The week of Nov. 10-14 on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart shows clips and interviews from the show’s host on his new movie Rosewater, poaching elephants to fund terrorist groups, and twisting images to fuel propaganda.
Correspondent John Oliver takes over for Stewart on Thursday’s episode to promote the usual host’s directorial debut and political thriller Rosewater. Rosewater is about an Iranian-born BBC journalist, Maziar Bahari, who returns to his homeland in 2009 to cover the political race between Mir-Hossein Moussavi and incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to IMDb.com. Maziar Bahari sneaks footage of the riots to the BBC after Ahmadinejad is declared president once again. Bahari is then imprisoned and tortured for 118 days after being arrested by the Revolutionary Guard, which is commanded by a man known only as Rosewater. After finally being released from prison, Bahari then writes an account of his time of imprisonment in his book Then They Came for Me. One very interested notion Bahari expressed on The Daily Show was how he kept somewhat sane in solitary confinement. As a nonbeliever, Bahari states he kept his family and friends close to his heart, reminisced his favorite songs and culture, and recalled fond memories to keep himself afloat while other prisoners were praying and meditating in adjoining jail cells. Gael Garcia Bernai, Jason Jones and Tim Greenberg also appear on the Thursday episode. Watch a clip of the interview below.
To find out how easily propaganda can be spun or how the meaning of a video can be misconstrued, check out the next clip below. While doing voter registration work, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges was taking pictures with a convicted felon as they flashed gang signs, according to the city’s police department. The police department blames and criticizes her after pictures were taken of the two pointing at each other. This story apparently goes deeper than what was expressed by the department’s complaints. While in office, Hodges had criticized some officers in the department for abusing their power to create more harm than safety. Thus, Stewart adds pointing fingers to the long list of “Innocent Things Black People Do that Look Suspicious.”
President Obama visited China to discuss climate change at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) last week. As the two largest contributors to global warming, China and the U.S. have come to agreements to drastically reduce carbon emissions by the end of the century. Another vice China and the U.S. has in common is creating a market for elephant ivory. Stewart was concerned about Chinese officials buying illegal ivory from poachers in Tanzania and transporting them via private airplanes in diplomatic luggage. Instead of appealing to ivory consumers sympathetically, Stewart decided to take a different route by not only showing the statistics and the damage poaching causes to an endangered species, but to show a report that state terrorist groups are selling illegally obtained tusks to fund their cause. Although this may seem a no-brainer for a bipartisan decision in Congress to further implement formidable legislation, there will always be one group to oppose noble causes - the NRA.