the link is here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=177586&title=red-state-blue-state-report-oil
it certainly takes the piss, but if you’re not too sensitive, it’s funny enough, and is some exposure for the lifestyle.
That was AWESOME! 
It made me a little sad to hear the audience groaning so much, though.
[quote=“BlueHeron, post:2, topic:1013”]That was AWESOME!
It made me a little sad to hear the audience groaning so much, though.[/quote]
yeah, didn’t surprise me though. let them eat grocery store bought food I guess, while they can.
hah, that’s great. I just don’t like how the slapped the label of democrat onto the guy. If your gonna rewild, you have to drop political affiliations. Democrats, go away!
All the same bullshit tricks. If I had a nickle for everytime some idiot douche pulled out a lighter while I was working on a bow-drill… It’s like I want to punch them in the face and say “SHut the fuck up, you’re not fucking funny.” Hahaha. That guy was awesome.
What the “red states” guy said… “Why should Americans have to go back to living like the indigenous people we wiped out in order to live like Americans?”
That’s fucking insane. That’s not funny at all. That is so fucking racist and just… weird.
Isn’t it a parody of a racist statement?
If they weren’t making fun of the guy in the first place, it would be a parody. But they do make fun of the rewilding guy first, like he is an idiot. Than they compare him to indigenous peoples… So they are still making fun of indigenous peoples. If they were boosting the rewilding guy, it wouldn’t be insulting, but they put him down, than compare him to indigenous peoples in a different joke. Does that make sense?
I think you might look a little too hard for logic there, Scout. It actually seemed a little sympathetic towards the rewilder–as sympathetic as the Daily Show gets, anyway. Really, I expected a lot worse. They portrayed rewilding as kooky but generally benign; the “red state” guy got a portrayal of stupid and mean. I’d rather have the “kooky” label any day. 
In the same segment they also make fun of the oil crisis, Democrats, Republicans, television (esp. political opinion shows), bicycle commuters, motorists, NASCAR racers, Americans, and the British. Everything on the Daily Show is put there as the platform for a joke. It is the primary way that the show couches the points it wants to make. But it’s layered. You have to look beyond the joke for the real message (although undoubtedly there are audience members who are too lazy or ignorant to get it). I’ve always felt that the Daily Show has more than one audience.
So if the Daily Show is going to examine rewilding, it’s going to make jokes about it on the surface. I saw a large part of the interview as an absurdist look at how the blue state guy’s caricature clashes against the culture of rewilding (dumpster diving, etc). It’s like, “How would this silly four-eyed intellectual liberal media guy respond to this guy’s lifestyle?” And what the red state guy said was written in answer to the question, “How would this silly macho bigoted conservative pundit react against the blue state guy’s interview?”
I actually feel stoked that they bothered to seek out somebody who is rewilding and document his perspective, instead of doing a complete parody. That way, a real live rewilding person got to make some clear points about rewilding and the end of the industrial age, and he said them with confidence, even if they were sound bites. If you look carefully, past the TV edits, you can see that Tod is an extremely keen and resourceful person (they note the fact that he’s a former engineer) with hope for the future and who has found his bliss. Not only that, they showed images of how he lives, and it looks like he is finding great success. Make fun of the roadkill and the bowdrill all you want for the sake of the lower life forms in the audience, but the proof is in the pudding… the guy is relaxed, friendly, smart, physically fit, and confident. (I love the way he says, “Yeah, it’s roadkill”, like “So what, get over it, dude”.) If I had never heard of the idea of reforming a pre-agricultural society, and I had seen this on the Daily Show, I would have been intensely curious about this guy and his proposed solution, despite the joking about dumpster maggots.
Ditto.
We all see what we all see I suppose.
[quote=“Urban Scout, post:5, topic:1013”]All the same bullshit tricks. If I had a nickle for everytime some idiot douche pulled out a lighter while I was working on a bow-drill… It’s like I want to punch them in the face and say “SHut the fuck up, you’re not fucking funny.” Hahaha. That guy was awesome.
What the “red states” guy said… “Why should Americans have to go back to living like the indigenous people we wiped out in order to live like Americans?”
That’s fucking insane. That’s not funny at all. That is so fucking racist and just… weird.[/quote]
People can be cocks (not the rooster kind). When I walk barefoot in the city, I get all these weird looks. The funny thing is, THEY’RE the crazy ones! I mean, how can you look me in the eyes and tell me that shoes are a good thing? That we NEED shoes if we are to even walk into a store? Or that shoes show how much better we are than the ground below us? I just remember that logic, and it keeps me cool.
The ‘red’ humor on that show was the same kind of ironic backwards humor you find on the Colbert Report. I personally find it quite funny. Of course, that’s when I’m attempting to give a shit about this political game.
And I still feel that show mocks the rewilding philosophy in a way. But the guy isn’t really helping portray himself in a dignified manner anyway. Dumpster diving for food? I guess it’s alright, and it’s a good use of food that would otherwise go to waste, but to show that on television just makes the guy look like a hobo who needs civ, not like a wild man who could live perfectly fine without it. It’s degrading.
Well, of course the Daily Show mocked rewilding. The Daily Show mocks. It doesn’t know how to do anything but. If something appears on the Daily Show at all, it appears as something to mock. That goes without saying.
And of course, how defensive should we get when someone mocks our own sacred causes? Shouldn’t we have the ability to laugh at ourselves?
But I think it went pretty light on rewilding, all things considered. I wouldn’t call it a sympathetic portrayal, but it felt a lot more sympathetic than what I braced for. After we watched it, Giuli got a little perturbed to see us mocked like that; I said, “Heck, I can hardly believe we’ve gotten to the point where there’s enough of us to warrant mocking!”
yeah, I guess my upsetness just boils down to the fact that I’m not a big fan of dumpster diving for food. Just seems degrading to me. Still think the daily show is the ~political~ shit, though.
What about dumpster diving feels degrading to you? Do you think of garbage as something bad or shameful?
Jason - you made my day with that comment! Thank you!
Yeah, I do. I know it’s just part of my inbred civ mindset, but I do. Just sayin, I think if your gonna rep rewilding on television, you shouldn’t dumpster dive while on air. People would get the impression that we’re hobos.
But you know what, now that I think about it, fuck that. People can think what they wanna think.
[quote=“v-rus, post:17, topic:1013”]Yeah, I do. I know it’s just part of my inbred civ mindset, but I do. Just sayin, I think if your gonna rep rewilding on television, you shouldn’t dumpster dive while on air. People would get the impression that we’re hobos.
But you know what, now that I think about it, fuck that. People can think what they wanna think.[/quote]
what’s wrong with hobos? by most definitions i could be considered a hobo, and it doesn’t interfere with my rewilding anymore than my other civiliized activities. and while i don’t think that dumpster diving is some revolutionary path to primitivism, it’s not as fucked up as buying food at the grocery store, which i’m sure most of us do.
You get what you ask for
[quote=“Urban Scout, post:5, topic:1013”]It’s like I want to punch them in the face and say
“SHut the fuck up, you’re not fucking funny.” Hahaha.[/quote]
I wish I was funny. I wish I was tough.
Maybe then I could write for TV too.