1/2 Hour News Hour Review - 6-17-07
With a few shows under their belt, the crew of the 1/2 Hour News Hour seem to working out which segments are simple one shots and which segments will be recurring. In this particular episode, we get 2 recurring segments: “The Evolving Male” and “Conspiracy Corner.” “The Evolving Male” has the same male character as last week, but this time discussing his relationship with his son instead of his relationship with his wife. It’s fairly predictable stuff, talk about how he doesn’t consider himself a “parent”, that he and his son are “equals” and though he doesn’t “toss a baseball” at his son, he does toss “life choices.” As you can imagine, the kid is uninterested and disrespectful. Meanwhile, this week’s “Conspiracy Corner” tackled the issue of the the levee breaks after Hurricane Katrina. The “conspiracy” is that the levees broke because of massive rainfall, that resulted in flooding. Though the host for this segment is a little over the top, his recounting of some the real conspiracy theories (how do we know the levees weren’t blown up under water?) was a pretty solid enumeration of some of the garbage that’s thrown out there surrounding the national disaster.
The one brand new segment that ran throughout the show dealt with being “carbon neutral” and using compact fluorescent light bulbs. This segment illustrated one of the issues not commonly brought up when discussing how much more “electrically efficient” CFLs are, namely, CFL lightbuls contain a fairly significant quantity of mercury. The segment showed how breaking one of these bulbs can result in such measures as calling in a ‘haz-mat” crew or having to have your own person be decontaminated. In addition to this segment, there were two commercials: (1) a “Hollywood Helping Humanity” commercial, congratulated Joey Buttafucco and Amy Fisher on getting back together and (2) an “ACLU” commercial that points how the ACLU forced Los Angels county to remove a cross from their county seal, as well as another “Guy White, Closet Conservative” cartoon, which was rather forgettable.
The news segments this week continued the strong run they’ve had over the past few weeks. They touched on how a judge would not allow an Al Qaeda terrorist to be held without formal criminal charges (”So he can now return to flight school”), on what constitutes “Spring Break in Gaza”, a few shots on Kevin Federline and Paris Hilton, and a nice little crack on Dennis Kucinich.
Dennis Miller finished of the show with his _The Buck Starts Here_ segment. Though not quite the verbal beat down he put on Harry Reid last week, Miller had solid run down of the religious zealotry of those who believe in man-made “global warming.” He broke down how people who oppose this religion are known as “deniers” and stated his wish that those on the far left were as serious about fighting the war on terror as they are at fighting against those that they feel are effecting the planet’s climate in some way. Overall, it was a solid way, to end a solid show.