Did Samantha Bee Just Make Us Like Vapers?

By Emily Cutler | Videos | May 24, 2016 |

By Emily Cutler | Videos | May 24, 2016 |

Don’t worry, people. This is not a political post. At least not directly.

I’ve long been a fan of Full Frontal, but I think they might have done something really remarkable last night. After covering the shitshow that was the Las Vegas caucus, and follow up with The Religious Right: Part Two, Bee ended the show with a segment on new restrictions proposed for the e-cigarette and vaping markets.

And I don’t particularly care for vaping. I know many fine people who do vape, and I don’t think less of them. But I don’t think more of them either. I don’t care for the exception that some vapers and e-cigarette smokers believe apply to them allowing them to smoke indoors. I don’t care for flavored smoking products, and I really don’t care that they’re called things like Twilight Sparkle’s First Orgasm. Mostly I don’t care for the vaping scene that’s on display in this clip. So basically saying I’m skeptical about this is an understatement.

Surprisingly, I don’t hate all of this. I still don’t want to attend that convention and I would sooner smoke petrified shit than Peaches And Herb Boner Surprise flavored vaping liquid, but I don’t hate it. And I was actually educated on a couple of points. Vaping is less harmful than standard cigarettes, there’s no large manufacturer of vaping products (maybe a good thing), but also no standard regulations on vaping products (definitely a bad thing). Probably because I’m a disinterested party, my overall reaction to the piece was “what’s the best way to ensure safety in the products without closing a bunch of businesses?”

Which makes me ask: was that Bee’s long con the whole time? The first segment was about a lot of presumably decent people turning into raging assholes because of their misguided passion about a candidate. The second segment was about the ways in which religious and political leaders whipped their base into a frenzy over abortion until those “passionate” people were pulling asshole moves running the spectrum from shouting at people on street corners to straight up murder. We’ve become so entrenched in our identity politics (rightly so at times, I should add), that we’ve become unaccustomed to being able to change our mind on shit. The show primed us to be receptive to the ideas of what can only be referred to as a bunch of assclowns by showing us the bigger assclowns that we absolutely should never become. For all of the praise I could heap upon this show, this is undoubtedly the highest: Full Frontal made me think “Don’t act like those Bernie supporter, act like those vapers.” Fuck you, Samantha Bee. I love you so much.