Unreality TV: ‘Weekend Update’ and the landscape of fake news, Brian Phillips, Grantland, August 22, 2014
It would be a mistake, however, to write off “Update” as the less subversive precursor to a more radical age of news satire. In the early years in particular, it wasn’t that “Update” was soft; it was that the target was different. Saturday Night Live first aired a year after Nixon resigned, six months after the fall of Saigon. The old American public reality, I mean the Walter Cronkite, Fit to Print reality, was cracked down the middle but still more or less in place. TV channels were confined to a few stiff buttons on an oversize remote. Newspapers still published late editions. There was no Internet. The structure of American authority had been shown up as fatally flawed, but nothing emerged to replace it. The early “Weekend Update” sketches were less interested in using the power of the news to castigate corruption than in pointing out the fraudulence on which the power of the news was based. They showed Chevy Chase, a mock-up of the oracular newsman, murmuring dirty talk into a telephone, unaware that he was on the air.
Or they showed Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin, in a “Point/Counterpoint” debate, dropping the pretense of civility and saying what they really thought: “Jane, you ignorant slut.” “Dan, you pompous ass.”
Above all, they made the news, that somber institution, look innocuous and foolish, a province of irrelevant weirdos and harmless egomaniacs.
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Is it strange that, of all the current-events products currently on television, it’s often Fox News that feels most like a “Weekend Update” bit? Critics are constantly asking why there’s no conservative Daily Show, but there is; it just won’t admit it’s a joke. The structure of Fox News is so deeply and basically comic that it’s impossible not to read it into the tradition of news satire. All those weeping paranoiacs! The fist-shaking curmudgeons! The gun-toting robo-blondes! Like “Weekend Update,” Fox succeeded by taking the elements of a normal news broadcast and exaggerating them to ludicrous proportions. Only instead of Opera Man, it has Angry Immigration Crusader; instead of Mr. Subliminal, it has Jowly Operative Insinuating Things About Hillary Clinton’s Health; instead of Gay Hitler, it has Outmatched Token Liberal; instead of “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead,” it has Benghazi.
Be sure to read the full article. It has some brilliant Fox News screen captures.
Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female, Stubby the Rocket, Tor.com, September 2, 2014
Shieldmaidens are not a myth! A recent archaeological discovery has shattered the stereotype of exclusively male Viking warriors sailing out to war while their long-suffering wives wait at home with baby Vikings. (We knew it! We always knew it.) Plus, some other findings are challenging that whole “rape and pillage” thing, too.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.
What My Bike Has Taught Me About White Privilege, Jeremy Dowsett, A Little More Sauce, August 20, 2014
I can imagine that for people of color life in a white-majority context feels a bit like being on a bicycle in midst of traffic. They have the right to be on the road, and laws on the books to make it equitable, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are on a bike in a world made for cars. Remembering this when I’m on my bike in traffic has helped me to understand what privilege talk is really about.
Now most people in cars are not intentionally aggressive toward me. But even if all the jerks had their licenses revoked tomorrow, the road would still be a dangerous place for me. Because the whole transportation infrastructure privileges the automobile. It is born out of a history rooted in the auto industry that took for granted that everyone should use a car as their mode of transportation. It’s not built to be convenient or economical or safe for me.
And so people in cars—nice, non-aggressive people—put me in danger all the time because they see the road from the privileged perspective of a car. E.g., I ride on the right side of the right lane. Very few people change lanes to pass me (as they would for another car) or even give me a wide berth. Some people fly by just inches from me not realizing how scary/dangerous that is for me (like if I were to swerve to miss some roadkill just as they pass). These non-aggressive close-passers don’t realize that a pothole or a build up of gravel or a broken bottle, which they haven’t given me enough room to avoid and which they don’t even have to be aware of, could send me flying from my bike or cost me a bent rim or a flat tire.
