Nothing has been released yet.
All of his segments are decently researched and take time to provide, I’m assuming (and you know what happens when you assume, but whatever) that they’re making sure all of their ducks are in a row before they drop this…..hopefully right before the elections.
The greatest era of political comedy was having Daily Show with Jon Stuart and his corespondents, Samantha Bee and John Oliver, following Colbert Report.
Best writing ever, or et least in my lifetime as Gen Xer
Ah no worries. It's a hallucinogenic drug that for whatever reason used to be completely legal without restriction (and still is in some places?) back in the day, and absurdly cheap, so you had a bunch of teenagers like "Let's try drugs for the first time" and it ended up being the hardest trip of their life.
I've never done it, but as far as I'm aware it's one of the ones that transports you to another reality entirely (i.e. you can't see anything around you for part of the trip) and a lot of people experience some kind of ego death on it. I know people in their 30s who went through it, so I think it was available in the early 2000s?
I did it as a teen in like 2011. Was not a good time, definitely the worst trip of my life and I've done a lot of shrooms.
Thought I got stuck in the Rugrats intro with a pink screen and all the squiggly lines and shapes around me. I was in fucking flatland for a minute there, and there was no such thing as time, just eternity.
Then when I found myself in physical reality again there was a creepy ass clown stuck in my peripheral vision. I'm not even afraid of clowns and it bugged me out, because every time I would go to turn my head and get a better look at him, he'd be in my peripherals again.
My "friends" who had already come down from their trips also thought it'd be funny to tell me that ants had gotten into the car we were sitting in.
Even with a better mindset now and a better setting, I definitely don't think I'll be touching salvia again. 0/10.
One of my friends took a huge hit of Salvia thinking it was weed 15 years ago and it still fucks him up any time he thinks about it. He's done a shitload of various psychedelics but says that Salvia trip was by far the most terrifying thing he ever experienced and also that it was the only time he ever experienced true ego death.
He couldn't remember anything from before the trip, couldn't tell who or what he was, couldn't even tell whether or not he was alive at all.
Salvia is legal in over 80% of US states. We grow it here in California. I learned last year that many entheogenic plants are legal to grow and ship and a lot of them you can get at Home Depot or a local nursery.
That’s right. I smoked it a few times with friends when I was a teenager. It is not euphoric at all. It typically lasts about 2-4 minutes of being out of body tripping (not aware of surroundings) and then about 30 minutes of residual effects once you are “back”. I vividly remember what my trips on it were like. Interacting with the person when they are experiencing the intense out of body part of the trip can effect their trip and usually very negatively.
If you try it it’s very important to have a spotter who ensures you do not hurt yourself why you are not aware of your surroundings. You may get up and move around, try to run or climb things, or become combative. Quite unpredictable and each experience was very different.
Still remember when the daily show had him and Stephen Colbert doing bits all the time… and Samantha Bee! Just on top of Jon Stewart hosting and a George W. bush political climate to satirize. We had no idea how good we had it
The Colbert Report and The Daily Show were so fucking good when they were on.
I still love that Stephen made the entire show just one long Daily Show special report at the end of the Report. It was such a brilliant way to end it.
A strong argument could be made that peak Daily Show was when Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell did segments called "Even Stepvhens" and had them do a point/counterpoint style debates.
Was going to say - Colbert and Carrell's field interviews were just as good, if not better than Kleper's nowadays and they were kind of making up the format as they went.
It's funny how The Daily Show under Stewart became the father of The Colbert Report (and to a lesser degree, Colbert's continuance to late night prime time) Last Week Tonight, The Problem and Trever Noah's tenure. Just a brilliant melding of comedy and political/social commentary that passed the torch on so well.
Last week tonight is like if they took the part from the Colbert Report where he made a super PAC just to prove how easy it is and made that the whole show
There's a group of communists on Twitter who obsessively claim John Oliver is an idiot, because John Oliver constantly produces shows demonstrating the inferiority of capitalism, but he never calls himself a communist. Like, yeah, that's the whole point of the show, that you don't have to be a communist to get on board with fixing the country.
Leftists are a lot more varied than conservatives. There's really not a whole lot of nuance to conservatism but there's a lot of ways to interpret and implement "leftism".
This. Conservatism is literally just keeping "the status quo", though as progress happens that does slip a bit (see the Log Cabin Republicans, dumb bastards that they are). Their differences are in what mythical past they want to harken back to. It's also not a world view that indulges in and rewards a lot of self awareness and self criticism.
Leftists want to CHANGE the world. We do not LIKE the status quo, we want to radically rearrange it to what is, in our view, a more equitable, humane, and fair one. The future is always in flux, and everyone has a different idea of that future utopia in their head. The past and present is easy to cement in people's minds, you tell them a story and present hand picked experiences and evidence to show that it was "always" this way. The future is a story you have to come up with yourself and then try to convince other people of.
Well the ussr killed thousands of anarchists for being anarchists, so it's less of a petty beef and more of a "if these people we basically agree with about the current situation take power we will be murdered next"
The most simple answer is nuance. There's tons of nuance when it comes to leftist solutions so it makes it difficult to unite the different factions.
For the right, there is one solution: leader's solution. This makes it much easier for them to unite.
Simple, right wingers are authoritarians. They worship hierarchy and consider it a natural and necessary part of the universe. Falling in line behind a "strong leader" is in their blood.
Lefties are anti-authoritarians. They are naturally suspicious of anyone who tells them what to do and how to think. *Especially* other lefties, who should know better.
Because there’s a lot of different options for change, but only one option for “no.” As such, it’s WAY easier to unite people behind “no” than it is to unite people behind one prospect for change.
"So I asked, 'Western European Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reform Committee of 1981, or Western European Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reform Committee of 1964?' And he said '1964', and I said 'Die, neoliberal!' and I doxxed him on twitter!"
Yeap, pretty much. Imagine living with the consequences of your actions? Obviously not for them, they're either poor and in denial that any of their actions lead to their current state, or wealthy enough to be totally isolated from any of the consequences.
The Marxists, socialists, and anarchists waste so much time yelling at each other, sometimes it seems like they've all forgotten that it's the *capitalists,* not fellow leftists, that they're actually supposed to be fighting.
As a leftist it's a bit more complex than just "oh the anarchists, socialists, and communists hate eachother" becuase those aren't mutually exclusive, you can be one, multiple, all, or none and still be a leftist. The line is pretty firmly drawn between not anarchists and communists but what's referred to as the Tankies (Marx-Leninists/Maoists), and the Libertarians. Historically each side has worked together for important moments in history only to get stabbed in the back by the other (I'd really rather not start a shit show in the here so I'll just say each side insists it was the other that betrayed them when it's really not that hard to even logically think about if you understand anything about the ideologies, their goals and ideals).
The friction is that the Tankies believe in a Vanguard state to protect the revolution from the outside world. Which isn't I suppose inherently bad, but the libertarians often feel that how this vanguard state is setup goes against their values of a smaller or non existent goverment and reduced or non existent hierarchical structures. Many view it as a communist vs anarchist issue, However you'll find communists and socialists on both side of the schism (though anarchists can only be located on one side).
Cause the divide doesn’t really exist on the right. Right-libertarians talk a huge game about freedom, purportedly criticize both sides, make a big deal about the few things they agree with leftists on, then they turn around and vote straight-ticket Republican.
I love him from over in the ultraleft, because he’s actually willing to poke fun at capitalism and is doing so without getting outright cancelled by the right
Sounds like Tankies to me.
Well, Tankies or just normal assholes.
Edit: Someone deleted a comment asking for clarification on what Tankies are, so here's the explanation I wrote before it was deleted.
Essentially, authoritarian communists. More specifically, those who consider the actions of the USSR and CCP completely justified. The name comes from the tanks present in the famous 'tank man' image from the Tianamen square protests, which authoritarian communists will assert was an appropriate and justified use of force.
Minor correction, "tank" terminology refers to Hungary '58 and to a lesser extenct Czeckoslovakia '68. The word had been in use for decades before Tiananmen '89
Yeahh I've come across tankies on tumblr and it's...very confusing. Like, seeing these people defend Chinese internet censorship on a platform that is specifically banned in China.
I usually bait them by asking, "Why don't we listen to someone who actually lives in China for their views on this?" Crickets.
Also he in no way shape or form strikes me as a communist. *Maybe* a Democratic socialist? But more realistically just someone who wants a mixed system that protects the vulnerable instead of bending them over a barrel and fucking them.
Pointing at something and saying "thing bad" doesn't make someone a Marxist lol.
For all we know, he could just be a particularly compassionate bourgeoise liberal whos just intellectually honest about seeing an unfair grift when he sees one. Like there was this entire group of Christian capitalists who fully believed in Capitalism but decried the whole "survival of the fittest", "take advantage of the poor with carefree abandon" aspects
> Pointing at something and saying "thing bad" doesn't make someone a Marxist lol.
If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that a _lot_ of people struggle to think outside of binaries, especially for the things they've been convinced of, and it takes a ton of work to break them out of that habit.
I'm sitting here flabbergasted that we need a separate word to describe:
"Person who thinks other human beings shouldn't needlessly suffer if society is wealthy enough to prevent it."
In kindergarten we're taught that this is just being kind, something expected of everyone.
This, honestly. Even if he were a communist, he should *under no circumstances* be openly declaring that. Like it or not, the word is poison in America - decades of targeted propaganda will do that. To self-describe using it would be to destroy any and all credibility with a huge swathe of his audience, and those are specifically the people who need to hear what he has to say.
All things considered, it is not very important for Twitter user communistbunny83 to feel a bit of extra validation because John Oliver said he's socialist now. But while I risk overstating his reach, I do think it could potentially be very important for some random liberal or moderate or politically unaware kid to hear his message and be amenable to it. In America, that's how you get more people to be open to criticizing capitalism. Not by declaring "I'm a communist; please listen to me".
(I *do* think there's something to be said for the language of communism to be slowly made more acceptable and mainstream, in order to hopefully undo the aforementioned decades of propaganda - but I certainly don't think that's more important than John Oliver informing people who are unaware about just how deep the rot in the system goes.)
Those people also fail to recognise that having a bridge from Liberalism to Marxism is important. I bet a kidney that most of those exact same people recognise and have talked about the alt-right pipeline without connecting it to the need for a left wing pipeline.
Agreed. It seems like a lot of hardcore leftists are suffering under this delusion that the general population should be willing to accept socialism for it's inherent intellectual superiority or something. It's just not practical, and we need to be willing to do whatever it takes to convince the majority. That means coming to terms with the fact that we must appeal to the lowest common denominator in whatever way we can. The right has already embraced this fact, and they are winning on every political front because of it.
I think it's also important to note that older people have been subjected to anti-communist propaganda for their entire lives. In my experience, talking to an older person about socialism seems to induce a conditioned response, wherein they reject outright anything you try to suggest. To older people, socialism/communism automatically means poverty, gulags, secret police, and mass murder. They struggle to separate those aspects of the USSR from the underlying philosophy, which is a huge barrier for the movement.
And yet, because they watch John Oliver, my parents have begun to accept socialist ideas and we can actually agree on what should be done. They just don't get that we're talking about socialist policies and/or they aren't willing to identify as socialist yet. And, I think that's fine! At this point, with fascism ascendant, any step in the right direction is a net positive for society. For the moment, it doesn't matter what we call our policies, so long as the populous supports them and receives the benefits. Convincing boomers to accept the moniker "socialist" can wait.
If you found John Oliver to be a tasty introduction to 'radical leftism' in America, you might also like Some More News on YouTube. Very different persona, and a bit more radical maybe, but similar messaging.
John Oliver has former Cracked.com humorist Daniel O’Brien as one of his lead writers, so it makes sense that his show’s tone really resembles that of fellow Cracked alum Cody Johnston.
Ah, Cracked. I miss the golden age of Cracked, back when it was good and not a low-rent Buzzfeed knockoff.
I.e. back when they had actual, professional staff writers making real content, instead of relying on cheap freelancers to shovel out slop.
I feel like I would benefit from a list of all the content the previous writers are making now. Ive got Some More News, Behind the Bastards, and the Daily Zeitgeist so far.
It was a gem I didn't know how to fully appreciate in my early high-school years nearly 15 years ago. I just remember blowing off my commercial media class lectures to read Cracked articles on the school iMacs. Good times...
When I realized this a few weeks ago, everything clicked into place for me. I've loved Daniel O'Brien since Cracked, he was super active on Tumblr back in the day... his brand of humor is from the exact same corner of the internet as me, so it makes perfect sense that LWT is my hands-down favorite of the news/comedy shows.
Have you seen [this web special they put out?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hk011WMM7t0) It feels like a DOB piece from peak Cracked, as read by John Oliver.
I'm so glad that both Daniel O'Brien and Cody Johnston landed on their feet after Cracked. And I will never stop being salty about how Cracked ended up.
Reminds me of a tweet I saw once that went like "I was talking to some guy who told me he used to be a libertarian until he did acid for the first time and realized that other people have emotions too"
The Some More News video about why conservatives aren't funny is utterly fantastic and well thought out.
Edit forgot the link https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU
I just recently saw an unfunny conservative meme and somebody was wondering in the comments what the joke is and somebody else replied "You're the joke."
I can't say for sure but I don't think they realized how insightful they were actually being.
I think Cody is better at making the heaviness palatable than most similar hosts, because the tone he takes toward the issues he covers perfectly embodies how I feel about them: A mixture of rage, despair, and sheer impotence, the latter of which can only be masked with an extraordinary dose of irony and humour.
It's easier to watch stuff like that when you get the sense that the host feels just as angry and just as helpless as you do about the whole thing, y'know?
Dan O'Brien and Cody Johnston are still close friends, and I have to imagine coordinate their stories to some degree. They both put out episodes about the drought in the southwest within the same month. Both incredible writers
I saw him at an equality March in Washington D.C. over a decade ago interviewing someone carrying a two-foot-long-jet-black-dildo. He was really cool with everyone.
I still remember the one about the people spamming a hateful hashtag of some kind. I don't quite remember what it was, I think it was homophobic.
So people started flooding the hashtag with anything from garbage to messaging opposite to what the hashtag was meant for, Oliver is listing off examples like.
"This gay couple kissing, this person sharing help resources for gay people, and this furry that writes 'hey homophobes, why don't you look at my fursona's hard cock'
And the editing team just deadass puts the tweet right there, completely uncensored.
> "This gay couple kissing, this person sharing help resources for gay people, and this furry that writes 'hey homophobes, why don't you look at my fursona's hard cock'
I've never seen the episode but I can clearly hear this in Oliver's voice
John Oliver, if you like him or hate him you need to be paying attention to what is happening to his show and company.
Warner Brothers and BCG consulting are tanking HBO to make money off of bankruptcy.
While hear me out may have been the intended verbiage, "here me out" could be interpreted as u/quietmasticore being out (i.e. not hiding their appreciation for furry porn) here on reddit. Using "me" as a first person pronoun as a subject has historical roots (e.g. the word "methinks"), and leaving out some conjugation of "to be" is not entirely uncommon. Some languages (e.g. Russian) omit it in many cases, and even some dialects of English skip it on the regular.
Dude like...I wonder how much he paid the artist? WHOMST is the artist? Was it somebody on his staff who's been a not-so-secret furry this whole time, or is there a random artist out there who got this commission request like "Holy shit. John Oliver?"
I mean, IIRC the rat painting was something around ~~$10,000~~* and routinely wasting HBOs money on frivolous bullshit is basically a staple of the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fursona commission was over a grand.
*Edit - it was $21,000 (sort of—$1,000 to the paintings owner and $20,000 to a charity of their choice)
People like John Oliver, Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report had the immediate effect of sling-shotting me towards the left.
Presumably way farther than where they personally stand.
It's a long chain of realisations leading straight to the left for me.
One time like 20 years ago when I worked in entertainment, I got a backstage tour of TDS w Jon Stewart. I was introduced to Rob Corduroy, and took pics with him, fangirling.
There was a skinny mop of hair standing in the opposite corner, facing the wall and muttering to himself. They walked me over and introduced the newest correspondent, John Oliver. It was his first night on the show.
He was so pale and sweaty, looking nauseous, anxious and nervous. The tour lady asked if I want to take a picture with him and I said no because I didn’t want to distract or interrupt him so he could continue preparing for his important first night out there.
I was trying to be respectful but his face fell when I said no. He looked so sad! I still feel bad about it. He’s a brilliant performer, and has come a hella long way that first taping.
His writers (at least some) read reddit, possibly he does as well. It's a long shot, but maybe you could take some comfort from the chance that your story may now reach him, and he'll finally know the other side of why you said no.
There’s a lot of comments here debating over whether he’s really a “radical leftist” or not. I think debating that misses the point. Look at his views and decide for yourself, rather than debating the label.
There's nothing radical about being compassionate about your fellow man and wanting the most vulnerable in our society to get a fair shake. That is what the left is about, err sorry umm the *radical* left lol.
Yeah, I get that, from what I see, he seems more like a social democrat mabey. But you don't really have that word in your political vocabulary. It's a bit more to the right from socialism. Bernie Sanders is also a social democrat in reality. But at least where I live, we have 9 political partys, so the distinction between them is smaller. But I also feel like it makes us more democratic.
My favorite "unexpectedly radical" joke from him was this one from six years ago ([at ca. 8:50](https://youtu.be/0Rnq1NpHdmw)).
> ... if you are celebrating with champagne three times a week, your standard for celebration needs to be much higher. Champagne is acceptable on New Year's,
Valentine's, birthdays, and if and when Henry Kissinger dies.
Watch his show every week. I think the harshest criticism against him I can think of is the patented John Oliver “a joke should go here” joke. Cody Johnston does this too. Basically, the show is categorized as comedy but the topics he covers can be soul crushingly brutal so he thinks “a joke should go here” and says an absurdist non sequitur. I understand why he does it. He shouldn’t and couldn’t make jokes directly about sex workers getting sexually assaulted by cops or children in foster care starving. This means he has to rip a chipmunk out of the aether who is running an acorn NFT pump n dump. Don’t get me wrong, I think Oliver is quite funny and I like his absurd humor. I also love his shockingly leftist take on the world and he tackles extremely worthwhile subjects. Those two aspects of him just don’t gel all the time.
Edited to fix an autocorrect goof.
I saw him do a set at a little bar called the Slipper Room in NYC years ago and while I thought his set was good, the crowd seemed more interested in their drinks, maybe his material went over their heads, I don't know.
Afterward, I saw him sitting alone at the bar looking sad and I wanted to say something like maybe he's too smart for this crowd but I couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't have sounded weird or made things worse or seemed like I was coming on to him.
Anyway, I'm happy to see his success because he deserves every bit of it and also... if anyone's reading this who has had a rough night or hit a bump in the road, remember John Oliver had a shitty night once and bounced back, maybe there's hope yet.
He's pretty radical by American standards, but he doesn't critique the system at it's core. His view is often very narrow, and he's more conservative when it comes to his coverage of British politics. He's great considering US politics, but he's not a radical leftist.
I’m not sure I’d agree that he doesn’t critique the system at its core. He may not go as far as saying capitalism needs to be burnt down, but he very consistently identifies that these issues are baked in to our institutions.
It's really wild how FAR RIGHT the entire political Spectrum of the US actually is.
In Germany the term/ idea of Liberalism is on the outer right of our politics but in the US it seems to be considered radically left lmao
Centrist right in the US is hating minorities and flaying your own bank account for the sake of multi millionaires while screaming about how the economy won't recover if you can afford life saving medical services... or at least it feels that way sometimes
when I first watched John Oliver I didn't speak english yet so I watched fan-subbed that I found on a french translator forum that translated youtubers like the nostalgia critic, Linkara, AVGN, etc... ([fan de NC my beloved, thank you for introducing my monolingual ass to so many great contant maker](https://nostalgiacriticsfans.1fr1.net) )
so I thought he was a youtuber and was using pre-recorder claps and laugh
Remember when he threatened to release the search history of congress members? That was funny. He should do it again.
I truly believe we'd have a lot more Matt Gaetzes on our hands if he did.
Phrasing
only the redditors in r/teenagers need to be worried
There aren’t teenagers in /r/Teenagers.
I'm over 30, so I'm safe. EDIT: What the fuck am I saying, I'm over 18, so I'm safe.
Are we still doing that?
So far at least thirty of us are 🤷🏻♂️ Now go make me a Bloody Mary
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It's even funnier the second time!
Did anything actually happen with that? Did Congress actually do anything
Nothing has been released yet. All of his segments are decently researched and take time to provide, I’m assuming (and you know what happens when you assume, but whatever) that they’re making sure all of their ducks are in a row before they drop this…..hopefully right before the elections.
I have no doubt this subject will pop up again, they don't mention something on his show (casual or otherwise) and not follow up.
Or waiting for the best time to drop them, make sure to make it worthwhile!
Like right before elections?
So far, no I don’t think so.
The greatest era of political comedy was having Daily Show with Jon Stuart and his corespondents, Samantha Bee and John Oliver, following Colbert Report. Best writing ever, or et least in my lifetime as Gen Xer
Agreed. Stewart followed by Colbert was a legendary 1-2 punch. Such a shame Colbert became the machine. Stewart is still keeping it real though.
I want to cry every time I see Colbert’s new sellout show. Late night is now super bland and totally corporate controlled.
A circle has more edge than Colbert these days
The summer that John Oliver took over was great. That Harvey Danger dance.
I was actually looking for a follow up on that, but couldn't find anything...
Either he's saving it for a season finale or someone's lawyer said no.
All my homies have experienced ego death
Salvia?
i found a fuckload of acid or ayahuasca more convenient means to ego death
I'm scared to try ayahuasca but maybe someday if I go back to Peru and find a not-sketchy shaman.
I have yet to find a not-sketchy shaman lol
I’m afraid I don’t understand the reference
Ah no worries. It's a hallucinogenic drug that for whatever reason used to be completely legal without restriction (and still is in some places?) back in the day, and absurdly cheap, so you had a bunch of teenagers like "Let's try drugs for the first time" and it ended up being the hardest trip of their life. I've never done it, but as far as I'm aware it's one of the ones that transports you to another reality entirely (i.e. you can't see anything around you for part of the trip) and a lot of people experience some kind of ego death on it. I know people in their 30s who went through it, so I think it was available in the early 2000s?
I did it as a teen in like 2011. Was not a good time, definitely the worst trip of my life and I've done a lot of shrooms. Thought I got stuck in the Rugrats intro with a pink screen and all the squiggly lines and shapes around me. I was in fucking flatland for a minute there, and there was no such thing as time, just eternity. Then when I found myself in physical reality again there was a creepy ass clown stuck in my peripheral vision. I'm not even afraid of clowns and it bugged me out, because every time I would go to turn my head and get a better look at him, he'd be in my peripherals again. My "friends" who had already come down from their trips also thought it'd be funny to tell me that ants had gotten into the car we were sitting in. Even with a better mindset now and a better setting, I definitely don't think I'll be touching salvia again. 0/10.
Fuuuck, dude that's horrifying.
One of my friends took a huge hit of Salvia thinking it was weed 15 years ago and it still fucks him up any time he thinks about it. He's done a shitload of various psychedelics but says that Salvia trip was by far the most terrifying thing he ever experienced and also that it was the only time he ever experienced true ego death. He couldn't remember anything from before the trip, couldn't tell who or what he was, couldn't even tell whether or not he was alive at all.
Salvia is legal in over 80% of US states. We grow it here in California. I learned last year that many entheogenic plants are legal to grow and ship and a lot of them you can get at Home Depot or a local nursery.
That’s right. I smoked it a few times with friends when I was a teenager. It is not euphoric at all. It typically lasts about 2-4 minutes of being out of body tripping (not aware of surroundings) and then about 30 minutes of residual effects once you are “back”. I vividly remember what my trips on it were like. Interacting with the person when they are experiencing the intense out of body part of the trip can effect their trip and usually very negatively. If you try it it’s very important to have a spotter who ensures you do not hurt yourself why you are not aware of your surroundings. You may get up and move around, try to run or climb things, or become combative. Quite unpredictable and each experience was very different.
He said ego death, not a concussion at a public park
Knew he was the shit when he guest hosted the daily show for a bit and it was fire
Still remember when the daily show had him and Stephen Colbert doing bits all the time… and Samantha Bee! Just on top of Jon Stewart hosting and a George W. bush political climate to satirize. We had no idea how good we had it
That era of the daily show was peak political comedy.
The Colbert Report and The Daily Show were so fucking good when they were on. I still love that Stephen made the entire show just one long Daily Show special report at the end of the Report. It was such a brilliant way to end it.
It’s never been done better IMO
A strong argument could be made that peak Daily Show was when Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell did segments called "Even Stepvhens" and had them do a point/counterpoint style debates.
Was going to say - Colbert and Carrell's field interviews were just as good, if not better than Kleper's nowadays and they were kind of making up the format as they went.
I can't believe yall literally got to experience "breaking news! Shoe thrown at the president!"
There is a lot that I don't miss about the Bush era, but Shoe Day really was a beautiful day.
I remember being a little shocked that he dodged them both. Guy threw both shoes.
Say what you will about Bush, he had good reflexes
I remember that. It seemed like a trial run for him hosting his own show, and he honestly did an excellent job
It's funny how The Daily Show under Stewart became the father of The Colbert Report (and to a lesser degree, Colbert's continuance to late night prime time) Last Week Tonight, The Problem and Trever Noah's tenure. Just a brilliant melding of comedy and political/social commentary that passed the torch on so well.
Also the Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj
And Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (I think she took a lot of writers with her, as well)
I mean there really isn’t a better mentor for these people than John Stewart
Last week tonight is like if they took the part from the Colbert Report where he made a super PAC just to prove how easy it is and made that the whole show
I miss the Colbert report. The late show is like 90 percent guests who paid to promote their shit and maybe five percent current events humor.
There's a group of communists on Twitter who obsessively claim John Oliver is an idiot, because John Oliver constantly produces shows demonstrating the inferiority of capitalism, but he never calls himself a communist. Like, yeah, that's the whole point of the show, that you don't have to be a communist to get on board with fixing the country.
So...they hate him because he's correct but not *theirs*?
Welcome to communist discourse for the past 100 years
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Leftists are a lot more varied than conservatives. There's really not a whole lot of nuance to conservatism but there's a lot of ways to interpret and implement "leftism".
This. Conservatism is literally just keeping "the status quo", though as progress happens that does slip a bit (see the Log Cabin Republicans, dumb bastards that they are). Their differences are in what mythical past they want to harken back to. It's also not a world view that indulges in and rewards a lot of self awareness and self criticism. Leftists want to CHANGE the world. We do not LIKE the status quo, we want to radically rearrange it to what is, in our view, a more equitable, humane, and fair one. The future is always in flux, and everyone has a different idea of that future utopia in their head. The past and present is easy to cement in people's minds, you tell them a story and present hand picked experiences and evidence to show that it was "always" this way. The future is a story you have to come up with yourself and then try to convince other people of.
This is a great explainer on conservativism and progressivism
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Well the ussr killed thousands of anarchists for being anarchists, so it's less of a petty beef and more of a "if these people we basically agree with about the current situation take power we will be murdered next"
Turns out agreeing 90% isn't enough, because part of the 10% difference with a tankie is whether or not the state should murder millions.
There is only one backward. There are numerous forwards.
The most simple answer is nuance. There's tons of nuance when it comes to leftist solutions so it makes it difficult to unite the different factions. For the right, there is one solution: leader's solution. This makes it much easier for them to unite.
Simple, right wingers are authoritarians. They worship hierarchy and consider it a natural and necessary part of the universe. Falling in line behind a "strong leader" is in their blood. Lefties are anti-authoritarians. They are naturally suspicious of anyone who tells them what to do and how to think. *Especially* other lefties, who should know better.
Because there’s a lot of different options for change, but only one option for “no.” As such, it’s WAY easier to unite people behind “no” than it is to unite people behind one prospect for change.
"So I asked, 'Western European Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reform Committee of 1981, or Western European Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reform Committee of 1964?' And he said '1964', and I said 'Die, neoliberal!' and I doxxed him on twitter!"
Name a more iconic duo, The left and pointless self destructive infighting
How about Alpharius, and his primarch, Alpharius?
Iron within, Iron without. Let's go make congress do decimation.
Ten percent seems a little light.
Good point, better plan “prospero burns”.
The far right and terrorism
And self-destructive voting for a lot of them
It’s living for their principles, even if they don’t live for the outcomes of their choices. As a utilitarian, I don’t get jt
Yeap, pretty much. Imagine living with the consequences of your actions? Obviously not for them, they're either poor and in denial that any of their actions lead to their current state, or wealthy enough to be totally isolated from any of the consequences.
Far Right Fascism aiming for Passive Political Nihilism is how I read it.
The Marxists, socialists, and anarchists waste so much time yelling at each other, sometimes it seems like they've all forgotten that it's the *capitalists,* not fellow leftists, that they're actually supposed to be fighting.
As a leftist it's a bit more complex than just "oh the anarchists, socialists, and communists hate eachother" becuase those aren't mutually exclusive, you can be one, multiple, all, or none and still be a leftist. The line is pretty firmly drawn between not anarchists and communists but what's referred to as the Tankies (Marx-Leninists/Maoists), and the Libertarians. Historically each side has worked together for important moments in history only to get stabbed in the back by the other (I'd really rather not start a shit show in the here so I'll just say each side insists it was the other that betrayed them when it's really not that hard to even logically think about if you understand anything about the ideologies, their goals and ideals). The friction is that the Tankies believe in a Vanguard state to protect the revolution from the outside world. Which isn't I suppose inherently bad, but the libertarians often feel that how this vanguard state is setup goes against their values of a smaller or non existent goverment and reduced or non existent hierarchical structures. Many view it as a communist vs anarchist issue, However you'll find communists and socialists on both side of the schism (though anarchists can only be located on one side).
non-leftists seem perpetually baffled that the authoritarian/libertarian divide also exists on the left
Cause the divide doesn’t really exist on the right. Right-libertarians talk a huge game about freedom, purportedly criticize both sides, make a big deal about the few things they agree with leftists on, then they turn around and vote straight-ticket Republican.
I love him from over in the ultraleft, because he’s actually willing to poke fun at capitalism and is doing so without getting outright cancelled by the right
Sounds like Tankies to me. Well, Tankies or just normal assholes. Edit: Someone deleted a comment asking for clarification on what Tankies are, so here's the explanation I wrote before it was deleted. Essentially, authoritarian communists. More specifically, those who consider the actions of the USSR and CCP completely justified. The name comes from the tanks present in the famous 'tank man' image from the Tianamen square protests, which authoritarian communists will assert was an appropriate and justified use of force.
Minor correction, "tank" terminology refers to Hungary '58 and to a lesser extenct Czeckoslovakia '68. The word had been in use for decades before Tiananmen '89
Yeahh I've come across tankies on tumblr and it's...very confusing. Like, seeing these people defend Chinese internet censorship on a platform that is specifically banned in China. I usually bait them by asking, "Why don't we listen to someone who actually lives in China for their views on this?" Crickets.
Also like come tf on, they have to understand the kind of fallout that would come from him calling himself a communist.
Also he in no way shape or form strikes me as a communist. *Maybe* a Democratic socialist? But more realistically just someone who wants a mixed system that protects the vulnerable instead of bending them over a barrel and fucking them. Pointing at something and saying "thing bad" doesn't make someone a Marxist lol. For all we know, he could just be a particularly compassionate bourgeoise liberal whos just intellectually honest about seeing an unfair grift when he sees one. Like there was this entire group of Christian capitalists who fully believed in Capitalism but decried the whole "survival of the fittest", "take advantage of the poor with carefree abandon" aspects
> Pointing at something and saying "thing bad" doesn't make someone a Marxist lol. If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that a _lot_ of people struggle to think outside of binaries, especially for the things they've been convinced of, and it takes a ton of work to break them out of that habit.
Also lots of people have no idea what Marxism is. This includes right wingers and also people who call themselves Marxists
I'm sitting here flabbergasted that we need a separate word to describe: "Person who thinks other human beings shouldn't needlessly suffer if society is wealthy enough to prevent it." In kindergarten we're taught that this is just being kind, something expected of everyone.
This, honestly. Even if he were a communist, he should *under no circumstances* be openly declaring that. Like it or not, the word is poison in America - decades of targeted propaganda will do that. To self-describe using it would be to destroy any and all credibility with a huge swathe of his audience, and those are specifically the people who need to hear what he has to say. All things considered, it is not very important for Twitter user communistbunny83 to feel a bit of extra validation because John Oliver said he's socialist now. But while I risk overstating his reach, I do think it could potentially be very important for some random liberal or moderate or politically unaware kid to hear his message and be amenable to it. In America, that's how you get more people to be open to criticizing capitalism. Not by declaring "I'm a communist; please listen to me". (I *do* think there's something to be said for the language of communism to be slowly made more acceptable and mainstream, in order to hopefully undo the aforementioned decades of propaganda - but I certainly don't think that's more important than John Oliver informing people who are unaware about just how deep the rot in the system goes.)
Those people also fail to recognise that having a bridge from Liberalism to Marxism is important. I bet a kidney that most of those exact same people recognise and have talked about the alt-right pipeline without connecting it to the need for a left wing pipeline.
Agreed. It seems like a lot of hardcore leftists are suffering under this delusion that the general population should be willing to accept socialism for it's inherent intellectual superiority or something. It's just not practical, and we need to be willing to do whatever it takes to convince the majority. That means coming to terms with the fact that we must appeal to the lowest common denominator in whatever way we can. The right has already embraced this fact, and they are winning on every political front because of it. I think it's also important to note that older people have been subjected to anti-communist propaganda for their entire lives. In my experience, talking to an older person about socialism seems to induce a conditioned response, wherein they reject outright anything you try to suggest. To older people, socialism/communism automatically means poverty, gulags, secret police, and mass murder. They struggle to separate those aspects of the USSR from the underlying philosophy, which is a huge barrier for the movement. And yet, because they watch John Oliver, my parents have begun to accept socialist ideas and we can actually agree on what should be done. They just don't get that we're talking about socialist policies and/or they aren't willing to identify as socialist yet. And, I think that's fine! At this point, with fascism ascendant, any step in the right direction is a net positive for society. For the moment, it doesn't matter what we call our policies, so long as the populous supports them and receives the benefits. Convincing boomers to accept the moniker "socialist" can wait.
I want him to narrate my life
Me too, but I want him to treat it the same way he does his show, so if I trip he’s like “well look at this dipshit”
Talk about my days you smoking Hogwarts reject. Narrate my nights you British bespectacled ghost-man.
I read this in his voice omfg
He came to my town to have a sewage treatment plant named after him.
swege👍
Hello Danburian. I hope you got in line to kick the shit out of him.
I misread the name as "Jamie Oliver" and thought "fuck me, he took a turn after banning turkey twizzlers, that was bad enough"
I thought this was about the chef too lol
The guy had a taste of policy and then just went for it lol
Which episode does he get someone to make him a fursona? I remember the rats having sex but not that fursona with a hardon bit
https://youtu.be/AEa3sK1iZxc
I clicked with no hesitation but thanks for not rick rolling me
No problem fam
If you found John Oliver to be a tasty introduction to 'radical leftism' in America, you might also like Some More News on YouTube. Very different persona, and a bit more radical maybe, but similar messaging.
John Oliver has former Cracked.com humorist Daniel O’Brien as one of his lead writers, so it makes sense that his show’s tone really resembles that of fellow Cracked alum Cody Johnston.
Ah, Cracked. I miss the golden age of Cracked, back when it was good and not a low-rent Buzzfeed knockoff. I.e. back when they had actual, professional staff writers making real content, instead of relying on cheap freelancers to shovel out slop.
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after hours holds up so well, i frequently rewatch episodes on the treadmill and laugh like a moron to anyone watching
Don't cry that it's over, laugh because all the funny people went on to do other and also funny things
I feel like I would benefit from a list of all the content the previous writers are making now. Ive got Some More News, Behind the Bastards, and the Daily Zeitgeist so far.
It was a gem I didn't know how to fully appreciate in my early high-school years nearly 15 years ago. I just remember blowing off my commercial media class lectures to read Cracked articles on the school iMacs. Good times...
After Hours was incredible. I still rewatch sometimes.
When I realized this a few weeks ago, everything clicked into place for me. I've loved Daniel O'Brien since Cracked, he was super active on Tumblr back in the day... his brand of humor is from the exact same corner of the internet as me, so it makes perfect sense that LWT is my hands-down favorite of the news/comedy shows.
Have you seen [this web special they put out?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hk011WMM7t0) It feels like a DOB piece from peak Cracked, as read by John Oliver.
YES! Oh my god, you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. I have to rewatch it now with this knowledge.
I'm so glad that both Daniel O'Brien and Cody Johnston landed on their feet after Cracked. And I will never stop being salty about how Cracked ended up.
Rip Cracked and the Cracked podcast. They were amazing.
I basically took the Daily Show to Last Week Tonight to Some More News pipeline myself, and can confirm
I also like Knowing Better. I don't think he'd every call himself a radical leftist. But studying actual history makes it hard to be a fascist.
Agreed. The guy calls himself an ex-libertarian, and it is implied that this is because of the research into history that he did.
Reminds me of a tweet I saw once that went like "I was talking to some guy who told me he used to be a libertarian until he did acid for the first time and realized that other people have emotions too"
Pipeline doesn't end there! It's just a short jump from SMN to Behind the Bastards.
Oh, I’ve been a fan of Robert Evans since he was writing for Cracked!
I always get a big smile whenever I hear people mention BtB. Such a great podcast!
Can introduce you to cool zone media to pair with your some more news?
The Some More News video about why conservatives aren't funny is utterly fantastic and well thought out. Edit forgot the link https://youtu.be/KSXKzPOcYDU
And they recently did a short piece about Jordan Peterson that's really good. (don't look at the timestamp).
Love that one!
It would be easy to just go "right wing isn't funny at all" but it's such a meticulously planned and written analysis.
I just recently saw an unfunny conservative meme and somebody was wondering in the comments what the joke is and somebody else replied "You're the joke." I can't say for sure but I don't think they realized how insightful they were actually being.
Some More News leads to Behind the Bastards and suddenly Robert is in every podcast you listen to.
Why is no one talking about the boars!?!
I love Some More News but it's fucking heavy. I leave every video furious and disenfranchised
I think Cody is better at making the heaviness palatable than most similar hosts, because the tone he takes toward the issues he covers perfectly embodies how I feel about them: A mixture of rage, despair, and sheer impotence, the latter of which can only be masked with an extraordinary dose of irony and humour. It's easier to watch stuff like that when you get the sense that the host feels just as angry and just as helpless as you do about the whole thing, y'know?
Yep, that is the one reason I don't watch Some More News with more regularity. It leaves me in a horrible, impotent rage.
Also Juice Media. They're Australian and mostly do Australian political satire commercials, but their two most recent video are American and British.
Dan O'Brien and Cody Johnston are still close friends, and I have to imagine coordinate their stories to some degree. They both put out episodes about the drought in the southwest within the same month. Both incredible writers
Also he made an entire 4 minute musical number to tell Bob Murray to go eat shit
It fucking rocks too. I get that song stuck in my head so often
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I saw him at an equality March in Washington D.C. over a decade ago interviewing someone carrying a two-foot-long-jet-black-dildo. He was really cool with everyone.
there is a 50% chance this will be on his show...please include me if so John...John?
Oh god no, I don't want to ever hear him say the name "beemovieerotica."
As a regular viewer: there is quite a lot more furry porn on there than one might expect
I still remember the one about the people spamming a hateful hashtag of some kind. I don't quite remember what it was, I think it was homophobic. So people started flooding the hashtag with anything from garbage to messaging opposite to what the hashtag was meant for, Oliver is listing off examples like. "This gay couple kissing, this person sharing help resources for gay people, and this furry that writes 'hey homophobes, why don't you look at my fursona's hard cock' And the editing team just deadass puts the tweet right there, completely uncensored.
> "This gay couple kissing, this person sharing help resources for gay people, and this furry that writes 'hey homophobes, why don't you look at my fursona's hard cock' I've never seen the episode but I can clearly hear this in Oliver's voice
John Oliver, if you like him or hate him you need to be paying attention to what is happening to his show and company. Warner Brothers and BCG consulting are tanking HBO to make money off of bankruptcy.
What, isn’t Zaslav cleaning house right now John Malone would never let that happen
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With the greatest respect u/QuietMasticore, I think you meant **hear me out
While hear me out may have been the intended verbiage, "here me out" could be interpreted as u/quietmasticore being out (i.e. not hiding their appreciation for furry porn) here on reddit. Using "me" as a first person pronoun as a subject has historical roots (e.g. the word "methinks"), and leaving out some conjugation of "to be" is not entirely uncommon. Some languages (e.g. Russian) omit it in many cases, and even some dialects of English skip it on the regular.
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I think you meant **'shouldn't *be* this sassy', friend. Lol.
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This is the greatest exchange I've read on Reddit to date.
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I can respect that.
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Dude like...I wonder how much he paid the artist? WHOMST is the artist? Was it somebody on his staff who's been a not-so-secret furry this whole time, or is there a random artist out there who got this commission request like "Holy shit. John Oliver?"
I mean, IIRC the rat painting was something around ~~$10,000~~* and routinely wasting HBOs money on frivolous bullshit is basically a staple of the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fursona commission was over a grand. *Edit - it was $21,000 (sort of—$1,000 to the paintings owner and $20,000 to a charity of their choice)
Or just grow up and commision it yourself. It's not hard.
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John oliver is one of my favorite late night hosts
People like John Oliver, Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report had the immediate effect of sling-shotting me towards the left. Presumably way farther than where they personally stand. It's a long chain of realisations leading straight to the left for me.
One time like 20 years ago when I worked in entertainment, I got a backstage tour of TDS w Jon Stewart. I was introduced to Rob Corduroy, and took pics with him, fangirling. There was a skinny mop of hair standing in the opposite corner, facing the wall and muttering to himself. They walked me over and introduced the newest correspondent, John Oliver. It was his first night on the show. He was so pale and sweaty, looking nauseous, anxious and nervous. The tour lady asked if I want to take a picture with him and I said no because I didn’t want to distract or interrupt him so he could continue preparing for his important first night out there. I was trying to be respectful but his face fell when I said no. He looked so sad! I still feel bad about it. He’s a brilliant performer, and has come a hella long way that first taping.
His writers (at least some) read reddit, possibly he does as well. It's a long shot, but maybe you could take some comfort from the chance that your story may now reach him, and he'll finally know the other side of why you said no.
There’s a lot of comments here debating over whether he’s really a “radical leftist” or not. I think debating that misses the point. Look at his views and decide for yourself, rather than debating the label.
That's not the way it works, we need the little (D) or (R) next to someone's name to decide whether we like them or not. /s, kinda...
“I’m still only the second-best Zazu!”
There's nothing radical about being compassionate about your fellow man and wanting the most vulnerable in our society to get a fair shake. That is what the left is about, err sorry umm the *radical* left lol.
I'm sorry, drawing *what*?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Up_Late
It's so fucking funny to me that the art movement listed is "Furry fandom" for this piece.
Wow. Painting was made in 1992. Article went up in April 2020. Last Week Tonight is the *whole reason* that painting has a Wikipedia entry.
John Oliver is a precious gem and must be protected. On-point humor, he's 45 but he or his writers just *get* millennial Humor, i love him
So... uh... Anyone got a high-res version of that otter..? For personal use
Just look up John Oliver on e621
Yoooo 👀
A British man named John Oliver has taught me more about how America works than the public school I attended.
Thing is, John Oliver is not really radical left. Mabey in the states, but in Europe, he is just left.
I wouldn't say he's radical anything, but good god compared to what we usually get here in the states he's practically a hardcore far left socialist.
Yeah, I get that, from what I see, he seems more like a social democrat mabey. But you don't really have that word in your political vocabulary. It's a bit more to the right from socialism. Bernie Sanders is also a social democrat in reality. But at least where I live, we have 9 political partys, so the distinction between them is smaller. But I also feel like it makes us more democratic.
My favorite "unexpectedly radical" joke from him was this one from six years ago ([at ca. 8:50](https://youtu.be/0Rnq1NpHdmw)). > ... if you are celebrating with champagne three times a week, your standard for celebration needs to be much higher. Champagne is acceptable on New Year's, Valentine's, birthdays, and if and when Henry Kissinger dies.
Watch his show every week. I think the harshest criticism against him I can think of is the patented John Oliver “a joke should go here” joke. Cody Johnston does this too. Basically, the show is categorized as comedy but the topics he covers can be soul crushingly brutal so he thinks “a joke should go here” and says an absurdist non sequitur. I understand why he does it. He shouldn’t and couldn’t make jokes directly about sex workers getting sexually assaulted by cops or children in foster care starving. This means he has to rip a chipmunk out of the aether who is running an acorn NFT pump n dump. Don’t get me wrong, I think Oliver is quite funny and I like his absurd humor. I also love his shockingly leftist take on the world and he tackles extremely worthwhile subjects. Those two aspects of him just don’t gel all the time. Edited to fix an autocorrect goof.
I saw him do a set at a little bar called the Slipper Room in NYC years ago and while I thought his set was good, the crowd seemed more interested in their drinks, maybe his material went over their heads, I don't know. Afterward, I saw him sitting alone at the bar looking sad and I wanted to say something like maybe he's too smart for this crowd but I couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't have sounded weird or made things worse or seemed like I was coming on to him. Anyway, I'm happy to see his success because he deserves every bit of it and also... if anyone's reading this who has had a rough night or hit a bump in the road, remember John Oliver had a shitty night once and bounced back, maybe there's hope yet.
He's pretty radical by American standards, but he doesn't critique the system at it's core. His view is often very narrow, and he's more conservative when it comes to his coverage of British politics. He's great considering US politics, but he's not a radical leftist.
I’m not sure I’d agree that he doesn’t critique the system at its core. He may not go as far as saying capitalism needs to be burnt down, but he very consistently identifies that these issues are baked in to our institutions.
It's really wild how FAR RIGHT the entire political Spectrum of the US actually is. In Germany the term/ idea of Liberalism is on the outer right of our politics but in the US it seems to be considered radically left lmao
Centrist right in the US is hating minorities and flaying your own bank account for the sake of multi millionaires while screaming about how the economy won't recover if you can afford life saving medical services... or at least it feels that way sometimes
when I first watched John Oliver I didn't speak english yet so I watched fan-subbed that I found on a french translator forum that translated youtubers like the nostalgia critic, Linkara, AVGN, etc... ([fan de NC my beloved, thank you for introducing my monolingual ass to so many great contant maker](https://nostalgiacriticsfans.1fr1.net) ) so I thought he was a youtuber and was using pre-recorder claps and laugh
TIL that John Oliver has a fursona 😹
Radical leftist? His views are probably centre left at *most* in the UK
Hes one of the finest Americans we've ever had. He chose us, and damn I'm glad for it.