John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

Is it me or does the music in the Obamacare vid sound a hell of a lot like the Peace Walker theme?

And of course like any video that deals tangentially with gender the comments for the transgender video are naturally filled with blatant bigotry and accusations of Oliver being an SJW even though he's ridiculously level-headed when you compare him to the more vocal parts of Tumblr.

edited 1st Jul '15 12:51:17 PM by AlleyOop

You should see last week's video about harassment. It drew out all of the assholes.

Like, all of them. It was like John was the Pied Piper of Trolls.

edited 1st Jul '15 3:01:15 PM by math792d

Because Youtube comments are always such a pool of quality and reason

I mean, he used Anita Sarkeesian as an example. She's a good candidate for "name most likely to start a Flame War by mere mention".

Yes, because Internet users are like soldiers with PTSD, rape victims, or religious fundamentalists — they are psychologically incapable of exercising restraint or good judgment when confronted with something that triggers them. It's obviously the fault of whoever brought up the topic.

edited 1st Jul '15 4:07:09 PM by Fighteer

Not quite sure who you're replying to, but no. The ones to blame for an argument are the ones arguing. That doesn't make bringing Flame Bait up any less of a bad idea, though.

My point was that savvy viewers knew there would be fighting the minute he mentioned her, and I think he did, too.

Online Harassment: I am not surprised either, she is a controversial figure.

On the topic of transgender identity and rights: To be honest, I don't understand much of the debate but using the threat of future judgement set off my bad faith alarms, even if as a joke.

Future judgment?

And Fighteer its more of an "Build It and They Will Come" Situation, just instead of Baseball it refers to the douchebag portion of the internet

edited 1st Jul '15 10:39:39 PM by 3of4

The "wrong side of history" argument.

Ah. He has a point tough. In general the trend has been going to grant civil rights rather than deny it long term.

@Vandro: what is the thing you don't understand? Maybe it can be explained.

edited 1st Jul '15 11:12:58 PM by 3of4

It's pretty funny how GamerGaters overreacted and attacked John for supposedly attacking them, even though he didn't say anything about GamerGate, thereby proving John's point during that segment.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that after a certain point, the more someone complains about people being too easily offended, the more easily offended they themselves are.

A big part of why I post on the TV Tropes forums nowadays is because I stopped posting on a video game fansite where a lot of the people there had a tendency to, while they would never word it like this personally, get extremely offended and start rambling about a popular blogging platform whenever the game developer did something that kind of resembled feminism. Even if the thing in question wasn't even being asked for in the name of feminism and had no tangible impact on anyone who actually didn't care ^note People repeatedly yelling "who cares?!" about these sorts of things without any sense of irony was also an issue I had.

edited 2nd Jul '15 8:16:47 PM by Falrinn

And for fuck's sake, most of the video was about revenge porn. Talk about trying to steer to conversation to what the original person wasn't even talking about.

The show's off this week but here's a little something to tide us over I think he dropped a hint at what next weeks main story might be....the TPPA

EDIT:nvm that was last years independence day vid that i had here.....(the one posted is the only one...

edited 5th Jul '15 8:50:15 PM by TwilightFalchion

Actually, it was uploaded this year.

I should have been clearer.....i meant the one posted right now is the only video uploaded this time

The edit at first had a link to last years one...cus my brain farted me back to 2014

A link since embed aren't functioning

This week's main story....:Stadiums...or How we learned to love that Aquarium behind Home base....

I feel like we've been told this story before, if not by John Oliver than by other people, and nobody's listening. We love our sports teams so much that we'll abandon all pretense of wanting our governments to "spend responsibly". The Marlins will leave town if we don't pay for their blowjobs? Fuck it, borrow and spend, baby!

edited 13th Jul '15 5:15:44 AM by Fighteer

That's true about absolutely any pet project, though.

Everyone wants the government to "spend responsibly"... except when it comes to whatever issue they care about the most, which obviously should have effectively unlimited funding. And to someone, every single issue is the biggest one so there will always be a person looking for more money for every single possible spending subject.

Stadiums and sports teams do get real bend over backward treatment by governments though. And it seems like every time one is built, the issue of cost and how they really don't do much (if anything) for the economy is brought up and then just kinda shrugged off and pushed aside.

I mean, as far as fucked up priorities go, it's hard for me to imagine worse than saying "Sure Mr. Billionaire, we'll gladly fork over hundreds of millions of dollars to build a venue for your business, despite the fact that it'll be too expensive to go to more than once or twice a year and the proceeds will go to your pockets, but screw those teachers who have to buy basic school supplies or beg parents to do so is ok. They want my tax money to go to them? Who do they think they are?"

But here in the States, as a whole we seem to think that's the right arrangement. And goddamn does it puzzle me.

edited 13th Jul '15 8:16:16 AM by TheWanderer

Two things I'd already decided upon years ago:

• If I ever become a billionaire, I will buy the naming rights to a venue and give it a name that's actually a venue name.

• If I become mayor of a town that has a team that threatens to leave if the town doesn't build a bigger temple, my response will be "need me to help move anything?"

So John Oliver did a piece on my former high school. Good job, John.

edited 13th Jul '15 6:05:33 PM by higherbrainpattern

Guess who's got a Emmy Nomination.

That's a tough crowd to compete in. I hope he wins it, but he'll also have quite a few more seasons to take a shot at it, hopefully.

True, but that he's in that crowd in itself is already a compliment.

I expect an epic Twitter 'War' between Colbert, Stewart and Oliver

edited 16th Jul '15 1:09:32 PM by 3of4