This time on Who Is America? we get five segments, and if none of them are particularly mind-blowing, two of them confront prominent surrogates of the Trump administration about the events of Charlottesville, one year after the Unite the Right rally where Heather Heyer was murdered (Rest in Power), and on the weekend where an anniversary rally not only took place in DC, but where the white supremacists marching were protected by police and even given a private Metro train car to ride to the event.
Nothing hits as hard as, say, the Jason Spencer or Kingman segments from episode two, but those two are the episode highlights. The second segment brings us Billy Wayne Rudduck of Truthbrary interviewing Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager. (You remember: He lost his job after physically accosting a female reporter, and of course CNN hired him as a commentator not longer afterward; more recently, he gave us “womp womp.”) Rudduck asks Lewandowski about the president’s racism and misogyny (or lack thereof, from their point of view), and then brings up Charlottesville, asking “Why should the president have to pick a side between anti-fascist and fascist? He’s the president of all people!” Lewandowski doesn’t go quite as far as I’m sure team SBC hoped he would, backing down a little when Rudduck suggests it’s good to stand up for the fascists when they want to “express their right to commit a genocide,” but we also do get a fun bit where Rudduck explains that the “Rastafarian lobby” controls PBS. (“They sent a bunch of Buffalo Soldiers to the heart of Africa.”)
The other segment involving Charlottesville features OMGWhizzBoyOMG interviewing David Clarke (a fairly appropriate followup after Joe Arpaio– maybe OMGWhizzBoy is trying to put together a series called “America’s Cruelest Sheriffs”). This segment served as another good example of a point I’ve been trying to make; that even when the segments on Who Is America? don’t score political wins or make points, they generally still work well as comedy. This one does both, but it’s the latter that was funnier to me than the former. It’s certainly a bit shocking to have Clarke give a sincere answer to the question of ”If you were the sheriff in Germany in the 30s, and the antifa was marching, what would you do to stop them?”, but the weirder, funnier scene is OMGWhizzBoy talking about his sister: first saying that his hands smell like “my sister after she finishes roller skating”, and then casually mentioning she was murdered three years ago and “they didn’t find her because they didn’t look in the lake.”
Of the other three segments, I thought the first one was the funniest, bringing the return of Rick Sherman and Ex-Con Second Chance (last seen in our very first episode), this time going away from the art world and into the world of EDM. If you thought the art world was inherently ridiculous, the EDM world is even moreso (perhaps my opinion is influenced by being an Old whose live music prime was mostly pre-EDM and who was never a raver even then). Jake Inphamous becomes Rick’s guide to the world, as he listens to Rick’s EDM track with samples taken from prison (“I’m gonna stab you, it’s for a song”) and seems genuinely taken by it. Rick is eventually rechristened “DJ Solitary” and Jake sets him up with a gig at SWAY Nightclub.
This ended up being hilarious for several reasons: Rick’s encounter with the girls in the car on the way to the club; DJ Solitary getting the crowd to cheer in support of murderers; and the way the audience gets into the song before the bass gradually drops out and they realize they’re just listening to scenes of prison sodomy, getting unnerved… then the beat drops and everyone gets back into it.
La Vita Diamante di Gio returns, although with nothing nearly as audacious as last segment. Indeed, this one was a little disappointing because Gio engaged in another charity photo shoot similar to that in episode 2, although this time with Mahbod Moghadam, co-founder of RapGenius (now just Genius). The shoot itself is funnier, with Moghadam being green-screened into a scenario similar to how Corrine Olympios was, although at Gio’s suggestion that “the camera subtracts a couple of inches” Moghadam takes up the offer to stuff first a banana in his underwear, and then a literal baby’s arm. Well, a literal baby doll’s arm. Moghadam also takes pretty quickly to Gio’s suggestion to “act like a black guy,” which makes me feel less bad for him.
The final segment features Brigadier Erran Morad meeting with Daniel Roberts, founder of the Youth Shooters of America. (“How do you get over the instinct not to shoot the youth?” “No, no…”) This segment is in part notable for the ease with which Roberts buys some of Morad’s ludicrous assertions, such as “I have been in 14 terrorist attacks, and started 3” and “23% [of terrorist attacks] in the Middle East is done by children,” but it’s really one of Morad’s three terrorist training segments that stand out. “Use Your Voice As a Weapon” is a bit of silly absurdity, as the two have a very normal and polite conversation in enraged tones; “Defending From Terrorist Babies” is better, as Morad trains him in the tactic of finding a bomb in a baby’s diaper and disarming it. (Roberts can’t get the diaper off in time and so just throws the baby in a trash can. It was the wrong baby.) The highlight, though, is “How to Survive a Beheading”, which, naturally, centers around “biting the terrorist’s penis and using it to hold him hostage.”
The fact that this Morad segment didn’t land as hard as some of the others is, I think, testament to how outrageous this show has been so far, more than anything else. If the dick-biting had been in the first episode, it might be all we talked about that week. As is, after seeing segments like the quinceanera and Jason Spencer’s ass-thrusting and N-bombs, it doesn’t quite have the same impact. Still, that’s just a testament to how high the best show on TV has raised the bar.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- Well, now I know the phrase “DJs get BJs.” (And now Rick Sherman knows what a BJ is.)
- “Not from me, but I can find you somebody.”
- Again, maybe I’m an Old, but DJ Solitary’s song could have passed as legit EDM for me. And I even kind of enjoyed it.
- Billy Wayne Rudduck has a conspiracy theory about the American Cancer Society: “Liberal elites are raising money to give Americans cancer.”
- “Backing down” in Lewandowski’s case means responding to “You can’t be attacking honest, fascist people who just want to express their right to start a genocide. That is their right.” with “I don’t know about that.”
- “I do not hate Jews. I am not an anti-Yosemite. In fact some of my very good friends hate Jews.”
- Other reasons I feel less bad for La Vida Diamante di Gio mocking Mahbod Moghadam: He introduces himself with “aka ‘Ma Boo,’ that’s my hip-hop name.” And also I found out why he got fired from RapGenius.
- Another great joke: because Moghadam is holding a white baby doll for the shoot; when Gio suggests using a black baby, we realize “Oh, duh, of course this makes no sense with a white baby,” but instead they use the black baby doll’s arm to stuff Moghadam’s boxer briefs.
- Also, given the green screen, wouldn’t green underwear be a poor choice for the shoot?
- Also, wouldn’t not wearing pants be a poor choice for the shoot?
- “It’s a shame that there weren’t brave sheriffs like you around in Germany in the 30s, because you could have protected the fascists, and let them speak their mind a bit clearer, and things could have been done a bit quicker.” That quote is something, but check out the expression OMGWhizzBoyOMG gives to the camera after saying it:
- Last but not least: Solidarity to everyone who showed up this weekend to counter-protest Unite the Right. You’ve inspired fear in the hearts of Nazis.