Filed under: gay rights, united states of america, war | Tags: don't ask don't tell, jorge luis borges, stephen colbert
Stephen Colbert, perhaps television’s wittiest comedian/commentator, is in Iraq. In this sketch, he explains the ins and outs of the wisdom in the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The full sketch is here.
The conversation between the two Colberts reminded me of Borges’ classic, “Borges and I” with a comic twist.
Filed under: entertainment, gay rights, iowa | Tags: commercial, gay marriage, stephen colbert
Stephen Colbert satirizes the anti-gay marriage ad by the National Organization for Marriage. As he puts it, the ad is “like watching The 700 Club and The Weather Channel at the same time.”
One of my favorite lines from Colbert–on Iowa’s sanction of gay marriage and its domino effect to New York’s gay marriage legislation introduced by Gov. Paterson: “The same-sex chickens have come home to gentrify their roost.”
Filed under: education | Tags: grades, incentive education, money, roland fryer, stephen colbert
One of the great lines in this interview of Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer by smart (smart-ass?) comedy guru Stephen Colbert: “What is wrong with the older generation’s way of doing things, where they paid kids to do well in school…by not opening an unholy can of whoop ass”
Fryer’s controversial, innovative theories are controversial and direct: Blacks are the worst performing population in the U.S. public education system.
Colbert wonders aloud (half-jokingly) if these comments by Fryer, a professor of economics at Harvard, are racist. Fryer–an African American man–says that his comments are fact and reality, not racism. “The achievement gap in this country is our biggest civil rights concern.” I tend to agree with Fryer; if not our biggest, then right up there with equal marriage rights for all and closing the gap between the very rich in our nation and the very poor.
Colbert’s other great quip: “If this works, look for Secretary of Education Alex Trebek.”
