meaning.

We knew back when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were on Comedy Central that their viewers were among the most informed on issues of any group consuming news. But now the role of satire in informing the public may be even more important — satirists may be the one thing that is keeping analytical thinkers engaged.

It’s important to note that sarcastic statements are like a true lie. “You’re saying something you don’t literally mean, and the communication works as intended only if your listener gets that you’re insincere,” explains Richard Chin.

What is perhaps most interesting about the way that satire works as a foil for Trump-era mental manipulations is that satire is designed to go after the three main ways our brains are constantly being duped: lies, B.S. and faulty logic.

In his first 406 days as president, Trump made 2,436 misleading or false claims. Most analysis of Trump’s false statements, like the running tab kept by The Washington Post, lumps his lies together with his bullshit — and that is a mistake. As Pennycook explains, “The difference between bulls**t and lying is that bulls**t is constructed without any concern for the truth. It’s designed to impress rather than inform. And then lying, of course, is very concerned with the truth — but subverting it.” Understood this way, it seems clear that Trump employs B.S. as much, if not more, than lies. Even better, he admits to it. He recently bragged that he just made up assertions of trade imbalances between the United States and Canada when talking to Justin Trudeau.

Flawed logic is a different thing altogether. These sorts of deceptions can take many forms, but as John Oliver pointed out, one of the Trump team’s favorites is whataboutism. "It implies that all actions regardless of context share a moral equivalency," says Oliver. "And since nobody is perfect, all criticism is hypocritical and everyone should do whatever they want.” Trump practiced whataboutism, for example, when he suggested that there were “many sides” to blame when a neo-Nazi intentionally drove a car into a mass of people and killed protestor Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.

In one example of satire mocking a Trump lie, Colbert called out Trump for claiming that his State of the Union address had the highest number of viewers in history. Colbert remained stunned that Trump needed to lie about his numbers and then decided to respond by using ironic exaggeration: “So let me just say right now, in advance, congratulations to President Trump on winning the Super Bowl. Well played . . . Also, you make a great Black Panther.”

But here is the really interesting part of the story. We know that fake news headlines, Trump B.S. and NRA skewed logic does in fact get cognitive traction even among those of us not predisposed to accept those falsehoods. Yet, those viewers who watch satire and other types of ironic comedy do not lose the ability to detect the ways that these comedians use creative deception to be funny. Why do we get tired of processing lies, but not of processing ironic comedy? And are satire consumers better at detecting falsehoods?

While more research is needed to fully make the case, there seem to be two main reasons why satire viewers may be better at detecting falsehoods than those who don’t consume this type of humor.

Satire viewers enjoy using their reflective cognitive abilities, which are effortful, typically deliberative and require working memory, over intuitive cognitive abilities, which don’t require higher order cognition. When I spoke with Pennycook about the potential of satire to serve as a defense against Trump era falsehoods, he remained skeptical that satire could strengthen mental fitness as a defense against falsehoods, but he did say that there may well be an overlap between people who are both willing and able to think analytically and satire viewers. “People do break down,” he explained, “according to the degree that they are willing and eager to engage in analytic reasoning.”

A number of studies have suggested that those who support right-wing ideology are more susceptible to bullshit, more governed by belief bias and less tolerant of irony and humorous exaggeration. But as the recent studies on fake news processing show, both the left and the right can fall for fake news. The critical difference, then, isn’t left or right political views, but analytical or intuitive thinkers.

The second part of the story is that processing humor cognitively involves pleasure. There is a cognitive reward for processing a joke that leads to laughter or amusement. Jokes engage both analytical and affective cognitive processes. Watching Samantha Bee or Colbert or Oliver dissect falsehoods is both analytically engaging and fun. The element of fun may be part of the reason why we keep getting the joke but can get worn down by incessant lies. When lies are processed through comedy, we don’t lose the ability to detect them as false.

And that may well be why these comedians keep being attacked as a danger to the NRA, the Trump agenda and right-wing extremism. Each time a comedian ironically makes fun of the right-wing mindset, they help engage our analytical thinking in a fun way.

The problem with the culture of lies — besides the cognitive toll it talks on all of us -- is that it may well be closely tied to a decline in democratic values. A study released this week by the Democracy Voter Study Group found that there is an alarming level of support for authoritarian rule among U.S. voters. Trump himself seems to have no real fondness for democracy, but we now know that only a slim majority of Americans (54 percent) consistently express a pro-democratic position. In addition, the highest levels of support for authoritarian leadership come from those who are disaffected, disengaged from politics, deeply distrustful of experts, culturally conservative and have negative attitudes toward racial minorities. That is also the same demographic that doesn’t like political satire and may even consider it “dangerous” to the nation.

It may be that the right’s real problem with late-night comedy isn’t that they can’t take a joke; it’s that they can’t take what a joke might do to their agenda.

Sophia A. McClennen is professor of international affairs and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. Her latest book, co-authored with Remy M. Maisel, is, Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Mockery and American Politics.

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sinclair 19 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

---

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/watch-john-oliver-exposes-one-biggest-american-health-hazards-no-one-talking-about

corp person

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/wc91m5/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-heavy-settle

tahir sq aug 11 mit clip 3:34 jon stewart fine = cut; 2012 JPM jgoff jokes

---

colbert superpac

7 min

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/av6bvx/the-colbert-report-colbert-super-pac---coordination-resolution-with-jon-stewart

===

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/06/22/coal_baron_robert_murray_is_suing_john_oliver_over_his_segment_featuring.html

A Coal Baron Is Suing John Oliver for “Character Assassination” Over Last Week Tonight’s Talking Squirrel Segment

By Marissa Martinelli

On Sunday, John Oliver predicted that his Last Week Tonight segment on the coal industry would probably result in a lawsuit, and voilà: His Last Week Tonight segment on the coal industry has resulted in a lawsuit. Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, is suing Oliver and others after Oliver used Murray as an example of “the divide that can exist between a coal company’s interests and those of its workers” during Sunday night’s show.

During the segment, which was critical of the coal industry and Donald Trump’s promises to revive it, Oliver explained that Last Week Tonight had contacted Murray Energy for comment—and received the show’s first ever cease-and-desist letter in reply. In response, Oliver doubled down on criticism of Murray and his company, even seizing on a satirical article in the United Mine Workers of America journal, which attributed Murray’s inspiration to a conversation he held with a squirrel—yes, a squirrel. (Murray Energy denies this.) At the very end of the segment, Oliver brought out a giant talking squirrel of his own. “Hey, Bob! Just wanted to say, if you plan on suing, I do not have a billion dollars,” said the aptly named Mr. Nutterbutter. “But I do have a check for three acorns and 18 cents.” The check was then revealed to be made out to “Eat Shit, Bob!”

Murray Energy is now making good on its threat to sue, filing a defamation lawsuit that stresses Murray’s ill health, calling him“a man who needs a lung transplant, a man who does not expect to live to see the end of this case” and claiming that Oliver’s segment has been detrimental to both his business and his physical condition. While the meat of the lawsuit regards Oliver’s claims about the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine in 2007—Murray claims it was the result of an earthquake, Oliver says there’s no evidence to support that claim—fans of general absurdity will be thrilled to learn that this legal document also addresses that very important squirrel incident.

Instead, Defendants continued their ruthless character assassination and attack on Plaintiffs’ business reputations by describing Mr. Murray as someone who “looks like a geriatric Dr. Evil” and arranging for a staff member to dress up in a squirrel costume and deliver the message “Eat Shit, Bob!” to Mr. Murray.

If that were not enough, after the live taping, Defendant Oliver exclaimed to the audience that having someone in a squirrel costume tell Mr. Murray to “Eat Shit” was a “dream come true.”

The suit also alleges that Murray Energy’s website was “hacked and inundated with the message incited by Defendants: ‘Eat Shit Bob.’ ”

Murray Energy has a long track record of suing outlets critical of the coal industry. The company is currently suing the New York Times over claims similar to Oliver’s (minus the squirrel part, of course). In addition to naming Oliver, his production company, and Time Warner, Inc., the lawsuit also names a number of fictitious defendants, who are basically participants that the plaintiffs can’t immediately identify. In this case, these could conceivably include the segment’s writers, or even Mr. Nutterbutter himself.

Last Week Tonight ? @LastWeekTonight

Replying to @LastWeekTonight

"Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week To-nut, I'm Mr. Nutterbutter. Just time for a quick recap of the week..."

10:39 AM - Jun 19, 2017

177 177 Replies 1,111 1,111 Retweets 5,646 5,646 likes

HBO is standing by the segment, with a representative telling the Daily Beast, which first reported the lawsuit: “While we have not seen the complaint, we have confidence in the staff of Last Week Tonight and do not believe anything in the show this week violated Mr. Murray’s or Murray Energy’s rights.”

JO takes lead on NN:

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/19/headlines/fcc_vote_advances_bid_to_end_net_neutrality

in Washington, the FCC voted 2-1 Thursday, along party lines, to begin a process to replace net neutrality rules that were adopted in 2015 to keep the internet open and prevent corporate service providers from blocking access to websites, slowing down content or providing paid fast lanes for internet service. In response, Free Press President Craig Aaron warned the proposal would take away the rights of internet users, saying, "The federal courts rejected this kind of approach twice when the FCC tried it before."

api ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMqbKO6BdxM

http://www.alternet.org/video/john-oliver-if-youre-relying-your-public-defender-youre-fcked

franklin punked Colbert on stimulus $ phantom districts?

In 2009, the New Mexico Watchdog [49] reported that based on data from Recovery.gov [50], millions of dollars were spent in non-existent congressional districts in the state. The story picked up steam among reporters, even turned into a Colbert Report segment called "Know your Made-up District." The Franklin Center released a national report [51] that said $6.4 billion in stimulus money had been spent in hundreds of "phantom" congressional districts. There was truth to the New Mexico Watchdog report, but it turned out, as reported [52] by the Associated Press, that the culprit was an error-ridden government database. The funds were actually distributed to the right recipients, but errors, such as zip codes entered incorrectly, accounted for the "phantom districts." The money had not, as the report suggested, been unaccounted for or misused.

Fox has made punditry standard b/c it's cheap; Colbert is a parody for rightwing mycountryrightorwrong

Stewart often mocks bad punditry? harmless barbs? has he even taken out anyone? (Beck has better score)

I want to believe that correction/ridicule is powerful disinfectant; and JS dos have pretty broad appeal (even young males; antidote to So Pk Republicans?

JS does media criticism, thus is meta-meta?

see yale/moser crit

http://ecowatch.com/2014/10/31/jon-stewart-koch-brothers/

“The past couple of nights we’ve noticed there’s a new advertiser on the Daily Show program,” said host Stewart. “Let’s meet our new sponsor.”

Cue: an upbeat ad about the wonders of modern fossil fuel-based industry from—the Koch Brothers.

“Who are these lovable scamp Koch Brothers?” asked Stewart, before he rolled news footage revealing among other things that “The billionaire brothers are expected to spend some $290 million these midterms, mostly through their complicated web of dark money organizations.”

Saying that somehow made the ad less inspiring, Stewart said, “To welcome them to the Daily Show advertising family we did make some minor adjustments.” Those “minor adjustments” undoubtedly caused some gnashing of teeth at Koch Industries corporate headquarters in nearby Kansas.

The revised ad used some of the original’s cheerful graphics and a similarly honey-voiced female narrator cooing, “You won’t always see our names on our campaign ads because the politicians we own say that’s OK. With our heartfelt devotion to fossil fuels, we make your planet warmer and your water more flammable while lubricating your birds and rearranging your polar bears.”

http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/10/john-oliver-bill-nye-climate-change-debate

Watch Colbert Shame GOP Climate Deniers: ‘I am Not a Scientist’

Stephen Colbert shows a video montage of Republican leaders mouthing...http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/08/colbert-climate-deniers/

---

http://ecowatch.com/2014/10/31/jon-stewart-koch-brothers/

1111 oliver did something surprising

http://www.cnet.com/news/john-oliver-wants-the-food-industry-to-show-us-its-peanuts/ sugar

### John Oliver's viral video: the best climate debate you'll ever ...

www.theguardian.com › Environment › Climate change

The Guardian

May 23, 2014 - The new HBO comedy show Last Week Tonight with John Oliverrecently ... some good mining to be done regarding environmental issues…

### Watch: John Oliver and Bill Nye Show Why Cable News ...

www.motherjones.com/environment/.../john-oliver-bill-nye...

Mother Jones

May 12, 2014 - Environment. → Climate ... That's what made John Oliver's climate segment last night, on his new HBO show Last Week Tonight, so perfect.

### John Oliver Does Science Communication Right | IFLScience

www.iflscience.com/environment/john-oliver-does-science-communicati...

Environment. John Oliver Does Science Communication Right. May 15, 2014 | by Stephen Luntz. Photo credit: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO).

### Watch John Oliver's Spot-On Takedown Of Climate Change ...

oilprice.com › The Environment › Global Warming

OilPrice

May 13, 2014 - Home The Environment Global Warming Watch John Oliver's Spot-On ... Unfortunately, it's a fake news show, John Oliver's “Last Week Tonight ...

### John Oliver's 97% to 3% climate change debate goes viral ...

www.dailykos.com/.../-John-Oliver-s-97-to-3-climate-change-...

Daily Kos

May 27, 2014 - The Guardian describes John Oliver's viral video: the best climate ... taste of the new "environment" and reception climate-change and science ...

Must-See Video: Jon Stewart Tackles Climate Deniers in Congress

Anastasia Pantsios | September 23, 2014 12:53 pm

http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/23/jon-stewart-climate-deniers-congress/

In last night’s segment of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart commented on Sunday’s People’s Climate March in New York, asking, “You may be thinking, do we really need a march to raise awareness of global climate change? I mean, it’s an accepted scientific phenomena pretty much everywhere.”

Does Texas Congressman Steve Stockman need a refresher course in elementary school science? Jon Stewart suggests he does. Photo credit: Comedy Central “Here’s why you need the march,” he says, answering his own question. “It’s accepted pretty much everywhere—but there’s one place called the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.” He illustrates his point with jaw-dropping clips of House members on that committee interviewing John PaulHolden, President Obama’s senior advisor on space and technology issues.

In one clip, Texas Congressman Steve Stockmanexplains that he doesn’t believe in rising ocean levels, saying, “When your ice cube melts in your glass, it doesn’t overflow—it’s displacement!” “How far back to the elementary school core curriculum do we have to go to get someone on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology caught up?” exclaims Stewart, pounding on his desk in exasperation. “Do we have to bring out the papier-mâché and soda so you can make a %#$^&$ volcano?”

In another clip, Indiana Congressman Larry Bucshon offers that climate change has been disproved because “there’s public comments out there that that question has been asked and answered saying no.” “You should look at the scientific literature rather than the public comments,” offers Holdren. “With all due respect, Rep. Bucshon,” says Stewart, “I suggest you get the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology as opposed to the YouTube comment feed of Obummerlies1776.”

It wouldn’t help. Bucshon goes on to say, “Of all the climatologists who depend on the climate changing to keep themselves publishing articles, I could read that but I don’t believe it.” Stewart then reveals who Bucshon’s three biggest campaign contributors are. You won’t be surprised to learn their identities.

cf vid burned notice

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horner beats jon, did you ever murder a hobo [also Stratfor security guy]

---

Even though Piltz's complaints were far broader, journalists immediately latched on to a key nugget: A lawyer formerly with the American Petroleum Institute named Philip Cooney, who had previously lobbied against the Kyoto Protocol, had been the White House editor of the scientific documents in his role as chief of staff on the Council on Environmental Quality. Here was a classic fox-guarding-the-henhouse story that everyone could understand and get easily outraged about. The blogs went nuts over the news.Moreover, the charges came just asTony Blairarrived in the United States to pressure George W. Bush to do something about global warming. Blair's visit -- a prelude to the coming G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, where more pressure will be applied -- catapulted the issue from an environmental obscurity to the center of pack media coverage.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was thrust into a journalistic feeding frenzy, where his defenses of the White House's "interagency review process" for scientific reports did not impress. McClellan uttered that phrase as if the mere fact that such a process exists provided an automatic justification for the routine editing of scientific content by political actors. It didn't wash. Before long, The Daily Show was mocking the Bush White House for its willful and devious denials of global warming, Cooney had resigned from his government post (promptly moving to work for Exxon Mobil, a key corporate sponsor of global-warming skepticism), and USA Today was declaring, "The debate's over: Globe is warming."

What hath Rick Piltz wrought? It's too soon to tell, but there's a new feeling in the air about global warming. It's a sense that the Bush administration may finally be held to account, by the media and by Congress, for four years of obstruction and denial while a planetary problem steadily worsened.

Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed Magazine and a TAP Online columnist. His first book, The Republican War on Science, will be published in September by Basic Books. His daily blog and other writings can be found at www.chriscmooney.com.

9/13/14

Stephen Colbert: U.S. Needs New National Bird in Face of Climate Change

Stephen Colbert was thrown in a tizzy by an Audubon Society report ..

Colbert Pokes Fun at ‘Rolling Coal,’ the Insecure Trucker Driver’s Response to Environmentalists

Watch the ‘Colbert Report' hilariously explain a new phenomenon..

.http://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=a0081d6261&e=c2e8fdabfa

JS recently did

Jon Stewart Roasts Republicans Who Deny Climate Change: Deaf Party Jam;

Editor Post | June 27, 2014

Read more at http://livinggreenmag.com/2014/06/27/video/jon-stewart-roasts-republicans-deny-climate-change/#gVyIU7TCTXgS5IqU.99

epa 4 admin: rmn, b1, b2, rr wm ruckles: no debate on real or we do it; CTW; boozman ark optometrist, zoo mjr; jeff sessions: co2 is plant food, not nox/sox; inhofe: nat'l elect mkt, BO's green dream; Deaf Party Jam;

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TUE JAN 07, 2014 AT 04:45 PM PST

Jon Stewart blasts climate change deniers at Fox News

by Bruin Kid

Last night, Jon Stewart was back for his first show of 2014, and he blasted those on Fox News for being climate change deniers, and then talked with Jessica Williams about these denials.

Hey, you know what? This is nice. No name-calling, no left vs. right ideological bullshit, it's just the pleasure of watching news anchors slowly perish from hypothermia.

MELISSA FRANCIS (1/2/2014): All this snow, and still cries over global warming.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on there, but the weather where you are on a particular day doesn't... don't... don't do this, don't.

ERIC BOLLING (1/4/2014): We're having a hard time understand how global warming alarmists are still trying to push their radical position.

DANIEL HENNINGER (1/4/2014): Global warming, a phrase we're all familiar with, I think it's going to die this year ... given the kind of incredible cold weather we've had this weekend.

(disappointed audience laughter)

Right now there are parts of my body that are getting angry that I didn't even know could get angry. (audience cheering and applause for earlier joke reference) And it's... they're getting so angry right now that it's... I'm not going to tell you which part it is... it's my balls. (audience laughter) Right now, I have angry balls. Oh my God, I think I just invented a new video game

(audience laughter)

"Are you kids playing Angry Balls? Hey you kids! Stop playing Angry Balls!"

Just when you think it's over, they pull you back in!

There you have it. War on Christmas is over, the War on Carbon begins. Global warming, just one more liberal conspiracy. Because even though there is a great deal of scientific data establishing climate trends, even though many of the models of global warming predict more extremes of weather — not just warming — apparently decades of peer-reviewed scientific study can be, like a ficus plant, destroyed in one cold weekend.

STUART VARNEY (1/2/2014): Looks to me like we're looking at global cooling. Forget this global warming. That's just my opinion.

Yeah! You're fucking opinion! That's your opinion! It means nothing!! Sorry. (yells at balls) Guys, settle down! (audience laughter)

What... it's your opinion! "Yeah, based on its flavor, I think lead paint is good to drink. That's my opinion. Peeing into a fountain the same time as another person is a good way to switch souls with them. My opinion!"

1/4/2014: DAN WEISS, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: If 97 doctors told you that that lump on your lung was something to worry about, and 3 scientists — er, doctors — told you not to worry about it, are you going to listen to the 97, or the 3? Sounds like you might listen to the 3, which would be sad.

ERIC BOLLING: Well, it really matters to me if the 97 were getting paid to tell me I had a lump on my lung, and it was bad.

(confused audience laughter)

You know, that is how doctors get paid, right? You go to them, and then they charge you to diagnose and treat your problem. Although, I think I've figured out where the lump is. (looks at image of Eric Bolling)

All right, let's follow this climate science money.

ERIC BOLLING (1/4/2014): I gotta tell you, I think these scientists are laughing from their lavish laboratories, and their vacations up at the Arctic, in their nice boats that are well-equipped.

(shocked audience laughter)

This Arctic? This lavish boat?

Yeah, that's the dream, man. I remember thinking, when I get older, I'm gonna be taking one of them Arctic research cruises. And monitor shit, 'cause all the ladies be like, "Damn, your readings are so accurate." (audience laughter)

But I get it. You can't trust these scientists, their judgment is clouded by money. Why do you oppose these scientists?

NEIL CAVUTO (5/4/2013): I think it borders on lunacy that we commit billions — dare I say it, Charles — trillions of dollars to something that might not be.

STEVE FORBES (11/24/2012): This is simply another government attempt to extort money from businesses.

Ah, so the integrity and research of corporations saving millions of dollars by denying climate change is unimpeachable. But keep an eye on those tricky global warming scientist thousand-aires. I've never trusted them since I found out one of the elements on their Periodic Table — gold. Pretty convenient!

Look, it seems like there's a simple way to solve this. Just bring on someone whose opinion we all respect, and whose expertise in this field cannot be denied.

DONALD TRUMP (1/6/2014): This whole global warming hoax.

(Jon facepalms as audience bursts into laughter)

(in Jerry Lewis voice) Nooooo! Oh, the doctor is in!

DONALD TRUMP (1/6/2014): This winter is brutal! I mean, I'm in New York right now, the airports were closed, everything's closed, it's freezing!

Oh! So global warming must be a hoax. Because, I mean, Mr. Trump would never conceal a bald-faced truth or go through any effort to hide when something's clearly receding over the years. (scratches hair as audience laughs)

1/14 fox

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/07/1267926/-Jon-Stewart-blasts-climate-change-deniers-at-Fox-News

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http://www.alternet.org/print/media/how-john-oliver-became-sheriff-cable-news

Contrast that with Colbert, who in April [7] tackled the related subject of Tennessee’s slimy new death penalty law: Colbert assumed the audience agreed that the death penalty is “unusually cruel,” and mocked the government for its dodgy behavior. Even for someone who doesn’t have an opinion about the death penalty, it would be easy to laugh at Colbert’s segment and still get the joke: the government– a target that’s always ripe for mockery. In Oliver’s segment about a botched execution, though, the joke is that Americans — including you, the audience — are still attempting to justify the death penalty. It may not be as side-splitting as Colbert, but it’s far more compelling.

The Colbert Report [8]

Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes [9],The Colbert Report on Facebook [10],Video Archive [11]

In a later episode, Oliver converted his own anger and frustration into action. In a segment about net neutrality — a debate that, though urgent, has been heated for months — Oliver managed to get his audience to do something about it. “This is the moment you were made for, commenters,” Oliver said, urging “Internet trolls” to complain to the FCC about its plan to regulate the Internet. “We need you to get out there, and for once in your lives, focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction!” he exclaimed after making a 13-minute case against the FCC’s proposal. A day later, the FCC crashed, and it’s likely that Oliver’s segment was a major contributor [12], if not the cause. Oliver told CBS of the incident, “We merely pointed people to their website and told them why they should be angry about it, and they went in droves.”

Oliver may not have figured out his show’s exact format yet, but week after week, he continues to raise “tough questions,” as his show has advertised, and often skewers his audience in the process. Whereas Stewart and Colbert take pains to seem like our friends, Oliver has made it clear, as he recently told NPR’s Terry Gross, that he is “no one’s friend.” So if “HBO is the moral wild west,” as Oliver said on CBS, then the host has successfully assumed the position of lone sheriff. As the show continues to evolve, we’ll see how far he will go to enforce the law, however unpopular it may be.

===

peach

http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org**/2011/**04/climate-change-through-the-eyes-and-wit-of-jon-stewarts-daily-show/

Jon Stewart’s highly regarded Comedy Central false-news program, “The Daily Show,” is no stranger to climate change. But along with the humor and wit, there are times when a bit more scientific rigor might help inform his important audience.

In a 2008 episode of “The Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart had an important story to tell about the U.S. government’s response to climate change.

“Our government doesn’t operate, necessarily, in the exact manner that we learned about in high school civics,” he began. “But I’ve got a little story for you tonight that may just rekindle your sense of wonder at just how truly f***** up it all really is.”

Stewart explained that the 2007 Supreme Court ruling, Massachusetts v EPA, required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. But when the agency e-mailed a climate action plan to the George W. Bush White House, the administration refused to open it.

“Amazing!” Stewart said. But the punch line of the story was this: “Not opening the e-mail worked …. The EPA rewrote the policy to Bush’s liking!”

The Daily Show – Be Patient This Gets Amazing – EPA E-Mail

Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

In just three and a half minutes, Stewart had summarized the complicated legal and political forces at play in Bush-era attempts to address climate change. At the same time, he illuminated the absurdity of the government’s actions, keeping his audience — one not necessarily inclined, mind you, to spend endless hours vetting peer-reviewed journals — laughing all the while.

‘Your Show is So Funny, Until … Global Warming’

Since 1999, Stewart has lampooned government, the media, and the public from his perch as the host of “The Daily Show,” Comedy Central’s fake news program. During his run, the show has racked up two Peabody Awards and 14 Emmy Awards. As recently as February 2011, the program was themost popular late-night show in America.

An April 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 16 percent of Americans regularly watched “The Daily Show” or its sister program “The Colbert Report.” (In the same survey, 17 percent said they watched “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News.)

Although the show is clearly intended to entertain, it often draws on the conventions of serious journalism. Stewart is famous for grilling guests in interviews. The show also employs a fact-checker, Adam Chodikoff, who told *The Washington Post* that without a factual basis, the show’s jokes are meaningless.

In a 2007 interview with journalist Bill Moyers, Stewart insisted — as he has often done — that he is nothing more than a comedian.

“Ultimately, we have very interesting reactions on our show,” he said. “People are constantly saying, ‘I love your — your show is so funny, until you made a joke about global warming, which is a serious issue, and I can’t believe you did that. And I am never watching your show again.’ You know, people don’t understand thatwe’re not warriors in their cause. We’re a group of people that really feel that they want to write jokes about the absurdity that we see in government and the world and all that, and that’s it.”

Reinforcing Public Misunderstanding?

When it comes to climate change, “The Daily Show” offers an often-uproarious take on the issue. Stewart has called climate skeptic Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) “the Senate’s resident denier bunny.” In a 2004 episode, Stewart opened a segment on science news by exclaiming, “Science! Fact! Testable data! There was a time when some Americans gave a crap about that!”

Although the show deftly highlights the follies of politicians and television news networks, it isprone to inaccuracies of its own in the nuances of climate science.A Yale Forum analysis found that Stewart and the show’s other correspondents have repeatedly — and mistakenly —conflated the ozone hole and climate change. At times, Stewart has appeared uncharacteristically timid in questioning guests about climate science. Meanwhile, the show’s coverage of the University of East Anglia/Climatic Research Unit 2009 e-mail controversy likely reinforced public misunderstanding of the issue.

Early Focus on Science, Then Policy

Comedy Central maintains an online archive of “Daily Show” episodes at thedailyshow.com. Using keyword searches and the site’s tagging system, The Yale Forum identified 67 episodes of “The Daily Show” that addressed global warming between 1999 and 2011. On average, about five episodes each year mentioned the issue, peaking at 13 episodes in 2009, the year the U.S. House of Representatives passed a ”cap and trade” climate change bill and world leaders met for the Copenhagen negotiations. In 2010, only four episodes addressed the issue, and none have so far in 2011.

The show’s coverage of the issue can be divided into three eras. In the early period (roughly 1999 to early 2001), Stewart addressed the issue through reports on scientific findings, such as rising sea levels, soaring temperatures, and melting glaciers. This clip, about melting ice caps, is typical of the show’s early treatment of the subject.

The Daily Show – Other News – That’s Thaw, Folks!

Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

After President George W. Bush announced in 2001 that the U.S. would not participate in the Kyoto Treaty, “The Daily Show” began to address political issues related to climate change. In its middle years (April 2001 to late 2005), the show satirized politicians, climate deniers, and mainstream media coverage of the issue. For example, in the following clip, Stewart explains that the top greenhouse gas emitters, the U.S. and China, remain unfettered by the Kyoto Protocol. When a spokesman for the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute says that greenhouse regulations would cause American job losses, Stewart retorts, “We’re going to need those jobs as we evolve into a black-lunged race of sun-blistered ocean dwellers.”

The Daily Show – Be Cool

Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

During this period, Stewart and other correspondents began occasionally confusing the ozone hole and climate change. For example, in a 2001 episode, comedian Lewis Black commented on the consequences of rejecting the Kyoto Protocol. Then he said, “And if they don’t get us by destroying the ozone layer, they’ll get us with mad cow disease.”

Susanne Moser, a research scientist specializing in climate science and communications, reviewed key “Daily Show” clips for The Yale Forum. “There is a very complicated relationship between ozone — in the stratosphere and in the lower atmosphere — and global warming,” she said. “Ozone-destructive chemicals are also heat-trapping gases, but the ozone depletion is not a cause of global warming.”

For Guests, ‘He Can Offer Very Difficult Questions’

In the modern period (late 2005 to the present), the show has continued to satirize politicians and the media. But guest appearances now make up a significant portion of the show’s coverage of the climate change issue. Stewart has discussed climate change with author Chris Mooney, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), NBC network journalist Bob Woodruff, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, former vice president Al Gore, and former president Bill Clinton, among others.

Stewart is known for — at times — conducting blistering interviews. When CNBC stock market pundit Jim Cramer visited the show in 2009, Stewart trashed him for giving his viewers misleading financial advice. To former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, Stewart said, “You’re a guy that is the most adamant about his innocence as anyone I’ve ever met. So you’re either the victim of a terrible persecution or a sociopath.” In a 2007 interview, Senator John McCain (R-Az) said the Iraq War had been terribly mismanaged. Stewart replied, “But then why not be honest about that? Why attack the people who question?”

McCain: We are where we are now. We are where we are now. The question is: can we give this strategy a chance? I’m emphasizing a chance to succeed with a great general, and I think-

Stewart: Why should we? Why?

McCain: Because the architects of failure are ignoring this.

Stewart: If the architects that built the house without any doors or windows don’t admit that that’s the house they built and continue to say: “No, it’s your fault for not being able to see into it,” then I don’t understand how we’re supposed to move forward.

Lance Holbert, an associate professor of communication at Ohio State University, said that Jon Stewart can be a tough interviewer in part because he is a satirist. “He can offer very difficult questions in ways that a journalist cannot, because he’s not as worried about maintaining access, and he always has an ‘out’ that he can laugh it off,” he said.

In climate-related interviews, Stewart appears to accept that warming is occurring and that people are substantially responsible. But he acknowledges that he doesn’t have a clear command of the issue. “It’s very difficult to know if people are lying to you with science,” he said in a 2005 interview with author Chris Mooney.

Perhaps as a result, Stewart appears more timid when he talks with guests about climate change and science than about the Iraq War or the financial crisis. In 2007, Stewart interviewed climate skeptic Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a prominent climate science “skeptic.”

[vid?]

The Daily Show – Christopher Horner

Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Stewart began the interview with a subtle jab at Horner, telling him that he preferred Horner’s book,The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, to the 2007 IPCC report, because the latter contains graphs and data. “I didn’t care for it,” Stewart said, to audience laughter. But when Horner unleashed a barrage of skeptical claims, including thecanard that scientists in the 1970s believed Earth was cooling, Stewart didn’t correct him.

“It was a salvo of contrarian arguments — data free, as implied, and dead wrong,” said Moser. Horner’s arguments “were only mildly questioned, albeit repeatedly, by common-sense arguments on Stewart’s part.”

On Hacked E-Mails, ‘Little Corrective or Different’ to Say

Stewart again displayed a misunderstanding of climate issues in his coverage of the hacked e-mail controversy. In November 2009, e-mails stolen from a University of East Anglia server and released to the public were seen by climate skeptics as revealing misconduct by climate scientists. Climate deniers seized on an e-mail from CRU director Phil Jones, who had written, “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

The Daily Show – Scientists Hide Global Warming

Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

“Ha! Ah see, it’s nothing!” Stewart said in his report on the subject. “He was just using a trick to hide the decline. It’s just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique, recalibrating data, in order to … trick you … into not knowing about the decline.”

Although Stewart acknowledged that the hacked e-mails did not disprove climate change, he lambasted scientists for mishandling data: “If you care about an issue and want to make it your life’s work, don’t cut corners!”

At the time of Stewart’s broadcast, misleading claims about the Jones e-mail were circulating widely in the media. For example, Jonah Goldberg, writing in USA Today in December 2009, erroneously claimed that scientists had discussed “the ‘trick’ of how to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures since the 1960s.”

But as early as November 21 — 10 days before Stewart’s report — Andrew Revkin at The New York Times had accurately reported the context of the Jones e-mail: Recent thermometer and satellite data shows a temperature rise, but tree ring data does not. Jones dropped the tree ring data because it didn’t match actual temperature records. (See also The Yale Forum‘s coverage of the subject.)

By overlooking the context of the Jones e-mail, Stewart himself was cutting corners, Moser said.

“I would assume this only perpetuated ignorance about the real issue and confirmed in Stewart’s audience a sense of suspicion of scientists,” she said. “He portrayed the media debate, but actually had little corrective or different to say about it.”

Moser said Stewart’s treatment of climate change may, at times, reinforce public misunderstanding of the problem.

“I find him considerably more effective in raising questions about political or ideological news coverage on other issues than on global warming,” she said. “I’m rather disappointed.”

newsbusters:

If you needed any more assurance the growing ClimateGate scandal is far more significant than America's media has been portraying, you got it Tuesday night from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Somewhat surprisingly, "The Daily Show" host in his opening sketch tore apart the scientists involved in sending the obtained e-mail messages for showing "a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it."

Stewart even mocked the man responsible for spreading more fear on this subject than anyone on the planet:

Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony.

Irony indeed (video embedded below the fold with transcript, vulgarity alert, h/t Story Balloon):

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN PERSON: A hacker in England got hold of emails between leading scientists which skeptics say show a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it.

(END VIDEO)

JON STEWART, HOST: Oh for f**k's sake! Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony. The iro---ny. Actually, the real story isn't quite that sensational. Basically, emails stolen from scientists at one of the leading centers for global warming show them discussing the work, a bit, how do I put this, casually.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX ANNOUNCER READING EMAIL MESSAGE FROM CLIMATEGATE PARTICIPANTS): "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." (Kevin Trenberth)

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (Phil Jones, CRU Director)

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: (Laughing) See, I tell you it's nothing. He was just using a trick to hide the decline. It's just scientist speak for using a standard statistical technique recalibrating data in order to trick you into not knowing about the decline. But here's what's great about science: in disagreement, we go back and look at the raw data.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX NEWS ANNOUNCER): University scientists say raw data from the 1980s was thrown out.

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: Oh for f**k's sake! Why would you throw out raw data from the '80s? I still have Penthouses from the '70s! Laminated. What did you keep?

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX NEWS ANNOUNCER): The scientists say they kept something called "value added data".

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: Value added data? What is that, numbers fortified with art? Truth plus, now with lemon? It doesn't look good. Now does it disprove global warming? No, of course not. But it does put a fresh set of energizers in the Senate's resident denier bunny.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

SENATOR JOHN INHOFE, (R-OKLA.): The fact that this whole idea on the global warming. I'm glad that's over, gone, done. We won. You lost. Get a life.

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: Alright. We knew Inhofe was going to say that. That guy thinks global warming is debunked every time he drinks a Slushee and gets a brain freeze. "If global warming is real, why does my head hurt?" But by the way, that quote was from BEFORE he found out about the leaked email story. But that's the point. If you care about an issue, and want it to be your life's work, don't cut corners. It's disheartening for people inclined towards the scientific method, and it's catnip to these guys who are going to end up celebrating tonight drunk, roaming the Arctic Circle trying to skullf**k polar bears, which are quickly disappearing because of rising oceans caused now apparently by God's tears!

Pretty amazing.

To be sure, it's just a comedy show. However, for several years various polls have indicated that many young people in America get their "news" from this program.

As polls have also shown belief in the global warming myth seems to decrease as you go up in age bracket, young folks hearing Stewart's view on this matter could easily be swayed by it.

But even more important than that, "The Daily Show" addressing this subject is a clear indication that ClimateGate is not going away any time soon.

All we need now is for "Saturday Night Live" to start mocking Al Gore along with this entire pathetic scam, and we can say goodbye to cap and trade.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Bravo, Jon. Bravo.

About the Author

Noel Sheppardis the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Click here to follow Noel Sheppard on Twitter.

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http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/fox-news-praises-jon-stewart-for-climategate-coverage/

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no images here)

Fox News praises Jon Stewart for climategate coverage

December 3, 2009by greenfyre

BPSDB That’s right,Faux News thought Stewart’s coverage was just great,no irony or sarcasm at all.

The sad news is, Fox is right. The Daily Show earned that praise and deserves it, unfortunately.

Once again (when was 1st?) Stewart acted largely as an echo chamber for a climate story rather than as the insightful wit that cuts to the truth with clever juxtapositioning. Completely absent was Stewart’s trademark of letting a talking head crawl out on a limb, and then presenting some visual or commentary that exposes the lie.

Notwithstanding a couple of cheap shots at Inhofe, which is both too easy and pointless to the story, and affirming that the emails do not topple climate science, which is obvious to anyone with a brain, [but useful for B&B fans?] Stewart contributed nothing new. Instead Stewart just let’s the main claims of the CNN talking head stand. Not just stand, but clearly accepts the claims as stated to be both accurate and true.

Jon, seriously … when Fox thinks you’re doing a great job maybe it’s time to double check just what it is you are doing. Not to say that it’s necessarily proof that you’re screwing up, but it’s sure not a good sign.

I am not asking Stewart to do anything different from his usual schtick; quite the opposite, I want to know why he didn’t do his usual schtick?

Make no mistake, many aspects of this story are too nuanced, complicated, or as yet unresolved to be suitable for The Daily Show to tackle. Nor am I asking The Daily Show to be some sort of news show format. It’s not, it’s a comedy show. But it’s a comedy show that does cover the news of the day, and does so with a particular style … usually.

Elements of the story, particularly the elements covered in the CNN report, did lend themselves to being deflated with the usual Daily Show format. Further, this aired Dec 1st, when all of the information needed to craft a classic Stewartesque puncturing of the wingnut hysteria were easily available. One phone call or two hours of an intern’s time on the internet were all that was required, and yet that’s not what we got.

How could Stewart have handled it? Well, take the “hide the decline” piece. How hard would it have been to follow the talking head with this graph clearly showing:

there was no temperature decline to hide in 1981, and

the CRU data is no different from the other data sets, hence obviously had not been tampered with.

Instead of exposing the misleading story, Stewart chose to reinforce it “It’s just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique — recalibrating data -– in order to trick you.” He then uses that to segue into helping spread the lie that the raw temperature data from the 1980s has been destroyed, another lie he could have debunked, but chose to repeat instead.

As for the accusations of draconian suppression of dissent, I can easily see Stewart using his standard ‘speaker in the ear’ bit to clarify that:

the alleged suppression was not of dissenting views, but of work and journals thought to be false, and that

these works and journals did indeed turn out to be false.

Not only would that have been easy, it would have been standard Stewart style, but it’s not what we got. Instead we got a straight read as if Stewart were some Fox News sock puppet reading the teleprompter … no wonder Fox thought it was a wonderful performance.

So what does this mean? Is it that the facts are so hard to find that even The Daily Show can’t come up with them despite their considerable resources? What does that tell us about how the average member of the thinking public is getting their information?

Or is Stewart & Co. really so clueless on simple climate science that they start to border on Denial? That may seem hard to believe, but since when does Stewart uncritically accept and repeat stories exactly as the appear on popular media? Yet he did so here, and also with his servile fawning over the Superfreaks climate scam.

Regardless of why, this is not good given how relatively influential Stewart is. What next? Inhofe as a special and honoured guest? co-hosting with O’Rielly? Seriously Jon, if you’re not going to give climate stories the standard Stewart lampooning with all of it’s insight, accuracy and wit, please don’t cover them at all.

Much more of this sort of coverage and Glenn Beck will be holding you up as an example for the popular media to emulate, and I am not sure you want to go there …

“Over the 20th century, ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic main development region warmed during peak hurricane season, with the most pronounced warming occurring over the last four decades.” Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/02/jon-stewart-on-climategat_n_376672.html Jon Stewart On ClimateGate] see below (too bad JS got punked on

Jon Stewart On ClimateGate (VIDEO)

First Posted: 03/18/1006:12 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 03:50 PM ET

On the Daily Show Tuesday night, Jon Stewart dug into ClimateGate -- a series of leaked emails between climate scientists which global warming skeptics have latched onto to prove climate change doesn't exist. "Poor Al Gore," Stewart proclaimed, "global warming completely debunked via the very internet you invented." [nb:uses same gag in both segments?

The claim behind ClimateGate is that these hacked emails prove that scientists were hiding evidence against global warming. (See our slideshow of the 7 Biggest Lies About ClimateGate here.) The real story, Stewart says, is not quite so sensational. But the emails do provide fodder for climate change deniers to go wild. Like Sen. Inhofe, who recently proclaimed 2009 "the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard." (Or, as he said to Sen. Boxer: "We won, you lost, get a life.")

"That guy thinks global warming is debunked every time he drinks a slushy and gets a brain freeze." Stewart said, then pointed out that Inhofe proclaimed victory before the climate emails were even leaked.

"But that's the point," Stewart said emphatically. "if you care about an issue, and want to make it your life's work, don't cut corners.It's disheartening for people inclined towards the scientific method and it's catnip to these guys who are going to end up celebrating tonight, drunk, roaming the Arctic Circle trying to scullf*ck polar bears. Which are quickly disappearing because of rising oceans. Caused now, apparently, by God's tears." [he alludes to explanation of science method, but does not bother to actuially explain it, thus some listeners might misconstrue?] show clip from 11/25 Fox segment, then comment OFF's sake"

maybe not: onearth blog:

The Daily Show Tackles Climategate-gate (Too Bad No One Else Does)

By Ben Jervey

October 27, 2011 | (4) Comments

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Call it Climategate-gate.

Last week, the results of a study that climate skeptics were eagerly awaiting, funded at least in part by the Koch brothers and headed by noted climate contrarian Richard Muller, were finally revealed. And the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (or BEST) project found, well, that mainstream climate science has been pretty much right all along, supporting the overwhelming consensus that the earth's atmosphere has warmed by about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. Climate Central's Michael Lemonick has a more detailed post about this study, which pretty much ought to put an end to the controversy (but won't, of course, becasue it's always been more about politics and profits than science).

Considering the insane airtime given to so-called "Climategate," you'd think that this BEST study might have generated at least a little bit of interest from the cable news networks. Not so much. But I guess that's what Jon Stewart is for. We generally don't post Daily Show videos, because everybody else does, but in this case we think an exception is clearly warranted. (Plus, Jon gets his science geek on, which is always fun.)

http://www.onearth.org/blog/the-daily-show-climategate-gate has particle phys guest, 2nd anniversity of CG 2009, massage joke, gore internet invented joke; 79-59% down polls, muller op-ed in WSJ (did not see that coming) koch funded; TP big debunk: mcrib big story CG got 24 secs of media coverage (network tv?)

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