Tag Archives: comedy

These 5 artists are sketching out the future of climate action.

by RoslynOHea Posted on April 13, 2018

In a statement about the decision, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said that the city’s water has tested below the federal action level for lead and copper for the last two years. But Mayor Karen Weaver doesn’t agree that the free bottled water should stop, and many Flint residents aren’t so sure their tap water is OK to use.

“My water stinks. It still burns to take a shower,” Melissa Mays, a Flint activist and plaintiff in a lawsuit that forced the replacement of water lines, told the Associated Press. “There’s no way they can say it’s safe.”

Resident Ariana Hawk doesn’t trust the water, either. “Everything that me and my kids do from cooking to boiling their water for a bath, we’re using bottled water,” she told the local ABC-affiliate news station.

The New York Times reports that about 6,000 of Flint’s lead or galvanized steel pipes have been replaced, but there could be 12,000 more lines to go. According to the World Health Organization, there is no known safe level of lead exposure.

“This is wrong,” tweeted Mona Hanna-Attisha, a Flint doctor whose research exposed lead poisoning in the city. “Until all lead pipes are replaced, [the] state should make available bottled water and filters to Flint residents.”

But after the remaining free bottles are collected, only water filters and replacement cartridges will be provided.

Original article:  

These 5 artists are sketching out the future of climate action.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Broadway, Everyone, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, LAI, Miele, ONA, oven, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These 5 artists are sketching out the future of climate action.

Are Your Favorite Late-Night Shows Sexist?

by LateshaGriggs Posted on July 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The controversy over a recent Daily Show tweet and the departure of one of the show’s rising comics has put a spotlight on how few women have roles on screen and behind the camera at television’s top late-night comedy shows.

And when Mother Jones did spot-check of several programs’ credits, the numbers read like a terrible punchline that female comics know all too well. While Full Frontal‘s Samantha Bee and past late-night hosts such as Chelsea Handler have helped blaze the path for women, the people penning the jokes for the most popular shows are still overwhelmingly male.

At eleven of television’s most popular late-night programs, just 30 of 175 writers were women, according to credits for episodes that aired this year. In other words, less than 18 percent of late-night comedy writers at the most popular sketch and talk shows are women. That is significantly lower than the number of female television writers overall, according to a study published earlier this year by the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism: In broadcast TV, women make up 31.6 percent of writers, compared with 28.5 percent in cable and 25.2 percent for shows that are streamed over the internet. Film still trails dismally behind—only 10.8 percent of writers are female. Though female writers find more work in television than their counterparts in film, the gender imbalance in comedy programming has continued to lag.

University of Southern California MDSC Initiative

This issue came up again after Monday’s historic US Supreme Court decision, which struck down several restrictive abortion measures in Texas. People took to social media to express relief about the ruling, which will prevent the state’s remaining abortion clinics from shutting down. It came as a surprise to some fans when The Daily Show With Trevor Noah posted what some said was a rather tone-deaf tweet.

The tweet, meant to show support for the ruling, did not land well with Twitter users on both sides of the abortion debate. One even suggested The Daily Show could avoid snafus like this by hiring more female writers. The Daily Show did not issue an apology, but it did post a follow-up tweet for clarification:

That Twitter user who clamored for more women writers raises a good point. Although The Daily Show is known for left-leaning jokes and its snarky take on American politics, the backlash to this tweet is an example of what can happen when a group of mostly male writers try to make a joke about women’s issues without much female input. Now, even fewer women will be on the show’s payroll. On Wednesday, Daily Show darling and four-year correspondent Jessica Williams announced she would be leaving the show after this week to begin work on a pilot. Williams, the youngest correspondent to join the show, inked a development deal with Comedy Central in March.

There are currently eight regular correspondents on the program, and after Williams’ departure, there will only be one female correspondent on a team of seven. The female correspondents are not credited as writing staff. Nor are the three women who are listed as semi-regular contributors on the Daily Show’s website. That means the ratio of male to female writers at The Daily Show is not any better than it is for similar programs: There are five times as many men as there are women in The Daily Show‘s writers’ room.

We took a look at the closing credits of the recent episodes of the most popular late-night shows. To get the most accurate count possible, we looked at the credits of each show or the Writers Guild of America website to verify the names of every writer. We used Twitter and IMDB to verify the gender of each writer.

Late Night with Seth Meyers, as of June 2016 (NBC):

Total credited writers: 17

Men: 14

Women: 3

Saturday Night Live, as of May 2016 (NBC):

Total credited writers: 24

Men: 20

Women: 4

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, as of June 2016: (Comedy Central)

Total credited writers: 19

Men: 16

Women: 3

The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, as of June 2016 (Comedy Central)

Total credited writers: 15

Men: 11

Women: 4

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, as of June 2016 (HBO)

Total credited writers: 11

Men: 9

Women: 2

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, as of June 2016 (CBS)

Total credited writers: 18

Men: 16

Women: 2

The Late Late Show With James Corden, as of June 2016 (CBS)

Total credited writers: 14

Men: 11

Women: 3

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, as of June 2016 (TBS)

Total credited writers: 9

Men: 5

Women: 4

Real Time With Bill Maher as of June 2016 (HBO)

Total credited writers: 10

Men: 10

Women: 0

*Recent episode credits were unavailable for Conan, The Tonight Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. The following numbers are from the 2016 Writers Guild Awards nominations.

Conan, as of December 2015 (TBS)

Total credited writers: 17

Men: 15

Women: 2

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as of December 2015 (NBC)

Total credited writers: 21

Men: 18

Women: 3

Jimmy Kimmel Live, as of December 2014 (more recent list unavailable; not included in tally) (ABC)

Total credited writers: 16

Men: 13

Women: 3

See the original post:

Are Your Favorite Late-Night Shows Sexist?

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, Meyers, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Your Favorite Late-Night Shows Sexist?

Meet Comedy Central’s New Odd Couple

by i5xbsasz Posted on January 14, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Tonight marks the premiere of Comedy Central’s Idiotsitter, the creative love child of comedians Jillian Bell and Charlotte Newhouse, longtime writing partners and pals who met while performing with well-known Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings. Bell, the more established of the pair, has written for SNL and juggled various acting roles, notably playing Jillian Belk, the weird but loveable co-worker of Adam DeMamp (Adam DeVine) on the TV show Workaholics. She’s also had solid parts in recent films including The Night Before and 22 Jump Street—in which she unloads a relentless stream of ageist insults on Jonah Hill’s undercover high-school cop character.

Continue Reading »

View this article – 

Meet Comedy Central’s New Odd Couple

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meet Comedy Central’s New Odd Couple

Ben Carson Supports Arming Kindergarten Teachers to Combat Gun Violence

by RosauraEwart Posted on October 6, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Ben Carson has some thoughts on gun control.

Less than a week after the massacre at an Oregon community college that left 10 people dead, including the shooter, the Republican presidential candidate dismissed renewed calls for gun safety and called for kindergarten teachers to be armed.

“If I had a little kid in kindergarten somewhere I would feel much more comfortable if I knew on that campus there was a police officer or somebody who was trained with a weapon,” Carson told USA TODAY on Tuesday. “If the teacher was trained in the use of that weapon and had access to it, I would be much more comfortable if they had one than if they didn’t.”

Carson’s calls to arm teachers echoes similar views expressed by GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who suggested the Oregon shooting could have been avoided if school officials were armed. “Let me tell you, if you had a couple teachers with guns in that room, you would have been a hell of a lot better off,” he told an event in Tennessee.

The proposal comes just one day after Carson also suggested during a Facebook Q&A that enacting gun control laws would be more “devastating” than the results of gun violence:

“As a Doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies,” he wrote on Monday. “There is no doubt that this senseless violence is breathtaking—but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”

The talk of arming teachers from Trump led Comedy Central comedian Larry Wilmore to respond on his Monday night show: “Let’s not elect a guy who’s getting his policy ideas from the movie Kindergarten Cop.” Watch below:

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore
Get More: The Nightly Show Full Episodes,The Nightly Show on Facebook,The Nightly Show Video Archive

More – 

Ben Carson Supports Arming Kindergarten Teachers to Combat Gun Violence

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ben Carson Supports Arming Kindergarten Teachers to Combat Gun Violence

This Fake App Just Summed Up Everything That’s Wrong With Silicon Valley

by AlyciaHeck Posted on March 12, 2015

Mother Jones

In Silicon Valley, a group of mostly white, mostly male twentysomethings have built a multibillion-dollar empire of sharing apps: shared housing (AirBnB), shared cars (Uber), shared dog-sitting (DogVacay)…you get the idea. But the so-called “sharing economy” doesn’t actually share equally with everyone. One fake app wants to change that.

WellDeserved is an app that helps you “monetize” your privilege—be it racial, gender-based, or socioeconomic—by sharing it (temporarily, of course) with other people. The fictional app was the winning entry at last month’s Comedy Hack Day in San Francisco, where creative agency Cultivated Wit challenged contestants to come up with a comedic app idea and pitch it to judges, all in 48 hours.

The app’s promo video will make you laugh and cry: A Google employee sells his free Google lunch to a guest for $10, a dude charges a black man $5 to hail a cab on his behalf, and another guy walks a woman home so she won’t get catcalled, asking himself, “Why don’t I walk with them, spare them the harassment, and charge ’em like five bucks?”

The creators’ (fake) plan for making the (fake) app work is summed up perfectly: “Our business plan is that VCs will just give us money. Because this is San Francisco, and we have an idea.”

This post has been updated.

Original post: 

This Fake App Just Summed Up Everything That’s Wrong With Silicon Valley

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Fake App Just Summed Up Everything That’s Wrong With Silicon Valley

The Case for Making Fun of ISIS

by NorbertoXPF Posted on March 6, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last weekend, Dakota Johnson starred in a Saturday Night Live skit in which she played a young woman being dropped off by her father for her first foray into independent living. She was not going off to college or a new job, but rather to a waiting truckload of ISIS fighters. “Dad, it’s just ISIS,” she explained, with the typical exasperation of an adolescent facing a parent’s lack of imagination.

The skit aired shortly before news broke that approximately 60 young British women joined ISIS in Syria, and it provoked heated responses. Viewers immediately criticized the bit over social media, prompting CNN to ask, “Did ‘SNL’ skit cross a line?” Fox News charged SNL with being “insensitive,” and Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck observed, “I don’t think there is anything funny about ISIS.”

Yet throughout the Middle East, ISIS is routinely ridiculed on television shows, within plays, and by cartoons. For many entertainers and satirists in the region, comedy is a way to fight ISIS’s often effective propaganda and to counter the murderous group’s narrative. “These people are not a true representation of Islam and so by mocking them, it is a way to show that we are against them,” Nabil Assaf, a producer of a satirical show now airing in Lebanon, told the Associated Press.

In Iraq, a state-funded television channel, Al Iraqiya, funneled an unprecedented $600,000 into producing Dawlat al-Khurafa, a satirical Iraqi show that features comical songs and skits acted out by a cast who satirize ISIS members living in a mythical Iraqi town. One recent song was about ISIS’s ban on adultery; it noted the ban is ignored when it comes to ISIS fighters and the women they enslave. Al Iraqiya also hosts an animated show called Dashawi, which chronicles the pratfalls and failures of a group of bumbling and hypocritical ISIS fighters who have set up base in Iraq. In the cartoon series, one young militant attempts to fire a rocket launcher and drops it on his commander’s foot, while ISIS’s go-to drunkard is tasked with enforcing an alcohol ban. The show is a mix of Looney Tunes and South Park. Al Iraqiya is the most successful and most accessible of domestic and foreign news networks in Iraq; it reaches 93 percent of Iraqis. Dawlat al-Khurafa’s theme song even went viral in Iraq, racking up more than 200,000 times on YouTube. Many viewers find the show funny, and share and comment on the videos online.

In Lebanon, the Ktir Salbe Show, a comedy series that airs on a local station north of Beirut, produces short skits that depict extremist Islamists not living by their own premodern rules as they talk on cellphones and ride in cabs. ISIS’s regional terrorism and hypocrisy are recurring themes on the Palestinian satirical TV show Watan ala Wata. A Jordanian play lampooning ISIS is touring theaters. In October, a group of Iraqi Kurds made their own SNL-style musical parody video of ISIS, in which a group of militants play air guitar with rifles and juggle with human skulls. Most of these videos are available on YouTube. One Palestinian ISIS parody video has almost 800,000 views.

A group of Iraqi Kurds pretend to be a band of ISIS members. KurdSat TV/The Middle East Media Research Institute

Satirical poetry and performances are a centuries-long tradition in the Middle Eastern countries. Cartoonists and satirists in the region were a major force during the Arab Spring uprisings of late 2010 through 2012. Bassem Youssef, dubbed “the Jon Stewart of Egypt” by viewers and the media, hosted a satirical news show that spent most of its time criticizing Egyptian political regimes prior to and during the Arab Spring. He canceled his show last summer, fearing retribution from the Egyptian government.

Middle Eastern television representatives insist that satire is an important weapon against ISIS, whose team of graphic designers, media spokespeople, and artists craft the sophisticated videos and messaging that lure in foreign recruits. As Ala’a Al Majedi, who works on Al Iraqiya’s satirical shows, said in an interview with the Middle Eastern news site Al Arabiya, “Comedy is one way to raise awareness” about the opposition to ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

Link – 

The Case for Making Fun of ISIS

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Case for Making Fun of ISIS

Jon Stewart Picked a Good Time to Retire From the Daily Show

by KrystynaK18 Posted on February 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I guess I’m curious about something. How many of you think Jon Stewart made the right decision stepping down from the Daily Show? I’m reluctant to say this because I’ve long been such a pretty devoted follower, but the truth is that Marian and I gradually stopped watching him last year. It wasn’t any single thing, or any big change in what he did. It was just a growing sense that we weren’t really laughing as much as we used to. There were still good bits, and the correspondents still had their moments, but they were fewer and farther between than in the past.

Are there others who feel the same way? I don’t want to turn this thread into a pile-on, especially if you happen to be someone who’s never liked Stewart’s brand of comedy. I’ve always been a big fan. But over the past year he seems to have lost a lot of his edge. Or is it just me?

Link – 

Jon Stewart Picked a Good Time to Retire From the Daily Show

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jon Stewart Picked a Good Time to Retire From the Daily Show

Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained His Flawless Character for 9 Years

by MurrayHVDE Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The curtain comes down on The Colbert Report Thursday night after a spectacular nine-year run on Comedy Central. But a big question remains: How on Earth did Colbert stay in character for so long?

“Stephen Colbert,” the character, is indisputably a brilliant creation. I watched every week because “Stephen Colbert” attacked right-wing media by embodying its most outlandish traits; the more sincere he was, the more searing and audacious the satire. He was sophisticated and simple at the same time. He gave viewers an amazing gift: temporary relief from the political divide by skewering idiocy at its source. (My colleague Inae Oh has compiled some of his best segments today).

It was a wildly impressive formula, in part for the stamina it required from Stephen Colbert, the comic. As fellow performer Jimmy Fallon told the New York Times this week: “I was one of those who said, ‘He’ll do it for six months and then he’ll move on.’…It’s gets old. But not this. He’s a genius.”

That’s what makes the above podcast, Working, With David Plotz, so fascinating: It’s Colbert, in his own words, out of character, describing his daily routine of getting into character; a real craftsman. It also reveals the vulnerable human performer within; a real artist.

Broadcaster and media critic Brooke Gladstone said back in April that Colbert “seems to be a modest man, too modest perhaps, to see that by lightly shedding the cap of his creation, he’s depriving us all of a national treasure.”

Long live Colbert.

More here: 

Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained His Flawless Character for 9 Years

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained His Flawless Character for 9 Years

American Lung Association Touts EPA’s New Carbon Rules In TV Ads

by ztx6uu6c Posted on June 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk initiative.

The American Lung Association released a new television ad on Wednesday defending limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency issued this week.

The ad is a first shot in what’s likely to become an advertising war over the new rules. The ad features a young boy and argues that regulators are now closing the “loophole” that allows power plants to “pump unlimited carbon pollution into his air.”

“Don’t let polluters weaken our clean air protections,” it says.

“We’re trying to help people understand what’s at stake when it comes to carbon pollution and climate change,” said Lyndsay Moseley Alexander, assistant vice president and director of the healthy air campaign at the American Lung Association. “It’s a call to action to keep our clean air protections strong.”

The Lung Association has been one of the more prominent groups cheering the new regulations. The group held a call with supporters on Monday afternoon, featuring President Barack Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

The administration has focused much of its public outreach on the health benefits of the new rules, including the avoidance of asthma, heart disease, and respiratory problems, that would come from cutting both carbon and conventional pollutants from power plants. The ads are airing nationally on cable channels such as CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and Comedy Central. Alexander declined to say how much the group is spending on the ads, but said it is “a significant investment” in the six figures.

Read more: 

American Lung Association Touts EPA’s New Carbon Rules In TV Ads

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on American Lung Association Touts EPA’s New Carbon Rules In TV Ads

This Video of a Marriage Break-Up Done Entirely in Movie Titles Is Pretty Great

by ColbySambell Posted on February 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This sketch features a couple breaking up, with dialogue constructed exclusively from 154 film titles. (Liar Liar, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Unfaithful, and Whore are included.) The video—made by the Brooklyn-based, five-member comedy troupe POYKPAC—stars Ryan Hunter, Jenn Lyon, and Maggie Ross.

“It started to seem like there was this period where all these movies kept coming out with names like How Do You Know and Rumor Has It…, and they were mostly romantic comedies,” Hunter, who also wrote and directed “Movie Title Breakup,” tells me. It took him two days to write the sketch—staring at his computer, searching through IMDb for applicable titles. “It was almost as if Hollywood was running out of names to call movies, so they started using phrases—like we were trending toward a world where every human phrase ever said was going to be the name of a movie.”

Continue Reading »

See the original post:

This Video of a Marriage Break-Up Done Entirely in Movie Titles Is Pretty Great

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Video of a Marriage Break-Up Done Entirely in Movie Titles Is Pretty Great