Michael and Us

In the early 2000s, Rick Mercer -- Canada's own Jon Stewart -- travelled to the United States to ask them about Canada. The resulting comedy special, "Talking to Americans," because a bona fide national phenomenon. We look back at this cultural relic, and Mercer's long-running weekly show "The Mercer Report," to find out what they teach us about our home and native land. Bundle up, folks -- it's our most Canadian episode yet!

ANNOUNCEMENT: the MICHAEL AND US podcast is doing a FAN EPISODE. Do YOU have burning questions for Luke and Will? Send your questions to [email protected] by Tuesday, February 5. Questions will be read on a Patreon-exclusive episode of this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus

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In 1968, right-wing William F. Buckley and left-wing Gore Vidal feuded for 10 nights on TV. The 2015 documentary BEST OF ENEMIES suggests these broadcasts led to a coarsening of the culture. The Michael & Us boys interrogate the thesis. PLUS: analyzing the right-wing perspective of the left-wing intellectual tradition; Luke's feud with Peter Hitchens; and tales from the Columbia Journalism School.

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John Travolta stars as a barely-fictionalized Bill Clinton in Mike Nichols' 1998 sorta-satire about how politics crushes idealism. We excavate this once-praised relic from the End of History, and are left with the question: what, exactly, was "idealism" in the Clinton era?

"Bridges to Nowhere" by Nathaniel Friedman - https://thebaffler.com/salvos/bridges-to-nowhere-friedman

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Do you think the holidays have drifted too far from Jesus? Conservative superstar Kirk Cameron is here to reassure you that, actually, God is fine with consumerism. For our holiday spectacular, we examine the 2014 essay film KIRK CAMERON'S SAVING CHRISTMAS.

New Patreon episode coming this week.

"Liberalism in Theory and Practice," by Luke Savage - jacobinmag.com/2018/12/liberalism-theory-practice-obama-trudeau

Evangelical Christianity was the great boogeyman of the George W. Bush era. We revisit the film that helped define it in the liberal imagination, JESUS CAMP (2006), and consider what became of Evangelicals in the Trump era. PLUS: a call for unity against our greatest enemy, Tom Hanks.

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In 2004, a group of liberal comedians and commentators came together to break the conservative monopoly on talk radio. The result was the ill-fated Air America. We watched the candid 2005 HBO documentary LEFT OF THE DIAL to analyze what went wrong. PLUS: Luke reflects on the passing of Harry Leslie Smith.

Thank you to listener Will Chapman for the suggestion. Also, apologies that one of the hosts keeps mistaking Randhi Rhodes' name as "Randhi Reid." It was a late night, folks.

"Harry Leslie Smith (1923 - 2018)" by Luke Savage - https://jacobinmag.com/2018/11/harry-leslie-smith-nhs-labour-obituary