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Earlier this week, Donald Trump surrogate Carl Higbie dug a hole while citing the president-elect’s proposal for a Muslim registry as having “precedent” in the Japanese internment camps of WWII. This caused Megyn Kelly’s jaw to drop, although she retained her usual poise while the rest of cable news and the Internet recoiled in horror.

Star Trek actor George Takei has penned an op-ed in the Washington Post to reveal how Bigbie’s words have “reopened very old and very deep wounds.” As a child, Takei spent three years in a California internment camp along with his family. He worries that America is about to rewrite a terrible chapter in history, all based upon how people “happen to look like” those who have committed heinous acts. He’s referring, of course, to how the internment camps functioned as a sort of punishment by association after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Takei poured his experiences into the piece:

I was just a child of 5 when we were forced at gunpoint from our home and sent first to live in a horse stable at a local race track, a family of five crammed into a single smelly stall. It was a devastating blow to my parents, who had worked so hard to buy a house and raise a family in Los Angeles. After several weeks, they sent us much farther away, 1,000 miles to the east by rail car, the blinds of our train cars pulled for our own protection, they said. We disembarked in the fetid swamps of Arkansas at the Rohwer Relocation Center. Really, it was a prison: Armed guards looked down upon us from sentry towers; their guns pointed inward at us; searchlights lit pathways at night. We understood. We were not to leave.

His narration pushes through various indignities and then makes the argument that “national security” should never be used as a justification to violate constitutional protections. Takei believes that to do so would make America no better than the offenders they seek to punish. He continues:

Let us also agree that ethnic or religious discrimination cannot be justified by calls for greater security. During World War II, the government argued that military authorities could not distinguish between alleged enemy elements and peaceful, patriotic Japanese Americans. It concluded, therefore, that all those of Japanese descent, including American citizens, should be presumed guilty and held without charge, trial or legal recourse, in many cases for years. The very same arguments echo today, on the assumption that a handful of presumed radical elements within the Muslim community necessitates draconian measures against the whole, all in the name of national security.

In 1988, Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the internment of Japanese families with the Civil Liberties Act. The camps were declared to be a terrible civil liberties abuse — one of the worst in American history — and those who have criticized Bigbie’s words believe history could soon repeat itself.

Takei believes that the casual mention by Bigbie of the “precedent” that exists for internment camps will act as a slippery slope, and that America must remain vigilant and not allow Trump or his appointees to enact their proposed policies, which do indeed contain a Muslim registry. The entire column presents a pretty watertight argument and an important one as Trump’s administration begins to take shape.

(Via Washington Post)

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A 14-year-old girl in the U.K., who died of cancer, received her final wish of being cryogenically frozen in the hopes of eventually prolonging her life. The girl, who is being addressed as JS for legal reasons, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and when she was told it was terminal, she began researching cryonic preservation. However, the act of being cryogenically frozen is, as The Telegraph puts it, a “leap of faith” and relies on medical procedures that may not even be created.

The girl’s decision was met with controversy, as her two divorced parents were split on the decision with her father being completely opposed to the idea. Her mother began legal proceedings with the help of a solicitor to make it happen. Unfortunately, JS was too sick to attend court, but wrote to the judge:

“I think being cryo-preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time. I don’t want to be buried underground. I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up.”

Judge Peter Jackson ruled to leave the girl’s fate up to her mother and didn’t specifically rule on cryonic preservation. But JS got her wish and was taken to a storage facility in America. The judge also granted an injunction preventing JS’ father from making arrangements on what to do with his daughter’s body but felt his sorrow: “No other parent has ever been put in his position. It is no surprise that this application is the only one of its kind to have come before the courts in this country — and probably anywhere else.”

(Via The Telegraph & The Guardian)

During his opening monologue on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert groused over “post-truth” being named as the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2016 “Word of the Year.” After announcing his dissatisfaction with hyphens, he lightheartedly argued how the word of the year is just a rip off of his own creation, “truthiness.”

Colbert first coined “truthiness” during the first episode of The Colbert Report in 2005. The word was a satirical take on how politicians make decisions based on their emotions while putting facts aside. Whereas the Oxford English Dictionary’s “post-truth” refers to situations where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The Late Show host believes that this imitation arrives a little too close for comfort.

However, perhaps this is simply a case of timeliness, as satire in the political landscape has merged with reality. President-Elect Donald Trump clearly catered to the American public’s dissatisfaction with the current government and tapped into their emotions. Colbert even recognized the similarities earlier this summer and brought back his Report character with “truthiness” in tow.

On Thursday, Colbert eventually took the “post-truth” honor in good stride, saying “I personally believe I’m getting ripped off” while wearing a coy smile.

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About 12 hours ago, Donald Trump made the controversial selection of General Michael Flynn, who tells people that it’s smart to be afraid of Muslims, as national security advisor. Friday morning brought two more names to the fold. These two gentlemen carry a similar outlook on global affairs, so at least Trump’s being … consistent?

Trump’s newest offers include Mike Pompeo, who called the Iran Deal a “disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” as CIA director (he has accepted the gig). He also chose Jeff Sessions, who lost a federal judge gig after cracking KKK jokes, as attorney general:

Sessions, 69, was Trump’s first endorser in the Senate and quickly became the then-candidate’s chief resource on policy. Known for his hard-line views on immigration, the fourth-term senator has been dogged by accusations of racism throughout his career. In 1986, he was denied a federal judgeship after former colleagues testified before a Senate that he joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.”

Senator Sessions hails from Alabama while Pompeo represents Kansas in Congress. Trump, who lacks foreign policy experience, is surrounding himself accordingly, but his selections all share the same worldview. That is to say, they will fit in with Trump’s proposed policies against refugees and undocumented immigrants.

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While comparing the arrival of Irish immigrants in New York City to that of subsequent Jewish and Italian travelers, Colin Quinn: The New York Story delivers a joke about the Statute of Liberty I didn’t quite understand. My Brooklyn-born and Queens-raised Italian girlfriend, however, laughed so hard she scared the dog off the couch. “We were cynical to begin with,” Quinn explains, “[because] there was no Statue of Liberty yet. There was never that poetic moment the Italians and Jews had. Because the Italians came… they’re already crying and emotional, and they look up and welcoming them is a 100-foot mother.”

This ex-Texan eventually got the joke, but the Saturday Night Live alum appreciated the response from a native New Yorker to his Big Apple-based Netflix special, which premieres Friday, November 18th. “Tell her I’m glad she liked the line because I said it during the whole run of the show and it never got a laugh,” Quinn said over the phone. “I kept it in because I knew it was true.”

The New York Story, which is based on Quinn’s 2015 The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, marks the stand-up comedian’s fifth one-man show since his 1998 Broadway debut, An Irish Wake. It’s also his second outing with fellow comic turned director Jerry Seinfeld, who previously directed Quinn in his 2010 HBO special, Long Story Short. Both points came up in our discussion, which quickly turned to President-elect Donald Trump‘s victory a few days prior — an appropriate subject given Quinn’s focus on immigration.

You’ve probably been asked about this countless time, but I feel it necessary to bring up Donald Trump, especially since you spend so much time discussing immigration in New York Story.

Nobody’s brought that up actually. Yeah, it’s definitely one of those things to look at it. And believe me, I’m not somebody that’s just going to be like, “Hey you know what? This is a country of immigrants.” No, there’s another side to it too. You can’t just dismiss it. That being said, the fact that nobody even discusses immigration — on either side, nobody discusses it — is so typical of what’s going on with us in general. There’s a lot of screaming on the surface going on, but nobody ever goes, “Let’s sit down and have a real conversation about it.” My new theory is [we should have] publicly held constitutional conventions, only no one’s allowed to criticize until after. So you can’t just attack people for giving their opinion. That’s the problem. Nobody’s going to be honest, because if you’re honest you’ll be in trouble. So that’s my new thing. With immigration, I think that’s another thing. The truth about immigration in New York City is, it saved it during the past 20 years. It changed New York for the better and no one denies that. Every neighborhood in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and elsewhere is better because immigrants moved in.

You poke fun at the mostly white millennials who’ve gentrified your native Park Slope, especially for their commitment to racially charged protest movements like Black Lives Matter — while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge a person’s color for fear of reprisal. I’m a liberal straight white male, and I know it’s a joke at my expense, but I totally get it. Do you worry others won’t?

I don’t blame you or them. Like I say in the special, you can lose your job if you do [refer to people by their skin color]. My intention is not mean, but if people want to take clips or take it in a different context, I’m sure they can. At this point, people can do that with anything. If you say anything, people can do that. You can do that with my book a lot easier, actually. If people are going after you, they’re going after you and they’re probably going to get you. It’s just the way it goes, but I don’t care at this point. Your intention is your intention, but if people want to misconstrue what I’m saying then they’ll do it. That’s just how it is. You want to get me? Go ahead. Anybody can.

Sure, but does that bother you at all?

It bothers me, but it’s just the way it is. I mean it bothers me, but I’m not deluded enough to think you can change the whole national culture and conscience. You can try but you can’t be like, “Guys stop now! That’s enough! I want everybody online to stop behaving like this.” [Laughs.] We need a “wave your fist” emoticon.

This is your second outing with Jerry Seinfeld, who doesn’t direct that much. Why do you think he decided to helm New York Story?

Because he believes in the stuff I’m doing. I hope that’s what it is. He believes it’s there for a reason, that it’s going for the right thing. He loves doing things like this. It’s the kind of stuff he loves. And he does it, I think, to help me. Definitely to help me, because when you see his name on it, people are more inclined to be like, “Oh Jerry’s involved.” It definitely helps. But also, he likes doing this kind of stuff. He likes to structure things, and I think it drives him nuts that I don’t give a shit.

[Laughs.] What’s it like to be directed by Seinfeld?

Once we’re filming, he lets it go. He’s very hands-on in the early days with the structural things. That’s when he’s really involved. When it comes down to figuring out the beginning, middle, end and things like that. That’s when he’ll ask questions about what I’m saying at certain points and why. Where they’re coming from. Things like that.

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In a 2013 interview with The New Yorker, you discussed a television show about immigration you’d written that nobody wanted to make. Whatever happened to it?

Nothing. They never made it. I’ve written a bunch of immigration shows and tried to get them all made. A bunch of different types of shows. Everyone was always like, “This is a good idea! This is a good time for it!” And it’s never happened. I don’t know what to say at this point.

Did anything from it percolate into The Coloring Book or New York Story?

No. It’s all stuff about immigration, and all the different aspects of immigration in New York and in the country in general. None of them ever got made.

The cut of New York Story I saw came in at just over an hour, though I’m sure the live show was at least an hour and a half. Was there anything you had to cut for time you’d wished you hadn’t?

I can’t remember, to tell you specifically, what we cut at this point. It was more like an hour and 50 minutes instead of an hour and a half in total. But I guarantee whatever we cut, in my mind, I thought “How did we cut that? That’s gold.” Every time I write something, I’m like “What? You want to cut that? That’s my masterpiece!” But you have to do that. You know how they say in movies that you “kill your little darlings”? It’s like that.

At least with Netflix, you don’t have to cut for commercial breaks or broadcast timeslots.

Yeah, but then if Comedy Central or somebody else like that buys it… The worse thing is when they cut into the middle of a joke and you have to call them out for leaving a setup without a punchline. People watching at home are going to think, “that guy’s not funny,” because they left the setup in but not the punchline. So you have to go in there and watch it because it’s so arbitrary and they’ll just kill it. That combined with political correctness, with which they’ll cut things and ruin the whole joke — especially a show like this. But if Comedy Central does buy this — I don’t know Netflix rules, I think they just own it forever, hopefully — I don’t want it cut up for commercials. Because if they do I’m getting in there and saying, “You can’t make this comfortable for people.” It’s either they like it or they don’t.

They can’t keep doing this in comedy. I was talking to somebody the other day about it. Look, you can argue for or against political correctness, but in comedy you can’t argue for it. Because whatever the standard is that people want, whatever is considered appropriate, the whole point of comedy is to go a little bit past that. That’s the point of it! Everybody talks about how you’re supposed to push the envelope, but then if you push the envelope they’re like, “Whoa! There’s standards of decency!” What is this, the Catholic League? [Laughs.] Is this 1930s? Stop! You’re speaking like the moral majority back in the fucking ’80s, you know? It’s so weird. I understand you want to be like that, but not with comedy. We’re off limits! How’s that work for everybody? I’m calling it now, we’re off limits. You can’t judge us! You can say we’re not funny, but you can’t judge us based on the normal standards of society. That’s it.

It’s an appropriate topic for discussion, given who we just put in the White House.

Yeah! [Laughs.] We’re in whole new sphere right now. We’re in a mindset that’s never been explored in society. People say “may you live in interesting times.” Well guess what? I guarantee you one thing — it’s not going to be boring. Whatever happens, it won’t be boring.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve been working on something. It’s about, for the lack of a better word, that one asshole in every situation. When you’re at your job or anywhere else you go, there’s always the one person who has that sort of toxic personality. You know what I mean? It’s about them.

How appropriate.

Yeah!

Are you still writing it, or have you already been trying it out on stage?

I’ve been putting it up for a couple of months. The thing about writing stand-up is, the audience has to be a part of it. More than anything else, they have to be in it the whole way. That’s the funny thing about stand-up. The audience is there for the development of the whole thing.

Unlike writing books, like your The Coloring Book. It’s much more insular.

[Laughs.] About halfway through the book, I was like, “You know what? I hate writing books.” Which is horrible, so I figured I should make it into a stand-up show or I would be miserable. Everybody was saying, “You should write a book!” and now I know I hate it.

Colin Quinn: The New York Story streams Friday, November 18 exclusively on Netflix.

It’s been a few weeks since something ridiculous happened with Kanye West or his family, so he was about due, and boy did he make up for lost time. Kanye continued his Saint Pablo tour in San Jose Thursday night and chose then to announce who he supported in this year’s election even though he didn’t vote.

“If I would have voted, I would have voted on Trump,” he told the crowd before they showered him with boos. It was one of just the many interruptions Kanye had during his set. Why he chose until now to throw his support behind one of the presidential candidates? Well, apparently Scooter Braun told him to wait until after the election to support anybody publicly.

Needless to say, fans in attendance did not enjoy the foolery.

And apparently after saying he would have voted for Trump, people started leaving.

Though some continued to enjoy the show.

While some were over it.

And some fans even threw things at Kanye during his many interruptions for political talk, which caused him to threaten to cancel the show.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, he confirmed that he still plans to run for president in 2020. So there’s that I guess.

I guess there’s nothing left to say but *sigh*

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On Thursday night, the The New Yorker released a compelling interview of President Obama by David Remnick. The piece takes place over the course of election week, so it relates how the president moved from “cautious optimism” just prior to the big day into the realization that things weren’t going as planned. And of course, there’s the aftermath by which Obama struggled to come to terms with not only Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss but it how it shall affect his legacy. The piece is well worth reading in full, but the most fascinating portions involve Obama consoling others through their shock and confusion.

To his staff members, Obama reassured them on the morning after their worst political nightmare. He insisted that wasn’t literally the end of the world: “This is not the apocalypse. I don’t believe in apocalyptic — until the apocalypse comes.” Obama seemed shell-shocked through much of the piece too, but he stays stoic for others while revealing glimpses of his true emotions to Remnick. Then came the not-so-easy task of explaining to daughters Malia and Sasha how exactly Trump won and why the aftermath was filled with racially charged attacks, protests, and sadness:

“What I say to them is that people are complicated. Societies and cultures are really complicated … This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop … You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”

Leave it to Obama to make every other parent feel inadequate with their own shrugs and silence in response to their own teenagers’ questions. After all, Hillary Clinton’s chances went from “a lock” to “not at all good” in very short order. There are plenty of factors within her loss, which will be analyzed for generations to come, but there’s time for that later. Obama just wanted to make sure everyone he knew was alright, and his daughters lucked out with such a perceptive dad.

You can read the full interview here. It’s a rather engrossing week-in-the-life piece that was undoubtedly planned out with one outcome in mind and then adapted through the chaos and stages of political grief. Folks are going to miss Obama.

(Via The New Yorker)