The April 8, 2013 episode of the Daily Show focused on Republican and Democrat opinions, lice deforestation, and the economy with David A. Stockman.
Jon Stewart began the episode reporting on the new budget proposal. The Republicans have said that President Barak Obama’s budget proposal is dead on arrival. Democrats also dislike the budget. Obama has managed to bring the two sides together. Stewart also describes some other missteps Obama has made recently. He called Attorney General Kamal Harris the best looking Attorney General after praising her abilities as Attorney General. His wife also accidentally called herself a single mother. Stewart then moved on to discussing the increasing number of politicians who switched their opinions on gay marriage recently. He said that Democrats put their opinion change on a huge scale and call it an evolution of opinion. Stewart showed an evolution chart (ape to man) with the changing opinions on signs for each iteration. For Republicans, it tends to be related to a specific person. One big exception to this rule is Representative Matt Salmon (R) who has said that even though his son is gay he refuses to change his opinion on gay marriage.
The second segment was Jessica Williams reporting on deforestation and the effects it has on wildlife. More specifically, she was talking about people removing their pubic hair and the threat this poses to pubic lice. Modern grooming habits are removing the preferred habitats for these organisms. Williams interviewed a couple of people about this change. One of them mention John Waters, but since I am not familiar with his work beyond Hairspray I do not really understand why. Either way, Williams actually interviewed Waters briefly about pubic lice. He seemed a bit sad about the current lack. Williams and one of the people she interviewed went to Brooklyn to try to find pubic lice, but people were not very receptive to them asking about it.
The guest for this episode was David A. Stockman promoting his new book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. Stockman and Stewart spent the interview talking about Stockman’s views on the economy. The book looks massive and boring, but it clearly has some interesting ideas in it. One of the big points Stockman made, for example, was his hypothesis that if those first banks had been allowed to fail it would not have spread and it would have taught other investment agencies a lesson. It was definitely a different opinion on the economy than most people talk about and is work hearing. It is kind of a hopeful view in a way, since he is basically saying we had it right not that long ago and there are ways to get back there.