“Birth Pangs”: Aasif Mandvi on The Daily Show

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(Alternate link to the video) Aasif Mandvi is an Indian-American actor and one-time playwright who has had small parts in many movies and larger parts on a number of major TV shows (like CSI). His Daily Show appearance — as a “Middle Eastern Affairs Correspondent” — is pretty clever; he riffs on Condoleezza Rice’s claim that the current wars in the Middle East are merely the “birth pangs” of emergent democracy in a “new Middle East”. Mandvi gets a couple of big laughs, but also possibly loses the audience at the end with an ironic line about 9/11.

32 thoughts on ““Birth Pangs”: Aasif Mandvi on The Daily Show”

  1. Did they show the Palestinian newspaper cartoons depicting Condi as pregnant with an armed monkey describing her as “black widow”, “black spinster”?

  2. Boom!!! and then Aasif says “that was just an Improvised explosive opportunity” – hillarious

  4. glad to see the guy find a better showcase for his skills than -shudder- the mystic masseur. man! was that a waste of time.

  6. Did Mr Bush say “working with udders” at the end, or was that just my imagination?

    Speaking of Bush, he and Ahmadinejad are two guys who strongly believe in the creative potential in violence. They really do think that the world needs to be actively f*cked up before things can start to get better. It’s a lucky thing neither of them has the means to make that happ…eh? what?

    Oh.

  7. Enough with the “Positive Image Mentality”. Mandvi was mediocre at best. Better than Samantha Bee, but not up to the standards of other Daily Show correspondents.

    And no-credit to the Daily Show for using a Desi as an (implied) arab, probably because real Arabs are too light-skinned to play the foriegner. John Stewart, Stop Hurting Amreeka.

  8. Actually, I thought he was quite good. The ironic ‘angle’ was original: a “Middle Eastern man” who actually supports “breaking some chickpeas to get hummus” (in other words, please bomb us). The joke is of course that it’s all a critique of the Bush administration’s many failures — and that devastating line at the end about 9/11 being a “tough day, but a great opportunity,” using Bush’s own logic, drives it home.

  10. “loses the audience” ?

    No, the audience was stunned by the impossibly poignant satire. There is just no excuse for the Bush administration, or America at this point. I and the audience were ashamed of our country by the end of this bit, for good reason. Aasif Mandvi tore a hole right through the heart of anyone paying attention.

  11. In the interest of making omelets, sometimes you have to describe how between one and three eggs are broken, encounter hot oil on a flat, metallic surface, and are subsequently fried until a chemical reaction occurs.

  12. “loses the audience” ? No, the audience was stunned by the impossibly poignant satire. There is just no excuse for the Bush administration, or America at this point. I and the audience were ashamed of our country by the end of this bit, for good reason. Aasif Mandvi tore a hole right through the heart of anyone paying attention.

    I agree… atleast I’d like to think so. I thought the last lines were the best part.

  13. Incidentally, this clip is now ranked #1 on Youtube’s top “News” clips today. I think SM viewers probably have something to do with that.

  14. Even Mr. Kobayashi finds it acceptable to make a ‘sardar’ comment for no reason…that’s just sad.

  15. Amitabh,

    I’m friends with Amardeep, and I use the term in a non-perjorative sense. See here. Amardeep recognized that, hence the humorous nature of his response.

    Peace.

  18. I can vouch for Mr. Kobayashi as well, which makes 100% of the Sardar contingent here.

    What I don’t know is whether the name refers to the usual suspects or to the current world champion eater, also a kobayashi.

  19. What I don’t know is whether the name refers to the usual suspects or to the current world champion eater, also a kobayashi.

    Duh. It refers to the name of my very cruel internship coordinator from Poli-Sci 192 A, Marc Kobayashi. 😉

  20. They never know who they’re working for. One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.

  22. I was hoping you meant him instead:

    Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi is a Japanese competitive eater and a member of the International Federation of Competitive Eating who holds the world record for hot dog eating as six time consecutive champion of Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating competition. The record of 53 3/4 hot dogs was set by Kobayashi on July 4, 2006. He is considered by experts to be the greatest competitive eater in the history of the sport.

    This guy is a real stud, he’s at under 10% bodyfat!:

    Kobayashi expands his stomach for a competition by eating larger and larger amounts of food, and then exercises to ensure that fat will not impede expansion of his stomach during a competition.[4] According to a 2006 documentary on MTV’s “True Life,” Kobayashi has a condition called gastroptosis, an abnormal downward displacement of the stomach. It plays a role in his eating ability because his stomach is able to expand below the rib cage unlike most people, allowing him to take in large portions of food. Physically Kobayashi has undergone drastic change from his earlier appearances on the competitive eating circuit (weighing in at a mere 110 lb in his beginning competitions and then 144 lb in later events.) This is due in large part to his more recent endeavors in weight training. By training with weights and working out Kobayashi has increased his metabolism, which in turn has helped him to burn more calories. This training is used by Kobayashi to maintain his overall health as well as helping him to elude excess calories from being stored as fat. Kobayashi’s official web site gives his height as 5 feet 7 inches and his weight as 165 pounds, but in a June 29, 2006, entry on his blog, he says that his weight grew to over 196 pounds during 2006, still being under 10 percent bodyfat. Kobayashi is also known for his trademark body wiggle, affectionately known as “The Kobayashi Shake” which he uses to force food down his esophagus and settle more compactly in his stomach.[5] He eats the hot dogs by splitting the frankfurter in half, swallowing both parts at once, and then dipping the buns in water, Sprite, or 7-Up and stuffing it in his mouth. He calls this the Solomon method.[6]
  23. I was hoping you meant him instead.

    Well, yes, he’s part of it too.

    What, can’t a brother work for a nebulous underworld kingpin while at the same time shoving great quantities of reconstituted meat product down his throat? And, no, I know how that sounds, but I’m not (yet) one of these guys.

  24. Is it just me, or is this guy in every single movie or TV show where they need a brown man? I feel like I seem him everywhere.

    My TV-watching consists mostly of Law & Order and its offshoots and I would have to agree. Funny thing is, he almost always plays a doctor or a scientist…

    On another note, I saw Sakina’s Restaurant ages ago and it was great. I had hoped to see more of Mandvi around, but alas, he’s been relegated to random L&O fame…

  25. Hey …

    I’m from belgium … so uhm, what’s Condi saying? Birth pangs? LOL They’re bombing villages … killing babies, one time they bombed a place where there were 37 babes, all dead now … and they’re talking about oppurtunities .. oppurtunities for what? Taking over the region and kill all the people over there?

  26. So, does anyone know if the Daily Show is improv comedy, or prepared stuff? Who wrote Aasif’s lines, him or a set of highly trained monkeys in some secret location?

  27. daily show is not improv, neither is stephen colbert except for maybe part of the interview. Jon Stewart even had many co / ghostwriters for his democracy inaction book. They’re great, but they do have to work at it behind the scenes.

  28. FYI, esteemed and experienced comedy writer Jonathan Schwarz of Tiny Revolution loved this, desi angle probably not a factor.

  29. glad the thread got back to the DS clip. “Tough day, Great opportunity” was one of the great lines of all time. Some audience members howled immediately, others were just stunned into silence, shocked someone would have the guts to say something so outrageously callous, something OUR PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISORS are saying daily, to television reporters, to the World. The timing was brilliant. I roared. One of the best Daily Show bits I’ve seen in a while.

  30. It’s really frustrating that the Daily Show clip with Mandvi wouldn’t load and wasn’t available on YouTube. If someone out there has a way for me to view it, I would be very thankful.

  31. Yes, down with the Daily Show, and its evil record of opressing the non-whites!!!!