PABAAH − Grass Roots McCarthyism

The Daily Show brings us another great, totally straight-faced interview by Rob Corddry called Red Menace*. In this one, Rob interviews a dude who is completely earnest about boycotting movies with “communist” and “unpatriotic” Hollywood stars. There must be a tear in the eye of every rabid, right-wing radio or TV idealogue right when they see this guy (which they won’t because it’s on the horribly unpatriotic Daily Show).

He’s from an organization called PABAAH, which is a really cool acronym for Patriots against boycotting all assholes in Hollywood or something like that. Their main beef is that:

“There’s people in Hollywood that spoke out against the war … they’re taking a stance against America, which would be … not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”

Great, I think Rupert Murdoch probably built a factory and stamped these people out by the thousands. The more eye-pleasing ones go to his TV networks, the lesser versions start organizations like this.

Apparently, the movie Elf (IMDB) is on the hit list because Ed Asner, a “communist sympathizer”, plays Santa Claus. Apparently, he has “a long history of speaking out against America”, whereas, the interviewee purports, “Santa Claus is on the side of right in this war on terror.” (When you see the guy, you’ll know why I think the double meaning there totally escaped him).

When asked about Hollywood’s reaction to him and his ideologically like-minded compatriots, the guy said his organization was accused of McCarthyism. So, Cordrry restated for him, with no small amount of sarcasm: “this is not McCarthyism, you’re just compiling a list of unpatriotic Americans … ”

“Correct. … people still use the term McCarthyism like it’s something bad.”

Ed Asner appears as himself with a curse-filled rebuttal, which is pretty funny, however, the other dude was totally prepared with the ultimate comeback:

“If Ed Asner is so fond of the communist lifestyle, why doesn’t he just go live in Cuba.”

Once this interview is over, you’ll wish it was fake (it’s the Daily Show, it might be) just so the guy they interviewed doesn’t really exist. But he does.