election

While most of the media was convinced that Trump could never be elected president, John Oliver was on TV telling us not to let that happen. Most listened, as Hillary Clinton went on to win the popular vote, but still here we are.

Last night Last Week Tonight, John Oliver devoted his show to looking back at what enabled Trump’s victory, such as the media, social media, and the spread of fiction posing as fact, and what we should do next.

All half hour of the Last Week Tonight's season finale is now available on YouTube. Come for his election coverage, stay for his tribute to this terrible, terrible year.

It’s been a long night for the United States, and at the end of it, we had a new president. Stephen Colbert had a long night as well. Wrapping up his Election Special for Showtime, Colbert was learning election results in real time, guiding his audience through this transition and delivering some solace.

Colbert has long been one of the most biting satirists of the Republican party, but in these final ten minutes of his show, he offered some words of wisdom that we could all rally behind. He sends out a call for unity that the country needs in these divisive times, reminding us that maybe we all “drank a little too much of the poison” that is politics. Then he took a great big sip whiskey and relayed the things that bring us together, like hating veggie pizza and our love for whoever gets up for seconds first at a wedding buffet.

“In the face of something that might strike you as horrible, I think laughter is the best medicine,” said Colbert. “You cannot laugh and be afraid at the same time, and the devil cannot stand mockery."

It’s a somber speech, but one that's worth watching.

If you live in the United States, you have a new president. The people have spoken, and they said that billionaire, reality TV-show host Donald Trump is how they want to ride out the next four years.

Look, this was a divisive election, and a very close one at that. As has been said many times, this wasn’t necessarily the time for a protest vote for, say, Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, but that doesn’t mean the Internet can’t find another third-party spoiler to bring America to its logical conclusion and elect a billionaire, reality TV-show host.

via @David_Leavitt

The Internet, because its nothing if not predictable, chose a new candidate: Dead-gorilla turned confusing-meme, Harambe.  That’s right, the gorilla who was shot dead after a child fell into his pen at the zoo received 11,000 votes in last night’s election. And that’s how game-show hosts are elected president, when people write in memes to be president.

So there you have it, folks. Reality TV-show host is president, and I am now this Tweet:

via @J4KMULL

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Among the various forms of voter suppression, this has to be one of the strangest. Matt Novak, a writer for the tech blog Gizmodo, has tweeted a picture about a special rule his polling place has: Vote here and agree to be filmed for “Booty Queens.”

via @paleofuture

Novak has followed up by stating that whatever "Booty Queens" is or whoever the titular Booty Queens are, it’s all perfectly legal, which is a relief. We don’t want the Booty Queens to be removed form power. He went on to write in a short post for Gizmodo:

“I spoke with a producer from the show who assured me that the crew has a permit to film there (at La Cienega Park) and that nothing they’re doing is illegal. She said that they weren’t really filming in the direction of the polling place, but instead were filming towards the playground. But it’s easy to see how one might be confused.” 

via Gizmodo

What is “Booty Queens?” One can only assume it’s a reality show about the matriarch of Booty Land. Honestly, I could Google it, but it’s probably not smart to do from a work computer. Frankly, I’m just as happy to take this person’s advice:

via @DeitchCSN

But if you voted at this particular Los Angeles polling place, you now might find yourself in “Booty Queens,” which, depending on what that is, might be an added benefit to voting. Who knows? Maybe someone wrote your name on the ballot and you could be America’s next “Booty Queen.”

Donald Trump has said a lot of things this election season, but there’s one thing none of us should stand for: Lying about our professional athletes and supermodels. Professional athletes and supermodels are the backbone of this country. They are who we aspire to be, and who we bow down before, hanging our heads in shame.

This makes Tom Brady’s supposed endorsement of Donald Trump all the more disturbing.

The New York Post reports that Donald Trump said to a rally on Monda that he spoke to Brady and recieved his vote. Trump recounted their conversation:

“Great guy, great friend of mine — great, great champion. Unbelievable winner. He called today and he said, ‘Donald, I support you, you’re my friend, and I voted for you.

And I said, ‘So Tom. You voted for me, you support me, am I allowed to say it tonight at this massive crowd in New Hampshire?’ He said, ‘If you want to say it, you can say it.’”

However, in the hours that passed, word finally got to Tom Brady’s wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen. On Instagram, a fan put it bluntly, asking “Gisele I heard you and Tom were backing Trump! Is that true??”

Giesle’s reply was brief: “NO!”

via Sheilashay

And there you have it, folks. This election season has brought out a lot in all of us. We struggle as a nation to bridge great divides between us and find our place in this crazy, mixed-up world. It’s hard enough, but at least we can rely on our supermodels and professional athletes to be there for us, speak for themselves, and never get lost in the fray.

So it’s come to this: Ken Bone is now an emoji.

I suppose we have no one to blame but ourselves. After all, as soon as he popped his mustachioed face onto our TV screens during the second presidential debate, we were hooked. We wanted to be Ken Bone. We wanted to idolize Ken Bone. We wanted to turn Ken Bone into a sexy Halloween costume. We wanted to search out Ken Bone’s sketchy history on Reddit. We got our wish.

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All of that was leading to this moment. Izod, the official sponsor of Ken Bone, has made the infamous undecided voter a Twitter emoji. With his squared off glasses, brisling facial hair, and signature, red Izod sweater, Ken Bone was born to be an emoji, and now he is one. Forever etched into the history books, the name "Ken Bone" has a symbol that future generations will ponder over, study, and perhaps worship just as we have. Simply use the hashtag #MyVote2016 on Twitter, and he'll appear, watching, protecting, tagging.

Share your voice this election. Make a statement with #MyVote2016 and Ken Bone in a red sweater. pic.twitter.com/D9Mitar83u

— IZOD (@IZOD) November 8, 2016

In the end, maybe this is where things were always heading. Andy Warhol famously said that in the future everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame, but maybe what he really meant was everyone would have their own emoji. Just look at him, staring back at you, asking a seemingly innocent question about clean energy. What does he look like? Does he resemble all of us, perhaps?

If you stare long enough at the Ken Bone emoji, the Ken Bone emoji stares back.

Frankly, I’m just a little dizzy from the whole thing. Reach out if you even know what’s going on anymore.

Don't stand still. Vote today: https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s #ElectionDay #MannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/4KAv2zu0rd

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016

Is there a more time-honored American tradition than the Mannequin Challenge? Probably not. When our forefathers came forth to this great country and beheld its many spoils, they knew that this land was made for you and me to stand still for a short period of time and pretend we were statues.

Lots of celebrities have been getting in on the Mannequin Challenge the past few days. There was even a Destiny’s Child reunion thanks to it. But there’s one entry that really packed a punch. Aboard her campaign plane (cam-plane?), presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her staff, which includes former President Bill Clinton and hard-rocker Jon Bon Jovi, delivered a Mannequin Challenge as a last-minute bid for the presidency in this 57-second clip. The message is clear: “Don’t stand still. Vote today.” It’s just as our forefathers intended.

Following a delightful song and dance number between Late Show-host Stephen Colbert and an innocent ragamuffin, the mayor of Candytown himself, Jon Stewart, dropped in to offer the audience some “toffee from an old man’s pants.” But upon learning that Donald Trump is running for president, Stewart, who’s a little out of the loop these days, gave his patented spit-take salute in surprise. Time to get back to work… after a little Yentl, for which there is always time.

Hamilton's Javier Muñoz, an astronaut, a crossing guard, and, of course, an adorable orphan joined other classic symbols of Americana, Colbert, and Stewart on stage to remind the audience to get out and vote. Make this old man’s wish come true, America. 

And now, what we’ve all been waiting for, gifs of people doing spit takes!

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via Wiffle Gif

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via Reddit

The election ends tomorrow, which means that late night TV is about to get a whole lot more boring (unless of course you're really in watching Channing Tatum play Twister — in which case, it’s about to become a whole lot more exciting). But that doesn’t mean we can’t have one final, hardy guffaw at the moments that defined these truly terrible and awful eight months.

Saturday Night Live closed out the election season with an awe-inspiring final debate between Kate McKinnon's Hillary Clinton and Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump, but what of the other great moments of this election cycle, the sketches and segments that kept up sane this past year?

From Jon Oliver’s blistering new nickname for Donald Trump to SNL's instant-classic “Black Jeopardy,” Wired has catalogued the best late night TV comedy of the year. Fall in love all over again with Jon Stewart popping in on Colbert and Jimmy Fallon tussling Donald Trump’s hair. We won’t believe it happened when it’s over, so revel in it all today. Check out Wired’s timeline of the sketches that defined the election here.

And to that we say, so long, Election 2016, you brought out the worst in all of us, and we’re happy to see you go.

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It’s the last Friday before the election, and things are getting crazy. Could they get crazier? Sure. We’d all love that.

Well, Julian Assange of Wikileaks is here to stir the cauldron if you will with a little “Spirit Cooking.” What is “Spirit Cooking,” you ask? CNET has a really handy explainer:

“The top trend on Twitter on Friday morning comes from an alleged WikiLeaks email of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta discussing spirit cooking. WikiLeaks tweeted that it involves "blood, sperm and breastmilk." Spirit cooking refers to performance artist Marina Abramovic's "cookbook" of recipes to cook up thoughts -- not meals. However, some on Twitter are taking it to the extreme and accusing the former secretary of state of devil worship. "This is not the first or last time that WikiLeaks has tweeted propaganda while doing Putin's bidding," a Clinton campaign representative wrote in an email. CNET cannot independently verify the information in the alleged email, and it is be entirely possible that someone altered the email before it was publicly released.”

Here's the tweet:

via @wikileaks

Here's the gif: 

via GIPHY

Ok. So, I guess, Hillary Clinton and her team are a bunch of witches now. If she is a witch, please, Hillary, make me a potion that will make me sleep for 1,000 years or, at least, the next week. 

Facebook, a never-ending source of useful information, has been our goto for up-to-the-minute election coverage this past season. As such, it’s probably caused us more anxiety about this election than any one speech, Wikileaks email, or video featuring Billy Bush. Your Facebook wall feeds into your worst fears about the candidates, and Stephen Colbert knows it.

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, Colbert took a big swig of cough syrup, dusted off his box of Reynolds wrap, and made a new tin foil hat to block the radio signals that the Illuminati uses to read our minds. Colbert is full of great intel about such things as the whereabouts of Chumbawumba, the shadowy industry of upstate New York weddings, and what oysters actually are. By the end of it, you’ll have your cork board up and long strands of yarn connecting seemingly disparate items together to prove your theory that, hey, what if the Chicken McNugget is more nugget than chicken?

Check out the video and prepare to have your mind blown.

What does it take to get you to vote? Is it civic duty? A profound belief in a candidate? Fear of another candidate?

For almost half the American population, none of these things matter because they don’t vote. In fact, only about 56 percent of Americans voted in 2008. There are no numbers on this, but it’s entirely reasonable to think that maybe more people say “Thanks, Obama” than voted for him.

So what does it take? Money? Would you like money out of a candidate's pocket? Well, that’s not gonna happen, buddy! This is America! We don’t pay for votes here, so take it some place else.

But what about those celebrity videos? Can Stanley Tucci get you to vote? 

via Save the Day

Sorry, Tucc. No. Celebrity videos where they guilt you into voting don’t work because they depend on the old theory of “rational self-interest,” i.e. the idea that people will vote based on heavily-reinforced social norms. People don’t operate based on “rational self interest,” do they? People say that they’re going to vote but, in many cases, don’t actually do it.  

Over on YouTube, The Nerdwriter found something that just might work: shame. That’s right, if shamed into it, people will vote. He offers some different methods for implementing the age-old practice of shame, like a thing on Facebook that says “I Voted” or, the Scarlett Letter of the digital age, “I Didn’t Vote.”

via Hardware Zone

Check out the video for some more facts about voter turnout. You will sound so smart next time the topic comes up if you do.

Election Day is a week away, which means that our long-national nightmare, i.e. this election, is almost over. That also means that we have about three months left of the Obama Presidency.  

In one of her famed Presidential exit interviews, a tradition since 2016, Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, sat down with the President. The two covered a lot of ground in this short interview, discussing the election, Obama's Halloween costume, voting, and what he'll be doing after he leaves office. 

However, we are a little concerned about one part of the interview, when Obama said, "I would hope that you'd be willing to take about the same amount of time you spend looking through cat videos on your phone to make sure the democracy's working."

Please don't take that as invitation to stop looking at cat videos on your phone altogether. We'll still be here when you get back from checking in on the democracy next week.

And now back to your regularly scheduled cat video:

via @Cole and Marmalade