Not this Sanders supporter. After I maxed out my Sanders donation, canvassed, marched, and phonebanked, I donated twice to the group of candidates that endorsed Sanders.

Unless we want to fake a birth certificate for real this time and cut a good ten years off.

That was actually the only joke that took me a few seconds. Maybe if he changed up the delivery on each "That's my favorite artist," then it would have been a bit more clear.

I think you're confusing his ridiculousness with the logic the writers need to follow. Just because a character is ridiculous doesn't mean the writers don't need to have a reason in mind for his behavior. He can be oblivious to that reason; the writers cannot be.

Examples of representation shouldn't cancel each other out; the character could be a woman AND Asian. Justifying the casting of a white actress by explaining that a character is no longer Asian doesn't exactly make the casting decision…better.

This was the infuriating excuse Roberto Orci used not to cast an Indian as Khan.

That statement was directly related to the prank war. He no longer has incentive to take that stance out of pride. So, either he was sincere with that statement, he grew to enjoy it, or he kept it out of a mix of guilt and affection for his brother. Given his past zeal for redemption that crosses the line, as in "C…

Well, then it's a different sort of pride than the pride of not giving in during the prank war. That war was resolved, as demonstrated by the karaoke. So it must be less pride at his place in that war than a genuine liking of the new do.

I would like just one year to go by where this doesn't happen, but even that is too much to ask lately.

Cowardice on a micro level inhibits the "right answer at a macro level."

Who was actually from Asia, though Indian, not Tibetan.

I would rather there be more Asian actors than no Asian actors. So, while it would be better to cast Tibetan and flip of the Chinese government, casting Japanese is far better than casting Tilda Swinton.

The perfect solution is to have lots of Asian characters played and written by lots of Asian actors, so that the full spectrum of a people can be represented from the Asian point of view. Then the stereotypes would be drowned out in a sea of nuance.

This sums up my feelings pretty well:

I've had an idea I'm working on about just that. The only book I've found as a source in my research is this: http://www.amazon.com/Charl…

It was mentioned in the Stray Observations, but I guess Phil is shaving the right side of his face? It seems like the most passive thing to do would be to let it grow, but not trim the left side. Now that the prank war is over, does he have an incentive to keep it?

Nope.

Oh, absolutely. I've never had any love for either party, and this election has made me even more vehement in my commitment never to support either party. I didn't even mention parties in my post, and that was deliberate.

The point of the article is that the show is suspicious of all parties and power, even if it's not neutral about the ideologies those in power want us to believe they support. In that way, it's only neutral in that it doesn't endorse specific parties, favoring the actual issues at stake.

The neutrality in the earlier seasons can probably be attributed to the tendency of the show to have right-leaning libertarian right John Swartzwelder write episodes from the point of view of leftish stances. He was therefore willing and able to skewer his own point of view as well as that of the characters.