Full Frontal returns, with Sam Bee plucking sexist, racist school dress codes out of the hiatus chaos
Back to school means white school districts are back on their bullshit
TV News Sam Bee
After playing a “What did we miss?” montage of every horror that occurred while Full Frontal was on a well-deserved break, Samatha Bee noted wryly that plunging once more back into the breach of our COVID-stricken, natural disaster-beset, misinformation-plagued country is daunting stuff. And while this Wednesday’s Full Frontal was taped too late in another hell-week to address the fact that one state’s GOP forced through a clearly unconstitutional and misogynistic law essentially overturning Roe v. Wade (and the late-night refusal of the GOP-packed Supreme Court to grant an emergency halt to that fundamentalist horseshit), Bee didn’t lack for stuff to get angry about.
The 20-years-in-the-blundering U.S. pullout from the war in Afghanistan got its due, with Bee playing clips of exactly the right-wing white nationalists you’d expect leaping right from “Biden didn’t get everybody out” to “Biden got too many brown people out and they’re moving into your neighborhood!” in a white-hot, white supremacist second. She also profiled a modest alpaca farm in Colorado where the transgender proprietors have been forced to turn Old West tough in response to the all-too-predictable hateful backlash of some of their neighbors. And while the Texas legislature’s end-run assault against women’s bodily autonomy will have to wait for next week’s show (and the in-progress legal challenges), Bee did take on another perpetual attempt by white conservatives to police people’s bodies, just in time for kids to return to the classroom.
Ah, dress codes—they’re not just for banning those T-shirts with swear words anymore. Bee did show how some school districts in states where Republican governors are actively shoveling children onto the “owning the libs” COVID bonfire are utilizing a masks-always dress code to circumvent GOP anti-mask mandates, which is the sort of cleverness born from life under idiots’ rule. But, as Bee explained with an heaping cafeteria helping of local news stories about more traditional and punitive dress code enforcement, these policies are primarily used to “police the bodies of girls, LGBTQ students, and students of color.” You know, like the blanket-banning of hairstyles primarily popular in Black communities. Or the kindergartener forced to show written proof of his Navajo heritage before being allowed to finger-paint and eat paste while sporting his traditional long hair.
And don’t get Bee started on how girls are treated, with the host showing clips of female students being removed from class for not wearing bras, wearing bras, and simply having breasts at all. Seriously telling on themselves for their penchant for sexualizing young women, school officials were shown doing everything from airbrushing girls’ yearbook photos (there are those pesky human breasts again), to disqualifying a victorious school swimmer because the male judge decided that her (school-approved, identical to everyone) swimsuit was a little too appealing. To him. Ew.
With kids all over this under-vaccinated and over-policed nation heading back to overcrowded, under- and unequally funded, poorly ventilated classrooms right about now, Bee (who was bleeped more than even her usual all episode), noted in exasperation that this conformist and prejudicial nonsense is the last [expletive elided] thing students should have to deal with. As Bee put it, hairstyle and dress are two important expressions of individuality that help in children’s long and painful process of self-discovery, and that theoretically well-meaning policing of students’ bodies will only drive those same kids to write more angsty poetry. Nobody wants that.
48 Comments
I agree with everything she’s saying but my God she needs some new writers. Every single one of her jokes just lands with a thud.
I honestly was just going to say, “Oh come now, she can’t be any more awkward and slightly embarrassing then John Oliver.” Then I watched and… I’m not sure if her jokes are worse or just that them being delivered like 3 times as often just makes them less bearable, but damn…
I LIKE both John Oliver and Sam Bee, but holy crap I swear to god, something about the Daily Show messed its former contributors up cus all of them (with the exception of Colbert) are just like… They all feel like they are trying to do John Stewart style jokes, while tackling far more serious and nuanced topics then the Daily Show tended to deal with on average and its just so… Awkward.
Your talking about sexual and racial discrimination directed towards children, MAYBE now’s not the time to break out the funny photo shop gag about kids eating glue or the dolphin with a metal? Maybe those jokes should be left to the parodies of goofy news headers they were originally made for and we could try… I donno, trusting the host to carry the joke without a cut-away-gag?
Fully agree. That entire monologue is brutal to sit through just because of the painfully unfunny jokes that are thrown in. I don’t watch this show, and that clip isn’t going to make me want to either.
The only people I know who find their clips funny are college professors. They’re very much geared at the liberal gentrifier crowd, despite making great points
I’ve also found shows like Wait Wait Don’t Tell be to be much less funny without the audience there. I think it’s because the audience would groan at some of the worse jokes, but without that it’s all NPR comedians laughing at themselves. It’s like watching a college improv group with a crowd of 5 people.
They’re both very funny, not every person is a 50 year old white guy who wants to listen to Bill Maher drone on …….
I’m absolutely not saying they should be Bill Maher. I’m just worried they’ll eventually become him in some fashion
The Patriot Act was funny. And Colbert, and even TDS can still be funny.
“I agree with this but it isn’t funny” is a pretty good summation of comedy today.
Who do you find funny?
Definitely not you
Same problem I have with Amber Ruffin – I totally agree with the arguments she’s making but her jokes rarely land for me.
Trump killed political comedy for me in general. But yeah, with how fucked everything is the tone of a lot of these shows are just weird.
You just described almost all political comedy in 2021. The worst is when you start to feel like they’re going for nods for applause over actual laughter. One of those is actually hard to elicit.
What happened to the dress codes of my youth, which were “you must wear clothes”. That was pretty much it. When did things start getting so creepy?
They’ve been very specific a lot of schools for a very long time. Not sure how old you are but it’s really not new. When I was in High School in the early 2000s there were tons of rules.
Well that is after my time.
Sounds like maybe you should research the topic instead of assuming things suddenly changed after however long ago your time was.
It was around the 80’s and 90’s when Boomers blamed drugs and teen pregnancy on spaghetti straps and thongs
I remember there being bans on tank tops and tube tops(at least that one I understand) in the late 1970’s, and skirts had to come within 2 inches of the knee.
There were a lot of rules in the 80’s. No spiked accoutrement, No steeltoe boots. No bikini tops as tops.
Not in my school it wasn’t, or if it were then they were never enforced. I would have appreciated a ban on steeltoe boots, at very least.
School uniforms bring you closer to The One True God. They also help the poor kids feel better about themselves because school should not be a fashion show.
Thank you for the laugh.
Why? It actually makes sense. Yes, you can argue that the design of many school uniforms can be problematic, being typically highly gendered and often uncomfortably sexualizing the girls with short skirts, but the principle of making everybody wear the same thing is good because it means you can’t be economically classified by what you wear to school.
Because nothing you wear brings you closer to “The One True God.” That is what made me laugh.
Oh great, another self-righteous lecturefest that will warrant its own weekly Newswire item alongside Amber Ruffin and John Oliver! God I miss the old AV Club.
Back to school means white school districts are back on their bullshitlmaooooo come on, i know these are just lazily thrown together every morning by someone who really just kinda goes along to get along but you cannot mention samantha bee doing a bit on white wealthy schools without also mentioning her own husband joining in on the fight to keep their school wealthy and white while being adamant that that’s not why they’re fighting any rezoning that would integrate.
Remember when Samantha Bee wanted to make sure only rich white kids went to school with her kids?
While she’s not wrong, it’s kind of tough to take any sort of sermonizing about schools failing minorities from Samantha Bee considering her outstanding effort to make sure NYC schools keep failing minorities.
That was reported incorrectly and debunked awhile ago. Glad you hung on to that relic of misinformation that is still wrong and at this point years ago.
Bee benefits from a fundamentally unfair and racist school policy. That wasn’t debunked, that’s the reality of where she sends her kids to school.
No you read it wrong. They wanted to close a school, the one her kids attended that was a few blocks away and have them go to a school tens of blocks away for everyone. That school would be diverse sure, but something 20+ blocks away from your home is a huge impact on ones daily life. This wasn’t making the school they attended more diverse. Also the comments made were misconstrued to fit a narrative done so by conservatives. You don’t know shit about New York and schools within. Where do you live?
I live in New York, thanks, and I’m well aware of the school system’s terrible deficiencies and segregation. Framing it as a question of “I want my kids to go to a local school” ignores how local schooling is used to redline poorer and minority children from better schooling opportunities (leaving aside the issue of testing at higher levels which allows ‘local schools’ to not at all reflect the makeup of their surrounding neighborhoods.)
You got everything about this wrong and believed people misconstruing the quotes and it was 5 years. It’s ok to admit you’re wrong and ya know get over it. Just stop spreading misinformation.
Here ya go – https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/samantha-bees-husband-school/Also the was 5 years ago and you’re still clinging to something you had entirely wrong. Jfc let it go.
Like you let so much go ? Kill yourself
Correct. The Snopes fact check is hilarious on it too – suggests that cus the matter was settled it’s not important that she was in favour what amounted to de facto segregation. Plus it was like 16 blocks away a perfectly normal commute in NY but even easier if you’re a millionaire like the Bee family.
I think others are kind of saying it, but I remember way back watching the Daily Show and LMAO at all sorts of things… but IDK it was a different time then for several reasons and now, I find myself watching and I can’t laugh at this stuff. It’s real and it’s terrifying seeing the world eat itself alive for the last couple of decades. I want it to stop.
I’m not against school uniforms. Make them inclusive. Go for it. But when you have a kid, you learn pretty quickly that American public schools aren’t delivering the best education. They’ve moved way beyond simply being a place to learn. When I traveled internationally to Asia I was impressed with the students there. I saw a trig lesson happening beneath a bridge in Delhi and that will stick with me the rest of my life. No Chromebooks, just a chalkboard and each kid had a traditionally-sized old math book. They had white shirts and purple pants for the boys, and monochrome saris or skirts for the girls. Indian and Chinese students wear uniforms, and they’re sure as hell learning more than American kids. Uniforms aren’t a problem. If they need to be inclusive, great. But school is over quick and adulthood lasts 3x as long. Prepare for adulthood.
I like these shows (Full Frontal, Last Week Tonight, etc.) and agree with them, but I am finding them progressively less entertaining since they are not doing much other than pointing out how shitty our world has become – something of which I am acutely aware every time I read the news. “Raising awareness” is pointless because most of the targeted assholes have no shame and are gonna continue to asshole, and as someone in the Northeast there is just about nothing I can do other than donate to groups in mostly FL and TX. I am not sure all the donations in the world are going to change the minds of the voters electing those officials or even help with the legal aspects (pessimistic I know, please don’t @ me about this). So these shows try to mine terrible actions by terrible people for humor and I am finding it less funny/entertaining these days. I wish these shows could change minds, but the fact of the matter is that the people watching these shows are the ones agreeing with them; no one is turning off Fox News to see what Samantha Bee has to say.
This, all day. I used to mainline all of these shows. Now, I find myself listening to podcasts that decry all of the above, BUT ALSO lay out ways average listeners can do some bit of good to change things. Crooked Media does a good job of this – bro-ing down on all of the awfulness out there, but also setting up Vote Save America, which offers a many non-social media-related, non-click-baitey, down right “unsexy” ways to try to affect change (phone banks, donation info, etc.).
I’ll have to check out Crooked Media – I had not heard of it.
It’s the Pod Save America guys, the speechwriters for Obama, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor…
Majority Report is really good at that, especially when Michael Brooks was around (RIP)
I remember John Oliver shared a URL for submitting complaints to the FCC when Ajit Pai tried to kill net neutrality and I became an even bigger fan of his show than before, but he really hasn’t done anything like that since then, because now it seems like he and his ilk prefer to spend 30 minutes getting the libs all worked up and then saying “good night.”
John Oliver eliminated a bunch of people’s debt but beyond that what exactly do you want them to do other then point out things that so many people take for granted? What exactly has Bill Maher done in the past 30 years ?
This is less “news” than it is a reminder that schools have always been authoritarian, often racist, sexist, classist institutions, designed by 19th century factory standards. There should be a reimagining of what they do and how they do it, but maintaining their traumatizing dysfunction is a bipartisan affair, with vested interests on the right and the left calling the shots.