Marcela’s Weekly Digest: 4th October 2022

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live in Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news. 

My weekly newsletter has evolved into this beautiful Tuesday weekly news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler.

Today I’m sharing my thoughts on Coca Cola being a sponsor of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, people not being able to afford food because of price gouging, a Brazilian soccer player endorsing Brazil’s current right wing president, Bolsonaro, and a school district in North Texas banning LGBTQI+ books

News that reminded me about that one time the world saw Joe Biden sleeping

Coca Cola is sponsoring this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP27). 

I laughed so hard when I read this news. Not because it was funny but because it is very disrespectful. You know when someone does something so disrespectful that you just shake your head and giggle because you just can’t believe their audacity? 

This is the level of disrespect of someone giving me chick’n nuggets without barbecue sauce. I spell chick’n nuggets like this because I’m vegan and I don’t eat chicken. I eat chick’n.

It’s disrespectful that after we’ve seen undeniable evidence of climate catastrophe, ‘world leaders’ are not even trying to pretend they’ll do something about climate change. 

Picking an awful entity that sacrifices human dignity to sell fizzy sweet drinks as a sponsor for a conference to ‘solve’ climate change sends a clear message that ‘world leaders’ go to this conference to take naps and not prevent further climate catastrophe. 

If Joe Biden sleeping at the last conference then coming back and opening the Gulf of Mexico for drilling wasn’t proof enough that ‘world leaders’ will not stop the world from turning into a very dangerous sauna, then this news should. 

You can’t say you are trying to ‘solve’ climate change, then have one of the perpetrators sponsor your festival, I mean conference. That’s like saying you are vegan and then eating chicken nuggets. 

I know world leaders, flying to a conference to mitigate climate change in their private jets, don’t actually want to do something about climate change. 

Why would they do that? It would cut into world leaders’ bosses’ profit margins?

When your ‘elected’ politician says you are the boss, they are lying; BP is their boss. I’m just upset that politicians don’t respect us enough to hide the fact that they aren’t going to do anything about climate change when we can clearly see its effects. 

Okay I’m upset about a whole lot more than that. I’ll just add this to the list of my gripes with capitalism which is much longer than that nap Joe took at COP26. 

News that made me explain why I’m not interested in eating the rich

Kimberly Hart, a woman who lives in New Haven, Connecticut stopped buying fruit because inflation has increased the cost of fresh produce. 

This is the story of millions of other people who are being forced to pick processed food over fresh produce because they just can’t afford it. 

There are also those who simply can’t afford food at all because of the prices. No one should be forced to eat unhealthy food – let alone starve – while food companies are raising prices in the name of inflation exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. 

Eating unhealthily should be a choice that you make. It’s a choice I make when I eat candy for breakfast. It can be a really fun choice to eat unhealthy food when you are not being forced into it so that food companies like Cargill can make over $5 billion dollars IN A YEAR.

That’s right, while people are trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from, members of the Cargill family have been added to Bloomberg’s list of the 500 richest people alive. 

Obviously rich people are not afraid of us eating them if they are publicly sharing who should be our top targets. I personally don’t want to eat rich people, not because I’m a vegan. I don’t want to eat rich people because I think hoarding wealth when people are starving makes your flesh taste bad. 

I do however want to talk about this idea of ‘inflation’ and how the market is constantly being used to gaslight us into accepting unacceptable things. 

Every single time I talk to someone about high food prices, the response is always, well it’s inflation and we can’t do anything about it. 

I’m sorry, inflation is not like a volcano that just happens. It’s like a volcano that Jimmy built for their science project: someone made it happen. 

I know some economics majors are about to come for me for what I’m about to say but I’m going to say it. The economy is made up. Money is made up.

The economy and money are controlled by corporations through the government. People like the Cargill family have raised the price on food not because of scarcity or some ‘market forces’  but because they simply want to make more money. 

And if ‘market forces’ are preventing people from getting food, maybe we should get rid of these market forces like Jimmy got rid of his Volcano after the science fair. 

News that made me confess about skipping class… I’m not sorry

Brazilian soccer player Neymar has endorsed Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s current far-right President, for reelection. 

I bring up this news not because I’m a huge Neymar fan. I’ve heard people say he is a heartthrob but I don’t know because I don’t watch professional soccer. The last time I watched soccer was by accident. I went to a bar, there was a game playing, and when you put a soccer game in front of me, it turns out, I will watch it. 

This is because I wasn’t always a person who looked at commercialised sports as a dangerous tool that the elite use to control and distract us. 

I’ll clarify.  I love sports. Which I know is not something that someone who likes sports would say but I really do. When I was in high school I used to skip class to watch the UEFA Champions League. I can say this now because I’m not in high school anymore and there is nothing they can do about it. 

I hate commercialised sports, which is the reason why I brought up Neymar’s endorsement of Bolsonaro. Athletes like Neymar and all entertainers are turned into celebrities specifically to control us. People know more about Adam Levine’s infidelity than what’s in their fridge. People bought new butts because of Kim Kardashian! 

Celebrity is very important for maintaining this dystopian status quo. That’s why celebrity doesn’t just happen. It’s created through exposure and only people who say what capitalists like are given this exposure. 

Yes Neymar is an amazing soccer player but he is more than that. He has been commodified to sell things and ideas because his values align with the capitalists’ values.

That’s why everyone should ignore him when he endorses a right-wing candidate who hates trees for President. How is hating trees your thing? Trees are so nice to look at and they give you shade. Leave the Amazon Forest alone! 

Nonetheless, Neymar is a perfect example of why you should not listen to people who have been picked by capitalists to tell you how to create a better world. That’s like taking life advice from your bully.

News that made me tell you stand up comedy can be educational

A superintendent of a North Texas school district, Granbury Independent School District, was caught on tape telling librarians that books about transgender and other LGBTQI+ characters should be ‘reviewed’ because they live in a very conservative community. 

Obviously the superintendent is wrong. There should be even more books with LGBTQI+ characters in Granbury school district’s libraries because it is a conservative community.

In fact, they should replace all the books about the founding fathers with books about the LGBTQI+ experiences in the library because it would serve two purposes. One purpose would be to educate children on the beautiful diversity of humanity. The other purpose would be to remove lies from the bookshelf. 

I didn’t find out about George Washington using enslaved people’s teeth from reading a book. The book said they were wooden teeth. I found out about George’s teeth from a comedian’s joke. Who says stand up comedy can’t be educational? Anyone who still listens to Dave Chappelle, that’s who. 

Anyway, this is not about Dave Chappelle: this is about people using the school system to inject homophobia and transphobia into children’s minds. 

Granbury school district’s purpose of reviewing over 100 of the books with LGBTQI+ characters and banning three of these books is not to protect children. It’s to create a dangerous and unwelcoming environment for transgender and gender non-conforming children. 

That’s why one of the non-binary students who goes to a school in the Granbury school district constantly deals with harassment from other children. The school has said it’s okay. 

The purpose of public school has always been to create a passive populace that believes what the power structure wants it to believe. The superintendent of Granbury and others who ban books know this. They know if they get children to believe these hateful ideas when they are younger, most of them will grow into hateful adults. 

Full grown adults still believe that the founding fathers were great guys because no one told them the truth about George Washington’s teeth when they were children. They knew if they told children George Washington’s teeth were from the people he enslaved they’d be like, eww George Washington is gross ,America is gross and we should have a real revolution. 

That’s the power of education and books. That’s why we should replace all founding fathers’ books in libraries with a copy of “A Queer History of the United States For Young People”. 

News that forced me to remind everyone they have perfect booty

@feelthenewswithmarcela Subscribe to my newsletter and come to the show on Saturday! #comedynews #news #leftist #ericabanks #blackanarchist #celebrity #celebritynews ♬ original sound – Feel the News

 

That’s it for the news, see ya next week,

Marcela