I felt like the opening was weaker than the first one, since the elements of surprise were gone. I don’t know how they can sustain it with the same basic material (gum chewing, doll illustrations, mobile podium) for more than a few weeks. But, then again, it’s highly unlikely that Spicer has that much longevity himself.
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I agree, it wasn’t as funny, but it was still pretty great… I did like the fact that the podium just rolled out into the press corps at the end there. The one before, she just picked it up and ran at them.
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You just heard of the Smothers Brothers this week? You’re missing out!
The downside of pushing people’s buttons like that is that it gets shows kicked off the air. By now (40 - 50 years later) nobody is even talking about them, but SNL is still on after 42 years because they pull punches when not doing so will get them in trouble
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No, I knew who they were… I just heard a piece on NPR talking about what happened to their show and what they did. It was nice to hear about that sort of bravery and to be reminded that people can do something other than go along out of fear.
Which is precisely what happened to the Smothers Brothers, which was my point. They (Smothers) sued and won, but it didn’t matter, because the show was over. None the less, we’re remembering them for how bold they were in standing up against the establishment despite the fact that it cost them their show. Same with people who defied the black list (saw Trumbo this weekend…). Pulling your punches can mean you end up on the wrong side of history, is my point.
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So you’re saying we should promote Nazi-punching? 
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Just watched it and she really nailed the voice at one point.
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The first one is not sweet at all, but it’s definitely worth watching. Corporal punishment wasn’t allowed by the time I was a pupil at the Christian Brothers, but the disciplinarian attitude at the Catholic institutions was well known. I’m pretty sure people had some idea of how the church would cover up abuse, but the extent of it has only been coming out over the last couple of decades. JPII visited Ireland in the early 1980s, so there were a lot of John Pauls a couple of years older than me. You might not call the cover ups evil, but they were definitely a betrayal of how the church had presented itself. It was a very religious country, even when I was younger, and the Catholic church had a lot of influence on every area of life.
Angela’s Ashes is another film adaptation of a book based on the author’s Catholic childhood in Ireland (he was born in 1930). While it follows his own life, it provides an interesting perspective on what his mother had to go through.
When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood . . . nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcohol father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.
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