The use of satire in the Key and Peele sketch comedy reveals a truth about trends in American urban youth by doing just that: by being contrary to the expected, by being nonsensical to the point of absurdity, by making us laugh. Moreover, it reveals a truth about our own ideological assumptions.
Comedy Central describes the new hit American sketch-comedy show as an “original new sketch-comedy show that examines life in a provocative and irreverent way, through a combination of filmed sketches and live stage segments. Whether it’s satirizing the President, spoofing Nazis, or ordering up some soul food, Key & Peele showcases their chemistry, camaraderie and unique point of view, born from their shared background and experiences growing up biracial in a not quite post-racial world.”
The show itself has received numerous positive reviews, even by one of the targets of their criticism, President Obama. While on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Obama touches on how he had watched the skit on himself with ‘Luther, his Anger Translator’ saying, “It’s pretty good stuff ”.
As with any great satirical piece, Key and Peele not only makes us laugh, they makes us think

On October 14th, 2012, “Fearless” Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian dare-devil BASE jumper, and skydiver captured the world’s attention on Sunday with his 24 mile space jump. He set the record for highest-jump and fastest free fall velocity when he became the first person to break the sound barrier without the aid of a jet or spacecraft. Thats over 768 mph at 70 degrees F. It’s estimated the he traveled at speeds of up to 834 mph. Though it was a great feat for man, it gave a monumental level of attention to the stunt’s sponsor, Red Bull, which garnered “tens of millions of dollars of exposure” for the energy drink brand. As for Baumgartner, he achieved a worldwide level of fame for the feat, but that is unlikely to lead to any riches. And despite being one of the most in-demand interviewees in the world right now, the man who fell to Earth is putting off media requests for the time being, opting instead for rest. Who could blame him?

well, sort of. Yesterday, my girlfriend and I posted photos of my friend Patricks recent journey across the country to the social news website, Reddit. The post went something like “So my friend decided to go on a road trip completely alone. He returned, 100 days and 10,000 miles later with these photos..” For those of us unfamiliar, Reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text “self” post. Users then vote the submission “up” or “down”, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the sites pages. Each submission has to be assigned to a “subreddit”. There is a “subreddit” for pretty much any topic you can think of, e.g. r/pics, r/food, r/politics, r/programming, r/skyrim. The more upvotes you get, the longer your post stays at the top of the subreddit. But there is also the “front page” of reddit which is the “homepage” for anyone that types in www.reddit.com. The front page is an accumulation of all the submissions users have deemed worthy of the front page. Note* IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO GET ON THE FRONT PAGE

so yeah, we make this post to r/pics (since it involved the photos my friend took on his journey) at around 4pm yesterday. While I’m in my 5 o’clock class I get a text from my girlfriend, “17 upvotes so far:)”. I was thrilled. We’ve posted quite a few things and barely get 1 or 2 upvotes. Not more than a few more minutes pass by and I get another text “holy shit, 150 now!”. If you could’ve seen the grin on my face. Then another “310!”. The thing with these posts are that once enough people “upvote”, the growth is exponential. I quickly rushed home so that we could sit in front of the computer and watch the votes and comments come in. It seriously feels like winning the lottery. Cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching. Before you knew it, we were not only the top post of r/pics, we had made it to the front page. THE FRONT F* PAGE! Never did I think we’d be on the front page. The rest of the story gets a little convoluted as we invited some friends over to celebrate our 5 seconds of fame.

24 hrs later my friend Patricks pictures have been viewed by over 345,670 people and counting all thanks to the community of Reddit.

As I’m watching the democratic convention, I can’t help but to think about President Obama’s speech writer, Jon Favreau. Yeah, Obama is great at delivering heart-touching, “truthful” speeches, but know this America, he didn’t write it–merely approved it. That’s not to say delivering a speech does not come with great difficulty, because it does. I can barely keep from passing out when talking in front of my peers in a small classroom setting, while this guy does it almost flawlessly in front of a crowd twenty thousand strong. Not including the millions of tv/online viewers. That’s a lot of pressure. But, what kind of pressure do you think lies with the person responsible for the words the president will say? What I found most interesting about Mr Favreau is that he’s been Barack’s speechwriter since he was first elected to the senate. It leads me to believe that Jon Favreau is a huge part of the reason why Obama is the president. I know it sounds far fetched, but I mean c’mon, this guy writes the stuff that people eat out of the palm of Barack’s hand. Back in 2008, most of what the general public knew about presidential hopeful Obama were the words that another man wrote. Kudos to you Jon Favreau.

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