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PinkCouture

PinkCouture

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'Saturday Night Live' And Stephen Colbert May Be Further Dividing Americans

Late-night TV probably isn’t changing any minds.

 

Six months after Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, it feels as if America has never been more obsessed with late-night political comedy. A willingness to wade ever deeper into political waters has been widely credited for ratings success: Stephen Colbert beat out former late-night king Jimmy Fallon, a happily apolitical host, in total viewers this season largely by attacking the president. Meanwhile, Season 42 of “Saturday Night Live” enjoyed a 23-year ratings high with Melissa McCarthy’s role as Sean Spicer, Kate McKinnon’s turn as Kellyanne Conway and Alec Baldwin’s spot-on Trump. But as biting as it can be, the humor of “SNL” and “The Late Show” probably isn’t changing any minds.

 

If anything, the country’s love affair with political comedy may actually be deepening the divides that characterized the 2016 presidential election, according to one researcher. To Heather LaMarre, who studies politics in entertainment media at Temple University, the Trump jokes and satire that flood social media are nothing new. What’s different about the past several months has been the environment those jokes are landing in. Trump, unlike many of his presidential predecessors, is responding ― loudly and with anger.

 

Whereas public figures might have ignored comedians in the past, or been good sports and gone along with the jabs, Trump has gone the opposite route, attacking comics over Twitter. His repeated comments have wedged a line: You are either with Trump, and against late-night, or with late-night, and against Trump. That can make Americans just a little bit curious to see what all the fuss is about, driving up ratings to shows. But in such an aggressive environment, no one softens enough to allow themselves to be persuaded. They just dig their heels into previously held attitudes, meaning conservative and liberal viewers likely turn from the latest “SNL” skit or Seth Meyers monologue with different takes. “The people who were already anti-Trump are going to become more anti-Trump, and the people who are pro-Trump are not going to walk away from him just because of something a political comedian said,” LaMarre said. She then added, “Especially if they think of that comedian as a Hollywood elite.”

 

Despite being a former reality TV star, Trump routinely separates himself from Hollywood, and many of his public lashings out have revolved around a theme of victimization by such elites and the press that cover them. LaMarre argues that Trump has aligned late-night comedians even more closely with Hollywood celebrities and the press ― groups he does not like ― by attacking them on Twitter or elsewhere. Doing so “raises this automatic reaction among anybody who maybe doesn’t like the press, or doesn’t like Hollywood’s influence in politics, which largely is the conservative base in America,” she said. For more liberal viewers, late-night shows offer a feeling of catharsis as their beliefs are articulated and reinforced. “Political entertainment provides a release valve,” LaMarre said.

 

At least one host sees that as his precise purpose ― as “an emotional release valve” ― and certainly doesn’t have grand ideas about his impact on the American political landscape. “We’re not actually affecting the world,” Colbert told an audience at New York’s Vulture Festival on Saturday, asked whether he ever felt as if his show wasn’t making a difference. “It’s an art in that we’re an emotional effect on the audience, but we don’t affect the world of policy that much.” “The truth of it is that you’re shouting into an Altoid tin and throwing it off an overpass,” the host said of his ability to influence politics. LaMarre laughed at that characterization, countering that even if it’s not changing the world, late-night TV can be “very enjoyable and entertaining for people.” “It can have a lot of emotional benefit even if it doesn’t have a politically persuasive outcome,” she said.

 

huffingtonpost.com

 

 

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jj3

jj3

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4 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:


I have to hand it to Trump, even I didn't think he would successfully destroy the Trans-Atlantic alliance which has been carefully maintained by every American president since Truman in the space of just four months. It's almost impressive, in a nihilistic destructive kind of way.

 

 

Let's admit it. The plan to make the election of Trump as prez of the US was pure genuis. This dude will work to make the Europe stronger than ever more than anyone else. Pure genuis i tell you ! :p 

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I drove past the Penn coal mines and a coal town yesterday.  I was in CT and hanging in wealthy neighborhoods and enjoying the water today.   Thin, good looking and financially well off people .  Many enjoy biking,rafting, and boating.  Public infrastructure was very good due to taxes on high incomes and the housing was gorgeous.

 

The coal town was a complete dump, horrible shoddy housing (including trailers).  Some confederate flags, and lots of american flags.  Outside of the beauty of the green mountain, the rest was very depressing.  The men had bad skin and had the manual laborer's look and the women looked terrible, many them obese muffins.

 

This is exactly what the "two americas" are.  Some places with household incomes at 20- 40K and others at 100K plus.  The coal miners voted for Obama back then and then voted for Trump.  

 

These economically troubled areas need a modern version of LBJ.  It's not encouraging at all.  I have noticed however, that there are signs that the Democrats may start to de-emphasize the identity politics (the equivalent of the filibuster in the Senate- pretty words and little real world value) with Bernie the moocher/class warfare candidate starting his blitz. I don't think Bernie will succeed though.  He is such a moocher candidate that the GOP can easily attack him.

 

 There was something about the DNC discussing and issuing plans on industrial policy that was floated on the WP.  

 

The presidency of LBJ is very illuminating on current times.

 

 

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SympathysSilhouette

SympathysSilhouette

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Merkel doesn't want to increase the defense budget, her speech was more about pointing out the necessity to do so after Trump refused to commit to article V of the NATO treaty.

 

It all makes perfect sense within that context. If Russia makes a play for the Baltics, the accepted wisdom up until very recently was that this would mean a war with America.

Since Trump has changed this reality, Europe now has the choice between making sure it can defend its own borders without America's help or allow Russia to push it around as much as it chooses.

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elfstone

elfstone

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We Need Memorial Day to Obscure the Unbearable Truth About War

 

The fervent pomp of Arlington to me always exudes desperation, as though we’re trying to suppress any acknowledgement that war’s the silliest thing people do. We sort ourselves into teams based on imaginary lines, dress up in costumes, pledge allegiance to pieces of cloth, and then mercilessly slaughter total strangers.

This reality – that waging war is both extremely unpleasant and fundamentally ridiculous, yet we keep doing it – indicates that it must serve some important purpose.

 

And all the history books I’ve ever read and all the history I’ve lived through suggests what that is: Wars are less about conflicts between societies than about conflicts within societies. Every country has a militaristic right-wing, and nothing helps that right-wing triumph over their domestic enemies more than a state of war. And just like a pharmaceutical company that doesn’t want to cure diseases when managing them is so profitable, their top priority is never bringing the war to an end, but maintaining and expanding their power within the country.

 

Amazing enough, Donald Trump recently told the National Governors Association exactly this, even if neither he nor they understood what he was saying. “We never win. And we don’t fight to win,” Trump declared. “$6 trillion we’ve spent in the Middle East … and we’re nowhere.”

 

But obviously Trump himself is somewhere: He’s in the White House. And lots of that $6 trillion is somewhere too, in the bank accounts of defense contractors. So if you understand who the real “we” are, we in fact have won the war on terror and are still winning. U.S. politics have been shoved hard to the right, making Trump possible, and since 2001 the value of Lockheed Martin stock has sextupled. The real we likewise have no interest in “fighting to win” in the sense Trump means — because that would require raising taxes on billionaires and drafting their children out of Stanford and Yale to go die in the sand, something that would quickly lead to the defeat of any president who tried it.

 

This perspective on the purpose of war was directly expressed by George W. Bush and his circle before he ever became president. Texas journalist and Bush family friend Mickey Herskowitz was hired to write a Bush biography for the 2000 campaign, and spent hours interviewing him. Herskowitz later said that Bush was already thinking about attacking Iraq — because, Bush said, “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief.” According to Herskowitz, people around Bush, including Dick Cheney, hoped to “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Why? Because, Bush told Herskowitz, that would give him “political capital” that he could use to “get everything passed that I want to get passed.”

 

In other words, the actual country of Iraq had little to do with the Iraq War. Its main purpose wasn’t beating Saddam Hussein, it was beating Americans who wanted to stop Bush from privatizing Social Security.

 

What’s most surprising isn’t that politicians start wars to consolidate their own power, but that the people don’t always simply assume that leaders choose war for that reason. Of course, the main calculation for politicians when making decisions is whether or not those decisions will help tighten their grip on the levers of society. From prime ministers to dictators, anyone who doesn’t think about that first and foremost will be, evolutionarily speaking, selected against, and quickly find themselves outside the palace walls.

That’s why we need a Memorial Day, I believe, and so does seemingly every country on earth. At Arlington and at all the world’s solemn military cemeteries you can witness the endless ocean of young men and women who have been shot, gassed, incinerated, ripped limb from limb, shredded, driven to suicide. In the best of situations they died because of talented warmongers in other countries. In the worst it’s because we ourselves were so weak that we handed over power to killers who were delighted to see us die if it gave them a three week bump in their Gallup approval rating. We have to draw a veil of consecration across all of it, because looking at it directly is unbearable.

 

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