PPLE 210-01N Contemporary Issues & Zines: Videos

John Hodgman is a writer, comedian, actor, and the author of three books of fake facts and invented trivia, all of them New York Times Bestsellers, and his writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, This American Life, The New Yorker, and Mad Magazine. After an appearance to promote his books on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," he was invited to return as a contributor, serving as the show's "Resident Expert" and "Deranged Millionaire".

The Action League Grannies have been spied on by the California National Guard. They've been written about in Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. They've appeared on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart's Comedy Central, and are regulars in Bay Area evening news stories. In public, they've been both booed and cheered, but they continue to protest with a sense of outrage, a sense of humor, and a commitment to non-violence. How do these older women keep doing what they do?

An annual "roast" of the current president & White House / Beltway luminaries held at an annual "black tie" awards dinner, where nationally known standup comics are invited to deliver sarcastic barbs at politicians in a "no holds barred" environment as the entertainment portion of a major fund raising event for the WHCA's various scholarship funds. This annual event started in 1921, while the video archives only go back to 2006.

The segment offers a potpourri of faux news items, literary & visual gags, tongue in cheek editorials, facetious commentaries, criticisms of popular culture and interviews with oddball characters. This link provides access to many of the recent episodes of just this segment as published on YOUTUBE. Each full length episode of "Saturday Night Live" runs 93 minutes. The "Weekend Update" segments typically run less than 15 minutes.

This link opens up a search of the Hatfield Library's collection of online videos showing what some presidents delivered for their segment at the annual ball of the White House Correspondents' Association. This photo from April 2015 shows President Obama surprised the guests by bringing along his own "anger translator" Keegan-Michael Key to supplement the delivery of his speech.