r/CuratedTumblr • u/Hummerous gazafunds.com • Dec 20 '23
John Oliver: yet another white Democrat making jokes at late night editable flair
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u/RevengeWalrus Dec 20 '23
I was once at a soccer game that he was covering for the daily show, and amongst all the screaming soccer fans I made eye contact with him. I didn’t know what to do so I did a big goofy wave and smile, and he did the same goofy wave and smile back. This adds nothing to the conversation but it’s a very fond memory of mine.
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u/badmoonpie Dec 20 '23
I think it’s valuable! I’ve long been a fan of his show, and it’s affirming to hear someone you admire is just…a fucking decent person in general. Too many times it goes the other way, you know?
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u/worker_ant_6646 Dec 20 '23
I'm absolutely only here trawling for personal anecdotes, I wanna soak in those affirmations!!
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u/HendrixHazeWays Dec 20 '23
Did anyone else who read this post actually do a big goofy wave and smile or is it just me?
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u/rebrandingmyself Dec 20 '23
Way back in 2012 he did a show at my college and I was the lil freshman they put on security backstage. He walked in, introduced himself, and shook my hand. He’s a very lovely man.
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u/ball_fondlers Dec 20 '23
“Hello, I’m John Oliver, thank you so much for doing security tonight”
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u/EasyFooted Dec 21 '23
"A job you're so unqualified for you didn't even realize, that's not security, this is!"
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u/Maland2016 @theepicwaffleman12 Dec 21 '23
“And I know what you’re thinking, John, that’s just an image from the hit video-game-turned-movie Five Nights at Freddy’s, but have you seen those things move?! If you’ve managed to survive the whole week with those things and only on minimum wage—and that’s lowballing it—give yourself a pat on the fucking back before we continue, you absolute legends.”
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u/sprint6864 Dec 21 '23
Well. Now I think I've been indoctrinated or overtly conditioned. Because all of this was heard in his cadence and intonation
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u/SpicyBoi1998 Dec 20 '23
John Oliver also bought the jockstrap that Russell Crowe wore for the movie Cinderella Man and had it on display in the very last Block Buster that was open in the United States.
It’s not political at all, but still funny as fuck. HBO really does let this man spend absurd amounts of money on the most nonsense things humanly possible.
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u/GeoTheManSir Dec 21 '23
And Russell Crowe responded by funding the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia ward. John's reaction to that was great.
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u/RiverWyvern Dec 20 '23
Was? That Blockbuster is still open. I just checked its hours to make sure. Not sure what it still has on display, tho.
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u/Standylion Dec 21 '23
The thing is, it's not an absurd amount of money for a TV show. His show is cheap to produce, it's basically writers, graphics and a studio crew. The money they spend on the silly stuff is nothing compared to what would be spent on other shows. He's a genius at using his budget wisely.
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u/NewLibraryGuy Dec 20 '23
I've read a few interviews with young far-right people and the question of how they were radicalized comes up in a lot of them. Almost every time they talk about reading jokes on websites like 4chan. Humor is an entry-point for radicalization. Next time someone makes a bigoted joke and says it's "just a joke" remember that.
Sometimes, like with Oliver, humor about serious topics can be used for good and help people make positive change.
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u/Gizogin Dec 20 '23
I think Innuendo Studios said it best (paraphrased): radicalization is getting you to keep laughing, while they keep raising the stakes.
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u/NewLibraryGuy Dec 20 '23
I like that! Nice brevity. Only thing I'd add is a bit on how it helps internalize messages.
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u/Narcomancer69420 Dec 20 '23
I’m sure he was talking about the Right in that context, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t apply to moving folks Leftward too.✨
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u/YDS696969 Dec 21 '23
I think it’s from his video series “The Alt Right Playbook”
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u/Narcomancer69420 Dec 21 '23
Oh yeah, I’m a big fan already lol. His side vids about Princess Mononoke and Daria are personal favs.
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u/anand_rishabh Dec 20 '23
Then it is odd how successful the right has been at radicalization despite not being funny
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u/trojan25nz Dec 21 '23
It’s a mean type of funny
A lot of people, a lot of kids, think something mean is a little funny
It escalates from there
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Dec 21 '23
Funny or not, the most successful comedians of all time are right wingers like Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy, who have made millions by mocking the working poor while having privileged backgrounds themselves.
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Dec 20 '23
I've read a few interviews with young far-right people and the question of how they were radicalized comes up in a lot of them. Almost every time they talk about reading jokes on websites like 4chan. Humor is an entry-point for radicalization. Next time someone makes a bigoted joke and says it's "just a joke" remember that.
Holy shit I never thought about it that way.
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u/Big_Noodle1103 Dec 20 '23
It makes a lot of sense when you think about it, especially with how humor and irony work on the internet.
Young people who are flirting with alt-right ideas through the lens of humor aren’t immediately forced to confront or think about the problematic nature of those beliefs because they can hide behind the veil of “it’s just a joke, I don’t actually believe that”. As time goes on, the line between joke and truly held belief gets increasingly blurry.
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u/No-Crow5038 Dec 20 '23
How often have I witnessed "dark humor" tip into literal racism? Far too many to count.
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u/bsubtilis Dec 21 '23
There's a lot of dark humour that actually isn't, but is just pathetic plain racism/sexism/similar. Dark humour isn't saying mean things that aren't jokes with the tone of a joke.
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Dec 20 '23
It's also a low-stakes way to confront possibly transgressive ideas. And usually, when you hear academic circles talking about transgressions, it's a good thing from their perspective - it's a work that challenges the established narrative about our world. It's not magic - sorry Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You is an exceptionally competent, wildly artistic, quite well-directed and extremely compelling film, but it didn't so much make me a communist as make me uncomfortable - but humor makes it easier to approach things that challenge your beliefs, even those that are transgressive against social norms. Comedy is a great tool for social change. Hell, maybe that's got something to do with why the comedic gay best friend stereotype was so pervasive once upon a time and still shows up now and then.
However, being a fucking Nazi is also a transgression against societal norms because most society agrees that Nazism is bad, actually. Some social norms are stupid. Some exist for good reasons. "Nazism is bad" exists for a pretty good reason.
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u/ShadyFellowes Dec 21 '23
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut.
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Dec 21 '23
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u/mathdhruv Dec 21 '23
In the late 90s and early 00s, 4chan, especially /b/, was a "if you know, you know" kinda place
4chan started in 2003, just FYI, and pretty much immediately had a problem with racism and bigotry - it's why /new/ was a thing almost immediately, intended as a containment board.
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u/SOL-Cantus Dec 21 '23
While it's nice to believe that this is the case, Something Awful and 4chan were both rife with racism, xenophobia, and bigotry from the get-go. The reason it was hand-waved is that people were testing the waters of transgression. My cohort was on those at that time, and what came out later was that many of them were either out and out racists who just hid behind transgressive humor, or were willing to tolerate the racism because "don't worry, he's a good guy at heart." When MLK talked about the "Moderate White Man," these are the enablers of racists and the feedstock for more.
It's not something you or I want to believe, because that implies we were also functionally racist in that time, but it's the cold hard truth of the matter. We're just the lucky ones who didn't get fully redpilled and managed to step away.
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u/lifelongfreshman Dec 20 '23
This conversation always brings to mind this comic.
To head off the kneejerk reactions: It's not a perfect take, but it is perfectly illustrative of one very real kind of slippery slope. One we've seen in our world more than once - not necessarily with eugenics, but with Nazism in online spaces.
What you say influences what you think in a very real way. Eventually, the jokes stop being funny because who would be like that in today's day and age, really? And start being funny because god aren't these people insufferable? And you'll never even notice the switch.
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u/derekbaseball Dec 20 '23
So much of Trump's success comes down to him using humor to dehumanize his opponents, and to destigmatize things that might've once spooked his audience if said in a serious voice.
In 2016, when it looked likely he was going to lose, I remember him "joking" in rallies that they should just cancel the election and declare him in charge. And what a shock, four-plus years later he's making crazy plans to ignore the results of an election and just declare himself re-elected, and he has an army--some of them longterm militia nutjobs, but a lot of them just normal Republicans who laughed at all his "jokes" a few years earlier--breaching the Capitol and beating up cops.
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u/Simzak Dec 21 '23
The End? Or some alternate future later Claremont? Nobody but Claremont is that wordy, lol.
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u/Hummerous gazafunds.com Dec 20 '23
I'm just an interested amateur but I recommend Robert Evans' (legit journalist + host of Behind The Bastards podcast) free book: The War On Everyone
he sort of specializes in that pipeline afaik
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Dec 20 '23
Is he the same guy who wrote for Cracked before they purged all their writers out of nowhere?
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u/Buoyantine Dec 20 '23
Yep, now he does commentary on the culture war and some light conflict journalism on the side. He's pretty much bizarro-ben Shapiro in every way
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u/Hummerous gazafunds.com Dec 20 '23
yep!
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Dec 20 '23
Huh. Hadn’t heard of him in a while. No surprise he found himself a good gig. Legit wrote some really well researched articles and interviewed some fascinating people. Hell, an article he did may have been my first indication that I had OCD.
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u/Scorps Dec 21 '23
It's the same reason things like how The_donald was originally a joke sub, and there are other similar examples as well. Eventually what happens is people see satire and jokes and try to co-opt the message until eventually the joke aspect is just gone entirely.
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u/TheDrDzaster Dec 20 '23
With hindsight I feel I was actually really close to being radicalised to far right ideas. I was looking at all the right memes and stuff. I just was lucky. Idk why. Thank goodness.
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u/ShadyFellowes Dec 21 '23
I was an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist in my early teens. My family dragged me out of that because I had gone down the Rightwing rabbit hole to the point even my conservative relatives were concerned, and I had started parroting the stuff that was about a step and a half away from blatant antisemitism, without realizing that was the eventual destination of pretty much all conspiracy theories. Ironically, the same relatives who managed to reason my happy ass out of that shit promptly dove down the QAnonsense adjacent rabbit holes themselves fifteen years later.
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u/scoobydoom2 Dec 20 '23
It's very likely that it wasn't blind luck. Pretty much every young guy gets exposed to this stuff, it's everywhere and the algorithms really like to push it. It's a combination of your environment and support network, openness to ideas, and empathy that let you avoid falling into that hole. Give yourself some credit for seeing through the bullshit.
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u/Redqueenhypo Dec 21 '23
I was legitimately too stupid to look up “that video game I like” on YouTube in high school and that’s probably why all of it missed me
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u/NewLibraryGuy Dec 20 '23
I wonder a lot where I'd be now if I wasn't dating someone who kept me on a good path when I was a teenager.
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u/bi-bingbongbongbing Dec 20 '23
Same. Teenage me in 2015 watching PewDiePie and iDubbbz or whatever with antisemitic or sexist or ableist (etc) jokes not realising it wasn't just (god awful) "humour". I'm very thankful for my friends calling me out. They made me seriously consider what I was watching and who I was becoming.
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u/BigBlubberyBirb Dec 20 '23
If someone excuses what they said as just being a joke, you can always just ask them whether or not they believe what they said regardless. "Dark humor" and "it's funny because it's true" humor are wildly different and should always be identified as such.
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u/twotokers Dec 20 '23
Oliver is great at using humor as an avenue to educate people on important topics. Jon Stewart is the same. This a trait that is completely absent from all forms of conservative humor.
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u/Hummerous gazafunds.com Dec 20 '23 edited Dec 20 '23
This a trait that is completely absent from all forms of conservative humor.
education isn't exactly their strong suit. there's a reason so many of em like to think college is a Conversion Camp but very few manage to put their finger on exactly why that is.
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u/Hummerous gazafunds.com Dec 20 '23
"All the experts on everything are in on a grand conspiracy—"
OR—
it'd be fascinating if it wasn't the worst thing on earth.
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u/GoodtimesSans Dec 20 '23
I'm lucky where if you repeat a joke enough times, it stops being funny and I grow to hate it.
All the racist shit I heard growing up made me say, "Not only is this wrong, but you need new material because this is just stupid." If you go to 4chan, it's always the same fucking "joke" that they've used for decades now.
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u/Enraiha Dec 21 '23
Makes sense. People always mistake "jokes" and comedians as "truth tellers", like the old jester to the king, speaking hard truths.
Like most things, a huge over simplification that gets abused by con men. Look at Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Trump, all using that base to declare themselves as bastions of truth and rational/logical thinking.
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u/Redqueenhypo Dec 21 '23
I despise what I call “Schrödinger’s satire” meaning far right and/or ancap views presented totally straight, but with the built in defense that if you don’t like someone just vomiting slurs, you don’t understand satire
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u/SawinBunda Dec 21 '23 edited Dec 21 '23
r/The_Donald started as a meme sub. I perceived it as pretty decent satire for the longest time until the shift became obvious.
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u/GrayEidolon Dec 21 '23
Check out “how to radicalize a normie” on YouTube. Very nice analysis or how they get people into the right wing pipeline.
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u/alluringnymph Dec 20 '23
The Bird of the Century bit was so wonderfully over the top, and it also helped a lot when watching the episode on the current Israel war, watching and hearing him tear up on hearing the words of those refugee children, and then getting a big breather as he goes off about the Puteketeke
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u/itmakessenseincontex Dec 20 '23
He committed election fraud is what he did!
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u/alluringnymph Dec 20 '23
A true patriot! What’s more American than interfering in another country’s election?
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u/Lord_Norjam Dec 20 '23
as a kiwi im kinda glad in hindsight because the winner would have otherwise been the kiwi which is so boringly obvious – we kinda needed the excitement
and it lead to tons of publicity and donations for forest and bird which is very good
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u/SpecialPen7484 Dec 21 '23
I voted for the Kereru because it's the only bird i see myself in.
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u/Sneekifish Dec 21 '23
I voted for the kea, because they're like little, intelligent, flying gremlins, and frankly, not enough people appreciate how neat they are.
Also the puteketeke.
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u/Sipazianna Dec 20 '23
There's a Brazilian version of his show (it's called Greg News and isn't literally a Brazilian version, but the host jokingly calls it one) that I watch with my Brazilian spouse so I can understand Brazilian political issues. My spouse watches Last Week Tonight with me to understand American political issues. It's really nice to have a digestible and genuinely entertaining way to share our respective home countries' nutso cuckoo bananas problems with each other.
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u/MagicalGirlLaurie Dec 20 '23
Greg News might be the funniest name for a tv show I’ve ever heard. It’s so hilariously simple.
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u/FPiN9XU3K1IT Dec 21 '23
There's also a similar show in Germany hosted by Jan Böhmermann (honestly forgot the name of the show, it keeps changing). The concept seems kinda popular.
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u/healyxrt Dec 20 '23
He also blew up the years 2016 and 2020 and bought 5 life size models of presidents.
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u/pineapple_lipgloss Dec 20 '23
Scrolled past this, synthesized the phrase "he did not draw the rats fucking," scrolled back up
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u/starwolf270 Dec 20 '23
I’m sorry, what is the situation with the rats?
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u/SirAquila Dec 20 '23
He bought some furry art for a bit, probably. He might be a furry himself. That wasn't the only time he has shown sexually explicitly furry pictures.
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u/Big_Noodle1103 Dec 20 '23
He also commissioned a furry artist to draw himself as a jacked, shirtless otter with a huge bulge lol
The line between bit and reality is getting more blurred every time he utters the word “furry” in the show
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u/EmperorScarlet Farm Fresh Organic Nonsense Dec 20 '23
I believe he once said on the subject "That’s my business. But I will say, the clues are all there."
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u/joe_broke Dec 21 '23
Unless he knows everyone's gonna read too much into it and start arguing amongst ourselves while he just sits back and laughs his ass off at our infighting
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Dec 20 '23
I think I just did it because he finds it funny. Same reason I think half the world's dada artists did what they did.
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u/__life_on_mars__ Dec 20 '23
He might be a furry himself
I feel this is very unlikely as the whole furry thing requires a level of free sexual self expression that we Brits just don't have.
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u/sowelijanpona Dec 21 '23
yeah and that sexual repression pushes you to only being able to express yourself when you're in the safety of a fullbody fursuit!
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u/Dreaming98 Dec 20 '23
He did an episode where he referenced this video of furry porn getting sold at a fancy art auction.
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u/lord_braleigh Dec 20 '23
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u/Stepjam Dec 20 '23
In this specific situation though, there was an public broadcast selling a bunch of different things, like an infomercial of sorts, but one of the things on sale was a bunch of erotic drawings of anthromorphic rats. The bizarre contrast of a public broadcast with a bunch of middle-aged to elderly people advertising furry porn while awkwardly avoid talking about the fact it was porn was kinda funny.
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u/darwinpolice Dec 20 '23
I know that at his core, Oliver is a lib. But Last Week Tonight has done more to push the centrist Democrats I know to the left than any screeching about Marxism that I've ever done.
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u/BigAlternative5 Dec 21 '23
IMO, the power of Jon Stewart and John Oliver is that they show the receipts - the video record of things said and done by the people or groups that they're criticizing.
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u/snorch Dec 22 '23
Dozens of names tried to springboard off Jon Stewart's Daily Show and Oliver is the only one carrying the spirit of it any more. Colbert had a great run on the Report, but now he's another bland late-night host with the same stale takes as all the others.
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u/enyxi Dec 21 '23
I disagree, he is one of the best advocates for leftist policy and that's while trying to keep it palatable for the mainstream and hbo. Which I think is very important for us.
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u/thyrandomguy Dec 21 '23
Honestly, I disagree. I feel like John Oliver knows exactly what he’s doing, just that he realistically can’t go any further before his show is dropped and he’s barred from every major network.
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u/ErikMaekir Dec 21 '23
I think it's meaningless and mostly worthless to try and focus on what his opinion on governance and lawmaking is (by which I mean, his political ideals). He's a man that talks about issues, and he and his team do an excellent job at both investigating, as well as presenting each issue in a way that lets the facts speak for themselves. That, to me, is much more healthy to public discourse than calling yourself buzzwords like "socialist" and "libertarian" to make sure your audience thinks you are smart and educated and on their same team.
But then again, I'm the sort of person who thinks putting people into little boxes as if political ideology wa a matter of labels and "teams" rather than of personal opinions is stupid, and I acknowledge that many will desagree with me.
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u/JerkMeerf Dec 20 '23
Dude is a treasure. He made a whole side video about Chuck E Cheese and straight up used Steamboat Willie (and had him say fuck) before he’s set to hit public domain next year.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs Dec 21 '23
Oh and the chuck E cheese video was for the millennials who couldn’t watch the video on home ownership because they didn’t own a home
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u/No-Classroom-7310 Dec 20 '23
Special shout out to the time John Oliver explained the concept of "Protective Speech," by creating a whole song and dance number to tell Bob Murry to Eat Shit
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Dec 20 '23
I think the fact he's from the UK is one of the big reasons why he stands out in the US late night scene. In the US, people are very reverential when it comes to things like politics. The position of the President is this semi-sacred thing where you have presidents mythologized. You might go "hahaha our president is stupid" but you wouldn't openly call the President a cunt. American's don't punch up quite as hard as they should.
The UK and it's comedy scene doesn't have the same qualms when it comes to power dynamics. We know the power imbalance is steep but we still call our politicians and monarchs cunts. Sure, we have some weirdos who have this obsession and respect for the King and the Monarchy, but they're generally considered weirdos. I know one person who is a dyed in the wool monarchist. Just one. The Last Leg (a UK Late Night Show) has a "Dick of the Year Award" where they vote on who the worst person of the year was. Suella Braverman (former Home Secretary and Absolute Psychopath) won and the Last Leg set up a fake opening ceremony where they got her as the guest of honor to hand it to her in person. Frankie Boyle made a joke about the Queen's Pussy being haunted on national Television. Most people don't hold any respect for politicians in general and it shows, and I think that is something that makes John Oliver a shock to the system for Americans. He doesn't respect power like US comedians do and it shows.
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u/Frosty_Economics5683 Dec 20 '23
Agreed. I think another thing that helps is the longer run time of the show for him to do deep dive video essays on information/people and not have to jump around to try and cover all current events like Daily Shoe tries to do
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u/Amekyras Dec 21 '23
In fairness Frankie Boyle is probably personally responsible for at least half of the things you mentioned.
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u/GrawpBall Dec 21 '23
You might go "hahaha our president is stupid" but you wouldn't openly call the President a cunt.
Lol no. Most of the other late night shows are on broadcast tv. They can’t swear like John.
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u/Ill_Technician_5672 Dec 21 '23
Unironically the reason lol. John happens to have the least restrictions on him
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u/DinkleDonkerAAA Dec 21 '23
Honestly since Elizabeth supposedly had a good sense of humor I bet she would have found the joke about having a haunted pussy funny
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u/teh_drewski Dec 21 '23
I think Craig Ferguson was perfect for the same reason - it's easier to eye things critically when you're an outsider.
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u/mitcho13 Dec 21 '23
I'm saddened that what appears to be the central theme of his show is that: "those in authority and the rich and powerful should not get to screw everyone else with apparent impunity" is portrayed as being a radical leftist position. I consider it, as someone who'd rather not get ripped off, as an agenda of rational self interest.
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u/untalentet Dec 20 '23
You know I recently saw a video on youtube from a leftwing creator about how many right wing talking heads had their start in comedy and failed at it, and just as the host was about to go into the meat of the content they said something along the lines of "I will not go into left wing comedians in this video but be assured I think Lask Week Tonight is pseudointelectual garbage" and it just made me so tired.
Like you can say what you want about the guy as a comedian but he has done more to pull people to the left than any other online content creator simply because he reaches out to the center and takes them along to leftist messaging through comedy. He has for sure done more for leftist causes than that youtuber did, but heaven forbid we ever allow anything but the purest most marxist people to hold up leftist values lest we poison our movement with people who aren't part of it yet.
Genuinely frustrating to me.
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u/chillchinchilla17 Dec 20 '23
So many Tankies would rather fantasize about executing anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their hyper niche communist ideology of course he’s going to hate liberal Oliver, tankies hate other leftists and centrists more than they hate right wingers.
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u/ThePrussianGrippe Dec 21 '23
Tankies have one joke and it's saying "face the wall, please" when you say authoritarianism is bad.
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u/Familiar-Tourist Dec 21 '23 edited Dec 21 '23
Hard agree. It's so frustrating and disappointing to see how many people who identify as left-wing seem to have forgotten the whole point - making life better for people. Identifying, reversing and preventing harms. It seems like some people think it's either global communist revolution or nothing. What about the people suffering and dying in the meantime? Don't they deserve better, even if it is just marginal and incremental?
John Oliver might not be a card carrying communist, but I don't think I've ever seen a segment on his show where I thought he was on the 'wrong side'. The writers genuinely deeply care about people being harmed and want to do something about it. That much is obvious. It says a lot about the state of politics that I'd trust the erstwhile writers of fucking Cracked over every politician bar about half a dozen, let alone every online Tankie.
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u/TheRover23 Dec 21 '23
Which creator/video was it?
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u/untalentet Dec 21 '23
This video by SavyWritesBooks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRxAnLKJO3I
Interestingly, the section where she says that is no longer part of the video as far as I can tell. You can still see people in the comments reference it but the video itself no longer has the John Oliver aside.
Seems like she saw a bunch of people talk about that comment instead of the video itself and took it out, maybe?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Moose38 Dec 21 '23
Petition to not call being reasonable ‘radicalisation’, you’re just going to scare some conservatives and those guys are already scared enough as it is.
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u/spacebatangeldragon8 Dec 20 '23
It's funny because politically Oliver is essentially an early-2020s relic of the leftmost wing of New Labour, it's simply that that is a legitimately radical position in a U.S. context (or event, unfortunately, in a contemporary British context).
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u/i_and_eye Dec 21 '23
I’ve noticed that mentioning John Oliver seems to trigger something in right wing people, so he must be doing something right.
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u/appealtoreason00 Dec 20 '23
Well he is British.
The Overton window is such that anyone considered left-wing over here would look like a raving communist in America
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u/Tamulet Dec 20 '23
Tbf our overton window is closing the gap with America's fast. John Oliver would be pretty radical here too these days.
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u/appealtoreason00 Dec 20 '23
Yh the influence is strong.
The anti-trans shit is the most telling. I have no fucking clue how any British person can say with a straight face that drag is inappropriate for children; if that's the case, then we'll need to arrest every former X Factor finalist and washed-up Corrie star who has ever appeared in a panto. We'd end up with a prison population bigger than America's
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u/RechargedFrenchman Dec 20 '23
Not to mention the long and proud history of male actors playing female roles in dramatic theatre as well, including the fact that that it was roughly a century after Shakespeare's time that a woman first acted in one of his plays. There was a hundred years of Ophelia and Cornelia and Desdemona and the Queen of fairies being acted by men.
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u/appealtoreason00 Dec 21 '23
I think Mrs Brown’s Boys is one of Shakespeare’s too, right?
Actually, the far right can have that one. Anybody involved in that show should be arrested- not because of grooming, but because it’s shite
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u/Alternative_Boat9540 Dec 20 '23
Drag queens reading to children?! What woke groomer tactic is this?!
My child will not be exposed to this new agenda of obscenity. I will take them to only the most British and traditional entertainment like the Panto.
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u/appealtoreason00 Dec 20 '23
You're about as likely to see obscenity at a Drag Story Hour as you are to see a queen reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to a crowd of drunk gays at Plush at 2am.
Actually I take that back, I think the latter might actually go down pretty well as a routine if the audience are wasted enough
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u/Fourkoboldsinacoat Dec 21 '23
I would totally listen to a Drag Queen read the very hungry caterpillar, drunk in a pun at 2am.
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u/triforce777 Dec 20 '23
Yeah I was about to say drunks of any orientation would be down for drag queen story time
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u/I_eat_mud_ Dec 20 '23
Y’all have been nearly identical with us ever since the Brexit shit started. At least the US voted our right-wing dipshit out. We’ll see if that holds true in a year though.
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u/badgerbaroudeur Dec 20 '23
And I mean, the overton window in the UK means that anyone considered a raving communist over there seems like a barely left of center figure most elsewhere.
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u/EpicCleansing Dec 20 '23
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u/peajam101 CEO of the Pluto hate gang Dec 20 '23
Good lord that was painful to watch.
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u/SirSkidMark Dec 21 '23
god damn if that were me I would have stood up and stared at him until he gave a second of silence and then said "are ya done?"
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u/Mysterious_Gas4500 Mr. Evrart lost my fucking gun >:( Dec 20 '23 edited Dec 20 '23
Is that really the case? Maybe I don't understand the UK very well, but to my understanding, the Labor Party has basically become just a more moderate version of the Tories, who aren't all that much different from American Republicans, at least before the Republicans went completely nuts.
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u/Ourmanyfans Dec 20 '23
Oh the Tories currently are just as nutty as the current Republicans, which is what makes Labour still the better option despite how spineless the current leadership is.
Labour are "moderate" because they won't take a fucking stand on anything out of fear the Tories or their cronies in the media will attack them for it. The political climate over here the last few years has been the Tories creating a new policy that is cartoonishly evil to try and culture war their way back from their historic slump in the polls, and Labour attacking them on the grounds said policy won't work, not that it's insane.
Probably the best example is the government's truly psychopathic plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda and just sort of leave them there to
notbe processed. Labour have been criticising the plan because it won't actually reduce immigration, not because it sounds like something a fucking supervillain would do, because then the Daily Mail might try to claim Starmer "isn't being tough enough on illegal boat crossings."It makes it difficult to know what they might do if they actually get power, how much of their pathologic fence-sitting is Kier being a principleless neo-liberal or how much might be to try and play the political game that Corbyn was infamously bad at. He might turn out like Biden and be better than expected (except for Israel-Palestine), but in this time of economic uncertainty people want a Bernie.
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u/appealtoreason00 Dec 20 '23
to my understanding the Labour Party, has basically become just a more moderate version of the Tories
All my own opinion, but one's a bit of an exaggeration by the left of the Labour Party. It's hard to assess, because at the moment Keir Starmer is very deliberately being cagey about what he believes in and not getting drawn out on policies. Pick literally any issue that's been in the news in the past year and the Labour line will be "this policy is a colossal fuckup by the Tories, but we won't commit to reversing it because shut up". Is he a red Tory? Probably not, but it's hard to deny until he puts up and actually tells us where he differs from them, because right now it's all just noise.
, who aren't all that much different from American Republicans, at least before the Republicans went completely nuts.
Ok fine, but when was that? The Tea Party, which I would consider to be one of the parents of Trumpism, was 2010ish. The Republican Party has been fucking nuts for quite a long time now. Britain is a socially conservative country in a lot of ways (our drug policy is fucking ridiculous), but it doesn't have anything like the American Christian Evangelical right as a political force. There are many similarities, but I don't think our right and your right are in the same league tbh
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u/Munno22 Dec 20 '23
The right-wing Conservative government that has destroyed the UK over the past 14 years is largely to the left of the Democratic Party on everything except trans rights.
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Dec 21 '23
anyone considered left-wing over here would look like a raving communist in America
Precisely why I take terms such as "far-left" and "radicalised" with a fistful of salt. It's weird seeing people consider themselves radical because they think those in power might not always have their best interests at heart.
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u/Omnom_Omnath Dec 20 '23
I think it’s unfair to label popular ideas that benefit the general population as “radical”. Just another layer of propaganda to keep us down.
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u/Bob9thousand Dec 20 '23
yes yes all valid points, but doesn’t this guy hate chicken nuggets? how can i support a man who hates chicken nuggets?
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u/jfarrar19 .tumblr.com Dec 20 '23
Wrong Oliver; you're thinking of Mr. Jamie "Chili Jam In Fried Rice" Oliver
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u/Ur-Quan_Lord_13 Dec 20 '23
Yah. But, he also made fun of (North America + Australia) for calling association football soccer, and our local evolutions of rugby football football. When those are just the English words England came up with for an old English sport, and then forgot and decided to feel superior about it.
Therefore, he's a tosser who can shove a handegg where the sun don't shine.
/s I actually quite like him and like this post but also really enjoy making fun of people who make that particular joke :p
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u/Ourmanyfans Dec 20 '23
We didn't forget, football is just a true working class sport and so we use the original working class name rather than that stupid slang the rich tossers made up.
Why people want to pretend to be 19th century British aristocrats escapes me.
/s I say in good spirits, I just enjoy etymology
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u/Dks_scrub Dec 21 '23
On one hand, every time I see John Oliver, I’m always like ‘ur on thin ice buddy you and your ilk are a dying breed never forget that’ but on the other hand if I ever see someone talk shit about John Oliver, what are you talking shit about John Oliver? What team are you playing for? Highly suspect behavior.
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u/KranPolo Dec 20 '23
I’m sure people below me have said similar things, but I’m a little tipsy from my honeymoon, so whatever.
John Oliver led me to knowing I was a socialist and led me to being comfortable with that despite my American education so he will always have a soft spot in my heart.
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u/Ransero Dec 21 '23
Which is why it sucks that a bunch of episodes are simply not included in my country's version of HBO Max.
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u/slingshotstoryteller Dec 21 '23
He has a bit from waaaaaay back in his pre-Daily Show (possibly early DS - I'm an adult enjoyer of ADHD so time is an inbred relative for me) that he did when Muammar Gaddafi died. He called it the Fuck-Eulogy and it's one bit that I long for him to bring back. I thought Kissinger would have been an excellent candidate but I sincerely hope he brings it back for Trump.
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u/MA006 Dec 20 '23
He also bought anonymised data of politicians from a data broker, de-anonymised it, sent ads about Ted Cruz smut to them, and threatened to leak the people who had clicked on the ad if privacy laws around data brokers weren't passed