Kasparola. The mash-up. The story. The legend.
A quick fake ad I made in a month or so ago for everyone’s favorite hosting duo, Kasparola
An overly-serious, partly tongue-in-cheek look at
the genesis of the name “Kasparola”
Tonight, like most Wednesdays we were treated to another serious and fun-filled installment of Kasparola.
What is Kasparola, you ask? Why, it’s when Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola host The Young Turks together, of course! And it took a village on Twitter to make the name Kasparola the very minor legend it is in the TYT universe.
The portemanteau-slash-name-mashup was an idea that came to me thanks to a comment that #tytlive legend @IAmSock made that got read on the air about combining host names.
I immediately thought of trying to come up with one for Ana and John. They have great chemistry together as hosts, on the surface different but complementary in terms of their delivery and personalities, but also having a lot in common both politically and personally — and not just a love for ice cream.
So why not come up with a name for this hosting phenomenon? In celebrity circles, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were Brangelina; in the TYT Universe Ben Mankiewicz and Cenk Uygur are Benk; so why not have a name for America’s favorite weekly Wednesday duo: Kasparola?
I was shocked at how many likes it got — it currently has 69 likes (insert joke here), which is a lot for a #tytlive tweet. IAmSock jokingly quipped “This is the best discourse I’ve ever started.” 😂 It also got a number of likes when I posted it on tyt.com that day as well. But sadly, Kasparola didn’t get read on air or liked that day by either John or Ana online. But was that the end of the line for the name Kasparola?
I probably would have dropped the whole thing if it weren’t for @TheEmoDragon, @BriCamillucci, and @MichaelKnaepen, fellow members of the TYT community. Emo Dragon (I think mostly jokingly) suggested I post about Kasparola again the following week. And when it didn’t get read that week either, I posted about it the following week, which also got a number of likes. Still no luck. So I gave it one last try on (checks Twitter timeline…) August 3.
Ironically enough, I often can’t watch all of Hour 2 live on Wednesdays 😲, so I usually don’t catch most of Ana and John hosting until I watch the recording the next day. @BriCamillucci, not having seen the show either, replied to my tweet and asked if “Kasparola” was officially a thing now. The next day, when I saw her reply, I jokingly replied that if John and Ana hadn’t acknowledged it yet, I’d have to start a hashtag campaign to get it officially recognized. And then, surprisingly — John Iadarola weighed in.
I was in seventh heaven (or whatever the equivalent for atheists is) — John actually saw it!! (I still go all “fan-boy” when any of the hosts reads one of my comments on air or likes or reacts to a tweet.) And John either approved or at least didn’t disapprove, depending on your take. And shortly after, Ana Kasparian replied as well.
So the big question at that point was, now that they both knew the name Kasparola existed — was that the end of the line for the name Kasparola, or would it get mentioned on air and have a chance to be more “official”, so to speak? Me of little faith, I didn’t think it would be.
But the following week, Ana did in fact read a comment of mine on the show mentioning Kasparola. She read it from the members’ comments, but I often post the same on Twitter and tyt.com, so I’m pretty sure this is what the comment was:
And once she read it, @MichaelKnaepen — who was liking, commenting, and retweeting about Kasparola as well, put it this way:
And as @IAmSock put it: “KASPAROLA WE DID IT!”
It took a virtual village to get the name Kasparola going — perhaps a very small village, about something silly in the grand scheme of things — but it was enough. @ZekeGonzalez22, who’s now famous for posting quick-fire video clips and gifs daily of the TYT main show, has also been using the name Kasparola when capturing some of their better or funnier moments. I’ve noticed a good number of comments mentioning Kasparola not just on Twitter and tyt.com (where I often live-tweet and comment during the show), but also on Twitch and YouTube. For whatever reason, it seems to have caught on.
I don’t think it caught on because it’s clever — it’s not really imo — but because it gives a name to something that the TYT community has come to really appreciate over the years. We’ve come to love Ana and John hosting together, bringing out the best in each other with a perfect balance of serious, passionate commentary and fun, lighthearted banter that is genuine (neither of which can be said of many of the hosting teams on cable news or the morning shows).
Somehow, they make finding out about the increasing insane and depressing news going on in the world not just informative for us, but actually enjoyable.
So… was this a silly thing to write a detailed blog post about? OF COURSE!! But sometimes it’s good to write about silly things to take myself and the world a little less seriously.
Okay, that’s enough tomfoolery for at least the rest of the month. You may now return to your regularly scheduled doomscrolling online!
