The August 5, 2013 episode of the Daily Show focuses on future presidential candidates, the politicization of everything, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not’s creator.
The episode begins with John Oliver discussing the coverage of the potential future presidential candidates. The news is already speculating about who will run in the 2016 presidential election. The first potential candidate Oliver really focuses on is Ted Cruz. The news reported that Cruz’s travel schedule looks more like a presidential candidate than a freshman senator. In an interview, Cruz discussed the fact that he was born in Canada, but has American citizenship through his mother. Oliver pointed out that the Republican part is, of course, totally cool with people being born in other countries and then running for president. Oliver also briefly discussed Rick Santorum and Donald Trump announcing their interest in running.
The second half of the first segment focused voter registration laws. Recently the restrictions on certain states voting law implementation was repealed by the Supreme Court. It did not take long for those states to take advantage. Texas enacted a law that had been previously struck down by a federal court as being too restrictive of the poor and minority groups. In Florida, the state is pushing forward with a voter registration purge. North Carolina is putting one of the most restrictive voter registration laws in place. This law reduces the early voting period, requires government identification, and eliminates same-day registration. When confronted with the fact that only one fraudulent voter was found in the entire 2012 presidential election, a proponent of the law said the goal was to increase voter confidence in the process. Oliver argued that confidence was not a problem, but pointed out that 1/3 of voters without government identification were Black.
Oliver continues discussing North Carolina’s recent legislative confusion. They recently tacked abortion restrictions onto two seemingly random bills. In the State Senate, they added abortion restrictions to a bill meant to prevent Sharia Law. Oliver pointed out the contradiction of including a law based on religious belief in a bill meant to prevent laws based on religious belief. The second bill was in the House. In this bill, abortion restrictions were combined with motorcycle safety laws.
The second segment started with Oliver discussing a video of a cat in a sink playing with water. He enjoyed the video, until he scrolled through the comments to find someone calling President Barack Obama an idiot. It involved a curse, but I’ll leave that off. Oliver then discusses how everyone feels the need to include their political beliefs in the discussion of anything. He specifically discussed people using the royal baby to segue into discussions of infant mortality rate, or Obamacare. He also showed similar clips in regards to the Super Bowl.
The guest for this episode was Neal Thompson promoting his new book, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe it or Not!” Ripley. The interview was pretty interesting. They talk about how Robert Ripley was a very popular cartoonist, and was thought to be one of the best-traveled men alive at the time. He was also the stereotypical American traveler. He refused to learn the language, and talked slowly and loudly instead. The book sounds really interesting, and so does Ripley’s life.