Today, as we bid farewell to Jon Stewart in his tenure as one of the most unlikely voices of a generation on The Daily Show, I must hark back to the original king of American satire and mockery, Mark Twain to set up my running diary of the inaugural Republican presidential debate for the 2016 election:
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were running for the GOP presidential nomination; but I repeat myself.
To be fair, some of these men—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich—are not idiots per se. They are jingoistic, plutocratic, pawns of industry with no regard for the civil liberties of anyone with a vagina or a skin color darker than a vanilla latte, but they are not idiots. However, this debate will go down as having the widest assortment of mentally defective asshats in the history of televised presidential debates. Now, since I don’t believe that the rapture is nigh and can’t take a drink without breaking out in handcuffs, the only reason I have watched this debate is to pay homage to Jon Stewart and his decade and a half of masochistic comedic journalism, and to provide you with the opportunity to laugh at something that, if you think about it for too long, is bloody horrifying.
I was only able to make it through about 75 minutes of the GOP debate as, at around 10:15, I realized that if I watched any more of this infantile madness I might be tempted to crash my head into the TV to make the bad noises stop, so that’s all you’re liable to get commentary on. I have a feeling it will be enough for the both of us. So, without further ado, I give you the inaugural 2016 GOP presidential debate, brought to you by Arby’s. Arby’s: Now with 75% less Ringworm.
8:56pm: “Hello everyone and welcome the Fox News’s coverage of the first Republican presidential debate for 2016. Let’s go check in with Brit Hume and watch his disturbingly loose, wrinkly pouch of throat skin wiggle. Brit?”
8:59pm: So far there have been 3 female news correspondents on screen and all 3 of them have been thirty or forty-something blondes with Real Housewives haircuts and BMIs lower than the legal drinking age. Fox News: where we hate all types of diversity, even when it comes to hair color.
9:00pm: All of the candidates are now on stage and Marco Rubio is already looking thirsty. I’ve also come to the odd realization that Jeb Bush looks a lot like a cartoon tadpole. And I’m pretty sure Ted Cruz just heiled.
9:02pm: Man, Rand Paul’s perm game is strong. #LetYourSoulGlow
9:05pm: First question of the night is a gimme and Trump has already whipped out his dick in front of the crowd and gone to work. In a simple hand raise question, Trump is the only candidate who won’t take a pledge—initiated by Fox News, the gatekeepers of the GOP—not to run as an independent if he loses the GOP nomination. FYI, that sound you’re hearing is about 80 million Democrats laughing hysterically.
9:09pm: In response to a question on the legitimacy of his candidacy, Ben Carson asserts that, “the thing that is probably most important is having a brain.” One would think that would be a prerequisite for running for President. Sadly, it is not.
9:15pm: After being called out for promoting “dynastic politics” and being the beneficiary of nepotism, Jeb Bush tells the crowd that the people of Florida didn’t call him Governor Bush, but instead that, “they call me Jeb, because I earned it,” a dubious claim unless he can prove that fought off hoards of vicious womb gremlins during his birth and wrote his name on his own birth certificate with placenta.
9:18pm: Oh, Trumpy! Trumpy, my boy! This guy is the human equivalent of anthrax or dried smegma. Megyn Kelly called Trump out on referring to women as, “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and generally being a misogynistic embarrassment to humanity—while leaving out the fact that he raped his wife—and he responded by making a Rosie O’Donnell joke and telling her that he didn’t have time for, “total political correctness.” That’s like taking a massive dump in the salad bar at Golden Corral and saying that you don’t have time for “total hygiene and cleanliness”.
9:27pm: In addressing the candidate’s hardline stance on abortion, Megyn Kelly brings up Governor Walker’s opposition to abortions in all cases, including rape and situations where the life of the mother is in danger, asking him, “would you really let a woman die rather than have an abortion?” and citing a study that says 83% of Americans support abortion in such instances. Well, being the mouth-breathing, pseudo-moralistic moron that he is, Walker responds by saying that he is Pro-Life and has always been Pro-Life, before going on to disregard the lives of thousands of American mothers who would be forced to have children who might grow up in a single parent household or as an orphan because this asshole thinks that our responsibility to human life begins at conception and ends when the umbilical cord is cut. There’s no joke here. Scott Walker is just a complete and utter piece of shit.
9:30pm: Huckabee keeps the unborn crazy train going, saying that shutting down Planned Parenthood and the millions upon millions of women it provides with life-saving medical care is little more than a cosmetic change and that what he would do as President is invoke the 5th amendment and the 14th amendment to protect the human rights of fetuses (think about that for a second) and stop evil doctors from being able to “rip up [the baby’s] body parts and sell them like parts to a Buick.” This coming from the party that has systematically done everything it could to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and curb civil liberties for people of color, treating the 5th and especially the 14th amendments as little more than nuisances? Shit, there are supposed to be jokes here. I’m already fading. Um…Trumpy…somebody get me Trumplestiltsken.
9:35pm: Ahhh, there he is—the man who can spin straw into shit and then declare bankruptcy after ripping off his investors because who the hell wants to use a company that spins straw into shit? Immigration has been introduced as the topic of the hour and Trump is in rare form, claiming that no one would be talking about immigration if it weren’t for him, doubling down on his unjustified assertion that the Mexican government is sending us their tired, their poor and their drug-dealing serial rapists and saying that we need to build a huge friggin’ wall on our southern border. When he was asked by Chris Wallace where his evidence was that the Mexican government was shipping criminals en masse into the US, Trump’s response was that he was just at the border and he talked to some border patrol guys and that’s what they were doing. Basically, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination just went on national television and went all Ferris Bueller on us, telling the American people that his best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with this girl who saw a bunch of Mexican criminals selling black tar heroin outside a 31 Flavors last night.
That’s all I got folks. Any more looking at tape of this debate and I’m going to have a psychotic break. I hope you liked it—it is a departure from what I normally do—but I felt like I had to on this night. Thank you Jon Stewart. I don’t know that a comedian has ever meant more to me and I hope you beat Chuck Todd into a coma with a baseball bat and take his spot on Meet The Press.
Categories: 2016 Election, Media, Satire, US Politics
You’re a better man than I am, Drew. Even though I set the DVR to record the debate(s), it was “accidentally” set to save only until space needed . . . so I was spared.
I’m also really gonna miss Stewart. For over a decade (commencing with the Bush2000 debacle) The Daily Show was my sole TV news source, thus responsible in good part for my having maintained any sort of perspective, equilibrium and sanity, especially up ’til around 2008. His show was smarter overall and displayed more journalistic integrity than most of the rest of media. He brought us Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Aasif Mandvi, Al Madrigal, Jessica Williams, and so many other incredible additions to both entertainment and political/social satirical news coverage. I also credit Stewart for much of my book and movie list, and the interviews that eventually led me to DemocracyNow!, ProPublica, Rachel Maddow, and more. His absence during the 2016 election cycle and all that follow . . . well, better not to borrow pain from the future. We’ll just have to carry on without him.
Comedy (and news, for that matter) is at its best, I think, when both relevant and “with teeth.” Jon Stewart achieves both in spades. I console myself with the thought that his next endeavours will be as rewarding to him as they’re likely to be for us.
And of course I second your thoughts:
I managed all of both debates, frequently sighing over what Jon would have had to say about parts of it.
Nary a word about Climate Change (Global Warming, idiots) which is having and will continue to have the most devastating effect on all of us in a very short time. GUYS, in the big picture ISIL is small cheese.
Rubio came across the best and I hope that Hillary is giving serious consideration to Julian Castro as her running mate. (Oh, Bernie, if only.)
Goddess, but I will miss Stewart. TDS and later also Colbert were my only ways to deal with GOP Conventions, etc., and stay sane
~Julia Leo