Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: May thirteen, twenty fifteen, Comedy Central's Worldviews headquarters in New York.
Speaker 3: This is the Daily Show with charms, tools, good story.
Speaker 1: Good show.
Speaker 4: Tonight, our old friend Reza Oslon will be joining us,
Speaker 4: and we're going to talk about all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 4: mostly God. You know, I'm watching Fox News, which I'll
Speaker 4: continue to do now for another I don't know thirty
Speaker 4: six shows minus Today's Open and Well.
Speaker 1: We often poke fun at them for lying and sucking.
Speaker 1: They do care very deeply.
Speaker 4: About certain issues like Benghazi, or women's legs, or that
Speaker 4: time one of their female anchors didn't wear a dress
Speaker 4: now known as Antskazi. The point is, after Fox Finish
Speaker 4: is caring about lots of other stuff, they eventually care
Speaker 4: very deeply about poverty.
Speaker 5: We haven't heard much about poverty from the Obama White
Speaker 5: House over the last four years.
Speaker 6: Virtually no emphasis on families.
Speaker 1: Why not focus on poverty?
Speaker 7: I remember five or six years ago President Obama making
Speaker 7: this one of his main talking points.
Speaker 4: I'm going to fix the structure of the African American family.
Speaker 1: Where did that go?
Speaker 4: And while the president has been addressing those issues his
Speaker 4: entire presidency.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 4: In fact, yesterday President Obama sat down for a seventy
Speaker 4: six minute discussion at Georgetown University in which he explained
Speaker 4: all sorts of things about personal responsibility and the debate
Speaker 4: between government assistants and personal responsibility as being a false choice,
Speaker 4: and families, etc.
Speaker 7: A free market is perfectly compatible with also US making
Speaker 7: investment in good public schools, public universities, investments in public parks.
Speaker 7: If we do those things, the values and the character
Speaker 7: that those kids are learning, they're less likely to get
Speaker 7: pregnant as teens, and less likely to engage in drugs,
Speaker 7: and less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 7: That is a reinforcement of the values and characters that
Speaker 7: we want. I am a black man who grew up
Speaker 7: without a father, and I know the cost that I
Speaker 7: paid for that, and I also know that I had
Speaker 7: the capacity to break that cycle.
Speaker 1: You know who else talked with his hands, Hitler. So
Speaker 1: Fox finally.
Speaker 4: Got the substantive presidential discussion on poverty that they always wanted,
Speaker 4: including on stage the counterview from the head of the
Speaker 4: conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 1: He was on stage.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to see Fox's happiness and satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Fox News Alert, Fox News Front and Center.
Speaker 4: President Obama taking time out today for one of his
Speaker 4: favorite topics, Fox.
Speaker 8: News's Obama accused Fox News of propagating harmful stereotypes about
Speaker 8: poor Americans.
Speaker 6: The President accused the media, in particular Fox News, of
Speaker 6: suggesting the.
Speaker 9: Poor are unwilling to work.
Speaker 4: Yep, just like college students in a four hour commencement,
Speaker 4: Fox basically pays no attention until they hear their own names,
Speaker 4: it turns out, at one point in this at one
Speaker 4: point in this incredibly thoughtful and productive session on poverty,
Speaker 4: the President made the easily provable and decidedly true point
Speaker 4: that Fox news narrative is that poverty is not a
Speaker 4: function of economic condition, but of character.
Speaker 7: The effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches,
Speaker 7: are don't want to work, or lazy. If you watch
Speaker 7: Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu.
Speaker 7: They will find like folks who make me man, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know where they find them, right, And they're
Speaker 7: all like, I don't want to work, I just want
Speaker 7: a free Obama phone or.
Speaker 10: Whatever, and that becomes an entire narrative. Really yeah, really
Speaker 10: really really really yes.
Speaker 4: What's with your tone of disgust and disappointment? Are you
Speaker 4: anchoring a news desk or did you just come home
Speaker 4: to find your dog at eating your cat's entire litter box?
Speaker 1: Roscoe.
Speaker 4: Really, it sounds to me like the president has a
Speaker 4: remarkably firm grasp on your business model there, Fox, So
Speaker 4: why are you outraged?
Speaker 8: In my opinion, the president is spinning his own policy
Speaker 8: failures as the middle class shrinks and the poor are
Speaker 8: trapped in this system, so to speak, the present blames us,
Speaker 8: the honest messengers.
Speaker 1: The honest messengers.
Speaker 4: Martha, Really, what what.
Speaker 9: Did you even?
Speaker 4: Did you even watch the program?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about, Barney?
Speaker 8: We've looked at the food stamp program, not at the recipients.
Speaker 8: We haven't characterized the recipients. We've looked at the program.
Speaker 8: We're not saying that the recipients of food stamps are
Speaker 8: bad people or that they're lazy.
Speaker 4: That is such a rich buffet of bull I can't
Speaker 4: at the three course prefix.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, prickfest for starters.
Speaker 4: Let's demonstrate Fox's contempt for those in power in our
Speaker 4: first course of this meal and a mouse douche if you.
Speaker 8: Will, America's poor are actually living the good luck.
Speaker 1: Just call them pennies from government heaven.
Speaker 8: The United States of entitlement, the nation of takers, entitlement society.
Speaker 1: Scary.
Speaker 4: We have nothing against the poor, It's just that their
Speaker 4: rabbit is greed burst through America's.
Speaker 1: Chest like the monster and alien. But I'm sorry you
Speaker 1: were saying.
Speaker 4: You don't characterize the poorest bad people are lazy while
Speaker 4: your entree is ready just as you asked for.
Speaker 1: It medium unfair.
Speaker 8: We have conditioned people to look to the government to
Speaker 8: be their answer for every problem they have and take
Speaker 8: zero responsibility.
Speaker 1: The mocher class, subsidized freeloaders.
Speaker 7: Give me these goodies, give me a cell phone, pay
Speaker 7: my rent.
Speaker 1: Beilouts from cretel to grave.
Speaker 9: Nation of moocher's freeloaders in America.
Speaker 11: Entitlement, mentality and.
Speaker 8: Sitting on the couch eating bonbonds, people who sleep till noon, sucking.
Speaker 1: Off you know, the nipple of the government.
Speaker 4: How removed from reality is Fox's perception of their own
Speaker 4: coverage on poverty. The main defender of your network's attitude
Speaker 4: towards those in poverty is the main offender. He does
Speaker 4: segments that would make Ebeneezer Scrooge. Go hey, take it easy.
Speaker 4: These are people we're talking about. So for dessert tonight,
Speaker 4: we serve you baked a lass hole.
Speaker 8: The handout nation rolls on. We hand out seventy nine
Speaker 8: billion dollars every January to these so called poor people.
Speaker 1: You're not being mean to poor people. I am.
Speaker 8: I am being mean to poor people, frankly, I am.
Speaker 8: Many poor families have homes with cable TVs, cell phones, computers,
Speaker 8: you name it, much much more. Ninety nine percent of
Speaker 8: them have a refrigerator. Eighty one percent have a microwave.
Speaker 8: You're going to give us the emotional side of the story.
Speaker 8: People need fifteen dollars per hour to live on. The's
Speaker 8: starving without it. Okay, I got that. The image we
Speaker 8: have of poor people as starving and living in squala
Speaker 8: really is not accurate. Many of them have things. What
Speaker 8: they lack is the richness of spirit.
Speaker 1: Anyway, you boy, what day is it today? Is it
Speaker 1: Christmas Day? Oh? Go up and buy all the gooses.
Speaker 4: Keep them out of those lazy boy hands. And if
Speaker 4: you see a boy on crutches, push him down.
Speaker 1: He's not crippled. He's crippled at hot. He lacks a
Speaker 1: richness of legsness?
Speaker 12: Are these glaring? Are they?
Speaker 1: I don't? Are these honestly?
Speaker 4: Are these glaring contradictions a product of lack of self
Speaker 4: awareness or cynicism, or.
Speaker 1: Stupidity or evil?
Speaker 4: I don't know anymore, and I'm starting to lack a
Speaker 4: richness of What I don't understand is another journalist on
Speaker 4: another network leaping to defend something so clearly indefensible.
Speaker 2: What about the specific clip about Fox News calling poor
Speaker 2: people leeches, sponges and lazy?
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that on Fox News?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess it's time for our favorite game show.
Speaker 1: Did you even try to research this? All?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 1: The rules are simple.
Speaker 4: First, Joe Scarborough cites three words. He says he's never
Speaker 4: heard Fox News called poor people, and then we see
Speaker 4: how wrong he is. Today's words are lazy, sponges and leeches.
Speaker 1: Ready sitko. These programs do make people lazy. They get
Speaker 1: food stamps.
Speaker 6: It makes it easy for them.
Speaker 2: To sponge off their girlfriends and spouses. So the more
Speaker 2: of the leeches that he can get to vote for him.
Speaker 1: And that's our game. We'll be right back.
Speaker 4: Earlier this week, Jordan Klepper, he gave us part one
Speaker 4: of his complete coverage of the UK elections. In tonight's
Speaker 4: part two, he now completes his complete coverage completely.
Speaker 1: Jordan.
Speaker 5: Last week in the UK, the Conservative Party had a
Speaker 5: huge victory I assume by using the same wedge issues
Speaker 5: American Conservative candidates used so expertly.
Speaker 11: Well, I do believe life begins at conception.
Speaker 6: Government run healthcare.
Speaker 1: This is what I do to out law. I think
Speaker 1: marriage is between a man and a woman. How am
Speaker 1: I going to win? And I said guns?
Speaker 5: Obviously these same issues would resonate in Britain. How important
Speaker 5: is the gun issue for you?
Speaker 11: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 9: You don't have any guns here?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 1: Does that upset you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 9: I mean how do you shoot legislation you don't like?
Speaker 5: We voted though, Is socialized medicine getting thrown down your throats?
Speaker 9: No, we've already got it. Well, big an issue as abortion.
Speaker 9: The main parties are all thinking the same thing on that.
Speaker 9: What about gay marriage?
Speaker 3: That's also not a debate. We have it and the
Speaker 3: one it's all fine.
Speaker 1: So what the you guys talk about?
Speaker 2: We're talking about the economy.
Speaker 1: We talked about something called the.
Speaker 5: Dean maybe political consultant Steve Morgan can tell us why
Speaker 5: they're ignoring these key issues.
Speaker 14: Well, I mean we would argue that we deal with
Speaker 14: the real issues here and those are not those.
Speaker 5: Is there any party out there that's talking about the
Speaker 5: fun wild card stuff like climate deniers or anti immigration
Speaker 5: or big fears and stuff like that.
Speaker 14: We've got onto immigration from the UKIP party u KIP,
Speaker 14: what is that uk Independence Party? And there a very
Speaker 14: dangerous party because there's enophobic. They appealed to the worst
Speaker 14: elements of British society.
Speaker 9: Okay, that's a party.
Speaker 5: I understand that sounds like good old American campaigning. But
Speaker 5: was UKIP candidate Kim Rose able to walk the fine
Speaker 5: line between exploiting people's fears and bald faced hatred babut
Speaker 5: the vices and car us You know, we're not masist.
Speaker 11: We want to stop the mass migration of people coming
Speaker 11: into this country. They're coming over in bass numbers. And
Speaker 11: now you've got communities taken up parts of the town
Speaker 11: which is all full of Polish people.
Speaker 9: See, he's not racist, he just doesn't like Polish people.
Speaker 11: I'm not a racist. What I'm trying to prove the
Speaker 11: actual fact. Now, this isn't about race. This is about space.
Speaker 11: All we want is our country back.
Speaker 5: If you're not repeatedly defending the fact that you're being
Speaker 5: called racist over and over again, you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, absolutely, I am not. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: I can't think of any reasons why people were confused
Speaker 5: about his policies.
Speaker 11: I've got into trouble with a Hitler comment, so I'll
Speaker 11: quote it from the book of Mind Camp.
Speaker 9: The Nazi reference.
Speaker 5: Good idea, although we don't usually actually quote Hitler. Sounds
Speaker 5: like he was ready for American style politics.
Speaker 9: He just needed a couple of pointers from a pro.
Speaker 8: Army.
Speaker 5: Give her the worst case scenario.
Speaker 11: The worst case scenario is this great, great country will
Speaker 11: cease to exist. Nice you know about the Kip policies.
Speaker 9: Hit her with the one hundred years of darkness if.
Speaker 11: We don't get out of the EU, and our children
Speaker 11: and our grandchildren will have one hundred years of doctors.
Speaker 5: This guy was on fire, but then his toughest challenge
Speaker 5: squaring off with the rival candidate from the Green Party.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Look, fact is, at the end of the day, we
Speaker 11: aren't the only party of what's a complete withdraw from
Speaker 11: the opinion, And I know you can't see that.
Speaker 9: Make the Hitler reference again.
Speaker 11: In nineteen forty two and in nine Camp said that
Speaker 11: if they will take away our freedom in tiny into
Speaker 11: sensible pieces about what's happening in this.
Speaker 5: Country, boom walk away, just good good. Ultimately, Kim Rose
Speaker 5: ended up with the whopping thirteen percent of the vote,
Speaker 5: which seems like way more than he deserved. And actually,
Speaker 5: in the time I spent here in Britain, apart from
Speaker 5: their terrible version of baseball, I was impressed with their
Speaker 5: electoral system. Guys like this are marginalized. They spend little
Speaker 5: on the elections, they had just six weeks to campaign,
Speaker 5: and their news media provides reasonably sober analysis.
Speaker 9: But there was still something that was bothering me. What
Speaker 9: was it?
Speaker 3: If hum believe with the Iraq War.
Speaker 5: Of the Iraq War, that's right, you guys were involved
Speaker 5: in that too, Yeah we were that.
Speaker 9: You guys have made some bonehead moves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh right, like us.
Speaker 9: They fought an unnecessary war.
Speaker 5: Their government approval ratings are dismal, and British leaders even
Speaker 5: promise punishing austerity measures. So apparently, no matter of your
Speaker 5: electoral system, your government will find a way to fit
Speaker 5: all up of course if you're British, there is a
Speaker 5: cultural advantage that cannot be denied.
Speaker 9: Hey, and Jordan, we also use the work.
Speaker 8: It's not a problem here, So cheers. Here's to the
Speaker 8: politics we do.
Speaker 13: Hey, good ey, Hey.
Speaker 12: Jordan Clopper over ride back, Yes tonight.
Speaker 1: He is a religious.
Speaker 4: Scholar about selling authors books include No God But God
Speaker 4: and zeal It.
Speaker 1: Please welcome back to the program. Res Oslin.
Speaker 11: All right, how's it going.
Speaker 4: It is going very well, right, you boy, your phone
Speaker 4: must be ringing off the hook.
Speaker 1: As a man who studies.
Speaker 9: The God business is very good, very good, right, because.
Speaker 1: Of how bad it is.
Speaker 6: There's always something to talk about.
Speaker 4: Why, you know, I've always said religion has given people
Speaker 4: great comfort in a world torn apart by religion.
Speaker 1: Why hasn't God just settled this?
Speaker 9: Yeah he really should.
Speaker 5: Just who's right?
Speaker 9: Just get it over with?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 1: Because doesn't he ever think? Okay, okay, this has gone
Speaker 1: on long enough.
Speaker 6: Well, look, the thing about religion that people have to
Speaker 6: understand is that it's far more a matter of identity
Speaker 6: than it is just a matter of beliefs and practices.
Speaker 6: I mean, those things are important, but when you say
Speaker 6: I'm a Jew, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Christian. You're
Speaker 6: making an identity statement, far more so than a statement
Speaker 6: of the things that you believe. I mean, we put
Speaker 6: it this way, seven out of ten Americans called themselves Christian.
Speaker 6: Seven out of ten Americans. Someone, think about that for
Speaker 6: a minute. Seven out of ten Americans. Seven out of
Speaker 6: ten Americans.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I don't do well with this. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're saying one and thirty five percent. YEA hold on.
Speaker 6: That means that seven you gotta get your kids to help.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: That means that seven out of ten Americans go to
Speaker 6: church on Sunday, or seven out of ten Americans read
Speaker 6: the Bible on a regular basis, or seven out of
Speaker 6: ten Americans can tell you anything about Jesus except that
Speaker 6: he was born in a manger and died on a cross. No,
Speaker 6: of course, not the vast majority of that seventy percent.
Speaker 6: When they say I am a Christian, they're making a
Speaker 6: statement of their identity that includes their nationality, their ethnicity,
Speaker 6: their worldview, their politics. All of those things are wrapped up,
Speaker 6: and so religion is about who you are as a
Speaker 6: person as much as it is about what you believe
Speaker 6: in the rituals that you practice.
Speaker 4: What struck me about when you said that you should
Speaker 4: seven out of ten Americans identify as Christian?
Speaker 1: Is the whole Merry Christmas hullabaloo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you say that in a store, you have
Speaker 4: a thirty percent chance of being somebody, and it really does.
Speaker 4: It'd be almost like saying, like, from now on in
Speaker 4: stores just say hello sir.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, as a Muslim, whenever somebody says Merry Christmas,
Speaker 6: I am obligated to say to you.
Speaker 12: Is that true?
Speaker 11: Is that in the Koran?
Speaker 1: In the Koran? Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 4: I thought it was part of the hadith, realize that
Speaker 4: it was in the Quran. But it brings up such
Speaker 4: an interesting point because I truly believe that if you
Speaker 4: remove the construct of religion. And that's why this discussion
Speaker 4: about Islam is so important, because now that the threat
Speaker 4: is Islam is of all the monotheistic religions particularly prone
Speaker 4: to extremism. Maybe in this moment, certainly the other religions
Speaker 4: have had it. But religion is more than anything else,
Speaker 4: a choice.
Speaker 1: But not viewed that way, No, it's not.
Speaker 6: But I mean more importantly, I think it's Look, there's
Speaker 6: obviously a serious problem with religion religious violence in the world,
Speaker 6: and particularly in Islam and in the Middle East. But
Speaker 6: if you're going to blame religion for violence in the
Speaker 6: name of religion, then you have to credit religion for
Speaker 6: every act of compassion in the name of religion. You
Speaker 6: have to credit religion for every act of love in
Speaker 6: the name of religion. And that's not what people usually think.
Speaker 6: I mean, they focus very much on the negatives. Part
Speaker 6: of the problem is that there's this misconception that people
Speaker 6: derive their value from their scriptures, and the truth is
Speaker 6: that it's more often the case that people insert their
Speaker 6: values into their scriptures. I mean, otherwise, every Christian who
Speaker 6: read the Bible would read it exactly the same way.
Speaker 9: In this country, not.
Speaker 6: Two hundred years ago. Both slave owners and abolitionists not
Speaker 6: only use the same Bible to justify their viewpoints, they
Speaker 6: use the same verses.
Speaker 1: To do so.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's a thing about scripture. Its power comes
Speaker 6: from its maleeability. You can read it in any way
Speaker 6: you want to. If you are a violent misogynist, you
Speaker 6: will find plenty in the Koran or in the Bible
Speaker 6: to justify your viewpoint. If you're a peaceful feminist, you
Speaker 6: will find just as much in those scriptures to justify
Speaker 6: your viewpoint.
Speaker 4: What what if you're a Jew who loves a bacon egg,
Speaker 4: Is there something to me that might.
Speaker 1: Be just as a you gotta be something.
Speaker 6: I would recommend the Book of Mormon for you.
Speaker 9: I knew it, but I mean, but that is the
Speaker 9: point exactly.
Speaker 6: The point is is that without interpretation, scriptures just words
Speaker 6: on a page. It requires somebody to read it, to
Speaker 6: encounter it for it to have any kind of meaning.
Speaker 6: And obviously, in that transaction, you are bringing yourself, your views,
Speaker 6: your politics, your your social ideas into the text. How
Speaker 6: you read scripture has everything to do with who you are.
Speaker 6: God does not make you a bigot. You're just a bigot.
Speaker 4: The violence that is a good point, and the violence
Speaker 4: that region is an outgrowth of a paucity of many things,
Speaker 4: not religion, not being the sole driver of these of
Speaker 4: these identity difficulties that are that are going.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of issues that are involved. Social issues,
Speaker 6: political issues, cultural issues, all those things.
Speaker 4: When you stick around, we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 4: so how to.
Speaker 1: Fix them midtle least, it'd be nice. Let's do this
Speaker 1: all right, And by the way, We're not going to
Speaker 1: do it on air, because that'd be too easy.
Speaker 4: We're going to do it on the web, paperback up zeal.
Speaker 4: It's on the bookshelves now, res osen Okay.
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