Think of the children

I was bowling with some friends last week, and as one of my friends was redeeming his coupon for a free game I was looking over the counter at the things they had on the wall. I noticed a plaque bearing a picture of a small (conveniently) black child wearing a medal, shaking a police officer's hand. Turns out this bowling alley had hosted some local special olympics league for a couple years in a row and this lucky kid was the winner.

The more I thought about this, the more it pissed me off at its sheer stupidity and feel-good uselessness.

Let me be clear: I'm not attacking children with disabilities, terminal or severely chronic illnesses, or 'special needs' (gotta love euphemisms, huh?). And I'm not attacking the organizations like this local 'Special Olympics' squad- or at least, not their intentions. Actually, scratch that. The whole idea is pretty fucking stupid. [cue hate mail in 3...2...1...]

There's a lot of things wrong with these groups. First of all, their intention. For the most part, the concept boils down to this:
"every child should have a normal childhood, even if they suffer from physical, mental, or health disabilities."
It's not a bad idea, really. It's a bit stupid, sure; and it's more than a little naive, but you can't blame them for caring. It's sort of like the pro-life position on abortion: you can respect the intentions, since they're coming from a good place- just maybe not the most well-informed place, or with the greatest execution of that central concept. I don't know about you, but I never shook the hand of a police officer as a child. I visited a firehouse when I was a Boy Scout, but that's pretty much as close as I got to meeting someone really cool. I haven't done half the shit these kids get up to, and my childhood was pretty well normal. Come on, how many of you have participated in a bowling league and a track team and a nature camp? And then of course they're given all sorts of bullshit awards because people seem to suffer the fantastic delusion that simply because these children have learning disabilities, or are missing limbs, or have cystic fibrosis, or whatever, that they're somehow so fragile that if they don't win a shiny little medal in everything they do, they're going to go insane and kill themselves. What the fuck? If you really want these kids to have a normal childhood, you should start treating them like normal goddamn children- which, as far as emotional sanity goes, they pretty much are.

aside: I'm not attacking the Make A Wish Foundation, I'm attacking the organizations and groups who coddle children who actually grow up to be adults. If the child has a terminal disease that will kill them before they become an adult, that's a completely different story. By all means, let Timmy the leukemia patient play a game of pickup with LeBron James. If he's got a 6-month prognosis I see nothing wrong with making sure the rest of his life vomits sheer awesomeness. Remember, I'm not an unreasonable asshole- just an asshole. :end aside:

It's bad enough that these kids get pampered and coddled and dragged around everywhere so they feel special, it's that these groups do nothing else for them. The reality is, most people who are homeless are in that position because of mental, physical, or learning disabilities that make it incapable for them to hold a job. And these groups just don't prepare them for that uncomfortable reality, because the same kernel of idiocy that led to the "EVERY CHILD IS SPECIAL" philosophy implies that these children can't handle reality. Well guess what, fucktards: like it or not, they're gonna have to. Pretending that their handicap doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. To make matters worse, these institutions tend to punt the children to the curb once they turn 18 or thereabouts, leaving the poor suckers armed with nothing but a memory that they can't really do anything on their own. These children are retarded, not stupid.

What these insufferable organizations need to do, if they really want to live up to their mission statement of doing some good, is teach the kids in their care strategies to adapt to the harsh reality of adult life. Claude has severe autism, okay? And the last time I checked, giving him an explorer's badge when you drag him off to the local zoo is not a known cure for his disease (though if it was you can bet your ass Jenny McCarthy would be screeching her ass off about it). So instead of trying to pretend his autism doesn't exist and trying to hide the fact that he's crippled (or, even worse, champion it as though it inherently makes him better than those without it), start teaching Claude about the places he should apply for a job, how to apply for social security, where he should turn if things fall sour instead of living on the streets, basic interaction skills- you know, stuff that's actually fucking useful for him to survive after you dump him on the sidewalk because he's not an adorable little child anymore.

Wrong kind of boob tube

I watch The Daily Show. I like it. It’s funny. Even when he’s landing blows on the rest of the media and their collective idiocy, Jon still manages to be clever and memorable, and for the most part his correspondents are too. But, sadly, not all.

I watched Olivia Munn’s first appearance on the show when she reported on the oil spill in the Gulf. At the time, I was impressed by how wooden, stilted, and lifeless her segment and performance were. Being a generous fellow though, I chalked it up to her getting her sea legs and waited to pass judgment on her until I’d seen more. Yes, her first performance was terrible, but perhaps she just hadn’t found her voice yet.

A month or so later, I’m still waiting, and after seeing her bit on the Arizona immigration debacle (interpret that as you wish), I have to say I am not happy. Or amused. It still feels as though her segments are scripted by the show’s writers, and they lack that personal touch that all of the really good correspondents- and great comedians in general- have. What’s stopping me from giving her more time? Well, she’s been on the show plenty of times, and has yet to improve. The kiddie gloves need to come off at some point, but I’m afraid this is it. Olivia, you just don’t have what it takes. What makes the correspondents’ segments enjoyable (and in some cases actually watchable) is how differently they each tackle their segments. Putting John Oliver on a story will produce a very different sketch from what you might see if Larry Wilmore had handled it instead (just to name two excellent members of the show’s reporters). Like I said, comedy is personal at its heart- it’s about you and the person telling the joke. What distinguishes passable comedy from great comedy is that personal finish- when Robin Williams cracks wise about the appropriateness of Bernard Madoff’s last name, it’s done in a manner completely different from how Lewis Black presents it. But it’s more than just that. It’s not just important to build a brand for the sake of being funnier than normal, it’s important to build a brand just to stand out at all. Right now Munn is still playing the straight man (or woman, whatever) in her segments. That’s not what she’s supposed to be doing.
Bottom line? She doesn’t have the talent. So what is she doing there?

Clearly, the higher-ups at The Daily Show know fairly well what they’re doing (being funny), and they’re damn good at it- just look at all the emmys the show has racked up. Look at the kind of people they’ve had as correspondents: Ed Helms, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert- even recent stars like John Hodgman and Aasif Mandvi . They even have Lewis Black make regular, hysterical, appearances. Lewis Black, for fuck’s sake! So who the hell was smacked in the head with a shovel over the weekend, walked into the studio on Monday, and said, “hey, we should hire that woman from G4!”? I hate to resort to cliché, but I hate tiptoeing around the real problem even more, so I’m just going to put it out there: they hired her for eye candy. I’ll admit it, she’s very good looking. I could sit there and watch her all day- provided she’s doing that in a forum where personal appearance is the main event (I’m not saying it should be the Playboy channel or something- maybe she could anchor a news station).

What especially rankles is how she (Munn) stacks up compared to Kristen Schaal. I can count the number of times Kristen did a segment on the show with one hand, and you know what’s a shame? She was fucking genius. Anybody who says women can’t be funny has never watched her (or Kathleen Madigan, for that matter). She was hired for her wit, plain and simple. And she didn’t make her appearance an issue! She’s hardly unattractive, but she didn’t put on any bells and whistles. She was plain, and that’s that- because what she looked like didn’t fucking matter. And now she’s gone. She isn’t even included among the news team on the goddamn website. And now we have Olivia Munn, who has a tenth of Kristen’s talent and ten times the cleavage, and you have to wonder if there isn’t a connection. She was hired to boost the ratings, plain and simple. Everybody knows sex sells. Samantha Bee, true to form, pointed this out the first time Olivia was on the show. And she’s absolutely right: Olivia is there to put the proverbial asses in seats (I highly doubt that’s actually a proverb, but what the fuck. Poetic license). Nothing more. Right, Olivia Munn was hired for her comedic talent, and Megan Fox is hired for anything because of her acting chops. Got it.

But why does this bother me so much? It’s pretty simple. If I want to see something funny, I watch a comedy show. If I want to see titties, I watch porn.