Mr. Spencer isn’t quite as prominent as the other lawmakers that Mr. Cohen has fooled, including Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, and Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent.
I know this isn’t the point of this piece, but SBC didn’t exactly fool Bernie.
Unless fool means “caught him acting in a civil way with someone he clearly thought was a nut.”
Thanks, great overview. Once again, Michael Harriot brings it.
He does! I really like his work.
The right wing media has spent the last 25-30 years weaving it’s own reality to keep electing these ass puppet corporate clowns into office to serve the super rich.
What the problem with running something akin to Psy-ops on your own population for that long???
For one it leaves an opening for a more savy and seasoned Psy-Warriors ( like Putin ) to seize the levers, and a citizenry so split from reality and or stupid that they don’t even realize they’ve been had.
In a statement shortly after the episode aired, Ralston said Spencer’s actions and language in the video are “reprehensible.”
must’ve missed it, who is “Ralston”? anyway, there ought to be many more of these ‘revealing’ interviews. (at least revealing in the sense of showcasing how hateful the right has become out of the sunlight)
Mr. Spencer had an opportunity to show the content of his character, and he did so, most emphatically.
See also:
Ralston is the Georgia House Speaker. And The Idiot got primaried out of office at the last election, so he’ll be gone in a few months even if he doesn’t resign over this.
Reminiscent of Kentucky Congressman who effortlessly uses the n-word, on the radio, when fielding a caller’s question. A gaffe is a gaffe because it is revelatory of the person’s true nature.
You know, I can almost understand repeating rubbish off of a teleprompter unrehearsed.
Pulling your pants down and threatening to touch someone with their ass as some sort of a defensive move against terrorists? LOL! Wut???
As an aside, this reminds me more of Michael Moore’s early work when he gave people enough rope to hang themselves (before he just went from documentary to propaganda.)
And finally, yelling the N-word if you are being kidnapped by terrorists probably would call a lot more attention to the situation. Of course, it probably would also reduce the likelihood of anyone helping you.
“Some masked terrorists are trying to kidnap that man with his pants at his ankles who is screaming racial slurs.”
“Eh… it will work itself out.”
Yes, the excuse that Baron Cohen has MADE people act like complete and utter morons in front of the camera is bogus: people who are sane and stable continued to act sane and stable under the pressure of his incitement.
Now, this fellow here, I think Baron Cohen might have done a public service in revealing what an idiot the man is. There is just something wrong in your head if you think a terrorist might drop a gun because he’s afeared to catch teh gay from your naked fanny.
Is this real life?
I do feel more and more like I’m caught in a landslide.
Every damn day…
I mean, it all seemed plausible enough until the bare ass defence bit. How deranged must his mind be to go through with this? This isn’t just racism and bigotry, this is insanity. How Sasha Baron Cohen manages to keep it together when things work out like that is beyond me.
Or a lahar.
The bit of this that made my jaw drop was his impersonation of a Chinese tourist, most of which seemed to involve invoking stereotypes from any Asian country EXCEPT China. Has this guy ever left Georgia?
Sure, just as apt as my usual go-to, “fetid torrential shitstorm.”
I’m not sure about it any more.
Satire has a function of relief in any environment where some things are so weird you need a fool to speak the truth. However, what Steward and Colbert, and all the others now fulfill a function by being the “voice of reason” in an un-reasonable public discourse (aka, the media) which becomes directly related to the level of mistrust of the media. If you speak of fake news or if you criticise incompetent “mass media”: you are displaying in-group disdain for the current situation of a
part of the public debate, somehow delegitimising it.
This function satire now assumes and embraces is still a function of relief. But it’s already so much dug in that entrenched seems an understatement.
