The May 5 episode of Netflix’s Chelsea was a change of pace. The episode was of a dinner party at her home, a format Ms. Handler occasionally used in season one, and the celebrity guests around her dinner table were Jim Parsons, Rashida Jones, Gaby Hoffman, and Mary McCormack. The subject of conversation was celebrating teachers who have impacted their lives for Teacher Appreciation Week, but it quickly turned into a an attack on America. One guest claimed the U.S. is "okay" with slavery happening again.
“Dinner Party: Getting Schooled” wasn’t about bashing President Trump (surprise!), per se, but of using the theme of education to bash his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. For example, when Handler said she attended a couple of years at a community college studying Russian history, Rashida Jones joked, “You might have a job in the cabinet.” After listening to drivel coming from elitist snob, Gaby Hoffman, who claims, “The right is using anti-intellectual propoganda to disempower the public and divide the masses,” declared she is no fan of Betsy De Vos. Color me not shocked.
The kicker was towards the end of the show. Bemoaning the education of America’s school children not including the “Imperialism” of America, actress Rashida Jones said, “It’s shameful how little we talk about the Imperialism of America. We just killed and raped a lot of people and then kidnapped an entire race of people, made them build the country and were like, ‘Oh God, now we have to live amongst them?’” Jones is bi-racial.
Handler noted that in Germany the history of the Holocaust is known by all Germans and monuments are everywhere to remind the people that it must never happen again. Contrasting that to America, the comic indignantly said the Holocaust happened over five years while slavery lasted for 400 years and only now has a national museum on slavery. Rashida piped in that “America is okay with it happening again and it is still happening.” Huh? Mary took a shot by saying, “Clearly we’re okay with it, look what’s happening.” I assume that shot was on the charges of anti-minority charges against President Trump. It sounded like the standard leftist pap – Republicans are racist and ignorant human beings.
Clearly, both the Holocaust and slavery are stains on human history. To lump the two together to air grievances and to claim America is okay with either happening again is beyond the pale – regardless of who occupies the White House. It seems to me that the leftist historian Howard Zinn would be proud had he lived to hear this load of garbage being served for dinner.
