On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, Jon Oliver cuts through all the misinformation spread about transgender issues by those seeking to create a sense of alarm that this is some kind of fad that is exposing young people to harm and are even passing laws forbidding gender-affirming care. He discusses what gender-affirming care actually involves and why it is nothing like what its opponents claim it to be.
(WuMo)
I tend to follow the news quite closely but this is the time of year when I find the news to be dreary for three reasons and feel tempted to follow the example of the family in the cartoon.
The first reason is because with just three weeks to go before the mid-term elections in the US, the discussion here consists almost exclusively of pundits examining the polls and tea leaves and trying to predict the outcome, thus inevitably going over the same ground again and again, trying to make sense of tiny fluctuations in numbers. At least politics in the UK is dealing with serious policy issues in addition to the leadership drama.
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Cartoonist Stephan Pastis often makes fun of the more elaborate coffee culture that has sprung up with its detailed recipes and this cartoon is an example.
What struck me is that the person asking for coffee says “Gimme”, which strikes me as rude. But I am wondering of this is one of those things that used to be considered rude but are transitioning to being acceptable by the younger generation, leaving oldies like me to catch up.
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After denying that he paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009 and saying that he did not even know the woman, that same woman says that she again became pregnant by him two years later. He asked her to get an abortion again and when she did not, he terminated the relationship. That child is now ten years old.
However, all this has not shaken Desi Lydic’s faith in Walker, as she explains.
Herschel Walker Foxsplained @DesiLydic pic.twitter.com/85eiCyK4nN
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 6, 2022
For those who thought that in Donald trump, the Republican party had hit rock bottom with its support for a liar who speaks utter nonsense, let me introduce you to Herschel Walker, former professional football player and the current Republican candidate for the Georgia senate seat. Walker has also made bizarre lies about the 2020 election, saying that Joe Biden did not get even 50 million votes, when he actually got over 80 million. Trump has endorsed Walker for the Georgia senate race, no doubt seeing in him a kindred soul.
The senate race has been rocked by revelations about Walker. The most recent is a report in the Daily Beast alleging that, despite being an advocate of banning abortion with no exceptions at all, even for rape, incest or if the life of the mother was in danger, and wanting federal laws to be passed to ban it nationwide, he had paid for an abortion for a woman in 2009. His son Christian Walker, who is an ‘influencer’ on social media has put out a Tik-Tok blasting him for his lies and his pretensions to being a moral Christian who condemns absentee fathers, when in reality Walker has confirmed that he had three children out of wedlock and that he had pointed a gun at his wife’s head and threatened to kill her. Incidentally Christian Walker is a conservative Trump supporter who rails against ‘woke’ liberals on his social media accounts where he has a huge following.
It is also reported that Walker’s advisors were aware of this abortion story well in advance but hoped that it would not surface before the election
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In yet another outstanding episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looks at the ugly history of how western countries looted the heritage of people around the world by robbing them of their historical artifacts in order to stock their museums and enrich themselves. He takes apart the excuses that are given by these museums to retain their stolen goods.
What I found particularly depressing was that only a tiny fraction of the looted items get displayed even in the museums of the western countries. Almost all of them are buried in their vaults so that no one gets to see them.
When people talk about historical wrongs, they often complain that it is hard to know how to rectify it. In most of these cases of looted items, it is not that hard. We know what the looted items are, we know where they came from, and who the rightful owners are. They must be returned.
Brazil holds its elections on Sunday and the most significant position is that for the presidency that pits the incumbent right wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro against leftist former president Inacio Lula Da Silva. Bolsonaro is very authoritarian and is currently behind in the polls but has said, like Trump, that he can only lose if there is cheating and that he will not leave office quietly. His supporters are saying that they will not accept any other result than a Bolsonaro victory. If no candidate gets an absolute majority on Sunday, there will be a run-off election on October 30th.
Bolsonaro is in many ways like Trump but while I wrote that it was always unlikely that the US military would go along with any attempted coup by Trump after he lost, that is not the case in Brazil. Bolsonaro is a former officer and has maintained his ties to the military and has, like Trump, given ex-military people important positions in government. Brazil had a US-backed military coup in 1964 and the military stayed in power until 1985. This history of military rule means that the concept of a military takeover is not unthinkable. Bolsonaro during his presidency also greatly relaxed gun ownership laws and that has led to a very large number of people now owning weapons. He also, like Trump, has a hard core of fanatical supporters who believe his outlandish claims, and might be perfectly willing to unleash violence if Bolsonaro urges them on, like Trump’s followers on January 6th.
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This comic strip will strike a chord with many readers who have spent a long time idly skimming through the streaming options trying to find something to watch. It can be difficult even if one is alone and there are no competing views.
I have pretty much given up on searching through the catalog as a way of finding films. It is very rarely that I stumble across anything that I think is worthwhile to spend a couple of hours on. When I do find something, it is a title that I had heard about before and made a mental note of as possibly interesting and then forgotten about it. What I do now is maintain a list of films that I would like to see based on reviews or recommendations, and then wait until they become available in some format.
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This was from three weeks ago, soon after Liz Truss became prime minister, where he deplores the state of the nation and what her and her policies might mean.
Commenter sonofrojblake seems to share Pie’s views about Truss.
Seth Meyers asked this anti-royalist for his reaction to the news coverage of the funeral. Oliver describes an innocuous but wry comment he made that was censored by Sky TV that broadcasts his show in the UK. He also says that a supermarket chain there muted the beeps that its scanners make as a mark of respect. He was pretty funny.
Incidentally, whenever I ridicule the absurd extent of the coverage and its hagiographic nature of non-news like Queen Elizabeth’s death and funeral, I inevitably get comments to the effect that by writing thus, I am contributing to the coverage, implying that I am being inconsistent. This puzzles me. Of course I am referring to the same event. That is obvious. But there is a difference between covering an event and making fun of that coverage. The point of making fun is to try and ridicule such coverage out of existence. It may or may not work but staying silent will definitely not bring about any change.
When confronted with pompous nonsense, the best thing to do is laugh at it.