Culture/Society
Tuesday night, TVLand’s normally apolitical sitcom Teachers joined the ranks of TV shows ridiculing religious people. In the episode, “Of Lice and Men,” public school teacher Mary Louise (Katie O’Brien) walks in on her pastor masturbating to a picture of her boyfriend.
The season finale of Showtime’s Billions culminated in U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) attempting to remove Trump appointed Attorney General Waylon “Jock” Jeffcoat (Clancy Brown) from office. Last episode, after Chuck discovered that AG Jeffcoat, a parody of AG Jeff Sessions, earned all of his money illegally, he plans to lure Jeffcoat into obstructing justice.
Having enjoyed my 82nd birthday, I am part of a group of about 50 million Americans who are 65 years of age or older. Those who are 90 or older were in school during the 1930s. My age cohort was in school during the 1940s. Baby boomers approaching their 70s were in school during the 1950s and early '60s.
Those who were begging for another insufferably woke feminist series after The Handmaid’s Tale are in luck. AMC’s new series Dietland is the latest show to cash in on the #MeToo movement in the name of #feminism. This program, however, aims to take things to a whole new level with the next natural step in stopping rapists: murder.
Has liberal Hollywood just completely run out of original material? Season four of Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a ditzy, nonsensical comedy series, makes me think so. The first six episodes released on May 30 are randomly sprinkled with snide comments against President Trump and conservatives in general, and even beats the dead horse of white privilege.
FX’s new transgender drama series, Pose, boasts the largest LGBTQ cast ever assembled for a scripted TV show—but that’s not enough. The show also wants to tackle Trump-era politics…like literally every show on TV today. Pose follows a group of transgender/gay people and their community trying to find their way in 1987 New York City.
Showtime’s Billions continues its vendetta against Attorney General Jeff Sessions by characterizing its Jeff-Sessions parody character, Attorney General Waylon “Jock” Jeffcoat (Clancy Brown), as a man who “recognizes no legal or moral authority, no justice but his own” and deserves “assassination."
On Wednesday, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and David Crary of the Associated Press hyped that the "the Trump administration is remaking government policy on reproductive health — moving to limit access to birth control and abortion." The pair spotlighted how "social and religious conservatives praise the administration,'" but failed to give an ideological label for the "women's-rights activists...[who] view the multi-pronged changes as a dangerous ideological shift." The journalists also slanted towards the pro-abortion side by quoting six critics of the Trump policy shift, versus just three supporters.
Liberal comedienne Michelle Wolf can’t get enough support for her White House Correspondent’s Dinner routine. In the bonus episode of David Letterman’s Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, he praises Wolf for having “the guts to stand up there” and “decimate the place.”
Havard Professor Khalil Muhammad claimed on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that President Donald Trump is a "really big part of the problem" for a spate of recent incidents where "white people [call] the police on people of color for insignificant reasons," as host Lulu Garcia-Navarro put it. Muhammad summaried the issue as "a problem of white fear being weaponized." Garcia-Navarro wondered if "the base of this...is a sort of cultural conversation that says black people in white spaces means there's something criminal going on."
The second season finale of CBS’s The Good Fight does not deviate from the show’s Trump obsession. With plots to assassinate the president and fictional Trump infidelity accusations, The Good Fight’s political agenda has never been clearer. The show announced its intentions early in the season with their impeachment episode, where the show claimed that the best way to impeach the president is to throw wildly false accusations at him until something sticks.
On Thursday's All Things Considered, NPR predictably hyped the impact of scandals involving the Catholic Church during their coverage of Ireland's abortion vote. Correspondent Alice Fordham noted that "during this ferociously noisy national debate [over abortion], the Church's role has seemed muted." She emphasized that "the Church's credibility in Ireland has suffered, after investigations uncovered child abuse and institutional abuse of unmarried mothers." Fordham later underlined that "many of those affected by the...abuses hope this referendum will mark a decisive defeat" for the Church.