A grandmother always felt her middle granddaughter Lindsay, 15, looked slightly different from the rest of the family because she had blonde, curly hair, while the rest of her siblings’ hair was dark “I thought genetics was being weird and I love her,” she wrote on Reddit’s AITA forum.
But things became serious after Linday’s parents “banned” her from taking things a step further and getting a DNA test. If the family was sure their daughter was theirs, why would they forbid her from seeking clarity in the situation? After the parents laid down the law, the situation started to seem a little suspicious.
“I told my son and [daughter-in-law] that there was something fishy around her birth she needed to know. They denied it and told me to leave it alone,” the grandma wrote.
Lindsay wouldn’t give up her quest. She approached her biology teacher, who admitted that it was “odd” for her to have such different traits. This confusion was too much for Lindsay, so she went to her grandmother for help. “She came to me distressed, asking me to buy a DNA test since she needs to know,” the grandmother wrote.
The grandmother purchased a DNA test and it proved their suspicions. “Long story short, she is not her mother’s kid,” the grandmother wrote. “My son got someone else pregnant and her bio mom gave her up.”
The interesting thing was that Lindsay was a middle child. So, the dad had a baby with another woman while he was with his wife. This revelation begs the question: How did the family suddenly have a baby out of nowhere without people being suspicious?
“They were on the other side of the country when she was born, and I met Lindsey when she was about 6 months old. Really not hard to hide the whole thing,” the grandmother wrote. “Our family has a history of miscarriages, so it’s common to drop news about a baby late in the pregnancy. They did the same with their oldest and didn’t think anything about it.”
The big revelation has caused friction in the family. The family no longer talks to the grandmother, which makes Lindsay even more furious about the situation.
Should the grandmother have taken such drastic steps if she knew what could happen if her suspicions were true? The commenters on Reddit overwhelmingly supported the grandmother’s decision. The big reason was that Lindsay needed to know her family history for medical reasons.
“Your son and his wife suck for lying to her until she is 15 about something so important and trying to keep lying to her even after she obviously started to question things. There are medical reasons a person might need to know what their genetics are/are not, and if you hadn’t helped her, she would have found out some other way,” Shake_Speare423 wrote.
Another commenter noted that protecting the parents’ lie wasn’t nearly as important as Lindsay’s mental health.
“People have a right to know their genetic heritage. Lying about adoption is linked to increased suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression. You put her safety and comfort ahead of your son’s preferences. Parental rights do not have greater value than a child’s right to access comprehensive medical care, and hiding an adoption does precisely that. Maybe some things, like a child staying healthy, should matter more than a parent’s right to lie, gaslight and manipulate their child as they see fit,” RemembrancerLirael added.
The commenters overwhelmingly supported the grandma for putting herself into an uncomfortable situation to protect her granddaughter’s mental and physical health. However, one commenter noted that she could have gone about it in a less polarizing way.
“Bit out of the norm for the responses here, but you should have gone through your son [and daughter-in-law] and convinced them. Told them that the biology teacher had highlighted that she had traits that didn’t make sense, etc. and convinced them that Lindsey would find out either way,” PhilMcGraw wrote. “It would have allowed them to find a way to tell her without it being forced on them angrily. A DNA test is the absolute worst way to be told. I’m sure they would have much rather told her than let her find out by a DNA test if that is what was coming.”
Nikki Haley is firing back at The View after the daytime talk show recently questioned just what the heck she’s doing on the campaign trail as she continues to lag far behind Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
Haley seemed particularly incensed over comments from Whoopi Goldberg, who questioned Haley’s political credentials. “Nikki, what have you done? What have you done, really?” Goldberg asked on a recent episode of The View. “What can you point to?”
“I’ve done quite a bit. I will tell you, as governor, we accomplished a lot, as U.N. ambassador, we accomplished a lot. I did a whole lot more than Whoopi Goldberg will ever do, and it is not the ladies on The View that I ever care to impress,” Haley said in a new interview with Fox News, where she noticeably neglected to get into specifics.
“At the end of the day, I’m fighting or every American’s vote. This is a chance to get our party right. The party that leaves their 80-year-old candidate behind is the party that will win. Mark my words. It is hugely important that we get a new generational conservative leader in the White House that leaves the baggage and the negativity behind.”
However, if Haley has done anything, it’s taken the fight to Trump. After the former president mocked Haley’s husband for not being on the campaign trail with her, she blasted Trump by revealing that he’s deployed overseas.
“You mock one veteran, you’re mocking all veterans,” she told Dana Perino following Trump’s attack. “But this is a pattern, Dana. He’s done this over and over again. Whether he went and called military members suckers, whether he was at Arlington Cemetery saying what was in it for them, why would they do this? The problem with Trump is he’s never been anywhere near a uniform.”
“Greatest Love Story Never Told” (you can listen to the song below) begins with Lopez referencing her and Affleck’s on again, off again, on again romance: “Different roads, two lost souls / Never thought we’d find our way back / Could’ve lost what matters most / How could I live with that?” Then things get racy: “Missing your body climbing on top of me, slippin’ inside of me / Way that I ride it, bodies aligning, look at our timing / Forget about the world when we’re alone / Only thing that ever felt, felt like home.”
While Ben obviously served as a major inspo on the new album, he also got involved personally — lending some background vocals for “Not Going Anywhere.” Yep, he’s credited.
Lopez is also releasing a documentary about the album titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told, but Jane Fonda, who appears in the film, thinks maybe she should calm things down by like 10 percent. According to Pajiba, the actress warned Lopez that while she’s rooting for her and Affleck to stay together forever, “it feels too much like you’re trying to prove something instead of just living it. You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.”
The Kid Mero is getting real about what really happened behind-the-scenes with Desus & Mero that led to the two seemingly tight partners going their separate ways. Mero has since launched a new podcast with Carmelo Anthony titled 7PM in Brooklyn, and he used the new platform to address the chances of ever working with Desus Nice again. It’s not looking good.
“It’s the business, there’s no friends in the business,” Mero told Anthony and guest Joe Budden. “And I was in a situation where I got four kids, two mortgages… The taxes are crazy. I got real life situations going on.”
While Mero was looking at the bigger picture, he claims Nice was not and things went south over a potential deal with DraftKings.
But Nice wasn’t interested, according to Mero. “This is going places bro we need to do this,” he said. “And [Nice is] like, ‘Nah,’ I’m like f*ck out of here. To me, that’s the beginning of this shit is corroded.”
The situation got worse when Nice wasn’t “feeling” making a movie with Judd Apatow.
“When you’re doing a movie with [Apatow], you’re not really doing a movie with this guy,” Mero said. “This guy’s like a kingmaker. You make a banger with him, you’re solidified. That’s what takes you up to the next level.”
As for the chance that the two will work together again, Mero isn’t entirely closing the door, but he’s also realistic about where he and Nice are at.
“Possibly, I never say never,” Mero said before adding, “I don’t think it could be fixed. Man to man, he’s on another creative pathway now.”
You can watch Mero talk about the split from Nice below:
Just like the rest of us, Melo and Joe wanna know what happened with Desus and Mero. pic.twitter.com/gbbu9L9c24
The state of New Jersey has birthed a plethora of notable music stars: To name a few, there’s Dionne Warwick, Queen Latifah, and Bruce Springsteen. Linwood native Mk.gee is looking to have his name on the pages of Garden State arts history books, too. His recently released album, Two Star & The Dream Police, serves as his latest effort on that front.
To support the body of work, Mk.gee will hit the road on a full-out North American tour with spots across the US and Canada. The 18-date run will kick off in San Diego, California, at the Music Box. Several dates have sold out, so fans need to move fast to secure their tickets.
Tickets for Mk.gee’s 2024 North American tour are on sale now. Find more information here.
Continue below for the full tour schedule and tour poster.
Mk.gee’s 2024 Tour Dates
04/23 — San Diego, CA @ Music Box
04/24 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
04/25 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
04/27 — San Francisco @ Great American Music Hall
04/29 — Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
04/30 — Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
05/01 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
05/03 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
05/04 — Denver, CO @ Meow Wulf
05/07 — Austin, TX @ Empire Garage
05/09 — Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
05/10 — Durham, NC @ Motorco
05/11 — Washington D.C. @ The Howard
05/13 — Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
05/16 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
05/17 — New York City, NY @ Irving Plaza
05/18 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
05/19 — Boston, MA @ Sinclair
Mk.gee’s 2024 Tour Poster
Mk.gee
Two Star & The Dream Police is out now via R&R Digital. Find more information here.
Is there anything that Zendaya cannot do? She’s currently ruling the red carpet ahead of Dune: Part 2‘s release, and we don’t know when Euphoria‘s third season will film, but she will also get dramatic and romantically comedic and in the upcoming Challengers. This film will be sexy as well as serious, and the project hails from Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, We Are Who We Are), who presents us the story of a tennis trio whose personal and professional lives are entangled in both pleasurable and disastrous ways.
Also, yes, this project is the “Zendaya has a threesome” movie. Let’s talk about that and what else shall happen:
Plot
Zendaya portrays a renowned tennis player, Tashi, who suffers a debilitating injury and must retire from competition. Naturally, she turns to mentoring, and she is coaching her husband, Art, which surely has its awkward moments on a regular basis. To make matters more stressful, she pushes him into a low-level pro event where he must face off with Patrick, who is Tashi’s ex-boyfriend and also the guy that they had a threesome with back in the day.
Naturally, the present-day competition isn’t simply about the love of the game. The former best friends and romantic rivals will surely embarrass the hell out of themselves while peacock-ing, and Tashi probably simply wants to be on the court herself, let alone dealing with two dudes tripping over themselves to out-man the other. Or perhaps she will like it, but the trailer suggests that Tashi had a lot more fun with these guys back in the day and seems kind-of over them now. Hopefully, the trailer hasn’t given away the entire film, but as a bonus, the film is scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who add layers to every slice of cinema that they touch. Let’s do the synopsis thing.
Tashi, a tennis player turned coach, has transformed her husband from a mediocre player into a world-famous grand slam champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a challenger event — close to the lowest level of tournament on the pro tour. Tensions soon run high when he finds himself standing across the net from the once-promising, now burnt-out Patrick, his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.
Cast
Josh O’Connor portrays ex-lover-boy Patrick, and Mike Faust fills the shoes of Tashi’s current husband, Art. Zendaya and O’Connor produce alongside Amy Pascal and Luca Guadagnino.
In the harsh light and brutal cold of a late February day, it can be hard to think about last summer when Barbenheimer was all the rage, and all we had to do was Beach around. Maybe you forgot what it’s like to feel that type of unparalleled joy that only comes with juxtaposing two opposite genres together, but today is the day you’ve been wanting for: Oppenheimer is now available on streaming, so you can have a very DIY Barbenheimer experience in the comfort of your own Mojo Dojo Casa or secluded New Mexico town.
Oppenheimer is now available for streaming on Peacock as a part of its “Imapact The World” rollout, which includes a handful of special featurettes highlighting the Oscar nominees and a behind-the-scenes look at the film with Christopher Nolan.
Peacock also added a handful of Nolan’s movies in one convenient place so after your personal Barbenheimer marathon, you can make your own Nolan double feature. Batman BegInception would be a nice place to start, but BatMento might be more fun.
Meanwhile, Barbie has found its permanent streaming home on Max, so you can stream both without the inconvenience of having to hop from one dark theater to another. It’s hard on the eyes!
Leading up to Usher’sSuper Bowl Halftime Show performance earlier this month, there was a lot of speculation about whether Justin Bieber, who has been associated with Usher since early in his career, would join in on the festivities. Usher’s performance turned out fantastic, but Bieber did not end up taking the field.
Now, Usher has confirmed that he did in fact ask Bieber to take part, and shared his perspective on why he didn’t.
In an interview on The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne Tha God asked Usher why “things didn’t work out” with Bieber, and Usher responded, “You know what? They did work out with Justin. I honor and recognize that my brother… I think that it might have been that fact that he’s just wanting to tell a different story right now, and I understand that. But we did have a brief conversation, and we’re gonna do something else in the future. But no love lost or anything like that.”
He continued, “I think that it’s a lot of pressure for the Super Bowl, obviously, for me to put together a show, so I reached out to everybody. Justin wasn’t the only person that I actually spoke to about doing the Super Bowl. But the moment was maybe for later. He’s gonna play the Super Bowl, I’ll go ahead and give you that, in the future.”
Universal Pictures hopes to storm into blockbuster season with a flood of box-office receipts. In doing so, the studio is harnessing 1990s nostalgia with a non-sequel/non-reboot, Twisters, which heads back to Oklahoma nearly three decades after the original film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. The irony, of course, is that (knock on wood) storms of cinematic grandeur rarely strike that state anymore (Tornado Alley has largely shifted to the east), but again, nostalgia, baby. And Glen Powell (Maverick, Anyone But You) was happy to put on a cowboy hat and ride some cyclones, y’all.
Powell stars alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones (Fresh, Under The Banner Of Heaven), and Universal has yet to reveal whether an irritated cow will be floating through the sky, too. This has to happen, yes? If that’s the case, perhaps this movie can eclipse the $240 million haul of the 1996 film.
Plot
Expect absurdity. Powell’s character, Tyler, is known to his social-media followers as the “Tornado Wrangler.” April through September must be his hunting season, and perhaps also his mating season, because there’s more than a suggestion that Tyler will hook up with Edgar-Jones’ character, Kate, after they withstand the clutches of Mother Nature.
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment is bringing the production values here, and as the title suggests, there will be more than one massive tornado raining down from the sky in a simultaneous way. Also, Kate didn’t even want to go tornado hunting, given that her character previously experienced a traumatic event related to a storm. However, she cannot stay inside a cushy, big-city meteorologist studio forever because there’s an action movie to be made.
Additionally, Tyler appears to have captured the Gen Z audience with Internet fame aplenty, and he also promises to have mastered some cutting-edge tracking technology. Here’s more from the synopsis:
[Kate] is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi, to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.
Cast
Glen Powell moves from sky-soaring and smart-ass romancing to tornado hunting as Tyler. Daisy Egdar-Jones flows into action mode as the storm-shy Kate. The film also stars Anthony Ramos, Kieran Shipka, Maura Tierney, and Katy O’Brian.
Release Date
Twisters swirls into multiplexes on July 19.
Trailer
Is that a cow-shaped billboard, perhaps? Those truly do exist in Oklahoma, so this trailer is going for at least some authenticity.
Do you remember when politics first broke your heart? The first scandal that turned you from an idealist into a cynic? Maybe it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it never will, but to others it can be a real touch-the-stove moment that lessens their enthusiasm when it comes time to vote. If they vote at all.
Jake Tapper, the host of CNN’s The Lead and State Of The Union, doesn’t fault people for still believing in politicians, but he acknowledges the impact of political scandals and how they can separate people from a pure belief in the political process. In his new docu-series, United States Of Scandal(which debuts Sunday at 9 PM on CNN), Tapper takes a deep dive into some of those moments, over the last twenty years, that have come to define a sometimes dysfunctional system that is ripe for abuse.
Tapper’s look at the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and the downfall of former Senator John Edwards and former Governors Jim McGreevey, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, and Rod Blagojevich isn’t just about politics and it isn’t solely about the past. United States Of Scandal is also an exploration of the way the media picks up and puts these stories down and, with the Plame episode specifically, what happens when a narrative turns into a bloody tidal wave. And if those above names have faded from your memory a little, consider the idea that yesterday’s crooked politicians can and do serve as inspiration for aspiring frauds who have studied their moves, tracked their consequences (such as they are), and developed an immunity to public embarrassment.
Below, we spoke with Tapper about all of the above; from the heartbreak of politics and its effects on voters to our flagging faith in a battered mainstream media. Why didn’t the show focus on oft-scandalized former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump? What’s the impact of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show‘s focus on political hypocrisy and showing receipts (and the spread of political comedy into mainstream news)? Let’s dive in.
Cambridge University did a study — millennials are the most disaffected generation with regard to politics as of 2020.
They have a lot to be disillusioned by.
Going back, I can remember being deeply heartbroken over Bill Clinton admitting that he had lied, and all these other scandals definitely ping on my own personal life experience with politics and kind of being disenchanted with it. Do you think these scandals are a root cause with that overall disillusionment?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the more important ones hit harder. Like, for instance, the Valerie Plame weapons of mass destruction one. That’s one where there are actual people killed as a result of lies and the scandal, because remember the whole outing of her was in defense of the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and they didn’t. And in that war, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost.
So I think ones like that matter more, hit more. And then there are other “scandals,” like how we exited Afghanistan. It’s not a scandal per se, but obviously a controversy. And then the questions about what were we there for for 20 years? But I do think that the daily slog of news that this “politician, that politician…” that people believe in… and every one of these folks that I profile had thousands of supporters, thousands of people who believed in them. John Edwards, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer. And so yeah, I could see that having a real disillusioning factor or disillusion impact or effect on millennials.
When I grew up, Watergate was the big scandal. And then I got a little bit older and it was ABSCAM. So I mean, it’s not like the scandals are new to millennials, but it does seem like there were more than enough politicians in whom people believed [who have been] proven to have been corrupted one way or another to have that impact on people.
As long as you’ve been doing this, as long as you’ve been following politics, as much of this as you’ve seen, and as close as you’ve been to it, is it odd to you sometimes to still see people that believe in politicians on either side?
No, it’s not. What’s odd to me is the fact that these politicians, usually men, almost always men, give up what they have worked so hard for so long for, forgive me, but for stupid reasons and for hubris, thinking they can get away with it over and over and over again. I don’t fault people who believe in politicians. I mean, I’m a journalist, so I’m a professional skeptic, so I generally try to not instill my hopes and dreams in any politician. But I’ve known Mark Sanford since 1999, and I, very early on, did not believe he was doing anything untoward because, not that I believed in him, but I knew him or I thought I did. So I don’t fault people for believing in politicians at all.
The Plame episode really focused on this idea of trust in the mainstream media, and you were talking, of course, about the Iraq war and the rise of narratives that it seems like everyone believes in, and it sort of becomes this tidal wave that just either takes you with it or you are very much on the outskirts. With that, and how many times people have been burned by that, is it surprising to you that there’s so much distrust in media and so much willingness to believe things that sort of just cement your own personal narrative?
The news media is not perfect. So obviously I think we in the news media have made mistakes that have contributed to a lack of faith and trust. But it’s also worth noting that there are entire institutions that are built upon a campaign of trying to discredit the news media for corrupted reasons.
Yeah, of course.
Fox is constantly attacking legitimate news organizations because they want to sell themselves as the only truth-tellers, whether or not they have to pay $787.5 million in defamation settlement payouts. Donald Trump, according to Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes, he said to her that the reason he attacks the media is so that people don’t believe them. His supporters don’t believe us when we report on negative things about him.
So there’s a lot of reasons why there is distrust in the media, but certainly during the buildup to the war in Iraq, it was weird watching. As a journalist, it was weird watching people in my profession… not all of them. There were some very striking exceptions to this rule, but it was weird watching people set aside their skepticism, set aside their professional skepticism, because it felt more fun, maybe, to be in the herd. And that’s one of the reasons why I think there was a lot of distrust of the media after 2004, 2005, 2006.
I’m curious about how you selected this roster and also why there are a couple of omissions — Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Why don’t you focus on their scandals at this point?
Clinton and Trump, we felt like, had been and will be pretty well covered. People weren’t clamoring for a documentary about the Bill Clinton scandal because it has been covered. There was a Ryan Murphy TV show about it.
It’s definitely over-covered. I definitely get that.
Yeah, so we wanted to go for ones that the people might remember but not really understand. And also, a lot of it was like who could we get? A lot of it was booking when we got Rielle Hunter, when we got Valerie Plame, when we got Jim McGreevey, when we got Rod Blagojevich when we got Mark Sanford’s chief of staff, when we got Eliot Spitzer’s mentor/aide, that helped us make those decisions. Obviously, if the powers that be want to do a second season, we got a lot more. There’s a lot more territory to cover.
George Santos feels like a two-parter at this point.
Santos, maybe Matt Gaetz. I don’t know. It depends on how that story ends, I suppose.
When you’re in an interview with someone and you know they’re lying to you, what’s the thought process for you in that moment?
I mean, it depends on the kind of interview. Look, for this series, one of the things we wanted to do was try to understand. It’s not just what were they thinking, like dismissively. It’s legitimately a sincere question. What were they thinking? So that was the offer to Rod Blagojevich, McGreevey, et cetera. We want to hear your story, we want to hear your side of it.
And I feel like we let them present the world according to Blagojevich, the world according to McGreevey, et cetera. And then if we didn’t think they were telling the truth, we would say that in the documentary if there were facts that needed to be corrected or perspective that needed to be countered. But that said, if it’s a live interview, it depends on how big the lie is in the context of a lie. But it’s always a challenge for any interviewer, especially when you’re doing an interview. How much do you want to challenge an individual lie? Which means you won’t get to these other three issues you want to discuss, and it’s just a judgment call you have to make in the moment. It’d be better if they didn’t lie. I would say I prefer that.
Are we in an era absent consequences or does it just feel like that? Because we’re constantly inundated by coverage of not necessarily fully developed scandals, but it almost feels like we go three feet in one direction towards the scandal. Then we get distracted by another one. We go another three feet in another direction.
Well, it depends on the scandal. It does sometimes feel like we’re in a consequence-free world. But at the same time, Donald Trump is on trial right now for a number of his scandals, whether it’s January 6th or inflation of his net worth or any number of other indiscretions. But one of the reasons we did this series is exactly what you say, which is there will be a scandal and we will understand it, and we will see what’s happening, and then we’ll kind of move on.
The John Edwards prosecution is a good example of that. John Edwards was prosecuted and ultimately he did not serve a day in prison. Ultimately, I believe, the jury was hung and it was a mistrial. A lot of times people will follow it until they’re confident that there will be some comeuppance and then that won’t happen. So it really depends on the scandal. But the main thesis of this story is that when these scandals happen, we don’t get the full story because the players are in the bunker, and seldom do we follow it all the way to the end.
I noticed in the episodes that I had seen, there were a few clips woven in from things like The Daily Show. A weapon of Stewart’s throughout his initial run was to highlight hypocrisy. I don’t know how well that’s going to fly now. I’m very curious to see how the show is now, but I’m also curious about what you think the role is of comedy shows like that and hypocrisy to call out and highlight scandals alongside your own role, obviously, in news.
Well, Jon Stewart did a lot of good.
Oh, sure, 100%.
In using old video to make points about hypocrisy, flip-flopping, and the like, and in fact was, from a broadcasting perspective, he and his researchers were very innovative and hugely influential, I think, in a positive way on news in general. Even though he was a comedy show, not a news show, his ability to use that research to make points, I think, was one of the most positively influential parts of his show, encouraging people to call out hypocrisy and to use clips to do it. So I hope he brings that back, his crack team of researchers, because they were great and really effective.
We’ll have to see what happens with his show. Obviously, it’s a different era. We don’t have a Republican in the White House. We’re not in the middle of a march to war, with American troops at least. And there are a lot of culture war issues that the left has won since Jon first got The Daily Show, same-sex marriage and the like. But who knows? We’ll see what happens.
It’s funny. I’ve interviewed a bunch of people from The Daily Show over the years, and I’ve asked the question a couple of times about just sort of where they sit as far as where that job fits on the Venn diagram of news and comedy. And there is a pushback from any notion that they’re anywhere close to journalism. And I get that, because it’s in deference to what you do.
Yeah, and they are not prisoner to… I mean, I remember one time they used a clip of mine completely falsely. There had been a shooting, and I came out and said something along the lines of, “Often police share information as much as they can, but often first reports are incorrect. That said, here is the latest they’re sharing,” and whatever it was, three shooters or whatever. And of course there was only one, and they only used the part of me saying there were three shooters and not the context of the caveats and the warning and all that stuff. And then I realized like, “Oh, yeah.” I mean, they’re not constrained by… They’re just trying to make a comedy show and they’re just looking for ways to do that.
Now, on the other hand, Fox does that all the time (Laughs). Taking clips and using them in a false way, so they don’t have an excuse. But I did learn that lesson. And they do insist on it that, yes, it is a comedy show, and their only imperative is to get people to laugh.
You’re a funny guy. I follow you on Twitter. You’re funny on there. You’ve been funny on the news. Anderson Cooper can keep it light every once in a while. Obviously it’s not a comedy show, but a little quip here and there. Did their success make it easier to loosen up a little bit when covering some stories?
I don’t know. I mean, they do something different than I do.
Yeah, of course.
But I would say that as a general note, we’re not in the ’50s or ’60s where people are only on television for 22 minutes a night, or even before that, before evening news went to 30 minutes, it used to be 15 minutes a night where there wasn’t really space for that sort of thing. I was on yesterday for seven hours. I mean, I think it’s for a viewer to feel comfortable watching, they have to feel like they’re seeing the authentic you for seven hours and not the 12 minutes of whatever they did in the ’50s. And so part of me is to make a light quip here and there, and it’s just more that. I don’t think it’s influenced by The Daily Show. I think it’s just a matter of just what we’re doing on cable. The evening news folks on NBC, CBS, ABC, generally don’t. They don’t have the time and it’s just not the right medium.
I imagine it also helps you to stay sane when you’re on for that long, also.
You’re assuming that I’m sane?
‘United States Of Scandal’ premieres Sunday February 18 at 9PM ET on CNN.
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