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Thursday, Jul 21
Jon Stewart gives me carpal tunnel, again
 You know, I really do try to keep these brief. Well, brief-esque. But seriously, some of this stuff is just too good not to share. Ladies and gentlemen, July 20th, 2005: This is The Daily Show. Kind of.
Jon goes all Howie Kurtz on the press for speculating on the new Supreme Court nominee. Ha ha, it wasn't Edith Clement! Losers. Says Jon: "Apparently the only time the press gets it right is when the White House illegally leaks it to them!" HA.
He gets right to John Roberts, noting that he's "not an un-handsome man." He implies that he looks like Mark Harmon. Ew, he so does not! Did anyone else have difficulty finding Mark Harmon attractive after "The Ted Bundy Story"?
Awww. Justice Roberts' cute little son Jack is gettin' all dancey and jumpy in his cute little sailor suit. Shades of Andrew Giuliani, no? Did you know he was a champion golfer? Time flies. Anyway, little Jack is cute and Jon nails it: "Jack, of course, is the one who seems to be on the way to losing the case of Family v. Ritalin." Perfect. He goes on: "Actually 4 year old Jack's loveable antics were adored by all...except the Secret Service, who quickly whisked him off to Gitmo." He then explains that if President Bush ever looks distracted during a speech, "it's because Dancing Jack is always there." He then shows Dancing Jack at The State of the Union, last year's debates and "even when he went to the U.N. to make a case for war." Oh yes, remember that case for war. Joseph Wilson had something to say about that once, didn't he? Anyway, the crowd loves Dancing Jack. He makes it hard to object to his father.
Who, by the way, we reeeaaally don't know much about. Jon shows a clip of George Bush, who actually brings up that he was the captain of the football team in high school and worked in a steel mill to help pay his way through college. "Oh my God," says Jon, jaw dropping. "John Roberts is the Tom Cruise character in 'All The Right Moves.'" Cute kid, iconic background, pretty eyes - John Roberts is SO getting confirmed.
  
More Jon Stewart after the jump! Let Dancing Jack lead the way.
Roberts may be a shoo-in, but that doesn't change the fact that he's creamy, milky white. Correspondent Ed Helms: "After all the media speculation about Edith this or Hispanic that, they chose a white guy. And not just a white guy, a reeeeallly white guy. "John Roberts?" That's the fake name every underage kid busted for booze uses!"
The zinger of the night: Jon: "What's been the reaction in Washington?" Ed: "Jon, Liberals are outraged by Bush's choice, they have been for weeks."
Another zinger pegged on Chuck Schumer, who says there's one area in which he can unquivocally approve John Roberts: he's a Bills fan. Quoth Jon: "A Bills fan! Aaah, that's the one position of Roberts for which we do have written record." Zing!
He makes fun of Ken Starr's appeal for decency: "A heartfelt plea for civility from the man who spent three years trying to subpoena the president's penis" before turning it over to "Senior Legal Analyst" Rob Cordry (who by the way will be performing at Summerstage tonight with the UCB's all-star troupe, and that is some funny, funny stuff) who goes through a few failed nominations, leading up to Bork, who is really a scary looking guy. And could that beard be screaming for a Brazilian any more. Cordry traces the etymology of the word "Borked" back through time, hearkening to failed SCOTUS nomination-slang like "getting pfukked" for 19th-century jurist Rufus Pfukke and the legacy of Millard Fillmore's rejected candidate Hiram P. Reameduptheass. A natural choice for Fillmore, hmm? Boldfacing those names just cracked me up.
Commercial! Because you can't follow all that with...
...a totally depressing laugh-free segment on children getting autism. But you sure as hell can make sure it gets airtime, which we laud The Daily Show for yet again. Guest Robert F. Kennedy Jr is on with his book "Crimes Against Nature," about the link between childhood vaccination and autism. The way he tells it, there's a whopping link. A preservative added to vaccines in 1988 containes a mercury-based substance that caused the autism rate to shoot up from 1 in every 2500 children to 1 in 166 children. That's an astounding statistic. They've taken it out of the vaccines now, but it's still in vaccines that the US has exported all over the world, which has brought autism to China in a big way. The pharmaceutical industry is terrified of getting sued and agencies like the CDC and FDA would get slammed for granting approval. As they should be. Also brutal: apparently ABC shot a segment on the topic to blow the scandal wide open. It was an exclusive, meant for ABC Nightly News and Good Morning America. The night before it aired, Kennedy got a call from the producer saying it had been cancelled on orders from higher ups at the network. The autism community cried foul and they aired it, but with cuts that made it "virtually an advertisement for the pharmaceuticul industry." Kennedy has no idea what happened at ABC but "that series of events was suspicious." Jon: "Where there's smoke there's fire." Jon urges everyone to buy the book. He's a mensch.
Tonight's guest: my on-screen guide says Newsweek brainiac Fareed Zakaria but that's what it said last week when Isikoff was on. So it could be a repeat. Stay tuned. Better yet, watch it yourself.
Update: LIEV SCHRIEBER! That's who John Roberts looks like!
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You know, I really do try to keep these brief. Well, brief-esque. But seriously, some of this stuff is just too good not to share. Ladies and gentlemen, July 20th, 2005: This is The Daily Show. Kind of.
Amanda Ernst
