Note: The first episode shown during the Fourth Quarter 2016 was a rerun of #742 on September 19, 2016.
Episode #744: Are You Serious?
First Broadcast: 9/26/16
As of September 25, the latest national polls for President have Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by less than 2 percentage points. Two!! The fact that Trump, a sexist, racist, prejudiced, bigoted, pathologically lying, narcissist, is being supported by so many people just mystifies me. Is it because he happens to have an "R" after his name instead of a "D," and that's all those people care about? Or is it because his supporters don't care about all his faults because they're just as prejudiced and ignorant as he is? Is this the logical outcome of people watching Fox News for two decades? Have his supporters been so programmed to not trust "the media" that they no longer trust any fact-checking whatsoever? Have white people become so complacent that they think they can ride out a Trump term, disregarding all the people of color--especially children--who worry that the preferred candidate of white supremacists has an actual chance of winning the election? I suppose I'll have a lot more questions after the first debate between Trump and Clinton, assuming I haven't lost my mind by then...
Episode #745: Words Matter
First Broadcast: 10/3/16
Both of us at Free New York watched the first Presidential debate between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump, and it's safe to say that neither of us were thrilled by the event. True, Clinton gave at least four false statements during the debate, but Trump made at least 34 false statements, or more than one every three minutes. Trump also interrupted Clinton at least 51 times, or more than once every two minutes. It's a wonder the moderator Lester Holt was able to keep up at all, but thankfully he wasn't alone in fact-checking Trump's nonsense. Is it too much to hope that Trump's all-out assault on truth will finally convince reasonable people in this country to not elect him to the Presidency? For those wondering "What the hell do you have to lose?", perhaps there's a review of a biography of Hitler that you should read sooner rather than later.
Episode #746: Men Yelling Indistinctly
First Broadcast: 10/10/16
In this time capsule, we voice our reactions to the one and only debate between the Democratic and Republican Vice Presidential candidates that occured on October 4, 2016. While there were many, many questionable and false statements made by both men, one that stood out for me in particular was this remark from Republican Mike Pence:
Senator, when African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?
Apparently, Pence is completely unfamiliar with both the concept that a) everyone has an inherent bias of some sort; and b) an institution with racist practices can instill a racist attitude in someone--even towards their own race. For a governor--let alone a potential Vice President--to not recognize that such a concept exists, that can't possibly help reform police departments so that their officers kill less black people (and people in general) across the country. As someone once said: "I think we can do better than that."
Episode #747: A Lot of Bad Shit
First Broadcast: 10/17/16
I originally thought I was going to discuss the second "debate" between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but as we were preparing to tape our program, several different women went public with their accounts of how Donald Trump groped, kissed, or otherwise touched them inappropriately, completely contradicting his denial during the debate that he had not done such a thing, and inadvertantly corroborating his brags to Billy Bush about how he likes to "grab" women "by the pussy." It's almost enough to distract people from realizing that the rise of Trump and his backing by the accurately described "basket of deplorables" (mostly men, it seems) provides us an up-close answer to the question, "How did Germany allow Hitler to rise to power?" It was a question that puzzled people in the Allied countries for decades after World War II ended. Complex experiments were devised to derive some clues, since the thought that anyone like Hitler could come to power in a country like the United States was almost truly incomprehensible to many. And yet, here we are, "banality of evil" be damned. I shudder to think what we might be talking about next week.
Episode #748: Elbow Sex
First Broadcast: 10/31/16
Repeated: 12/12/16
This week, we take a short break from the politics to give our reviews of the Fox network's remake/reboot of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Long story short: We weren't impressed. Compared to the original from 1975, it was too clean, too pretty, and really missed the point having Frank-N-Furter cast as a woman instead of a man. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised since this was directed by the same person who directed High School Musical, but I at least expected some of the raunch to remain. Sadly, for the second time this month, I must quote the source: "I think we can do better than that."
Episode #749: From The Left
First Broadcast: 11/7/16
In this last episode before the 2016 Presidential election, we at Free New York implore all of you who can vote to not vote for Donald Trump. I probably don't have to worry about our New York viewers, since the latest polls here have Clinton winning the state by around 20 percentage points. However, regardless of where you live, it would be a colossal mistake to vote for the apparent champion of anti-semetic, misogynist, racist, white supremacists across the country to be the next President of the United States. For some of you, that might raise a question: If not Trump, then who do you vote for to show your discontent with the Democrats over how they helped screw Bernie Sanders out of the nomination? Well, if you're in New York State, you could probably safely vote for Jill Stein and not affect the general outcome too much. A safer option for New Yorkers might be to follow Bernie's suggestion and vote for Hillary Clinton on the Working Families Party line. If you're in a swing state where the vote totals are expected to be close, Clinton might be the best choice there also, since she would still be the better political adversary to have in the White House in the end, compared to Trump. In any event, let's hope all the weirdness of this ridiculous campaign ends when the results are known on Tuesday... assuming they are known on Tuesday... maybe I better lie down for a while. P.S.: Don't forget to VOTE.
Episode #750: The Weird Shit
First Broadcast: 11/14/16
Repeated: 3/13/17
So... here we are. The nightmare scenario. Even though Donald Trump lost the popular vote for President to Hillary Clinton by at least 200,000 votes, his apparent win in our nonsensical Electoral College means that he is now... gulp... the President-elect of the United States. I certainly didn't see this coming, since most of the pollsters were predicting a Clinton victory right up until the point that Trump won. That, and possibly living in a borough where voters went almost 9-1 against Trump made me unable to conceive how so many other people could voluntarily elect such an openly prejudiced bully to the highest office in the nation. Michael Moore was one of the few people who did anticipate a Trump win, which maybe shouldn't have been so surprising in retrospect. After all, like someone trapped in solitary confinement who purposefully breaks their own toilet, all the Trump supporters in the Midwest may have voted the way they did because they thought it was the only way they could express their rage at their situation in a way that could be heard. They could also all be racists, so it's hard to know for sure. All I can say for now is that the states can't pass National Popular Vote bills soon enough. And maybe, just maybe, the members of the Electoral College can still save us all from one of the worst decisions ever made...
Episode #751: Damaged Goods From the Get Go
First Broadcast: 12/5/16
Repeated: 1/9/17
Is the Naked Cowbody being considered for a position in presumed President-elect Trump's cabinet? How much pain was Mitt Romney feeling in his dinner with Trump? Will Trump's cabinet become the wealthiest in American history? Is Trump's selection of Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary a complete betrayal of the many promises made to the middle class during the 2016 campaign? Did Trump know about Mnuchin's history as a defendant in lawsuits alleging that he helped defraud investors the entertainment industry? Are people aware that the company for which Mnuchin was the "non-executive co-chair" was alleged to be "a classic Ponzi scheme" by the people who sued it? Shouldn't the fact that Mnuchin was an executive producer on Suicide Squad disqualify him for any position in charge of a budget? (Even if it did make back at least 3 times its estimated budget from the worldwide box office?) And how many companies are Trump supporters boycotting, now that Kellogg's has been added to their list? I am not looking forward to 4 years of this crap.