I don’t. I think it misses a great deal of O’Keafe’s dishonesty via selective editing. O’Keafe in fact did not visit Planned Parenthood dressed as a pimp: the street scenes were edited in later. Project Veritas' Election 2016 'Rigging' Videos | Snopes.com
Cohen will show clips where the target catches on. That’s funny too, as a contrast. It’s also a lot fairer to his audience.
It reminds me of what entrapment is and isn’t.
Pop quiz, hotshot: Someone comes up to you and starts singing the praises of meth. This person begins putting on a little show about how wonderful meth is, how amazing you feel, and how cheap it is, and practically shoves it into your hand. You feel pressured, to say the least, and due to that pressure, you buy. You’re now under arrest for purchasing methamphetamine. Was that entrapment?
Of course not. You weren’t physically forced to buy the drug, you were simply enticed and pressured. You could have walked away at any time, whether you knew it or not.
Cohen is, therefore, a lot nicer, a lot less… intense… than the police are allowed to be. When someone promotes the kinderguardian idea on his show, trying to turn it around on him is akin to saying that if you don’t want to be raped, you shouldn’t dress like that. Which is also a common Republican talking point.
Cohen is just being Tough On Stupidity. He’s Enforcing Our Social Norms. Republicans should be in favor of stuff like that.
That is pretty much textbook entrapment.
Entrapment is inducement plus predisposition. If you had no predisposition, you would have walked.
nm
I’m watching ten minutes of the show right now. Several Congressmen come out in support of toddlers with gun. In most cases, they are not reading from teleprompters; they’re goaded into answering this stupidly. Watch the video if you don’t believe me.
The word “Flabbergasting” doesn’t do justice to the obscenity of these Congressturds and gun nuts.
I’d love to put it in GD (“Should Congress help arm Toddlers? Many GOP Congressmen think so”), or perhaps the “Guns give me an orgasm” thread in MPSIMS. But I’m at 85-and-counting. You don’t have many Warnings, Ravenman: Why don’t you start the thread?
I got two things from that video. One, Cohen is a comedic genius. Two, politicians are dumber than I thought.
As someone who likes to inform us that guns are lovely things that offer terrific protection against government tyranny, and that gun violence has absolutely nothing to do with the US being infested with guns and is merely a little cultural problem, aren’t those your kind of politicians? I mean, sure, they’re laughably dumb gun nuts, but so are you.
Good God. I alternately laughed and felt like crying.
I never said guns weren’t part of the problem. It’s a multidimensional world with multiple variables in practically every issue. Why is it hard for you or your side to be honest?
Just saw episode one, and yeah, that last ten minutes was really something.
They’re completely wrong about giving children guns. Children don’t have the requisite strength, dexterity, and overall coordination to use guns. They should be using crew served weapons instead, which have the advantages of being both somewhat stabilized requiring less strength and skill to use and building teamwork.
They don’t need all that when they have owlvision.
“Looks like you’ve got some molehills on your lawn”, says the person living in Kathmandu.
The biggest problem is that at least half the show was just not funny. And while parts were, they didn’t rise to the genius of Ali G or Borat. I was very disappointed.
I wasn’t complaining, I just didn’t understand why it is in the Pit.
That video is biting. The part about Cohen’s son – “he died doing the thing I love” – is amazing, mostly because of the reaction. And the last several minutes of the congressmen endorsing the program is sickening.
Part of his genius is putting half-twists on common expressions to make them terrible, but he’s so nonchalant about it that an interviewee eager to maintain social norms is unlikely to challenge him–it’s easier to believe they misunderstood him than to believe he really just said the awful thing he said.
Given what I’ve read about the clip, I don’t find it especially damning. Cohen is brilliant at exploiting particular aspects of psychology, in the same way a stage magician exploits other aspects. Sure, folks should’ve stood up and walked away, but the fact that they didn’t may speak more to their eagerness to please someone they view as an ally than to any especially awful beliefs on their part.
But it does make me think that KGB experts could’ve used the same techniques to get that pee tape.
And by necessity we don’t see the entire encounter.
That said, here’s what Bernie Sanders had to say when interviewed by one of Cohen’s alter-egos: “Billy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I really don’t.” Which isn’t an unreasonable response. Not really a great parallel though, as Sanders was interacting with a character whom he would disagree with.
The gun stuff is pretty damning, as gun enthusiasts insist that they take gun safety very seriously and object resentfully to the lack of gun knowledge of their opponents. But they are able to be filmed with a variety of guns with stuffed animals on them, all the better to market them to toddlers. Or film ads for such proposals.
Cohen does not care in the slightest. He got lottsa lottsa legal flak after Borat, but shrugged it off. I like the way he takes the stuffing out of the pompous and opinionated, but I found the Borat film both childish and incredibly cringeworthy, and many of those he made fun of were nice ordinary people.
I thought so too. It was actually kind of boring.