Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon laugh at the futility of the Olympic Village's anti-sex cardboard beds
President Biden on Monday walked back comments he made about Facebook killing people by spreading COVID-19 misinformation, but not before Tooning Out the News found a real killer to take umbrage.
"Seriously, you know there's a problem with Facebook when you can find more honest information on Tinder," Jimmy Fallon said on The Tonight Show. "Our country has gone from 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself' to 'Please don't take medical advice from a meme.'"
Meanwhile, "the Olympics are almost here, and the athletes in the Olympic Village are sleeping on beds made of cardboard, and some people think they're meant to discourage any intimacy," Fallon said. "A bed to discourage sex — or as that's also known, an air mattress. That's right, because of COVID, the organizers want to make sure every athlete is as celibate as a badminton player."
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Yes, to stop the spread of COVID-19, "athletes will have to sleep on beds that are allegedly designed to collapse under the weight of any more than one occupant in order discourage sex," Stephen Colbert laughed at The Late Show. "Yeah, because we know if there's one thing world-class athletes can't do, it's have sex in unusual positions." So far, "athletes do not seem deterred from gettin' it on," he added, and "now the buzzkills over at fact-check village have spent the afternoon debunking the rumors coming from the athletes themselves, and instead claimed that the beds were made of cardboard so they could be recycled into paper products after the Olympics. I can't wait for six months from now to read toilet paper labels that read: 'Made From 100 Percent Recycled Olympic Sex Bed.'"
"COVID cases are rising in all 50 U.S. states," and lockdowns are possible again, Colbert sighed, vowing, "I will not give up my live audience!" The Delta variant is spreading so rapidly, Los Angeles County has reinstated its indoor mask requirement for everyone, he noted. "Typical Los Angeles — even the virus is pitching a sequel. One major factor keeping people from getting vaccinated is the lies and misinformation they read on social media, especially Facebook. ... Makes you miss the good old days when Facebook's primary function was helping you find unflattering pictures of your ex's new boyfriend."
The Late Show also imagined what vaccine misinformation would have looked like in the age of polio.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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