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Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Danny Devito and "Smoochy the RINO" [1]
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Date: 2025-07-22
Watching Jon Stewart do a gospel choir sing off about the cancellation of “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” I was again reminded of this obscure satire film, the title is “Death to Smoochy” and Smoochy is Rhino, not a RINO. I picked that photo for this diary because it’s the moment in the film that Smoochy realizes something is very wrong.
This movie is one of my favorites, a lesser known Robin Williams gem. It did terrible at the box office because of 9/11, not anything about film quality.
Edward Norton plays “Smoochy The Rhino”, the host of a new children’s show. Smoochy takes over for Rainbow Randolph, played by Robin Williams, who was canceled for a bribery and corruption scandal. Danny Devito and Jon Stewart are the corrupt children’s network and charity executives. Harvey Fierstein is the boss of a corrupt children’s ice skating event.
So what do this have to do with Stewart and Colbert and our current moment?
www.nbcnews.com/…
Sen. Ernest Lundeen delivers a speech under a swastika banner to the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce on March 20, 1940.
This moment from real history is parodied in ”Death to Smoochy”, with Robin William’s character attempting to frame the good-natured Sheldon Mopes played by Edward Norton. The second video is from a few years ago, Danny Devito is fond of this work.
Rachel Maddow did a podcast on the real history, more people should be aware of the cartoon satire version. If you like “Jojo Rabbit” or “Idiocracy”, then watch ”Death to Smoochy”.
The gospel choir sang along with Jon when he talked about the corporate threats to freedom of speech and his defense of his friend Stephen Colbert. I’ve seen “Death to Smoochy”, so I know the historical knowledge and depth Jon Stewart has in this area.
If the rhetorical gloves are off, then I suggest Jon Stewart and fellow late night comics focus on tying current events to the Hercules Powder Plant Disaster. Make the connections to modern day sabotage of modern day infrastructure of national defense (vaccines, maybe?) For those that don’t know the tale of America in 1940:
The Holocaust didn’t just happen because “American stood silent” until December 1941....it happened because German agents of the Abwehr had been inside the United States for years, stopping American involvement.
Inside Congress too...archive links to 1941 originals. The “America First Committee” was actually a German spy operation led by George Sylvester Viereck.
www.nytimes.com/…
time.com/…
From the archives of Viereck’s notes:
In the late 1930's he became the highest-paid American publicist for the German cause by accepting lucrative offers to serve as a correspondent for a Munich newspaper and as an editor with the German Library of Information in New York City. He advised officials in the German Foreign Office, particularly Hans Dieckhoff, who was German ambassador to this country in the mid-1930's, and the German consul in New York City, on the state of American public opinion and the mood of Congress regarding Germany and the European situation. He cultivated friendships with certain isolationist Congressmen, especially Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New York and Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota, who were anti British and sympathetic to Germany. [32] Of course, in the meantime, most of his Jewish friends repudiated him.
www.lib.uiowa.edu/…
RT talking points being repeated by MAGA elected officials has a historical parallel.
With the funding cuts to PBS/NPR, I bring up “Death to Smoochy” because while Jon Stewart might be limited in his freedom of speech, I doubt John Oliver and the costume department over at Last Week Tonight have such creative restrictions.
A classic Robin Williams movie about a canceled children’s show and public corruption is just sitting there on the shelf, full of references to use for today. The joke songs are funny, I recommend the movie if you need a laugh.
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