Samantha Bee Went to an Evil Jail and Had the Best, Most Relaxing Time
School segregation enthusiast Samantha Bee, who also hosts the late-night comedy show Full Frontal, recently visited the infamously abusive Rikers Island jail and emerged feeling like she’d just come back from “a Caribbean vacation.” Her words.
People even told her her skin was glowing!
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Those tidbits arrived as part of a long conversation between Bee and Girls creator Lena Dunham, published by The Hollywoood Reporter on Wednesday. It’s worth reading this particular exchange in full to really capture Bee’s craven lack of self-awareness (emphasis mine):
DUNHAM I tweeted something about the TV show Friends, and then everyone was like, “Nice timing. We just dropped a bomb.” Do you feel like you could ever untether yourself from the news?
BEE It’s funny. I went to Rikers [Island, New York City’s main jail] a couple of weeks ago to shoot something that I think will be really good. It was a really interesting experience. But you’re not allowed to take your phone in because you can’t take glass or anything like that. So they took my phone, and they put it in a lockbox for eight hours. And I felt like I had gone on a Caribbean vacation. I emerged from Rikers, and everyone was like, “Your skin is shining.” And it was because I’ve never been more relaxed. I felt so free just knowing that my phone was safe, but I wasn’t allowed to see it or know what was happening in the world.
DUNHAM So Rikers became the most relaxing place you’ve been in months?
BEE It was the most free I’ve felt in months.
The irony was apparently lost on Bee that she felt so liberated while, all around her, human beings were locked in cages. Will her eventual Rikers segment focus on the rampant human rights abuses within the prison’s walls and the lives the facility has claimed even after inmates are granted release, or will it be about the therapeutic value of “locking up” your iPhone? Only time will tell.