US television

Subterms

    Latest story

    163 Shares48 Views

    Seth Meyers on the Epstein conspiracy: ‘This is a crisis of Trump’s making’

    by

    Late-night hosts discussed the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the “spite” behind Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the theories circulating over the death of Epstein, spurred on by the alleged missing minute from his jail cell video on the night of his death.He said that Trump is not in the right place to be handling it, as he’s “old” and “tired” and just came back from a golfing vacation in Scotland.While there, he opened a private new golf course, which was on the official White House live stream. “They’re not even pretending any more, there’s no separation,” Meyers said.Trump is “tired from all his golfing and self-enrichment” and was recently seen trying not to fall asleep during a press briefing with Mehmet Oz. “Imagine if Joe Biden did this,” he said.Meyers added that “he can’t hear or understand reporters’ questions any more” before playing footage of him getting confused over a recent question about Russia.Trump has been asked why he cut ties with Epstein and recently said he didn’t want to waste people’s time by going through the details. “Please, my man, waste our time!” Meyers said.He then “dug the hole even deeper” and “made it so much worse” by rambling on about Epstein stealing workers from his spa, which he said was one of the best spas in the world. “Stop talking about the spa – is it your safe word?” Meyers asked.But it’s “not just Trump who keeps digging a hole for himself”, there’s also Dan Bongino, an Epstein-obsessed podcaster who is now the deputy director of the FBI.Despite him claiming that the full, unedited tape would be released, experts have said that while it might be “unclear how much time is missing”, this isn’t the full tape after all.“This whole thing is a crisis of Trump’s making,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert reminded viewers that it was the last day of July, which means that the “basket of deplorable tariffs are gonna kick in” the day after.Trump had originally claimed he had made 200 deals ready for 1 August but “on the other hand, no he didn’t”, with just eight in place before the deadline.Colbert said that “his demands are insane” and many of the countries are included “just for spite”.This week also saw him revive the presidential fitness test for American schoolchildren so they could be “as fit as President Trump”. It had originally been retired in 2012 for a switch to a focus on individual health rather than athletic feats.Trump signed the executive order flanked by athletes, including former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who is a registered sex offender. Colbert called it “a brilliant way to distance yourself from the whole Epstein scandal”.This week also saw lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for clients such as OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Trump, make further complaints about how he is shunned while in Martha’s Vineyard.He had previously complained that his politics had made him a social pariah, but now he is suing a vendor who refused to serve him pierogi. He was later seen speaking to a police officer about the incident.“They have bigger crimes to investigate, like someone’s houseguest bringing a domestic chardonnay,” Colbert quipped. More

    More stories

    • 213 Shares145 Views

      in US Politics

      Losing Stephen Colbert and the Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason | Adrian Horton

      by

      Last Thursday, when Stephen Colbert announced on air that CBS had decided to cancel The Late Show, its flagship late-night comedy program, after 33 years in May of next year, I was shocked.For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.Reporting in the days since the announcement have lent some credence to CBS’s claim that this was “purely a financial decision”. Though The Late Show has led the field of late-night comedy in ratings for years, it only averages about 2.47 million viewers a night. Its ad revenue plummeted after the pandemic; Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the show loses $40m for CBS every year. Of the network late-night shows – NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – Colbert’s Late Show has the smallest footprint on social media, where Fallon’s celebrity gags still reign supreme. The format of late-night television – a host delivering a topical monologue, house band, celebrity guest interviews – is a living relic of a different time, when a youth-skewing audience would reliably pop on linear television at 11.30pm. The field has been contracting for years, with programs hosted by Samantha Bee, James Corden and Taylor Tomlinson ending without replacement. Ad revenue for the genre as a whole is down 50% from just seven years ago, in the middle of Trump 1.0. It’s long been assumed that the hosts currently in these once-coveted chairs would be the last, their programs expiring when they decided to step down.What’s shocking is that Colbert, who was reportedly set to renegotiate his one-year contract at the end of this season, was not given that time, which just so happens to coincide with a critical window for the intended merger of CBS parent company Paramount with Skydance Media. Three days before the announcement, Colbert called Paramount’s settlement with Trump a “big fat bribe” to incentivize the administration’s approval of this $8bn deal managed by two billionaire families.Regardless of Colbert’s contract timing, it seems the cancellation of The Late Show is a financial decision, just not in the way CBS is framing it. It’s not about the $40m The Late Show is losing per year – a lot of money, to be sure, though a drop in the bucket for the major players here – but the $8bn on the line with this merger. There were presumably other options; Late Night With Seth Meyers dispensed of its house band and musical acts last year to save money. With new billionaire ownership, there could be some business maneuvering, should independent political comedy be a priority. Colbert’s Late Show, a leading critic of Donald Trump on network television, is clearly not; the show may have been a money loser, but in this context, it’s a convenient sacrifice.And though it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at late-night television – I often do – it’s an especially disappointing one, both in the culture at large and in the dwindling 11.35pm time slot. For years, I have argued that the late-night shows have long outstripped their original function as comedy programs. They are satirical, occasionally relevant, sometimes profane, but hardly ever funny, in the traditional sense of making you laugh. Often, they resort to so-called “clapter” – laughter as a polite applause, jokes for agreement rather than laughter – in a deadening anti-Trump feedback loop. With the exception of The Daily Show, a cable program founded for the purpose of political satire, the shows basically serve two functions in the internet era: 1 Generate viral celebrity content as they promote another project, and 2 Comment freely on the news, unbound from the strictures of decorum, tone and supposed “objectivity” that hamstrings so much journalism in the US.The latter was, I’d argue, the most important contribution of late-night television in the Trump era, when the president and his minions exceeded parody, and Colbert was the best at it. Nimble, erudite, self-deprecating but exceptionally well-read, Colbert transformed from extremely successful Fox News satirist to the reverend father of late-night TV: principled, authoritative but hardly ever self-righteous, deeply faithful to the American project, steadfastly believing in the decency of others. (Colbert is a practicing Catholic and die-hard Lord of the Rings fan, facts that sometimes snuck into his monologues.) At times, such old-school values felt insufficient for the moment; the format of late-night comedy as a whole has proven futile, even pathetic, in the face of Donald Trump’s brand of shamelessness, the Maga movement’s ability to turn everything into a joke. But these hosts, and the Daily Show-trained Colbert especially, did something that the rest of news media or the sprawling celebrity and comedian podcast network could not: call bullshit on the administration with the imprimatur of a major television network, and say exactly what they were feeling.That ability proved useful to me, as a viewer, at times when it seemed standard media was incapable of articulating what was happening. During the pandemic, or the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, or on January 6, or when Trump was re-elected, or when Republicans mocked Californians during the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year, late-night television had the freedom to express outrage, and Colbert in particular to express moral injury. The jokes were almost never surprising; they weren’t really even jokes. But it still felt soothing to see someone say them, with corporate backing, at an institution that still carried enough name recognition to, well, merit a “late-night roundup”.Colbert, ultimately, will be fine. He is a skilled comedian whose talents weren’t always well-tapped by the strict format of late-night comedy. Perhaps he will join the legion of comedians with podcasts, speaking directly to fans; perhaps he will release a special. But his absence from late-night television spells doom for the rest of the format, and more importantly for freedom of speech on the big networks. Late-night comedy has been fighting a losing battle for a long time, and The Late Show was never going to out-influence the rising tide of rightwing media, the manosphere or any number of independent shows in a fracturing media landscape. But the fact that he could try, from one of the more famed perches in television, still meant something. More

    • 238 Shares134 Views

      in US Politics

      The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy | Jesse Hassenger

      by

      The idea that the political career of Donald Trump would be a goldmine for comedy died a long time ago, with the coffin accepting stray nails for the past five years. The latest and possibly last such nail is the cancellation of The Late Show, the CBS late-night talkshow hosted by Stephen Colbert since the fall of 2015, and originated by David Letterman when the network poached him from NBC in 1993. At this point, Trump hasn’t just made topical late-night comedy look outdated, hackneyed and an insufficient response to his reign of terror; he’s also made a chunk of it flat-out go away.There will be time to eulogize Colbert’s particular talkshow style later; the Late Show isn’t leaving the air for another 10 months, when his contract is up. Surely that leaves plenty more time to savage the president – and Colbert has been in this slot since right around the time Trump became a real contender in the presidential race, so why has this only now come to a head? Seemingly because the axing of the Late Show franchise follows the $16m settlement of a frivolous Trump lawsuit against CBS and their newsmagazine show 60 Minutes over the show’s editing of a 2024 interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Colbert made great fun of his bosses’ payout as a cowardly “bribe” designed to appease the Trump administration, who are in the position to approve or deny the sale of Paramount, the corporate owners of CBS, to the company Skydance. In other words, the pre-merger nixing a comedian who regularly goofs on Trump on network TV seems like a convenient bit of timing – maybe even an unspoken bonus to go along with those millions of dollars.The network, of course, has characterized the decision as “purely financial” amid a period when most traditional late-night shows have struggled. As excuses go, it’s not entirely unconvincing. After all, Colbert isn’t being replaced with another host; The Late Show is simply going the same route as its short-lived companion series After Midnight (and The Late Late Show before it). CBS is surrendering the late-night block entirely. This represents a major retreat after the Letterman deal made the network a genuine player for the first time in ages. Presumably it’s back to reruns and old movies going forward.In that sense, this decision does transcend politics. CBS has ripped off a bandage that the big three networks have been applying to similar wounds for years. Late-night programming simply doesn’t mean as much as it used to, with smaller network lead-ins from primetime lineups and more audience choices for comedy, talk, music or even the dopey celeb games that Jimmy Fallon throws together. Saturday Night Live has retained some cultural cachet, thanks to a combination of lower commitment (20 episodes a year, on a night where many people don’t have work the next day, versus eight times as many, all airing on weeknights), legacy branding (it’s still known as a star showcase and political comedy go-to, no matter how wan those cold-open sketches get), and sketch comedy that travels well online. These days, it’s routinely one of the highest-rated network shows of the week when it airs a new episode, offering an encouraging sign that old time-slot rules about viewership no longer apply. It’s also extremely expensive to produce and difficult to replicate, which nonetheless looks more viable than the tired talkshow format.View image in fullscreenBroadly, this could be a good thing for comic minds including Colbert or Conan O’Brien. Some comedians seem unable to resist the siren call of late-night talkshows, chasing the Tonight Show dream even when that actual job remained out of reach. O’Brien is a singularly brilliant comedy writer and performer; as great as his late-night shows could be, in retrospect should he have spent three decades primarily in that waning medium? Colbert, meanwhile, did his strongest political satire playing a parody of a conservative commentator on The Daily Show and its later spinoff The Colbert Report. His warmth and sometimes-sharp humor made him a good “real” talkshow host – and by most standards, a successful one. In recent matchups, his Late Show has been the most-watched such program across the major networks. That he can face cancellation anyway should (alongside O’Brien losing his Tonight Show gig years ago) signal to newcomers that the rarified air of the national late-night talkshow host is also getting pretty thin, maybe unbreathable.Yet Trump has sucked up some of that oxygen, too. Even with the “challenges” cited by CBS, it’s difficult to believe that vanquishing a longtime issuer of Trump mockery wasn’t at least considered a side benefit of canceling The Late Show. Even if the decision was, as claimed, a financial one, it accompanies another financial decision: that Paramount could afford to pay Trump $16m rather than proceed with litigation that many seemed to think they could win. That’s precisely the kind of expense that could diminish how, say, your late-night talkshow attracts more eyeballs than The Tonight Show.Beyond Trump personally smudging up the balance sheets, he’s helped to hasten the demise of late-night comedy simply by being himself, seeming to provide the perfect target: a venal, dimwitted perma-celebrity with an army of devoted sycophants. But after two non-consecutive administrations have flooded the zone with grotesqueries, performing a lightly zinging monologue or sketches as a warmup act for good-natured interviews seems unlikely to entice either those craving anti-Trump catharsis, or those desperate to believe in his strongman powers.That Colbert took a somewhat less cutesy approach than his competitor Fallon seemed to be all that was necessary to mark him as a troublemaker. The thing is, Trump might have ultimately consumed him either way. By providing a ready-made caricature of himself, intentionally or not, the president has beaten the system again. It may not be worth mourning the hacky, presidential-themed jokes we might miss in a future with fewer talkshows than ever. But it does feel like the enforcement of one of Trump’s more minor cruelties: the ability to see himself as the only real star in the world. More

    • 213 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      I chaired the FCC. The 60 Minutes settlement shows Trump has weaponized the agency | Tom Wheeler

      by

      It is time to unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Paramount Global, the parent of CBS Television, has agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Presumably, the FCC can now cease its slow-walking of the Paramount-Skydance Media merger.Just two days after the president took office, the agency’s new chair, Brendan Carr, inserted the FCC into the issues in the Trump lawsuit that alleged “news distortion”. As the New York Post headlined: “Trump’s FCC pick Brendan Carr says ‘60 Minutes’ editing scandal could affect Paramount-Skydance merger review.”That lawsuit was filed in the final week of the 2024 presidential campaign under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a statute historically used against false advertising. The case was filed in a single-judge federal district court that one legal publication characterized as “a favored jurisdiction for conservative legal causes and plaintiffs”. CBS characterized the case as “without merit”.The 60 Minutes broadcast aired in October; the day before, a different excerpt had appeared on Face the Nation. Soon after, the Center for American Rights – a group that describes itself as “a public interest law firm dedicated to protecting Americans’ most fundamental constitutional rights” – filed a complaint at the FCC alleging CBS had engaged in “significant and substantial news alteration”. The complaint was dismissed as seeking “to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment”. Immediately upon becoming the FCC chair, Carr reversed that decision and ordered a formal proceeding on the matter (but let stand the dismissal of a complaint against a local Fox station over its 2020 election coverage).The election of Trump and the installation of a Trump-appointed FCC chair transformed the Paramount/CBS merger from a review of the public interest merits of the transfer of broadcast licenses into a broader question that included the 60 Minutes editing. Carr told an interviewer: “I’m pretty confident that the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction.”The formal paperwork for FCC approval of the license transfers was submitted 10 months ago, on 6 September 2024. Now that the lawsuit has been settled, it will be interesting to see how quickly the FCC acts.The CBS case is just one example of the tactical leverage the Trump FCC regularly exerts over those it regulates. Carr, who wrote the FCC chapter in the “Project 2025” Maga blueprint, has not been shy about using this authority to achieve such political goals.Even before formally assuming the FCC chair position, Carr began exercising chair-like authority to advance the Maga agenda. This began with a letter to the CEOs of Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft and Apple alleging: “you participated in a censorship cartel … [that is] an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled.” Going beyond traditional FCC authority, he threatened: “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers.” Carr suggested he might investigate whether those editorial decisions were made in good faith.Recently, Carr conditioned the approval of Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications on Verizon agreeing to drop its corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Continuing his anti-diversity efforts, he launched an investigation into Comcast Corporation because it promotes DEI as “a core value of our business”.In his pre-FCC chair days, Carr championed press freedom. In a 2021 statement, he wrote: “A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official.” Once he became Trump’s FCC chair, however, he not only picked up on the 60 Minutes matter, but also launched an investigation into the public broadcasters NPR and PBS “regarding the airing of … programming across your broadcast member stations”.The FCC’s regulatory authority directly covers about one-sixth of the American economy while also affecting the other five-sixths that rely on the nation’s communications networks. What was once an independent, policy-based agency has been transformed into a performance-based agency, using any leverage it can discover or invent to further the Trump Maga message.

      Tom Wheeler was the chair of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017 More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’

      by

      Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”.He said it was “worth remembering that people don’t like this stuff” and that while Trump might have promised to crack down on criminality, instead he has been “letting Stephen Miller run rampant” targeting everyday workers.Meyers called it a “wildly unpopular crackdown on innocent people living their lives” and Trump now trying to control the narrative showed how he is “terrified” of losing more support.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert said that there was a possibility that thunderstorms might force Trump to cancel the military parade planned for the weekend.“You made God mad and now he’s shooting lightning at your birthday tanks,” Colbert joked.He added: “If he gets too wet, it all slides off and someone has to carry his face and his hair around in a bucket.”It’s proving to be an unpopular plan already with six in 10 Americans calling it a bad use of government money. “He’s already throwing a big military parade out in Los Angeles,” Colbert added.This weekend will also see planned pushback across the US dubbed the “No Kings” protests. Trump was asked if he saw himself as a king this week and he claimed that was not how he saw himself. “Why dost thou sons look so inbred?” Colbert quipped.He also spoke about Trump’s unpopular visit to the theatre and joked about his dumb responses to questions on the red carpet. “His brain is wet bread,” he said before joking that Trump probably believes Les Misérables is about a character called “Lester Misérables”.Trump has raged against drag performances at the Kennedy Center so some decked-out drag queens walked in to watch the show near Trump. “That is amazing except for anyone sitting behind them,” he said.Colbert also looked at the coverage of the Los Angeles protests, ridiculing a CNN segment that commented on the smell of weed during a peaceful demonstration. “They better call a Swat team and a taco truck,” he said.This week also saw the Trump administration target the use of any “improper ideology” at the National zoo. “All monkeys doing it in front of our preschoolers must be married,” Colbert said.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host joked about surviving the “post-apocalyptic hellscape” that is Los Angeles.He also brought up the “Maga-friendly” Kennedy Center and how Trump going to see Les Misérables was “like Kanye going to see Fiddler on the Roof”.He added: “Usually when Trump watches a staged rebellion, it’s Fox News’s coverage of the riots here in LA.”Kimmel joked that Trump was “putting out fires with his brain” given how calm things have really been in the city, and compared it with the January 6 riot where Trump and his followers called those involved “concerned citizens on a sightseeing tour”.He spoke about the the planned protests this weekend, saying: “I really hope that doesn’t put a damper on Trump’s big birthday parade.”This week also saw Trump admit in an interview to once playing the flute when he was younger. “I feel like I’d have the same reaction to a gorilla using a curling iron,” Kimmel said.In other news, Rand Paul’s refusal to support Trump’s bill that would increase the national debt also saw him disinvited from this year’s White House picnic, but after he told reporters, Trump claimed this wasn’t the case. “Trump thought RuPaul was trying to get in,” he joked. More

    • 238 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Win a game show, become a US citizen? We’ve entered the realm of the truly depraved | Dave Schilling

      by

      I guess Republicans really love game shows. Just a few days after Fox aired its “isn’t Trump wild” guessing game, What Did I Miss, it was revealed that the TV producer Rob Worsoff has pitched the United States Department of Homeland Security on a series premise he calls The American, which would give immigrants a chance to compete in a series of challenges for the prize of US citizenship. The actual process of winning citizenship is obviously too boring to film. Filling out an N-400 form? Snore. A written exam? I’d rather watch a dog eat grass. Skip all that and give us an obstacle course instead.People have stupid ideas all the time. My child thought it would be fun to squeeze lemon juice in his hot chocolate. He took one sip, almost barfed on the table, then begged me to order him another, lemon-less beverage. Stupid ideas are great, because most of them are harmless. “Oh, I ate a large bug off the ground. Whoops.” The only stupid ideas that are a problem are the ones where the actual government considers cosigning them. The DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin was asked by Time magazine what the status of Worsoff’s pitch was and responded via email that it “has not received approval or rejection by staff”.Gotta really think this one through, I guess. Something like this must be thoroughly vetted by serious people. How cruel is this one, exactly? How desirable is the bloodthirsty demo for advertisers these days? Can we sell a presenting sponsorship? And is this for streaming or broadcast? Can we get Chris Hardwick to host? These are all vital questions to consider before making a decision in show business.Such an idea would be eye-rollingly low-class in normal times, but as the Trump administration attempts to ramp up deportations and to do away with the constitutional right of citizenship by birth (and federal courts bravely fight back), this dumb concept travels at warp speed to the dimension of the truly depraved. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services website takes great pains to describe the process of becoming an American as solemn and full of responsibility. Step 10 of the site’s “10 Steps to Naturalization” is “Understanding U.S. Citizenship”. It states: “Citizenship is the common thread that connects all Americans. Check out this list of some of the most important rights and responsibilities that all citizens – both Americans by birth and by choice – should exercise, honor, and respect.”Yes, but what if you had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar first?To make his pitch even more appealing to the bigwigs in Washington, Worsoff suggested a few choice ideas for challenges that correspond to the most stereotypical aspects of life in America’s 50 states. A pizza-making contest for New York, a rocket-launching challenge for Florida, and a “gold rush challenge” for California. Nothing says “vital skills for living in 2025” like panning for gold in a pair of tattered Levi’s 501s. Perhaps Levi’s will sponsor the segment. Gosh, this thing pays for itself.But why stop there? Maybe a Breaking Bad-themed meth-making challenge for New Mexico. Polygamy challenge for Utah? How efficiently can you operate a turn-of-the-20th-century steel mill in Pennsylvania? Can you safely land a plane at Newark airport? For Washington state, you just have to answer trivia questions about Seattle inaccuracies in the sitcom Frasier. The possibilities for inanity are significant.In order to advance to the next round of this bottomless pit of human misery, contestants would be subjected to a vote, which Worsoff described as “like a presidential election”. Oh, how fun. Can you contest the results of that vote, too? Worsoff said in an CNN interview that his idea is “not like the Hunger Games”. Mostly because the costume budget isn’t as high.The Democratic opposition in Congress has, naturally, lined up to publicly condemn such a grotesque notion. The New York congressman Jerry Nadler said on X (formerly known as a useful platform for conversation) that “human lives are not game show props.”A nice sentiment, but I must be the bearer of bad news. Human lives have been game show props since the invention of the form. In 2005, Fox (why is it always Fox?) aired a reality show called Who’s Your Daddy, where a woman had to guess which of eight men was her real father. If she guessed correctly, she’d win both an awkward conversation and $100,000. Presumably the cash prize would go directly to her therapy bills. Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, while not a game show (the real winners are the viewers, I suppose) is a reality universe where women frequently abuse alcohol to the detriment of their own lives and the lives of others around them. If human lives are not props in these shows, are they even entertaining to the masses?An idea like The American, then, is the natural extension of the genre, taking someone’s desperation, fear, and overwhelming desire and squeezing all the drama possible out of it. Worsoff told CNN that he had pitched this idea to previous Democratic administrations, but weirdly, we never heard about it back then. It’s only now that such a concept feels enough in line with the zeitgeist of immigration paranoia that Worsoff felt emboldened to speak freely about it.He said: “I’m putting a face to immigration. This is a great celebration of America.” Yes, it is a celebration of America. Specifically our worst impulses: the desire to make everything a game and revel in the bread-and-circuses spectacle of life and death, but to cloak it in nobility and charity. Worsoff continued: “I’m very fortunate and lucky and honored to be an American. And I want everybody to understand the process.”At no point did I think that a pizza-making contest was part of the process.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

      by

      The lead plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting Donald Trump’s order to dismantle Voice of America has said the media has to resist as the administration becomes increasingly aggressive against the press.“I never in a million years thought I would have to fight for freedom of the press in the United States of America. And yet here we are,” says Patsy Widakuswara, the White House bureau chief for the broadcasting network. “As journalism is under attack, it feels empowering to fight back. We need more people to resist and fight back.”Kicked out of press conferences on multiple continents for asking pointed questions, Widakuswara is not the type to balk at challenging powerful leaders. In her three decades as a journalist those instincts have served her well, and perhaps at no better time than now.The White House reporter is now leading the charge to save VOA, which the US president has described as “anti-Trump” and “radical”. In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively cut off its funding via its parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).Launched in 1942, initially to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA is a federally funded international broadcasting network, produced in dozens of languages that reach about 350 million people around the globe.View image in fullscreenFor decades it has been seen as a form of soft power, encapsulating the values of liberal America. But after Trump’s order its operations have been suspended, with virtually all of VOA’s staff of 1,300 placed on immediate administrative leave and about 600 contractors terminated.The lawsuit filed by Widakuswara and several of her colleagues follows lawsuits the Trump administration has taken out against ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US, and attempts to expel some press from the White House. Those backing the case argue that VOA has for decades provided an important source of objective information, especially in illiberal environments.“These are not just women in Afghanistan or farmers in Africa,” said Widakuswara of VOA’s audience. “They’re also activists in Russia and decision makers all around the world who are also facing the onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from Russia, Iran, China, and extremist organisations like [Islamic State] and al-Qaida.”At home having a quiet Saturday when she received the email about VOA’s demise, Widakuswara says to do nothing was inconceivable. In a matter of days she had rallied a team to fight against it, and by Friday morning had filed a lawsuit.“It’s just the way I’m wired,” she says over the phone from Washington. “Congress gave us a mandate to tell America’s story to the world through factual, balanced and comprehensive reporting. If they want to change the size, structure or function of VOA, they can’t just shut us down. They must go through Congress. That’s the law.”View image in fullscreen‘Holding autocratic governments to account’Starting her career in Jakarta in the late 90s, just as Indonesia’s decades-long dictator Suharto was being toppled, the Indonesian-born journalist has seen first-hand the impacts of authoritarian regimes.Widakuswara worked at a campus radio station, and later as a fixer for foreign journalists when they flooded in to cover the event, as mass student protests inundated the parliament building and forced Suharto to step down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That was my first taste in media,” she says. “Holding autocratic governments to account.”The experience led to a career in television, and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship to obtain her master’s in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. After stints at the BBC and Channel 4, she was named VOA’s White House bureau chief in 2021.Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president.Another motivating factor is to support her 47 colleagues at VOA on J-1 or journalist visas in the US, who could be sent back to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and Myanmar which have previously jailed journalists.Widakuswara’s efforts to save VOA appeared to score an early win, with a judge in April ordering the Trump administration to restore funding to VOA and other US-funded media. But the preliminary injunction was only a temporary measure.On Saturday, just as VOA staff were preparing for a “phased return” to work, a court of appeals issued a stay on that ruling, saying the court did not have the authority to block Trump’s executive order regarding employment matters.Keenly aware of the unfavourable political climate she is up against, Widakuswara says it is hard to know if their case will ultimately prevail, but the only choice is to try. “Even if it’s just like a 5% chance or even a 1% chance, that’s better than a 0% chance, which is what happens if we do nothing.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

      by

      Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for the news outlets NPR and PBS, accusing them of being biased.NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.The US president has long had an antagonistic relationship with most mainstream news media, previously describing them as the “enemy of the people”.A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on leading roles in his administration.“National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) receive taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),” Trump said in his executive order. “I therefore instruct the CPB board of directors and all executive departments and agencies to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”He added that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.The CPB budget has already been approved by Congress through 2027, which raises questions about the scope of Trump’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 40 million Americans listen to NPR public radio each week, and 36 million watch a local television station from the PBS network each month, according to their estimates.The NPR director, Katherine Maher, estimated in March that the radio station would receive about $120m (£102m) from the CPB in 2025, “less than 5% of its budget”.The media rights group RSF warned on Friday about “an alarming deterioration in press freedom” in the US under Trump and “unprecedented” difficulties for independent journalists around the world. More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Stephen Colbert on potential alien life: ‘Take us to your leader, we don’t have one anymore’

      by

      Late-night hosts spoke about the Easter weekend, potential alien life and Donald Trump’s recent meeting with the Italian prime minister.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert pointed out that this year’s Easter Sunday also falls on 4/20, the unofficial holiday for weed enthusiasts.He joked that it would be “the Sunday he is risen and you is high”.This week saw Trump meet with the rightwing Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Some had hoped she might “ease the tariff tension” as she is often referred to as a “Trump whisperer”.He then played footage of Meloni speaking in Italian to Trump who complimented her directly after. “I’ll have the same thing she ordered but double meatball, double parm,” Colbert joked.Meloni has now made an offer to Trump to make an official visit to Italy, a place Colbert said he would feel at home as he “looks like a pile of prosciutto with a little spaghetti on top”.Due to massive cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA might have to stop inspections at food facilities. Colbert joked that we would know get to enjoy Tyson’s tangy buffalo beaks and thumbs.The administration is “actively trying to make health officials dumber” with halted efforts to collect data on many issues. It will now lead to “TLC’s sexy new reality show Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea Island”.This is all “just the tip of the cutberg” with the weather service also in trouble, seeing 300 employees let go as severe storm season ramps up, “when we need the weather people the most”.Colbert said that Twisters “will soon be the only programming on the weather channel”.He said that some are scrambling to make major discoveries “before science ends forever” such as this week’s reveal that there is possible signature of life on a distant planet.Officials have said that further studies are needed but Colbert expressed excitement, saying: “Please aliens take us to your leader, we don’t have one anymore.”Conspiracy theorists have also claimed that this week’s controversial all-female Blue Origin space stunt was faked. “Oh, I don’t know if I believe that,” he said. “Maybe Kubrick could fake the moon landing but you could never fake Gayle King’s sheer terror.”Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also spoke about Easter. “If Jesus comes back and sees what’s going on, we are in deep trouble,” he said.Kimmel noted that he was “not sensing a lot of Easter spirit this year” and that Easter Sunday falling on 4/20 will lead to “some very long and confusing egg hunts”.Egg prices remain high, which has seen an “outpouring of tips for other stuff you can colour instead” such as potatoes and marshmallows, but Kimmel said Jesus would only come back for “boiled eggs”.In response to the sky-high prices, he asked: “Is anyone else tired of all the winning yet?”Meanwhile, Trump has given the White House an “extreme makeover” with plenty of gold added. His press secretary called it “the golden office for the golden age”, which Kimmel called “quite the spin”.He joked that for someone anti-DEI, he has the “same taste as Liberace” before asking: “Do you think Donald Trump understands that the story of King Midas is a cautionary tale?”He also spoke about the Meloni visit, joking that Trump probably took her to an Olive Garden to “make her feel at home” before airing a clip of him showing off “his vast knowledge of other lands”.Trump referred to the Congo and said: “I don’t know what that is.” Kimmel asked: “When is someone gonna show that man a map?”He said the government is running like a “well-soiled machine” before moving on to the alien planet news, detailing that researchers have found an equivalent of sea scum. Kimmel joked that we “may have found a new home for Ted Cruz”.The planet is 120 light years away, so Kimmel said “off you go Elon and Jeff, time to climb into those space dildos and boldly go away”.He also joked that we have a “better chance of being visited by aliens than Canadians” with tourism rates down post-tariffs. More