…The result is hilariously empowering…

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:748385

How’s Your News? is one of the most eye-popping, feel-good, and surreal shows that MTV has ever featured. There is nothing like it anywhere on TV, for that matter.

Great in depth interview with reporter Jeremy Vest and Director Arthur Bradford on the NPR show “The Sound of Young America”

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/RecRoom/76195-Media-misfits/

“…in case it’s not apparent by now, one Web commentary gets it precisely wrong when it accuses the show of being a comedy that uses “handicapped people as the punch line” and concludes, “Can’t get too much more offensive than that.” In fact, if any viewer can get to know these seven personalities — can watch Harrington debating the merits of medical marijuana with passers-by on the street, or Bird bullshitting with Silverman and Kimmel, or Vest interviewing an acid casualty on Venice Beach — and still feel that way, it probably says more about the viewer than the show’s producers, who’ve succeeded wildly and hilariously at their professed goal: to show the disabled in a light that’s “less sentimental and more empowering.”

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/05/boing-boing-video-ho.html

“When I first saw the internet version, I remember first feeling a little guilty or awkward for laughing at people with disabilities on-screen. But when I watched the MTV episodes in entirety with the BBV crew, I started to feel like I knew these people, and was more comfortable with it the more I watched. Maybe part of the lesson here is that people with disabilities are real people. They don’t need me to feel “precious” or “protective” about them. It is okay to laugh with them, and when they are being funny in a comedy series, it’s okay to laugh at them, too. Not as people to be pitied, just as people.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020404010.html

“Upbeat and moving…the show is a genre all to itself…funny in ways that nothing else on TV is funny…The show isn’t really “about” mental disabilities; it’s just a chance to look through someone else’s eyes and see the world in ways you’ve never seen it before. It could be part of a course in the humanities, or just a course in humanity. It’s also a wickedly entertaining half-hour, one you’ll never regret having surrendered to your television set.”