Comments on: Can We Teach Middle-Aged Liberal Dogs New Tricks?

By: Alyssa

Alyssa — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:30:08 +0000

Yeah I was less than impressed with Monday night’s Daily Show. After a minute or two of silence during that bit, my SO looks at me and says, “This is really dumb.” All I could say was, “Yeah.” It takes quite a while for Jon to tell Asif that these are inappropriate stereotypes and by that point, the jokes are so tired that there was no way to save it. He has done this bit before (in different contexts) and made it work, but all the times I can think of, it was Jon making the stereotypical jokes and getting told off by a correspondant. That dynamic actually works since it is so clearly Jon (the white guy) who is so clearly in the wrong that he just end up hanging his head and sputtering nonsense by the end.
@Becky: You got it. The reason Latin@ culture and Spanish isn’t well known is because it is considered low-class. This is the very reason people learn French in school instead of Spanish (even though Spanish would proove more useful). I remember a girl’s mother telling me that her daughter had to take ASL because she is NOT going to take a Spanish class (annunciating Spanish as if it were a bad word).

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:57:13 +0000

@aspiringexpat: Totally agree. I think that in a lot of ways it’s a class thing–Latinos are written off as immigrants, or perceived as all being low-class “Mexicans” (even though many of the large and powerful Hispanic communites here are definitely NOT Mexican).

Even when Jon Stewart took the Fox News dude to task when he said “Does Sotomayor know what it means to be American?” he didn’t fully grasp how insulting that comment was. Not only was Sonia Sotomayor born an American citizen, her parents–and grandparents–were born American citizens, and Sotomayor’s mother served in the US army. Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917.

Gah. But to Fox News, everyone with a Hispanic last name is just a Mexican here to mow their lawn.

By: Ista

Ista — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:20:50 +0000

I didn’t like any of it. But I especially didn’t appreciate the adding in of gay issues. Is that really necessary? Why can’t we actually have a discussion without having it turned into “Well, we’d have the gay people represented if she would have been a lesbian, or if we had one of the justices fuck dudes most of the time.”

By: aspiringexpatriate

aspiringexpatriate — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:33:56 +0000

@Becky: I’ve always wondered how that could possibly be the case, given the demographics of population, especially where I’ve lived, Dallas and Los Angeles. I didn’t have a huge amount of exposure to hispanic culture growing up, but aside from my brothers and father, my family is comprised of latinas. And now I live in the same area as them so I see them at every big holiday. It does still shock me how many people have no idea what it is.

By: orlando

orlando — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:22:30 +0000

I disagree with Kivrin and DangerMouse on this one, because the game is never going to be about winning over the rightwing nutters. The whole game is about shifting “normal”. The larger, day-to-day, casual normalizing of disrespect for women or minorities, or “othering” of any kind, is what gives the extemists a platform. Remove their platform and they have nothing to stand on. Doodz – stop bending over and making yourselves into platforms, just to show you’re above the doormats.

By: martha

martha — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:05:21 +0000

I really would not put Jon Stewart in the same category as Favreau, at all. Jon Stewart may miss the mark a few times, but the intention with his humor is consistently to poke holes and to raise questions.

The Favreau boob-grab was pure misogyny absent of any higher intent.

By: Spark

Spark — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:31:50 +0000

Hey, I’d take Jon over Newt any day of the week, but he doesn’t get a pass either. His first comment on Judge Sotomayor is that she’s fuckable? That’s low.

By: DangerMouse

DangerMouse — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:48:02 +0000

Really, I’m not scared of Jon so much as I’m scared of the people who are apparently even more ignorant, particularly those who do not seem to know that Puerto Rico is, in fact, part of the USA.

When I’m done being scared of them, I’ll deal with Aasif and Jon. Like Becky said, they’re missing some knowledge, but at least they know how to pronounce a name in Spanish, or they at least knew how to find someone who did.

By: Kivrin

Kivrin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:09:47 +0000

Eh, I gotta say, I could not be less disturbed by these clips — not when there are still so many proudly conservative men (and women!) extant in the population. Cracking on Liberal Dudes for being insufficiently liberal seems a lot like calling out certain “waves” of feminism for not being feminist enough. Once the Conservative A-holes start paying lip service to concepts like feminism, then I’ll worry about whether Liberal Dudes really “get it.”

By: Maggie

Maggie — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:51:34 +0000

Yeah, I was not impressed by Jon last night either. Especially the subtle “yeah, I’d totally ‘do’ Sotomayor too. Heh heh heh.” come on, man