Sesame Street: The GOP version

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Kenneth Tomlinson, a man obsessed with getting rid of all of the ‘liberal bias’ running amok in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (you know, Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, etc.), has resigned.

Fortunately, no permanent damage was done to PBS, but during his tenure at CPB, he spent over $14,000 in taxpayer money for a ‘study’ on this alleged liberal bias, and what could be done about it. Had Tomlinson’s plans reached fruition, we imagine the new, non-liberal, Republican-friendly version of Sesame Street would look a lot like this:

Church-goers to Dems: don’t bother

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Plenty has been said about whether or not it’s worth it for Democratic candidates to go after the ‘religious’ or ‘values’ voters. Sure, Barack Obama attends church regularly, but his pastor’s KRRRRAZY! And, anyway, isn’t he a Muslim or something? And yeah, Hilary Clinton talks a lot about her walks with Jeezus, and how forgiving her husband for his infidelity was the Christian thing to do. But isn’t it all for naught? After all, most gun-loving, chest-thumping, Bible-reading Christian Americans see the letter “D” after someone’s name and picture a limp-wristed Frenchman who wants to surrender to the nearest terrorist, right?

Well…. yeah. For the most part. It certainly doesn’t help when Chan Chandler, former pastor at the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina removed the liberal members of his congregation for – wait for it – being liberal. Apparently, church is only for those who are “Christian” in the sense that they see Jeezus as a red-blooded, flag-waving, Republican soldier who spits flames and wields an M-16.

It wasn’t until the IRS decided to investigate Chandler’s shennanigans that he was forced to resign. Before that, he regularly used the pulpit to speak on behalf of God’s messenger, President Bush. Anyway, here’s a quick glimpse into what Chandler’s sermons used to look like before he became unemployed.

Sandra Day: We’ll miss you

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Now that Sandra Day O’Connor has retired, thanks to the Bush Administration we’ve got a right-wing leaning Supreme Court that has made decisions that negatively effect, among other things, worker’s rights to fair pay.

A lot of decisions have been made recently that come down to a 5-4 majority. It’s with that in mind that we take you to the Supreme Court locker room, where Ginsberg and her pals are discussing their retired contemporary.

Creationism Class

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Creationism is on the rise in our local schools. Again. A book by Larry Booher called “Creation Battles Evolution” has been published in North Carolina, and some think it should be used as a science textbook. Kansas and Pennsylvania school boards are trying to force “Intelligent Design” into school’s curriculum, even though the Supreme Court has been very clear that public schools cannot teach Creationism.

Recently, the National Science Teacher’s Association has called Intelligent Design a “pseudo science”, and remarked that it has no place in the classroom. They also pointed out that they were stunned and disappointed that President Bush (clearly a scholar in his own right) endorses the teaching of Intelligent Design, which brings Biblical Creationism into American science classrooms. It does make one wonder; would the proponents of Intelligent Design (or Creationism or whatever the Religious Right wants to brand it this week) also vociferously fight for Greek Mythology to be taught in science classrooms? What about Buddhism? After all, there are plenty of creation stories out there, so why not bring them all into public schools and label them ‘science’?

We all know that fundamentalist Christians are trying to make sure that kids don’t get sent astray by evil scientists and their ‘theories’ about evolution. So, to make sure the ‘science’ of Creationism (Earth is 6,000 years old; God made everything in six 24-hour long days) gets a fair shake alongside Evolution (Earth is billions of years old; primordial soup formed the first single-cell organisms that became monkeys, then people) we’ve decided to go inside a Pennsylvania classroom to look at a Creationism Class in action.

Tic Toc Top Court

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What does it take in this day and age to get appointed to the Supreme Court? An even-keeled reputation for fair-mindedness? A stellar portfolio of presiding over difficult cases? Charming good looks? An ethnic minority? No! Not if you’re now-Chief Justice John Roberts, who more closely resembles Otto the Inflatable Auto-Pilot from the movie Airplane than he does an actual judge.

Above: which is the real John Roberts? Can you tell?

Anyway, we’re sure that the President’s choice to tap John Roberts for the Chief Justice chair was a long and difficult one involved a dartboard and a half-empty bottle of Yagermeister, so we present to you the three top contenders at the time: Luttig, Roberts and that lovable scamp Alberto Gonzales.

Dubya and the Munitions Factory

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

What happens when you mix Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Dubya and the international fight to secure nuclear weapon capabilities? You get this:

Bush’s Bicycle

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Leader of the Free World. Pioneer in the War on Terror. Man of the People. Bicycle enthusiast. These are but a few ways of describing our President, who spends more time working out and on his bicycle than he does working on national security and catching Osama Bin Laden. Enjoy our spoof of Queen’s “Bicycle Race”.

Hey, Cheney! Go fuck yourself!

The staff at Weekly Review has finally gotten around to getting some of our old videos online for all to enjoy. Most of these are from the live theater version of Weekly Review, performed at Caroline’s on Broadway.

First up is a Rock Opera version of the events that transpired when Dick Cheney traveled to a Hurricane Katrina-devastated area of Mississippi to tell the good folks there how great the relief efforts were going. Apparently, the now-homeless citizens of the area didn’t agree with Dick’s sunny optimism about how the government handled the disaster. During a CNN interview on location with the VP, one brave citizen told the man to go fuck himself. Over and over.

How ironic that the man who told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself (while on the Senate floor, no less) was now getting the same treatment from a peasant! How’d he handle it? Check out the video.

This is Racist America

Look out, everyone! A Black Muslim from some mystical foreign land is trying to run for President, and once elected, will turn the US over to terrorists!

The talking heads on TV, of course, will never say the above sentence out loud, but with all of the rhetoric flying around, it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on in their heads. The best example is the people who pose the question: “Is America ready for a Black President?”, and completely miss the irony bus when they ask within two minutes “Is Barack Obama black enough?”(Editor’s note: according to the films “The Fifth Element” and “Idiocracy”, a black President would KICK ASS!)
Fortunately, Barack Obama delivered an amazing speech recently dealing squarely with race relations in America. Unfortunately, the ripples he may have created in the public arena by unflinchingly challenging this subject have not yet reached most of the pundits in Television Land.

Take, for example, our Republican friends who challenge Obama’s patriotism with the notion that his decision to not wear the American flag on his lapel somehow means he’s really rooting for the ‘bad guys’. We kid you not. Here is a fine example of all of the Republican ‘patriots’ who always have their precious little flag pins on. Even when being photographed for their mug shots. Seriously.

Then you’ve got Hilary’s camp just doing the completely wrong thing with Geraldine Ferraro, who claims that Barack, like Jesse Jackson, got to where he is because of his color. We’d spend more time trying to make sense of this, but we’ve got shit to do.

Last but not least, fresh off the short bus is Congressman Steve King from Iowa floating the idea on national television that somehow terrorists will rejoice if Obama takes the White House. Yes, the same Steve King who compared immigrants to cattle, and pulled straight from his ass a ‘statistic’ that says immigrants murder 12 American citizens every day.

No WONDER this country is fucked up. We’ve got people sitting in elected offices who still can’t see past the color of people’s skin, and use that ignorance to write laws that everyone needs to follow.

Well, enough with the intro. We wrote a song about it. Welcome to Racist America!

Edit: after ‘Racist America’ was posted, Chris Matthews added yet another notch in the “let’s go back to the pre-civil rights era” belt. Chris, seriously…. what the hell, man?