dd2520

Simple answer: The American Beverage Association. In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg tried to take soda and other sugary beverages off the SNAP list and faced a severe backlash from the Soda Lobby. The proposition failed.

hahahahahahahaha. if it makes money, there's a lobby for it. And the ABA is nothing to fuck with

I actually interviewed you not too long ago about political comedy, which was great, but didn't get to really get into the weeds about TDS. I'm curious to know your thoughts about the 2010 Jezebel piece about sexism at the Daily Show. Also, your comedy is overt political/media commentary, but originally, if I remember correctly, TDS was a bit more similar to a Weekend Updatey fake-news format than the more earnest commentary of the modern Daily Show. Were there tensions between those two poles in the writers room and how did the douchehumor sensibilities of Killborn affect them?

I understand the need to have effective means of evaluating the competency of teachers, but the ugly truth of the American educational system is that we simply do not pay teachers enough money. There's so much talk about STEM education, but, let's be honest here, if someone has the skills to be a STEM educator, then those skills are more valuable than our system is willing to pay for them. Why would someone with an aptitude for science, for example, choose teaching over engineering, when as a teacher they would make less at retirement than they would right out of college as an engineer? Yes, there are those that make that decision based on ideals rather than economic ambition, but with student loan debt exploding, we're going to see those numbers decline. We can talk all we want about unions and vouchers and charters and reforms and all this backandforthblahblahteacherscapegoating, but until our system compensates good teachers, especially STEM teachers, what they're worth on the market, our system will never ever improve.

I guess, being a teenager at the time, I probably carried my own biases into viewing it, and, it being so long ago, I don't have many clear memories of it, other than Killborn's sorta smarminess and some genuinely amazing field segments that would be impossible to really pull off in an age when everyone knows the Daily Show.