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Jan. 10, 2015 - Jimmy Dore Show
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Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program, the Jimmy Dore show.
So we all noticed the killings of the cartoonists and satirists in French.
But let's be honest, the French had it coming.
The Enlightenment, croissants, rude waiters, movies with subtitles, the metric system, body odor, Jerry Lewis, the French had it fucking coming.
I'm glad we're not like France.
In this country, we don't let religious nuts own guns.
Oh, wait a minute.
I mean, it's nice to see the same right-wingers who wanted to ban French fries are now publicly shedding crocodile tears for France.
The thing to keep in mind about what happened in Paris is this.
The perpetrators are murderers, and the full weight of the rule of law should come down on them.
Freedom of speech is absolute.
It enables people to believe in whatever dumb religion they want to believe in, and it enables me to mock them for believing that dumb religion.
These kind of events always bring out the worms from the woodwork, right?
Anyone who tries to stir up hatred for a community, advocates discrimination and racism, wants to suppress civil liberties in the name of defending them, want a religious war, don't trust these people.
Freedom of speech allows you to ignore people, too.
So if you allow fear to dictate your actions, then it is you who turn these murderers into terrorists.
What the murderers did was futile.
You can kill people, but you can't kill ideas, good or bad.
Killing people will never end you being offended.
Muslim fanatics killing people because they think their God wants them to offends me.
Just as a country that purports to be Christian, dropping bombs on innocent human beings in the name of spreading freedom, that offends me too.
Religion offends me because it separates people instead of bringing people together.
These tribes get offended that other tribes don't believe what they believe.
They blame people for their beliefs instead of their all-powerful God for allowing so many beliefs in the world in the first place.
Nothing protects us from being offended in this world.
It isn't surprising that a profane, irreverent, satirical publication was the target of religious fanatics.
When you read religious texts, God is always a humorless grump.
And nothing offends the humorless more than being laughed at.
Good satire mocks the powerful, mocks the arrogant, mocks the foolish, and it mocks ourselves.
That's why humor and satire are so important to being human.
Life is hilarious.
We are all jokes with different setups, but the same punchline.
If we're not laughing, we don't get the joke.
Those few who are missing this element within them, they are missing something essential to human life.
When the offended come to me wanting me dead, I'll be laughing in their fucking faces.
It's the Jimmy Dore Show.
The show for up-minded, lowly-lovered laughies.
The kind of people that are Phil Mance may be on tearing down our nation.
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper say.
It's hard to talk to your T-Valgi.
And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore!
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to this week's show.
I enjoyed in the studio.
Cross for me, hilarious Japanese man.
It's Robert Yasimura.
Hey, Robert, how are you?
Ohio.
Ohio.
Next to him, our resident Latina from the blog The Miserable Liberal and Comedy and Everything Else podcast.
It's Steph Zamarano.
Hi, Steph.
How are you?
Hola, Jimmy.
Hola to you.
Across the glass from me from the Young Turks.
It's Edwin Umanya.
Hi, Edwin.
How are you?
I am doing good.
How are you doing?
All right.
And we have a new production assistant here.
Michael, how do you say your last name?
Schertzer.
Michael Schertzer is here with us.
All right.
You might be hearing his voice.
You might not, but we'll see what happens.
Oh, my God.
On the phone, all the way in New York City from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It's TV's Frank Frank Conniff.
Hi, Frank.
Hello there.
Yay, good to hear your voice.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Hey, did you see on if you watch The Apprentice, Donald Trump, he fired, there was an actress from The Cosby show, and she wouldn't contact Bill Cosby to get money.
And so he fired her for that.
And, you know, a lot of people don't know this about Donald Trump.
Not only did he fire an actress for not contacting Bill Cosby, he also once berated a nurse for not treating Richard Speck.
Explain.
Richard Speck killed a bunch of nurses in Chicago.
Oh, okay.
Right.
It was a long time ago.
We can laugh about it.
We can laugh about it now that he did it.
It was in the early 70s.
He killed a bunch of, he tied them up in the nursing school and killed him.
So it's really funny.
Anyway.
So a lot of problems in New York with the NYPD, and they're not making themselves look any better.
I don't know.
It's like they're having a contest.
How can we make ourselves look worse?
Everybody think about it.
Hey, so we politicize a dead cop's funeral?
Done.
Done.
Are you kidding me?
So many cops, again, at the second funeral, turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio.
And their new slogan, the NYPD, it's because they came out with a new slogan stuff.
It's called To Protect and Sulk.
Yes.
Can I just say Mayor de Blasio is the only thing standing between them and a full-blown federal investigation of their department?
They should not be doing that.
Yeah, well, I don't know if you noticed, but they're not the smartest guys.
Yeah.
But they do have impunity to kill.
Yeah.
So that gives them a lot of ballsies.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, Fox News host Shannon Bream, she actually said this, right, Frank?
She said that bad guys have a specific skin tone.
Ah!
Wow.
Just today.
She said that just today.
Fox News host Shannon Bream said bad guys have a specific skin tone and the GOP is thinking of making her house majority whip.
You know what, Don Lemon, back in the news.
Friend of the show.
We're going to get to, you know what, we'll get to that joke later.
But just it's just good to know that in these times of tragedy and polarization, there is one simple truth that everyone agrees on.
Don Lemon is a fucking idiot.
Hey, did you say terrorists as terrorists scare me?
I don't know if you guys, we're all talking about what happened in France, and terrorists do scare me, but you know what scares terrorists?
Cartoons.
Everybody, we heard about Steve Scalese, right?
He's the new GOP majority whip in the House of Representatives.
And it's crazy that Steve Scalese, but he's, you know, he's got hot water because it came out that he gave a speech to a racist organization in 2002 that was founded by David Duke in Louisiana, so everybody knew who they were.
And, right, but it's just kind of crazy that Steve Scalise is still GOP majority whip when there are so many other racist Republicans qualified for the job.
And so there's a lot of heat, there's a lot of pressure to get rid of them as majority whip, but they're sticking by him because David Duke threatened, he threatened to expose more GOP KKK speakers.
Isn't it sad when you can threaten people with the revelation that they know you?
That's not a good thing.
That's not a good day in your life.
I'll let people know that you know me.
And then it's over for you, Ski.
Okay.
By the way, GOP Congress is in session.
They're officially in session, and nothing has happened yet, so they're very excited that they've already achieved this year's agenda.
Actually, they're seeking cuts to Medicare and Social Security so they can free up some money for some more Benghazi investigations.
And by the way, we may in 2016, we may elect a Bush in 2016.
We may elect a Bush in 2016.
So let's all take a moment to hug all the innocent people that will be killed in 2017.
All right, what's coming up on today's show?
Chuck Todd had a satirical panel on his show to talk about comedy and satire and politics and what's the problem.
What's been dumbing down America?
The answer just might surprise you.
Or will it?
Also, we're going to talk about Chris Hayes' reaction to the cartoon killings.
They're not cartoon, the killings of the cartoonists.
They're not cartoon killings.
They're actual killings.
That would be more like a roadrunner cart.
That would be a roadrunner, right?
Also, we're going to check in with somebody using porno terminology on the Chris Hardball show, and everybody's okay with it.
Plus, Jim Kramer, ladies and gentlemen, is going to break it down.
He's going to let us know why corporations are going to give their workers a raise this year.
The answer just may surprise you because it surprised me.
Okay.
Also, CNN asked some pretty irresponsible questions about the cop defts and who's responsible for it.
Plus, a lot more.
We got phone calls today from we got John Boehner calls in.
Luke Russer calls in.
George Clooney, who I sat next to at the sushi restaurant last Friday.
Yeah, he calls in.
Plus, Ron Paul calls in to talk about the new GOP majority whip, Scott Scalise.
Plus, a lot, lot more.
That's today on the Jimmy Dore Show.
No!
So I was watching Meet the Press.
This is the week in between Christmas and New Year.
And here's what Chuck Todd, all of a sudden, Chuck Todd says this.
The state of satire.
I put together a very special roundtable on politics and comedy in America.
And he didn't invite me.
I'll tell you that.
He did not have me on that panel because then something might have happened.
But he had on Lewis Black, W. Kamal Bell, and a female writer, which I'm blanking on her name right now.
Laura Croft.
Laura Croft.
Now, what is she written for?
Kraft.
What has she written for?
Cheese slices?
I believe she wrote for Colbert at one point.
Okay, there you go.
All right.
So there you go.
Here's his first question.
Get ready.
Basically, it's built off this idea, and I've heard it from other corners, that the political satire is dumbing down regular politics.
So he's heard this in other corners.
No, he hasn't.
That political satire, political satire, you mean the guys who are pointing out how everyone is ridiculous.
They're the ones dumbing down.
The ones using wit and clever writing, they're the ones dumbing down.
It's not Louie Gomert.
It's not the Drudge Report.
It's not Megan Kelly.
It's not the guys, people at Fox and Friends.
It's not Joe Scarborough.
It's not Chris Matthews asking for a week straight.
Does torture work?
It's not that.
That's not dumbing down.
No, what it is, what is it?
What is it?
It's built off this idea, and I've heard it from other corners, that the political satire is dumbing down regular politics.
You know, the problem with that statement is, Frank, you can't parody what he just said.
It's like politics is dumbing.
Frank, politics is dumbing down satire.
It's not the other way around.
Exactly.
And who are these quarters?
Where's this quarter that are people saying this?
Because nobody ever, whatever anyone says about the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, no one ever says, oh, it's so dumb.
They do nothing but fart jokes the whole time.
Yeah, no one, no one ever sees, you're right.
No one ever says that.
Everybody, even if they don't agree with the politics of it, everyone agrees that they're intelligent shows.
You know who would say something like that?
George Will would say something like that.
This guy or Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd is so inside the bubble.
He socializes with George Will, so that's probably where he heard it from.
Yes, yes.
By the way, he's saying politics is being dumbed down by satire.
This is being said on a program whose regular guests are of the intellectual magnitude of Joe Scarborough and Luke Russert.
Yeah, that's that, but it's political, but it's satire.
Satire.
Okay, so here, and here he has, he has another question.
Here's Chuck Chuck Todd.
Another question for the satirical panel.
Obviously, the larger critique is that the rise and popularity of political satire is creating a more cynical public citizen.
Satire, did you hear?
This is right.
This is kind of stunning stuff.
He's saying satire, Robert.
He's saying satire is making a more cynical public citizen.
No, the citizens and satire are barely keeping up, Chuck, with the cynicism of politicians and the media.
They're barely keeping up.
Regular people are barely keeping up with it.
Can we have another Benghazi investigation?
Was it the Daily Show who did seven Benghazi investigations?
Was it that?
Was it the Daily Show that stopped millions of people from getting health care in Texas?
Poor people, was it that?
You tell me.
Was it, oh, I remember when the Colbert report shut down the George Washington Bridge and political retribution?
Remember when that happened?
You talk about, and it gets worse, by the way.
I have more clips that are worse coming.
I got to tell you, I'm already excited that the supposed news program is going to break down comedy.
Yes.
And its influence on society.
Political satire exposes the absurdity of politics.
It's not what makes politics absurd.
Well, the reason people, a lot of people consider the Daily Show and the Colbert report when it was on their news source is because the regular news is so bad.
Yes.
Hold that thought, though, Frank.
We're going to get to that.
We're going to get to that.
Hold that threat.
That's a good thought.
We're going to get to that maybe in the next clip.
Chuck Todd should introduce every episode by saying, I will demonstrate in this segment what a fucking idiot I am.
Yes.
I mean, this is stunning.
And, you know, it seemed like the comedians on the panel who I like them all, except for one, you figure out which.
And now I like them all.
They fell into that someone on a television show who hosts a TV show with a lot of money is being nice to me.
It happened to me when I went on Red Eye, like the guy who hosts Red Eye was being really nice to me and laughing at my jokes.
And I could not, when someone laughs at my jokes, I cannot help but feel affection for them, no matter who they are.
Yeah, and that's that's why that's why GE doesn't pay taxes.
It's the same mechanism.
It is.
It's the exact same mechanism.
If Hitler laughed at my jokes, I would be.
Yeah, he was kind of a nice guy.
Yeah, exactly.
I say the same thing.
If Hitler liked my comedy, I'd be like, you know, he has another side that people really don't see.
I have a suggestion.
What if Chuck Todd is doing a really meta bit in this entire thing?
Oh, yeah.
Like he's doing a joke about the whole thing.
We're just not getting it.
Yeah, I don't know if you've seen Chuck Todd.
He's not half that smart.
Okay.
I'm not even smart enough to understand what you're saying.
And he's certainly not smarter than me.
This guy's a C minus student all the way, Chuck Todd.
If he even finished, whatever he started.
I'll bet you is a great lacrosse player.
I'm going to bet he didn't finish college.
And if he did, it was a bad college and he was a C minus student.
And if he got good grades, it was because somebody was rich in his family.
I actually heard he went to a good college and he graduated with a major in not asking follow-up questions.
Yes, that was taught by who taught that class?
Oh, Tom Brokaw taught that class.
Oh, yeah.
And he was on the economy.
Put into the green of good use, though.
Yeah, uh-huh.
So here is his question, Frank, that speaks to the point you were just about to make.
Here he asks the panel.
What should we take away from the fact that political satirical news in some ways is more popular, obviously, than what we're doing?
Or is sometimes in some cases more trusted?
You know, you see these things where John Stewart's more trusted than the evening news anchors.
Why are comedian?
So that's your, there's your question, Frank.
Why are comedians more trusted than, well, first of all, that's not a question you should be asking comedians, Chuck.
That's a question you should be asking yourself.
Yes, and it's like asking, why do people think Frank Sinach is a better singer than Justin Bieber?
Exactly.
Meet the Press has been a docile platform for war criminals to lie their country into a war where military contractors go on and drum up business, where defenders of torture are given airtime, and pundits whose job it is to misinform the public with pre-approved party talking points go unchallenged.
And you wonder why you're not more trusted than Jon Stewart?
Are you shitting me, Chuck?
It is a part of American history now that Meet the Press helped the Bush administration sell the Iraq.
Yes.
That's not an opinion I'm giving.
That's a part of American history right now.
And we also know that the NBC Nightly Luz also helped drum up.
The whole media did, but you can, in the case of Meet the Press, it came out that Dick Cheney's media advisor said that this is a good format for us.
It's a place where we can control the message.
Yes.
That is part of the record that Dick Cheney's office felt that way about Meet the Press.
Yes, that is not a joke.
That is for real.
Just like how we found out that MSNBC actually fired Phil Donahue during the run-up to the Iraq war because they didn't want to be seen as against the war.
Right.
The liberal, the liberal anti-war station.
So maybe Chuck also, people trust a comedian more than they trust news people.
By the way, the liberal anti-war station MSNBC around that same time gave Michael Savage a show.
Gave Michael Savage a show.
That's right.
Joe Scarborough still commands 15 hours a week of programming time.
15 if you count Meet the Press.
That's right.
So he's still right-winger.
Still get three hours.
That liberal MSNBC likes to kick off their liberal programming day with three hours of right-wing talking points brought to you by ex-Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, Wall Street insiders, and the odd plagiarist.
So how many broadcast hours have Chuck Todd – What should we take away from the fact that political satirical news in some ways is more popular, obviously, than what we're doing?
Or is sometimes in some cases more trusted?
You know, you see these things where Jon Stewart's more trusted than the evening news anchors.
Yeah, well, how many broadcast hours have you, Chuck, sat next to Andrew Mitchell, the wife of the former Federal Reserve Chairman, the man who helped engineer the crashing of our nation's economy, and you never asked her one uncomfortable question.
And you wonder why you're not more trusted, Chuck?
Remember when the largest anti-war protests in the history of America was happening outside your studio, and you had to drive through it to get to work, and how you and nobody at Meet the Press ever mentioned it?
And you wonder why you're not more trusted?
I like the way he uses news speak, where he says, you see these things.
I heard this thing from a guy.
He's throwing off all his investigation skills.
I heard this guy.
I don't know.
Maybe because news is horrible, Chuck.
And it's not some kind of weird trickery that comedy satirists are playing on our culture.
It's not some sleight of hand that's happening.
It's an actual revealing of how horrible the news media is.
The fact that you're all controlled by one of six companies.
How about that fact?
How about that?
You all worked for a defense contractor during the Iraq war.
How about that?
How many checks do you take from a defense contractor during an illegal war before you stop calling yourself a journalist?
The answer is endless.
And that's why people don't trust you.
How many times, how about because nobody in the news media told us that Wall Street was going to crash our economy?
And then they were going to make everybody on Main Street pay for it while they got their pockets filled again.
How about that's why?
Because we all know you hang out with those guys.
How about because you're cheerleading on yet another war in the Middle East, another round of bombings being brought to you by our Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.
Okay, so maybe that's why.
Maybe because every day you don't tell us what the people need to know to be informed.
The NBC and all the channels, they went from not airing any dissent against the Iraq war to the latest round of bombings.
They've improved it and we'll have a little bit of dissent, but not much at all.
Yes.
And we're still, they simply don't have the information.
They have cut the number of reporters that are embedded in place in places like the Pentagon.
Yes.
The Department of Agriculture.
I mean, the Department of Education, I mean, places where we need beat reporters embedded all the time.
They have cut them.
And the reporters that they do have show themselves to be lazy.
You're going to ask the second question.
They do not ask the third question.
Capital.
How about go ahead, Frank?
The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, along with several other nightly news cats, in the Iraq war, they let off their broadcast with a story about this great hero, Jessica Lynch.
And they recited this invented story that was given to them by the White House.
Without checking it, they portrayed her as a hero.
And we all now know that it was bullshit because Jessica Lynch told us it was bullshit.
And no one followed up.
That's one of many examples where they just took what the Bush administration or whoever is in power hands them and they just recite it like stenographers.
Yes.
And yet it's the satirical shows that are making people cynical.
Yes, it's the satirical shows.
You guys sent a college intern to be your Capitol Hill correspondent.
You sent Luke Russert, who had the qualifications of doing his own podcast.
That was his qualifications.
You send him to Capitol Hill to be your Capitol Hill correspondent, and he reports back talking points verbatim.
And you wonder why people don't trust news.
I mean, he's trying to blame comedy like they've like we've done some sleight of hand, some trickery, some jiu-jitsu on the American electorate to make them not trust news anymore because of our jokes.
Yeah.
And actually, specifically, and this is the truth, Luke Russert's only experience before NBC hired him was he did a sports radio show with James Carville.
Yes, it was a pod.
I don't even know if it was on a radio.
I think it might have just been a podcast.
It might have just, I don't know.
You know, if I had the resources of NBC, I'd have someone look that up for me.
But if I worked for NBC, I wouldn't have anyone look that up for me.
And also, you might not get an accurate report about that.
So here, here, Chuck Todd.
I buried the lead on this whole segment, by the way.
So here's the lead, right?
So Lewis Black says to him, basically, I don't know how you can talk to these people, these politicians.
So Lewis Black is trying to be nice to him in a sense.
He's like, I don't even know how he's trying to sympathize with Chuck Todd.
And watch what Chuck Todd.
Now, this definitely should have been the first thing I played, but I don't know why I didn't.
Here we go.
Ready?
I like to build, maybe.
Here we go.
And what's you and everybody else?
Where somebody comes on, and I don't know how you do it with kids.
I don't know how you do it.
I'd be barking at them.
So he says, I don't know how you sit there and talk to these people.
I would be barking at them.
Chuck Todd responds.
Now, here it is.
Here's the full reveal.
Here's the full reveal of why, Chuck Todd, why people don't trust you.
Here we go.
Ready?
We all sit there because we all know the first time we bark, it's the last time we do the show.
There's something sometimes the last time you're ever all of a sudden, nobody will come on your show.
Oh, all of a sudden.
Because the first time we bark, it's the last time they'll do your show.
No one will come on my show.
If I bark at them, they'll never come back and lie on my show again.
Yeah.
It's a news show.
I depend on newsmakers to come on my show every week and tell lies.
I can't, I can't help with that.
It's not the information I'm bringing to the people.
It's the people I'm bringing to the people.
It doesn't matter that they're lying and I'm not allowed to push back and debunk them in real time.
It's just that I have them on.
I'll have on John McCain to lie about something.
I'll have on Haley Barber to lie about something.
I'll bring on Donna Brazil to lie about something.
But I can't ever push back because I need to have these people on my show again.
He just admitted why people, you just revealed, Chuck, what's wrong with corporate news, what's wrong with your show specifically, what's wrong with you as a journalist specifically, and you just answered your own question you posted to the panel a minute ago.
Why don't people trust journalists anymore, but they trust comedians?
It's because comedians bark.
They bark all day long.
That's why, because they're comics.
If you ever watch it.
Yes, that's right.
That's why people think Jon Stewart is a better journalist than you.
Not because Jon Stewart is a good journalist, but because you aren't even one.
Right.
That's the one for what to do.
Music.
You Hey, there's a lot more.
We have a lot more to say about Chuck Todd's satirical comedy panel he had on Meet the Press.
But before we get to that, let's get to our phone call we got from John Boehner.
I guess I got a call from John Boehner.
He's going to then got the new GOP Congress.
Jimbo Bader, three times Speaker of the House, baby.
Those are Tip O'Neill numbers.
Fuck.
Transition this time around.
From people like Louis Gilbert, you know, the United States House of Representatives village hate.
Yeah, you definitely want that guy asserted lied to the presidency in the end times.
Am I right?
Sarah Palin supported Gilbert for speaker.
Wow.
One irrelevant idiot supported another irrelevant idiot for something that was never going to happen.
Stop the presses.
And Steve King, that guy writes Birth of a Nation fan fiction.
So I'm going to say he was a dark horse.
It's Bader, baby.
It's always Bader.
And by the way, everyone who opposed me is going to rule the day, believe you me.
Losing their committee assignments is just the start.
For instance, a certain Florida representative is about to discover that he is openly gay and has a serious case of ball sugars.
That's how the new Bohr rolls, baby.
We got both houses of Congress now.
So the government is pretty much our bitch.
I, of course, will be continuing my insane policy of only bringing up bills that have the support of the majority of the majority.
What will the majority of the majority support?
What bills can you look forward to in the coming days?
I'm glad you asked.
And you'll be sorry you did.
Item one.
No one pays taxes ever again.
I don't know how that's going to work out, but handsome Dick Ryan says it's a winner.
I am two.
The government never does anything that requires money ever again.
Item three.
We raised the defense budget to, I don't know, a gazillion dollars.
And item last.
Unborn fetuses will be given guns to defend themselves against abortion doctors.
It's boarding in America, people.
And I, for one, have a nice, healthy morning stiffy.
It's the eye of the tag.
And of the fight.
Okay, John Vader.
John Voehner has written by Robert Yasamura.
Okay, we got phone calls from George Clooney and Luke Russert coming up in the second half of the Jimmy Door show.
But right now, we're up against a break.
We'll be right back in one minute.
This is the Jimmy Doer show on Pacifica.
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Now let's get back to the second half.
Hey, welcome back to the Jimmy Door Show.
We got a lot coming up in the second half.
I'm joined on the phone from New York City.
It's Frank Connant from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Also in the studio with me, hilarious comedian Robert Yasimura and our resident Latina from the Miserable Liberal blog.
It's Steph Zamarano.
Also, Edwin Umanya from The Young Turks is with us.
And what's coming up in the second half?
We're going to continue our discussion.
Luke Russert and Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd had a roundtable of comedians talking about why the news is so bad and comedy is so respected.
So we're going to get back to that conversation.
But before we do, oh, also, we have a phone call.
Luke Russert calls in to us to talk about this.
Also, George Clooney calls in later on in the half hour.
But right now, here's a word from our miserable liberal, Steph Zamarano.
Every year I sit and think, oh my God, I have to make a list of resolutions that I'm willing to live or die by.
Sure, things never really get that tense, but the mere idea already makes me feel like a complete failure.
No, I haven't become the person I was once resolute to become.
Maybe I just gave up along the way or found other things more desirable.
I don't know exactly.
I try to live a good life, but it seems more of my life is spent zoning out watching movies that my husband will never have the patience to watch because he's reading another article on torture and our country's loss of moral compass.
It seems pointless to write out all my resolutions when my country can't even live by its constitution.
Who are we?
What do we stand for?
Come to think of it.
If there was any year that I should write resolutions, it's this year.
But this year's resolutions will be logical and attainable.
Number one, I will not torture.
Number two, I will not rape another human being because it is torture.
Number three, I will not take photos of my torture victims posted on Facebook because I will not torture.
Number four, exercise.
And number five, steer clear of satire.
Oh.
Yeah.
Music.
you Thank you.
Okay, now we're going to pick up our conversation where we left off of Chuck Todd on Meet the Press interviewing Lewis Black, Lauren Kraft, and W. Kamal Bell, three satirical comedians, talking about the influence of satire and comedy on our body politic.
It's been ridiculous up to this point, and I kind of bet it keeps being ridiculous.
We're going to pick it up where Chuck Todd just revealed, just admitted that the reason he doesn't hold his guests' feet to the fire when interviewing them is because they won't come back on his show.
So that's why he, quote-unquote, won't bark at them, and he won't bite either.
Okay, let's get back to that right now.
The one thing he didn't reveal when he said that was it's not just that they won't come back on his show, it's also that these are the people he socializes with.
Yes.
He'll run into them at a cocktail party or a dinner party or a restaurant, and it'll be really awkward.
Jenk Uger told me, Frank wants to be chummy with everybody that he runs into in meets.
There's no doubt of Jenk Uger told me about it.
He said he had his agent take him to this lunch restaurant where they all hang out.
And he's like, it's funny.
They all talk to each other.
He goes, Jenk looked at me incredulously and said, they think Tucker Carlson is funny.
Well, I don't know if you know this, but they're thinking about changing the title of the show from Meet the Press to Meet.
Just meet.
I think so.
I think their slogan is, no bark, no bite.
Welcome to Meet the Press.
No bark, no bite.
Oh, my God, but we'll get that rebooking.
So it doesn't.
It's not about informing people.
That's secondary to what he's doing.
You just revealed that informing people and getting the story out, getting the facts out, is secondary to booking someone on their show.
And if someone wants to come...
So in other words, like, instead of having someone who could accurately tell him about the Bush administration's torture policies, and there are people out there in Washington who know about these things and who can come on and talk about it, instead of that, he has to get the big get, Dick Cheney, to come on and lie about it.
And as a newsman, that's more valuable to him to have the powerful person lie than to have a not so powerful person tell the truth.
And don't forget that when Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal and brought down a president, they didn't do it by interviewing powerful people.
Right.
They didn't do it by interviewing like the everyday lower-rung people who could actually give them some real information.
That's exactly correct.
They went and they talked to the secretaries and the files.
So why even go forward?
We talked to the powerful people.
That's exactly the way that modern people like Chuck Todd operate.
And so here's how Chuck Todd, here's how he justifies what he does and how he doesn't let satire bother him.
He's going to show you right now.
So this woman, Laura Kraft, comedy writer Laura Kraft, who's on this panel, starts to tell him why people don't trust news journalists.
And of course, because she's face to face with him, she's doing it in a polite way.
Right.
So she starts to make the point that, you know, people feel that journalists are being fed talking points from whoever they're talking to, which is exactly true, which is exactly what's wrong with news.
They just repeat talking points and they go, well, the other side says this.
That's my joke.
The other side says that.
I guess we'll, thanks for the debate.
Right.
So here's what, so she starts to say that and watched, here's how Chuck Todd justifies everything he's ever done.
Maybe somebody who's a member of the media who's being fed information from for different reasons from different political groups.
You know, I think you guys are totally pure.
We know that nobody has ever fed you anything.
You've never taken money from a corporation ever, right?
You know, they're offering, oh, and no one's ever fed you guys anything.
No one's ever lied to comic.
No, that's because, no, that's the whole point, dummy.
We don't talk to those people.
We make fun of them.
We have their job.
He's doing a complete, you know, we always talk about false equivalency.
Yes.
This is a false equivalency that goes way beyond anything that we always talk about on the show of him saying, well, you, you know, you don't ask any tough questions.
You're a comedian, and when you're doing the funny phone in Cincinnati, you don't ask anybody tough questions.
Right, exactly.
It's like that.
It's the same thing.
So he's trying to, so he's trying to say, he's trying to dismiss his credit, the criticism of him as being a stenographer, saying, well, you guys aren't great reporters.
They're comedians.
They're comedian.
You guys aren't great.
You guys work for corporate.
He's trying to say, look, we're all dirty.
We're all at this big.
We're all at this.
We're all part of the same hypocrisy, but never think of it.
It applies to my family.
So he's saying, look, we're all taking part in this capitalist gangbang.
So let's not pretend that we aren't.
You guys just have the one job where you get to make fun of it.
That's not the same job that you have.
They don't have the same responsibilities.
So Chuck, he sees his job as having the same set of responsibilities as a comedian.
Also, by the way, what kind of journalist asks a question, receives an answer, and defends himself against that instead of taking the information in the way a journalist is supposed to.
So he cuts her off.
When she starts to tell him why people trust Comics or the news journalists, he cuts her off and then tries to dismiss her answer because you guys are, oh, you guys are, you guys, you guys never take corporate money, huh?
That's his defense for being a bad journalist.
That comedians also sometimes take corporate money.
The fact that he's defending himself at all is like, what?
That's not journalism.
That would be like Walter Cronkite, like them saying, like, we just landed in the movies.
Be like, why would you put it that way?
Exactly.
It's also like, well, you know, you take corporate money and so do I. Well, yeah, you know, I take corporate money to maybe do a sitcom pilot or an HBO special.
I don't take corporate money to help people lie about the war.
Yeah, right.
So here, W. Kamal Bell, who was also on the panel, he makes a good point.
So there weren't many good points.
I'm sorry to say that the satirists on this panel, who I like all of them, fans of their work, for whatever reason, they got that thing where they were being nice to Chuck Todd.
They fell into that trap.
But here, W. Kamal Bell makes a good point.
He doesn't make it as strenuously as I'd like, right?
But he makes it.
So that's his good thing.
And watch how Chuck Todd totally just ignores it.
So let's listen to W. Kamal's Bell and Kamal Bell's point, and then we'll listen to Chuck Todd dismiss it.
People think that John, when people watch Jon Stewart or John Oliver, they feel like they're at least getting that person's perspective.
And I don't think people believe with the news.
I think they feel like you're getting a corporation's perspective.
You're not getting that individual person.
Should you guys be held responsible?
So he just moved on to the next question.
Should you guys be held responsible?
You guys, you guys, meaning satirists, should you guys be held responsible?
And I forget, I don't know what the next question was, but he just said, that's the crux of this whole conversation, is that you guys are just repeating corporate talking points.
That's the problem.
That's why people don't trust you is because they see what you're doing.
They see that you work for one of six giant media companies in America.
Every newspaper, every radio station, every television station, every cable provider, all owned by one of six giant companies, not KPFK.
We're powered by the people.
It's true.
And we don't take money from banks and we don't take like other public radio stations do.
We don't take money from Walmart and banks.
Even for our tote bags?
Even for our tote bags.
We don't have Chinese slaves make our tote bags or our giveaway gifts.
We don't do any of that stuff.
So that's the difference between us and you, Chuck.
Also, you know, I think that part of it, too, is that Chuck Scott, like Chuck's Legnita Press gets really bad ratings.
I just read an article that Morning Joe tanks every morning.
Great.
It does really poorly, but I don't think either of those shows are in any danger because even getting ratings isn't their primary purpose.
Their primary purpose is to maintain the status quo.
Yes.
Keep the power structure in place that the heads of these news divisions are all tied into.
And then even though they don't get big ratings, they get really good advertising dollars from the war, you know, from the weapons makers.
The banks.
Right.
From Walmart and the bank.
You're right.
And the banks look at those shows, the banks and the corporations and all.
They look at those shows as PR things.
They look at it as part of what keeps their image good in front of Americans.
And those shows serve that purpose.
So what Chuck Todd's supposed to be doing is he's supposed to be investigating Eli Lilly and General Dynamics and General Electric.
He's supposed to be investigating Walmart and Goldman Sachs.
But in fact, what he's doing is he's taking money from them to support his show.
They're the ones who buy the commercials on his show.
So what they're doing, and we mentioned this in the book, Your Country's Just Not That Into You.
So what they're paying, what Walmart is doing when they buy ad time, they're not funding Chuck Todd's investigation of Walmart.
They're funding the non-investigation of Walmart.
They're funding the non-investigation of ExxonMobil, the non-investigation of General Electric.
These are, that's what they're, when they buy ad time on Meet the Press, that's why they're buying the ad time.
They're giving them hush money and they take it.
And I know that's a fact.
Again, because Jenk Uger, when he was the host on MSNBC, he had a news story that was critical of one of their sponsors that used the name of one of their sponsors in a critical news story and they made him take it out.
They go, you can't use that.
That's somebody, that's our sponsor.
So this is not conjecture.
This isn't conspiracy talk.
This is exactly what's going on.
We see it.
That's why people don't trust you.
And then Kamal Bell makes another good point.
And I didn't think about this till he said it.
We're talking about how Chuck Todd said how he can't bark at his guests because they'll never come back and then he'll get fired from his show like Soledad O'Brien did.
Soledad O'Brien got fired from her show because she started to push back on people.
And Frank called him.
Frank predicted it.
He said, well, I look forward to listening to her at her new podcast, which is exactly when her contract came up.
She was gone.
She was gone from CNN, and now she's on Al Jazeera somewhere where nobody watches.
I watch Al Jazeera.
I watch Al Jazeera because I think it's probably the only good television news left.
There is some good news at Al Jazeera.
It's not as good as I thought it was going to be, and they didn't give me a job.
So here we go.
And I lost my job there.
And Frank lost his job.
So here's what, listen, there's another good point that Kamal Bell makes about news journalists getting to bark.
The thing that comedy gets to do that steering is we don't.
Yeah, comedy gets to bark.
And I think that, but the weird thing is that Fox News also gets to bark.
And I think sometimes the left, you know, the left-leaning media is afraid of barking.
And so the comics, so they, you see, there's a lot of left-wing media.
They will play a clip of the daily show, or they will play a kip of John Oliver and go, look at this guy barking.
Anyway, back to a reasonable discussion, even though I know that's what I want you to believe.
Let me have the reasonable discussion.
So that was those two very good points.
He goes, comedians are allowed to bark, but Fox News also gets to bark.
Isn't that something?
Yes, you're allowed to race, bait, smear, be wrong on the facts, be political, politi facts, lie of the year attributed to your news organization.
You can do all those things if what you're doing is in defense of the status quo, which is exactly what they're doing.
They're propping up mainstream thought.
They're propping up the status quo.
They're propping up the powers that be.
They're not trying to tear down ExxonMobil.
They're not trying to tear down the war machine.
They're not trying to tear down Goldman Sachs and Chase Manhattan.
They're not trying to tear those people down.
So they're allowed to say whatever they want to say.
They're allowed to bark 24 hours a day.
Hey, there's a lot more to our discussion about Chuck Todd and his problem with comedy and blaming comedy for bad news reporting.
But you got to get the podcast of the Jimmy Door show, and you can get a podcast of the Jimmy Door show for free at iTunes or through Stitcher or at JimmyDoorComedy.com and you spell Door D-O-R-E.
If you go to JimmyDoorComedy.com, you can listen to the podcast there.
You can download it for free.
You can make comments on the episodes, all kinds of stuff at jimmydoorcomedy.com and you spell door D-O-R-E.
Now let's get to our phone call from Raluke Russert.
Joining us on the phone now is the highly respected NBC newsman, Luke Russert.
Jimmy, did I note a hit of sarcasm in that intro?
Maybe just a little bit.
Jimmy, dude, bro.
You're really hurting your gravitas and whatnot with a tude like that.
With a tude?
You called it a tude?
Listen, how so?
Well, you're trying to be funny, and as my buddy Chuck Todd said, satiric programs like The Daily Show, The Colbert Rapport, and Don't Trust the P in Apartment 23 are making people cynical.
Don't trust the what?
That is the name of a show.
We all know that I was hired for my current high-paying gig with no qualifications solely based on nepotism, right?
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Well, keep it, when people like you and Stuart Colbert point out that I have no qualifications for the job I got solely based on nepotism, it makes people cynical.
Actually, I think a so-called news organization like NBC hiring someone with no qualifications for an important job is actually what's making people cynical, Luke.
No way, Jose.
An ideal America would be a nation of citizens content to be misinformed by overpaid hacks like myself.
When you and your comedy comrades start making truthful statements about how untruthful the media is, it turns everyone into cynics.
Cynics, man.
You're just not a fan of comedy and satire, are you, Luke?
Not true, man.
My dad, Tim Russert, used to invite Mark Russell over to our house and he played the piano and six songs of totally contemporary wars and junk.
I'm afraid to ask this, but do you remember any of those songs?
Yes, I remember the lyrics to the deficit rag.
The deficit is going up really high.
The only thing to say is aye.
The nation's a dead and it's a drag, and that's the deficit ring.
That is the blistering satire right there.
You really think so?
Hell yes.
I mean, the Capitol Steps are their most incendiary.
They weren't half as cutting edge as that.
The Capitol Steps.
I think I barely remember them.
Well, dude, they were into some sick burns.
I totally remember the lyrics to their parody of Blowing in the Wind at the height of the Lewinsky scandals.
How many times must a man go down before he can know what is?
And how many men must an intern do before she's swallowed enough?
The answer, my friend, is blowing on Bill's cock.
Okay, that's enough.
Jimmy, I'm just bringing you back to a time when Al-Qaeda was preparing to attack inside the U.S., but the media did nothing but report on Bill Clinton's sex life.
It was a golden age.
But then you satirists came along and made everybody cynical.
Luke, did you hear when your buddy Chuck Todd said that in order to get guests to come back on his show, he never asks tough questions?
I did hear that, and I was deeply moved.
Jimmy, I know that I don't always come off as the most humble person in the world, but I only hope that one day I'll have the skills to be the kind of seasoned softball interviewer that Chuck Todd is.
Well, this is a sad day to be talking about satire considering what happened in Paris.
I know.
It's awful what happened to those cartoonists of that magazine.
We can only hope this horrific event will inspire comedians and satirists of the world over to stop making fun of people in power.
What?
Yeah.
I mean, these Al-Qaeda terrorist dudes are the most evil people on the planet.
But when they're satirized, it makes everybody cynical.
Luke.
Luke, I appreciate you stopping by, but could you please hang up, hang up the phone, and get the fuck off of my show.
Jimmy, catch you next time, Broheem.
All right, that was Luke Russard, ladies and gentlemen.
Luke.
So here's a story.
I was going to my favorite sushi place on Ventura in the Valley, which I'm not going to tell you what the name of it is because I like to keep it a secret because it's the best sushi around and nobody goes there because the guy's the sushi chef is not as he's not as nice as you'd like.
So if you don't, he's very rigid, and so people don't go there.
But guess who does go there?
Me and George Clooney.
Hello goes there.
So I was there the other night and it literally was me and my friend Steve from the Young Turks, my Asian friend, and also George Clooney was in there with a group of four people.
So I called him And we got a little.
Oh, yeah, I hear you.
We got a little conversation.
So on the phone, we have Academy Award nominee George Clooney.
Hi, George.
How are you?
Hey, Jimmy, it's good to talk to you.
Hey, listen, it was good bumping into you at that Sushi joint at Ventura the other night.
Yeah, that was a treat, wasn't it?
That was a treat.
That was a treat.
You know, it's sad, though.
You and your lovely wife.
No, that was my Asian friend, Steve.
Oh, that was your wife.
No, he's Asian.
But, you know, very.
Those Asian guys look like women.
Yeah, they're very, very hairless.
Anyway, that's what I like.
But I noticed you sitting there.
You were with another couple, and you seem to be having a seem to be having a lot of fun.
Yeah, that was my, that was a good time you were having there.
No, I noticed that you're so famous that you have to sit facing the wall.
And that's usually how they see you when you go to a place like that.
They say, okay, George Clooney's here.
Let's make it so he's down on display for the entire restaurant.
So I thought.
You'll get there.
You'll get there.
So I thought that because I hate to stare at the wall.
That's my least favorite.
Then I was like, wow, if everything works out right, you get so famous, you have to, everywhere you go, you have to sit facing the wall so people don't bother you.
That's kind of kind of fun.
It's like I've done everything right in my life.
I'm still sitting in the corner like a little kid.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I know.
It's kind of funny.
But now invite me.
We have fun.
Those were our friends, the copsteaders.
Oh, yeah.
We play pranks on each other.
Oh, yeah.
You play pranks.
What kind of pranks?
I watched the ballot, went to the bathroom, and then he came back and he put my fedora on my chair.
So I sat on it.
Go.
Oh, that's funny.
He put his dear fedora.
And I got him back later that night.
Oh, you got, how'd you get him back?
Fuck his wife.
All right, if I'm on the chair, man.
you know we have fun boners pranks yeah Gags.
Gags.
Have you given any more thoughts joining our club?
No, I actually haven't.
I didn't really think that I would see you again and bump into you like that.
Well, I think you should really give it a real piece of thought.
Yeah, you know, I'd really like to hang out with you guys.
It's just that the best time you'd ever have in your life.
I can't.
I really look forward to it.
I mean, I would love to.
Yeah, I would love to go with you and Brad Pitt, but no wives.
But I just don't, what you consider a prank, I consider violating my marriage.
Hey, Johnny Puritan, maybe you take that buckle off your hat there.
Hat buckle.
Yeah.
I don't think that's me being overly Puritan.
I just think that's, you know, there's one person in the world I want just for myself sexually.
Maybe that's selfish.
Maybe that's not as involved as you, but I don't see it as a prank.
I can climb through a window if you lock a door.
I'm going to get into pranks and hijink stuff.
Yeah.
I'll find a way to fuck your wife.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, I love a good joke as much as the next guy, but I guess.
Hey, you can come fuck my wife.
Yeah, I'm really not into having sex with friends' wives.
That seems, I would think that would make it.
Totally hairless.
I think it would make it kind of awkward for us the next time.
Yeah.
I mean, I know that there are certain groups of fighter pilots who did this kind of thing.
And it reached a certain level of celebrity.
This makes sense.
But I guess I'm just not there.
Yeah.
It's not weird.
Just take a bunch of muscle relaxers.
Everyone's cool.
Well, listen.
All right, Jim Jam.
Okay.
It was great.
It was great sitting near you when we were eating sushi.
Did you feel my aura?
I certainly felt your aura.
Yes, I did.
I certainly did feel your aura.
And let's just say you and Ace of Steve are fantastic case in sushi restaurants.
Yes, we do.
Actually, you right back at you.
It really made me raise my opinion of you to know that you know where to go get the good sushi.
And by the way, it's not, it wasn't jammed.
There's nobody in that place.
It's very low-key.
And only the people in the know know where to go.
And that's what I like to say.
I don't say this on the air.
Don't say where it was.
No, I'm not going to say where it is.
I like having it be my little place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's your little place.
Yeah, it's our little place.
Okay.
And I love the chef, and I'm not going to say his name, but he's.
I love that guy.
Fucks his wife.
What's that?
I love that guy.
Fucked his wife.
Yeah, you got to have, you've got to stop doing that, I think.
I don't think it's okay if you have sex with everyone's wife.
I'm Clooney.
Yeah, I know.
Listen, I look forward to bumping into you again.
It's probably not going to happen.
Okay.
All right, George.
All right.
Take care.
Come quiet.
All right.
How's George Clooney?
George Clooney.
Okay, so guess what?
Ron Paul is going to be in the premium content this week, along with the rest of our Chuck Todd conversation.
And there's some more stuff.
There's always great stuff in the premium content.
It's a great way to help support the show.
In fact, it's the best way.
So how do you do that?
You go to JimmyDoorComedy.com.
You click on premium.
You make your donation.
It's only $5 a month.
And if you pay for the whole year at once, it saves you.
We'll give you a free month.
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That's what it works out to.
Not a big deal.
So thanks to everybody who does that.
And thanks, everybody, who's going to do that this week.
And you get to hear the Ron Paul and all the other stuff we talk about.
Okay.
That's right.
That's it.
So thanks, everybody, who sent the emails to be part of the live studio audience.
I appreciate that.
Your name has been placed on our list for the live show.
And we will get that to you.
We'll get you the pertinent information as that date draws clearer.
January 31st will be our first go at it.
We're going to try it in the Young Turk studios in Culver City.
We might move it to the YouTube studios in Playa Del Rey because they're bigger and they have more capacity.
So we'll see.
They're playing this all by ear.
But, you know, the Jimmy Dore show is this powerful satirical engine, and we need a live audience.
And we're going to get it.
Yippee for us.
Today's show was written.
That's right.
It was written by Mark Van Landuit, Frank Conniff, Steph Zamorano, Mike McRae, and Robert Yasamura.
All the voices today performed by the one and the only Mike McRae who can be found at mikemcrae.com.
and big thanks to Sean James, who helps make my computer run so I can do the show.
And if you have a Macintosh and there's something wrong with it, he can fix it for you right over the internet.
It's amazing.
You can send him an email at MacHelp at SeanJames.com.
And you spell Sean S-H-A-U-N.
That's MacHelp at SeanJames.com.
All right, that's it for this week.
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