Now the thing is, why we protesting? That’s the big question. Why this Oscars? Why this Oscars, you know? It’s the 88th Academy Awards. It’s the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole black nominees thing has happened at least 71 other times.
.. Hey, if you want black nominees every year, you need to just have black categories. That’s what you need. You need to have black categories. You already do it with men and women. Think about it. There’s no real reason for there to be a man and a woman category in acting. There’s no reason. It’s not track and field. You don’t have to separate them. Robert De Niro has never said, I better slow this acting down so Meryl Streep can catch up. No. Not at all, man. If you want black people every year at the Oscars, just have black categories, like best black friend. That’s right. And the winner for the 18th year in a row is Wanda Sykes. This is Wanda’s 18th black Oscar.
.. Is Hollywood racist? You damn right Hollywood’s racist, but it ain’t the racist that you’ve grown accustomed to. Hollywood is sorority racist. It’s like: “We like you Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa.”
An open letter to the Republican establishment leadership
The Koch sons would later revive the spirit of the John Birch society under a new more respectable name: the “Tea Party.”
Given that the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party became the party of the “You Lie!” Obama-obstruction era, the Koch brothers had succeeded in reintroducing the very note of hysterical paranoid racism into American politics. This was what Bill did had worked so hard to repudiate.
Bill would have never said Obama wasn’t a real American, let alone have gone along with the “birther” or “he’s a Muslim” nonsense.
.. Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere. He is the creation of the Birch/Koch brothers designs on our democracy. Now the Koch brothers and the Republican establishment are affraid of what they made.
.. First, Neil Postman’s prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death has been vindicated. It’s not coincidental that Donald Trump is a reality TV star. He is the face of an illiterate America that gets its “facts” from TV news and talk radio hosts. He is the result of a celebrity “culture” gone wild.
.. Second, Donald Trump is the creation of white angry lower and middle-class Americans who have come through our educational system that failed to educate them.
.. These are fact-free functional illiterates, creatures of TV news and celebrity culture, Postman’s walking dead. The are not moved by facts but their energy is fueled by overt racism, hate, xenophobia, isolationism and ignorance.
.. It turns out that what Bill Buckley misunderstood about America was the actual character of white America. Bill thought he could civilize conservatism. But the American right has never dealt honestly with the issue of race.
TRUMPAGEDDON!
Trump is a creature of today’s political and cultural establishment. How could a master of comic mockery like Stephen Colbert object to Trump’s political style?
.. In 2013 one of the winners of the Bradley Prize was Fox News founder Roger Ailes, perhaps the single most influential person behind the transformation of politics into entertainment over the last generation. Very Trumpian.
.. The National Review symposium I contributed to also featured Glenn Beck. If he’s acceptable to the conservative establishment, is Trump a stretch?
.. For a long time, he says, the Right has promoted “a toxic politics of fear and resentment, sometimes brewed with a tinge of racial animosity.”
.. The implication is that the American people have been hoodwinked by a professional political class that’s not up to the job and lies about it. Perhaps we should say, “Shame on you, Mr. Voter, you shouldn’t let yourself be taken in like that.” Kristof implies something different. His line of reasoning implies that many Republic voters are wicked. After all, why would those cynical Republican Party grandees cook up their toxic politics? It can only work if the Republican base is actually motivated by fear, resentment, and racial animus.
.. I can’t think of any Democrat of standing, in public life or not, who wouldn’t be thrilled to have Bill grace their cocktail receptions or dinner parties. Why, then, should Donald Trump be held accountable for his many excesses?
.. Donald Trump should be no surprise. He’s made in their image.
A Word With: John Oliver, ‘Competing Against People Sleeping’
Q. This election is supposed to be a late-night host’s dream. Do you feel compelled to cover it?
A. We really don’t feel compelled to do anything. We’ll probably end up doing much more about the process of the election than the personalities involved. There’s plenty of places you can go to get stuff about the personalities. We’re more interested in the election architecture, which is underpinning this entire yearlong circus now.
.. We are so late to that process we don’t get to do any of that. It’s almost helpfully not within our reach. So, instead we can be proactive and go off to the things that we are interested in. It was a huge luxury last year to not have to talk about the election.
.. Q. Do you see the other late-night shows as your competition?
A. We’re on a different night at a different time. We are not competing against them at all. We’re competing against people sleeping. Our main competition is drowsiness at the end of the week.