Bugle 293 – Slow cook democracy

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The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 293 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World for the week ending Friday the 29th of May 2015.

I'm Andy Zoltzman reporting exclusively for the Bugle from London, the spiritual home of interest rate manipulation.

Proud to be a Londoner as always.

And in New York City, the spiritual home of New Yorkers and their physical home as well in many cases, it's the satirical screwdriver himself, John Oliver.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

Andy, last week I did a gig for a benefit gig for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a very good organisation.

The problem was I had to go on immediately after a leading cancer doctor telling the audience about the work he was currently doing to treat patients and the research he was doing to cure diseases.

He also just happened, unhelpfully, to look like a male model, Andy, and I have never felt like a bigger piece of shit as I walked onto the stage afterwards to tell some jokes.

Oh, I've felt like a piece of shit multiple times before when walking on stage and also when not walking on stage Andy.

I feel like a piece of shit now for instance.

But there is something particularly unforgiving about a side-by-side juxtaposition between a handsome cancer doctor and a non-handsome non-cancer doctoring comedian walking onto a stage implying, don't listen to him, listen to me.

Especially because, in the cruelest twist of fate, the doctor was also funny, Andy.

So he was funny, handsome, and worked to cure cancer.

And on that evening, I can tell you I was literally none of those things.

So this is Bugle 293.

Coincidentally, 293, the number of plants ejected from this year's Chelsea flower show, the offences the guilty plants had committed

range from cheating.

A clematis was caught injecting itself with an anabolic petal-enhancing steroid, whilst a nasturtium and a chrysanthemum were found naked in the same flower bed, getting distinctly funky, stamens and carpels all over the place, disgusting in front of the children as well.

And a cherry tree was thrown out that had just won a medal for being really good at being a tree after it urinated on a dog in what experts described as a revenge attack by a plant that was struggling to cope with its newfangled fame.

The celebrity tree was unavailable for comment, but is rumoured to have been planted in Snoop Dogg's backyard.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

And, John, there's been some sensational science on your side of the ponds.

Scientists in Chicago have announced that

levels of unconscious prejudice can be reduced by training the brain whilst asleep asleep by playing it stuff to cure you of prejudice.

This is a huge step forward for the world.

I mean, it does sound like bullshit, but this is

after all.

It's not bullshit, John.

It's science.

Admittedly, that is a pretty fine line quite a lot of the time.

So, to mark this, we are giving you an audio file to play to yourself on a loop overnight whilst you snooze that is guaranteed to cure you of any known or unknown bias that is making you a bit of a.

Simply ask a friend, spouse, parent, child or babysitter to sit next to your bed with a ghetto blaster whilst you sleep and keep repeating the following at a soothing volume.

Don't act like a prick.

Calm the f down about shit that's not your business.

Those people who are a little bit different from you shouldn't really be a problem.

People who believe in something that you do not believe in, there really is no actual need to kill them if you're right.

Your Lord will strike them down for you.

So chill out, kick back, and stop being a massive tool.

This technology can cure all extremities of you and long-held prejudices, including racism, sexism, ageism, terrorism, plagiarism, republicanism, baptism, shitbaggery, and general nonspecific twattish attitudes.

Repeat nightly for 12 years, increase volume if not working.

Yeah, I'm not sure that's going to have them wake up cured, Andy.

So might just have them wake up even angrier.

I just think that is all Islamic State needs.

Just wake up mid-argument.

I think that's where we've been going wrong with Islamic State.

We don't need military threats.

We just need some subconscious tapes to play overnight.

Right, just some drones with some speakers on the bottom of them.

Yeah, we've been using the wrong type of drones.

We just need something droning on.

The drones need to literally drone.

What sort of republicanism were you referring to as well?

Oh, it's the medical type.

Right.

That's thought not to be, it's kind of genetic.

It gets handed down through the generations.

Top story this week, US election news.

Andy, the last time we spoke, the UK was just coming to the end of its truly grueling five-week electoral campaign.

And like a marathon runner, you were all left buckled over and vomiting at the finish line.

America, of course, prefers the slow-cooking approach to democracy.

And we here are currently in the midst of candidates merely deciding if they're going to run for office or not, which is essentially a case of working out how much money they think they can raise, writing that number down on a piece of paper, asking an expert, is that enough?

And the expert then probably telling them how many zeros they need to add to the end of the number and then leaving the candidate with a decision to make.

Isn't democracy beautiful, Andy?

American politicians have to plan their campaigns very much like people plan weddings.

There's a lot of balloons, a lot of people you really don't want around.

And at the end of the day, it's hard to justify the money you've just spent.

This week has seen a few more names that announce that they'll be attending the 2016 electoral jamboree.

So we thought we'd give you a little update of America's choices so far.

And I warn you, the choices are not great.

This is like when you sit down at a restaurant, look over the menu, and find yourself thinking, there is really nothing I want to eat here.

I would leave, but I've already eaten a breadstick.

And the waiter is telling me that I have to order something now.

Well, as you say, the candidates are jockeying for positions, some on as yet imaginary horses.

The whole thing, John, they reckon it's going to cost five billion dollars.

I mean, that seems like a lot, but that's only £16 a head for you Americans for a whole year and a half's worth of manipulative grandstanding and shameless self-promotion.

That has to be good value.

Well, if it was only a year and a half, that would be fine, Andy, but it's definitely not just only a year and a half.

It's longer than that.

Or it just feels that way, but it's also longer than that.

So we've had Rick Santorum who's launched himself, and barely a day passes without some Republican or other throwing his or her needlessly expensive hat into the already overcrowded and argumentative ring.

Santorum has saddled himself up and is riding himself to the start line.

I mean, what are the odds looking like for him, John?

Because he ran last time, didn't he?

He did.

I mean, he's a conservative with a capital K and a Christian with very nearly three capital K's.

He came second to Mitt Romney in 2012, but he is likely to come 15th to whoever wins the primary this time around.

His early move in his speech was not only to say that if he's president, America will defeat ISIS, with the implication really being that if he's not president, ISIS will conquer this country immediately.

But he's also launched his campaign song, which is called Take Back America.

And the song, Andy, like Santorum himself, is absolutely appalling.

I'll give give you a little taste of it now.

I mean that's

what?

Unleash the pride.

Just reiterating that point,

it is time for that.

This is the way.

Changing the tide.

Isn't it time?

And then it's a fade out with a guy shaking a tambourine.

Oh, right.

Well, I mean, that's...

It's 45 seconds long, but they pack a lot into that 45 seconds, Andy.

Well, that does raise a few questions, John.

I mean, what do they mean by take back America?

Is it like some kind of disappointing shirt that no longer functions?

It has to be returned.

Whence it came.

That's right.

To get a refund for America from the Founding Fathers.

I don't know.

That's the problem with the 45-second song.

He's left a lot of room for interpretation, and that's dangerous in politics.

Unleashing the pride as well.

I mean,

that sounds like a bit of an about turn from his previously anti-gay marriage positioning from 2012.

Because, I mean, he kind of positioned himself as the champion of voters who opposed abortion and gay marriage, a kind of liberating hero to people who get unnaturally and inexplicably worked up about things other people are doing in their own lives that have absolutely no impact on them.

A kind of 21st century inverse gandhi.

Yeah, he will be running against a retired neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, who's a fully qualified doctor and even fuller qualified idiot, who, among other things,

that people in prison turn gay.

So that's a doctor.

A doctor said that.

Right.

And he, I mean, he said some true, I was reading about him this morning.

He said some truly, truly extraordinary things, Carson.

He claimed that allowing gay marriage would lead to the acceptance of bestiality and paedophilia.

That's a doctor.

That's a doctor saying that.

To which the obvious response is, no, it won't.

Dr.

Carson, there's absolutely no way that could possibly happen.

Are you a doctor, Andy?

Are you a doctor?

I'm not a doctor.

And he said this.

The point was that if you change the definition of marriage for one group, you'll have to change it for the next group and the next group.

To which again, the obvious response is, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You might be a qualified neurosurgeon, but you are completely and deliberately misunderstanding what this is about.

And you seem to misunderstand that marriage is consensual between two human adults who can give consent to each other.

Whereas, for example, a horse cannot give consent to marrying a human.

It can give consent to being given a sugar lump.

It cannot give consent to marrying a pervert with a fetish for horses.

Nor, more importantly, are horses likely to mobilise themselves to press for the legalization of bestial marriage through political campaigns.

Nor, even if they did, are people likely to think, yes, that seems fine, unless horses start evoluting a fk of a lot quicker than they have been and start developing the concept of romantic love and getting your friends to buy you some crockery.

It's, I mean, this is truly an extraordinary.

He also previously compared

Obama, Kelly at the Affordable Care Act, to slavery.

I'm always getting them mixed up as well, John, because I don't live in America.

Can you just remind me?

I know one involves helping people get access to medical care so they don't unnecessarily die, and the other involves the dehumanising, subjugation, and brutal exploitation and commoditisation of a race of people over hundreds of years.

And one of the greatest scars on the intensively scarred moral flesh of civilization.

But I just cannot remember.

I don't know.

I don't know.

All I know is that Lincoln was against both of them, Andy.

That's all right.

All right.

Okay.

That's all I know.

But yeah, he does say for a neurosurgeon, he does often sound like he practiced a lot of neurosurgery on his own brain recently.

Whilst using peanut butter as an anesthetic.

They'll also be going up against Texas senator Ted Cruz.

And Andy, if you think there's nothing worse than Santorum's Take Back America song, then you haven't heard Ted Cruz's supporters' rap song featuring lyrics such as, when power is concentrated centrally and federally, it creates dependency that's medically like leprosy.

Again,

it's not like that.

It's not like that at all.

It's called Set It On Fire.

And if you're wondering if i have a little bit of it for you andy then you shouldn't here it is start slow that's because like all hip-hop you want a slow build

oh oh oh we're back throw back to the 80s

it's like we're back in the late 70s labor force is dead

olden enemies and you hear the voice of reagan saying the fed is not the rest of the world this is cool

conservative ascendancy america you always want to hear Andy, in a rap song,

Reagan mentioned in the first eight bars.

There you go,

medically like leprosy.

There you go.

You can't, listen, you can't argue with something if it rhymes, Andy.

No, no, that's

what.

Yeah.

Fight the power.

I always thought Karl Marx made a mistake.

not writing the Communist Manifesto in a series of limericks.

Another interesting thing about Ted Cruz regarding Obamacare, Andy, is that he once spoke out against Obamacare for 21 straight hours in the Senate.

21 hours, Andy.

Other people may have made better points.

No one made longer points, Andy.

And

that is very much going to be the backbone of his campaign.

I mean, did he speak for 21 hours in the form of a rap?

Or

no?

I think so.

And I'm guessing it sounded medically like leprosy.

MC Filibuster is is quite a good name, actually.

It's not bad.

It's not terrible.

That is true.

Jeb Bush, he's not officially announced he's going to stand.

But

he is definitely going to stand, isn't he?

And I mean, you might think that

his name is slightly tarnished by being the same name as one of the most nationally and globally divisive presidents ever.

And also his DNA being...

basically the same and his Christmas card list.

And if Bush wins, John, I think we can prepare for the distinctive sound of the entire world just deciding to hibernate for four years under the nearest available sofa.

Obviously on the Democratic side the big name is Hillary Clinton who has been on a bus tour of the country positioning herself as a relatable grandmother.

The grandmother part is biologically true.

The relatable part is biologically impossible Andy.

The biggest media storm around her campaign so far, aside from a mysterious loss of personal emails from when she was Secretary of State, was her eating a burrito at a Chipotle.

That's it, Andy.

That's what the media went nuts over.

A hungry woman ordering a thing.

Hillary Clinton getting a burrito is very close to nothing, Andy.

It's technically something because it's a human eating food to survive.

But that's all it is.

It's as much something as an owl taking a shit is something.

That's technically something, but it barely seems worth bringing up.

I don't know, John.

I mean, it just, I think, surely a a message to the people of America that

whatever happens, Hillary Clinton is is is going to eat.

She will eat.

She will eat at least once a day.

And that's what you can rely on her.

And who do you want in the White House?

Someone who will eat once a day?

She's a strong favourite.

I was checking out the odds

after my successful bet on the British election.

I might have a little flutter on the state the American one as well.

She's Evans' favourite.

And

this could be a very exciting new start, John.

I mean, men have had a pretty decent go at running the world for the past 100,000 years plus.

But

is America ready for a president with ovaries?

This is a huge step for you.

Well, we'll see.

She's definitely the front runner for the Democrats.

She's so much a frontrunner that the only person on the Democrat side currently declared to run against her is Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, who has been widely ignored.

He's running in the Democratic primary despite never formally being a part of the Democratic Party.

And it's kind of largely assumed that this is because this will give him access to televised primary debates where he will entertainingly and justifiably shout at people.

I think that's what Bernie is largely going to contribute to this election campaign.

Some entertaining, well-meaning points delivered at volume on television.

Well, the odds are quite interesting.

You can get Alec Baldwin at 750 to 1.

Okay.

Sarah Palin at 100 to 1.

That's got to be very disappointing for Baldwin, frankly.

And Ben Carson, who we were talking about earlier on, extraordinarily, he is around about 25 to 1.

That's still a long shot, but not nearly as long a shot as you would hope for it to be in a nation that has schools and books.

And also,

you compare his odds with George Patake,

who has just launched his bid.

He is a moderate in a heavily Conservative field, which basically means absolutely no chance.

And when I say no chance.

No, no chance.

No chance.

I'll check the betting sites.

He wasn't even listed on most of them after announcing that he's standing.

And on the few that were offering odds on Pataki, they're basically 50 to 1, so making him twice as unlikely as the already massively unlikely Ben Carson.

He naively issued a four-minute launch video without at any point lecturing people on what they should do with their wombs or penises.

And it is hard to see how that is going to appeal to the core Republican voters.

He's neck and neck with Donald Trump and John McCain, and probably about the same odds to be the Republican candidate as Michelle Obama.

Yeah, George Pataki has as much chance of winning this race as a horse with no legs has of winning a race.

A horse with no legs on a skateboard with no wheels.

So what is the American public looking for, John, in the president of the United States?

They're not looking at all.

They're not looking at it.

They're quite rightly not looking at all Andy they're ignoring this at the moment because it's too soon so the American people to their credit are completely ignoring this process you want to look at candidates in elections Andy this early the same way you look at the sun ideally not at all but if you have to very briefly and with serious protection there's no point there's no point in the American people engaging in this yet none

well I'm glad we've covered it on the bugle then

give people a gentle way into it.

I guess, you know what you want.

You want a bit of charisma, someone who can

inspire.

He was the kind of person you can leave in your kitchen for 10 minutes, and by the time you've come back, they've made your kitchen table think it's a trampoline.

That's really what I want in a president.

You need trustworthiness, the outward veneer of believability, in a way that it is clear that when push comes to shove, they would take their own mother down a back alley and hand her over to the Chinese secret services.

You need to have a steely inner, I think, to be a president.

And most importantly, as you say, the willingness to spend vast amounts of dubiously acquired money, suffering a deluge of personal abuse, all for the right to be ceremonially stymied by your own political structures for the next four years.

It's uh as you say, John, democracy is fun.

And it is baffling how big an issue gay marriage still seems to be in the American political uh scheme.

I in Ireland, they've just had a referendum, um, voted overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing gay marriage.

Now, Ireland is a well, it's a nation which has traditionally scored at least nine popes out of ten on the Catholic scale.

And yet, even Ireland is now massively in favour of gaming.

Why is it still such a big issue in America?

Well, it's not, really.

It's not.

Yeah.

It's not exactly.

It isn't, really.

It's got, you know, most,

I think a majority of people agree with it.

It's past the tipping point.

A lot of states have it.

It's just really, it's not really so much about...

who was first now as who's going to be last.

And I think it'll be a close-run race between Mississippi and Alabama.

So, why do all the so many of the Republican candidates keep banging on about it?

I don't know, because they're old.

I don't think anyone really cares.

Some other candidates to run.

If you know Mitt Romney, sadly.

No Mitt Romney, sadly, the 2012 nominee.

He said these words.

He said, I did not want it to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have had a better chance of becoming the president, which is pretty much how he ran his 2012 campaign against Obama.

Giuliani 2008, is he going to stand again?

Well,

as long as the campaign's still active, Andy, he never stopped running.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, I saw described as having, quotes, extravagantly hawkish foreign policy views.

Now, that's, I mean, that's extra, not just hawkish, extravagant.

I'd like to see a bit more flamboyant in American warmongering.

I think Graham could be the candidate to bring that.

John Kasich,

Ohio governor, said, I'm pretty qualified for this kind of a job.

I'm pretty qualified for this kind of a job.

Not this exact job.

Obviously, I'm unqualified for that.

Makes like he's applying for a job of just painting some walls and not in a Michelangelo kind of way.

Carly Fiorina, former boss of Hewlett-Packard.

And if she makes America function as badly as the the Hewlett-Packard computer I had in the late 1990s when she was in charge of that company, America will basically become Sudan within four years.

Well,

she is very qualified to run for office in that she's already spent a huge amount of money running for Senate in California.

She spent $20 million to not be Senator of California.

So

there is previous there in terms of shitting money up a wall.

Set Blatter,

he has to be a California.

I think it is to lose.

I think for some reason, because of some reasons of how the voting blocks are laid out, he, I think, has already won.

Only gets things done.

He's not afraid to be unpopular.

Those are two important qualities in a president.

I mean,

it's this is an unusually big field.

I don't remember there being quite so many in it last time.

We may have just blocked it out.

That's because you have amnesia, Andy.

Right.

It's like childhood.

It's always this way.

Yeah, exactly.

Endorphins have kicked in and said,

you know, you come out of each American election thinking, never like that again.

Never like that again.

Then the endorphins cook in, and the next thing you know, you're saying, should we have another one?

A couple more candidates.

Mina Stamotl, she's a cleaner in the Republican Party headquarters.

She went through the wrong door

last Wednesday, walked into a press conference room with a mop and bucket, and accidentally became a candidate.

But she's viewed as being able to connect better with ordinary voters,

but it was also a bit too busy doing six different cleaning jobs today.

She's currently 15 to 1.

And also, the ghost of the two-time presidential candidate but no-time president, Thomas Edmund Dewey, having another crack at the big one from the grave.

He's inhabited since 1971.

Now, of course, the other big story this week is the FIFA scandal.

And thanks to those of you who sent us messages awaiting our response to this.

I know, John, you're covering it on your show

this week.

Well, uh as we record today the FIFA election is taking place to see uh whether Set Blatter can remain in his anointed role of King Turd in the chocolate box of global sport.

And it does appear that he almost certainly will.

It I mean it is utterly because I had these these kind of dawn arrests of leading FIFA figures this week and FIFA's response was basically say it's a good day for FIFA.

Which is a bit like hearing someone say better out than in after spectacularly shitting themselves at a funeral and then vomiting into the coffin and saying, Oh, that felt so therapeutic.

It is a kind of version of the Orgean stables in which Hercules has turned up with his mop and bucket.

Thinks, thought to himself, Oh man, this is a really big job, whilst King Orgea says, What mate?

Who sent you?

I hadn't even noticed they were dirty.

The barefaced balls of this organisation, John, is truly spectacular.

Some have said this is just the tip of the iceberg, and the FIFA Titanic has given that iceberg a damn good humping, and Captain Blatter is elbowing the women and children aside to make sure he gets his own lifeboat.

It's

it's it is as a sports fan it is hugely depressing.

Blatter had his words to say yesterday.

He said the events of yesterday, this is speaking the day after the arrests, have cast a long shadow over football and this FIFA Congress.

And I think we see here where Blatter sees the problem.

Some would have said that it wasn't the events of yesterday so much as the events of the last 20 plus years.

Clearly, for Blatter, the problem is the arrests in the swanky hotels.

He said, We cannot allow the reputation of FIFA to be dragged through the mud any longer, which would carry more weight if he was not caked head to toe in mud, as if he'd just been at some kind of alternative spa.

He said, I know many people hold me ultimately responsible, but I cannot monitor everyone all the time.

Again, the classic defence: I was only giving orders.

And he has rejected calls to resigning, insisting he is the man to, quotes, fix things, which is perhaps a slightly unfortunate choice of words.

And he still has a lot of support in the global game from, and you know, he can claim some credit for turning international football from the closed European, South American closed shop that it was in the 1970s and before.

And maybe he has done some good things, but just as even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, so a massive accidentally does something not that

every now and again.

And in other sports news, baseball has has been rocked by another cheating scandal.

This one in the minor leagues as the former New York Fawkes outfielder Chaos DeFrost has been caught attaching his glove to a drone to enable himself to catch balls that were flying over his head into the stands.

DeFrost, currently playing for the Boston Balthazars after unsuccessful spells with the Utah Nutcrackers and the Yosemite Yowsers, as well as an MVP year in the Austrian Baseball League with the Vienna Schnitzels, used the drone with his glove nailed to the front.

It was allegedly stolen from the American Air Force.

And he pouched a dinger to left field, technical term, hit by the Tulsa Convulsor star slugger De Milo Venus.

DeFrost then completed a controversial double play by crashing the drone into home plates at 150 miles an hour with pinch runner Eric Wart still short of his ground, hospitalizing Warts, the home plate umpire Jeremald Putsch, and his own catcher Herod Jerkett.

The Balthasars coach Cornelli Perestalts explained, it's something we've been working on in training.

Chaos was the North American remote-controlled aeroplane aerobatics champion when he was 16, and there's nothing in the laws of the game that explicitly says you cannot use a military-level drone as a fielding aid.

DeFrost will serve a one-inning ban during the Balthazars next match that's on the roads at the Miami Shriek.

And a quick bit of news just breaking from the US Justice Department.

They've announced that all biker gangs will only be allowed to ride kids' tricycles until they've all learned how to behave themselves.

A Justice Department spokesman said, if they're all busy saying vroom vroom and pedaling their little legs as fast as they can, I think we'll see a definite upsurge in their ability not to shoot and kill each other.

Your emails now and we've been receiving some slightly curious spam on the Bugle email address

including this said, hello, my name is Gary Wembley and I understand your company deals in tennis rackets.

Can you email me with the types that you have, including the price range?

Thank you, best regards.

Gary Wembley.

It's a great name.

There's no link for you.

You've got to get involved in that, Andy.

Right.

But I don't understand this type of spam because there's no link for you to

open up the inner recesses of your laptop

to some identity thievers.

It's just, this is just, it appears to be a genuine inquiry about tennis rackets.

So, I mean, maybe this is the next step for Bugle merchandise, John.

Yeah.

The Bugle tennis racket.

Yeah, with our faces in the middle.

Sold in bulk.

That's right.

Thanks.

Do keep your emails coming in.

We will do some more that aren't just spam, but we've got to wrap up this week.

A quick update on

the situation with Michelle, who we've been raising money for.

Some of you might have had updates from the website that she had a relapse,

sadly, and

the good news is that she has rallied somewhat from that relapse and is hoping now to go and get some treatment in Cuba.

So things have slightly changed.

I don't know the exact situation at the moment, but

enormous thanks again to all those who've donated the money.

That has basically meant that whatever treatment she is able to have is now possible.

So

I don't really have any more than that, but we'll

keep you updated with what's going on.

And if I can

follow myself, as John followed the doctor at the gig the other day, I'm now going to plug my own show at the Soho Theatre which is on January at January?

Monday, the 8th of June and also the 6th of July, the Saturdays for Hire Show.

I will be publishing

up on the Bugle feeds in future weeks chunks from those shows.

So if you are wanting to submit an email, please do to satirise this at saturistforhire.com.

The details are all also on the Soho Theatre website.

See you all there.

So that's it.

Until next time, Buglers, thanks very much for listening.

Enjoy the future of football unraveling before your eyes.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye!

Hi, Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.