Thatā¦sweet jeebus Iām wiping tears of joy from my faceā¦beautiful, just beautiful. In my youth of considering what it would be like to be wealthy, I recall thinking about traveling all over the world, buying lots of books and houses (for the books, of course), and giving a fiver or even (gasp) ten or more dollars to the homeless shelter down the way. I donāt ever recall thinking about how easily I could subvert democracy and bend the populace to my will. Why canāt they just give money to lots of museums, libraries, and organizations devoted to feeding the poor or building schools or someshit. Would that be so hard to do?
Because anyone could use those things. How would the elite enjoy those things if āthose peopleā could just walk in?
/s
Butā¦ Ballet!
āWeāll lubricate your birds. Weāll rearrange your polar bearsā
hahahah oh wow
Hopefully he keeps it up if they do.
The ballet??
When I had the stomach to watch Sunday morning political shows, it was always amazing to see the parade of military contractors, agropolies, and oil companies which were the sole sponsors.
Oh wellā¦ surely they had no effect on the perceived legitimate boundaries of mainstream political discourse, right?
They did give a bunch of money to the Smithsonian to revamp the dinosaur exhibitā¦ (actually sounds like more self-interest)
Excellent question. This is my theory.
Mostly, itās because they are really, really horrible people and are wired different than anyone else. OK, not that big a leap.
There are some exceptions, but to arrive at this level like the Kochs - and not to confuse ārichā people with guys like this with staggering wealth - you have to be able to turn off that gene that would make you a normal person with empathy, etcā¦ Or just be born without it at all. Most normal, well adjusted and thought out people realize that they live in a larger world than that which closely surrounds them and behave accordingly.
Anyone that has been successful and is doing well should be thankful and feel fortunate. That probably applies to a good number of this readership as well. On a different level, of course, but guys like these two are NOT thankful or feel fortunate at all. In their eyes, they are on the same level as Jonas Salk.
Just my 2 centsā¦
Iām not exactly the hugest fan of the Koch brothers, but they do in fact give large amounts of money to all kinds of charities and organizations, including aforemtioned museums, libraries, and organizations for feeding the poor:
But thatās whatever to most people, people can only be one thing, not both things.
They sure got their moneyās worth for that 30 second spot. It got shown three times extra for FREE!
I think what he meant (and how I answered) is more about them fundamentally as human beings.
They wanted the exhibit fixed. They had noticed some inaccuracies from how they remember the paleolithic era.
For those of you in Canukistan or other third world country where you canāt access Daily Show links online, you can find a lovely video of this on youtube:
<3 Stewart
I canāt help wondering if weāre anywhere close to a critical mass of sanityā¦
Needs John Oliver. No one shits on the powerful like him. It was good, but too cute and not insulty enough. Also: whatās with the ballet bit? I feel like itās a veiled homophobic jibe.
Also: America would be better if those guys were dead. Just saying.
PS Comedy Central: you guys are fucking stupid. Last Week Tonight has it right: put up viral bite-size bits on youtube for sharability and international audience but keep the full eps for subscribers. For those that donāt know, Comedy Central geo-locks their shit to north america. Of course, if I feel like it, itās trivial to run a VPN and watch the clip. CC are not stopping anyone who wants to from watching their stuff, and they should realise by now that if people want to steal it, they will.
Oh, they can geo-locate a joke but not geo-locate viewer tracking? How about: Iām not going to your shitty regional site and digging manually through to find (or maybe not find) what Iām looking for. Iām going to click āokā on tunnelbear and watch it embedded where it is, for free. Or Iāll just go pirate it: http://watchseries.ag/serie/the_daily_show
+1 every word.
I wonder how Jon Stewartās skit would have gone in a world where the majority of newspapers and TV networks were more like Fox News rather than MSNBC; if Washington was abolishing many programs and cutting spending drastically and the Koch brothers were liberals who were legally working within the current system to try and elect liberals and get a liberal message out?
I wonder who he would demonize in this scenario?
