John Oliver is Amazeballs! (Andy Zaltzman is in his shed)

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John Oliver is consistently hitting it out of the park when it comes to discussing today's current issues.

For example, he attacked the state of US prisons yesterday:

(Thanks to Hypatian for the original title.)

EDIT: Bugle related stuff also counts!

I just watched yesterdays episode as well. I think that the last two were my favorite, his prison segment yesterday was great, and last week had a long and good episode on income inequality as well.

The popularity of The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and, I expect and hope, Last Week Tonight, (especially among younger people) gives me hope for the future of journalism, and our nation as a whole, in the coming decades.

Yonder wrote:

I just watched yesterdays episode as well. I think that the last two were my favorite, his prison segment yesterday was great, and last week had a long and good episode on income inequality as well.

The popularity of The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and, I expect and hope, Last Week Tonight, (especially among younger people) gives me hope for the future of journalism, and our nation as a whole, in the coming decades.

Personally, it makes me worry that we're trading actual outrage and a drive for meaningful action for a smirk and chuckle at all the dummies.

I'm glad John Oliver got his own show, though. I was worried he wouldn't be able to carry it but clearly I was wrong about that.

Just watched that clip on my tablet while I was having a smoke and was blown away... he's getting better and better with each episode.

Bloo Driver wrote:

Personally, it makes me worry that we're trading actual outrage and a drive for meaningful action for a smirk and chuckle at all the dummies.

I'm glad John Oliver got his own show, though. I was worried he wouldn't be able to carry it but clearly I was wrong about that.

That's why it works, and why satire like this show and Colbert are so important right now. You don't find this kind of depth delivered in such a palatable way on issues this big, they're too chronic and lacking in stunts to count as "news" for the 24-hour news cycle and traditional news outlets are often, well, dry.

I was initially worried that his show would just be a pale imitation of his stint hosting The Daily Show last Summer, but it's steered itself quite nicely into having a more global focus and showcasing a topic in-depth every week. I suspect HBO would rather have more than one show a week, but being so delayed from events through the week is probably the main reason they can do this kind of digging into things. That the best stuff is often on YouTube (officially!) within 24 hours is rather refreshing.

Also, I learned from that clip that Al Franken has really toned himself down. I feel like the Al Franken I remember would have been like... dude, what the f*** is the size of the cell? It's a simple question, you idiot.

Demosthenes wrote:

Also, I learned from that clip that Al Franken has really toned himself down. I feel like the Al Franken I remember would have been like... dude, what the f*** is the size of the cell? It's a simple question, you idiot.

I thought his "Am I asking this right?" bit was pretty brilliant. I also don't know why the dude was stalling. It would have been pretty simple to say, "I don't have that immediately available, but I'll get it to you as soon as possible," instead of exposing himself to ridicule from the one guy in Congress with professional comic training.

kazooka wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Also, I learned from that clip that Al Franken has really toned himself down. I feel like the Al Franken I remember would have been like... dude, what the f*** is the size of the cell? It's a simple question, you idiot.

I thought his "Am I asking this right?" bit was pretty brilliant. I also don't know why the dude was stalling. It would have been pretty simple to say, "I don't have that immediately available, but I'll get it to you as soon as possible," instead of exposing himself to ridicule from the one guy in Congress with professional comic training.

he was probably a plant. Did anyone see who he came in with??

I thought it was a little odd that John Oliver didn't mention that solitary confinement was considered torture in most of the world.

Yonder wrote:

I thought it was a little odd that John Oliver didn't mention that solitary confinement was considered torture in most of the world.

well, that and anal rape.

It is odd that we, as Americans, don't know it.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I just watched yesterdays episode as well. I think that the last two were my favorite, his prison segment yesterday was great, and last week had a long and good episode on income inequality as well.

The popularity of The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and, I expect and hope, Last Week Tonight, (especially among younger people) gives me hope for the future of journalism, and our nation as a whole, in the coming decades.

Personally, it makes me worry that we're trading actual outrage and a drive for meaningful action for a smirk and chuckle at all the dummies.

News outrage has always been essentially mindless pornography. It never really drives action. Oliver managed to drive action - Look at all the letters to the FCC.

I'm loving that satire is taking a front journalistic seat. You can go a lot further when you mock someone or you're acting like it's a joke than you can if you're trying to manufacture balance. Oliver's bit on gun control on the Daily Show was fantastic and not something you would have seen from any mainstream journalist.

Paleocon wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I thought it was a little odd that John Oliver didn't mention that solitary confinement was considered torture in most of the world.

well, that and anal rape.

It is odd that we, as Americans, don't know it.

I'd kind of hope that any form of rape would be considered torture, but I get what you're saying.

That was a fantastic segment but I think he missed a big opportunity to talk about the financial incentive to keep the prison systems broken. Namely, how slavery is legal under the thirteenth amendment and how that has led to corporations using the prison population as free labor.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

[Former] Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that “there won’t be any transportation costs; we’re offering you competitive prison labor (here).”

Wow, FSeven, that's horrific. I was going to say "Well, he can't cover everything in ten minutes" but after reading that I agree with you.

Last Week Tonight has surpassed The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in my mind. Spending 10-12 minutes every episode on one topic is fantastic and, surprisingly, educational. And it's still funny as hell.

LWT alone totally justifies the cost of using a friend's HBOGO password.

lostlobster wrote:

Wow, FSeven, that's horrific. I was going to say "Well, he can't cover everything in ten minutes" but after reading that I agree with you.

It is a big hill to climb with not a lot of time to do it but I'm of the mind that just breaching the topic is sufficient enough to get people thinking about it. I can see how despite this segment there will still be people who think, "Well, do the crime - do the time." Meaning that as deplorable as conditions in prisons are, these people in a sense chose to be there by breaking the law. Sympathy gives way to apathy.

Focusing on how corporations are using prisoners as slave labor comes at the broken justice system from a different direction which, I think, forces people to see how prisoners have become a resource to exploit and pulls back the curtain on any myth that prisons are intended to rehabilitate people. I think even the people who lack concern over bad food and safety in prison might give pause when they consider that the current prison system is essentially Slavery 2.0 because they've used Microsoft products. They've used Dell or Compaq or IBM products. They've bought their lady Victoria's Secret garments. They have a stake in the game. Then again, I constantly underestimate many peoples' lack of concern and empathy on some issues.

lostlobster wrote:

Last Week Tonight has surpassed The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in my mind. Spending 10-12 minutes every episode on one topic is fantastic and, surprisingly, educational. And it's still funny as hell.

Agreed. While funny, TDS and CR went through topics so fast that by the end of the show very few things ended up sticking, at least for me. Spending more time leaves more of an impression and arms you with more information. And there's something about hearing it all delivered in Oliver's accent that makes it all the more funnier.

lostlobster wrote:

WT alone totally justifies the cost of using a friend's HBOGO password.

That's a fantastic pricing plan.

I think it's a testament to just how f*cked up our prison system is that he can't cover all the badness in the length of one segment.

I wonder if a treatment of the 2 + 2 of racially unequal incarceration rates and the use of prison labor wouldn't have been seen as "too much" to try to present to a viewer. A neutral audience member might think it smacks too much of conspiracy theory.

John Oliver can't carry the (American) football all by himself.

On another note, I think it's so damn smart of HBO to be putting up some of these larger segments on YouTube for free. They're probably making a mint off the ad revenue (each of these are pulling in PewDiePie levels of views and it's certainly more than if people just pirated the show instead) as cord cutters like me get to watch at least the major highlights of the show legitimately. I like the way he's going about these issues, though I think he uses analogy jokes a bit too much (i.e. "Doing this is like wanting this and asking this person to do it." That's a minor complaint at worst though and I'm actually excited for Sunday nights when the new clips go up.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

On another note, I think it's so damn smart of HBO to be putting up some of these larger segments on YouTube for free. They're probably making a mint off the ad revenue (each of these are pulling in PewDiePie levels of views and it's certainly more than if people just pirated the show instead) as cord cutters like me get to watch at least the major highlights of the show legitimately. I like the way he's going about these issues, though I think he uses analogy jokes a bit too much (i.e. "Doing this is like wanting this and asking this person to do it." That's a minor complaint at worst though and I'm actually excited for Sunday nights when the new clips go up.

It's a fairly standard Oliver-ism you can find on his excellent podcast also starring Andy Saltzman, The Bugle podcast.
Your feelings on analogies are like Law and Order. I understand the appeal, and yet want nothing to do with it.

I think we still need to remember that this is supposed to be a comedy show. I think it's a testament to Oliver's having a soul that he didn't try to make fun of the free prison labor thing.

sometimesdee wrote:

I think we still need to remember that this is supposed to be a comedy show. I think it's a testament to Oliver's having a soul that he didn't try to make fun of the free prison labor thing.

I think that saying it's "supposed to be a comedy show" does it a large disservice. I also think that they can and have mentioned important things without making fun of it. I don't think that free prison labor is any more off the table than prison rape, and I feel like his coverage of prison rape didn't make fun of it, or at least not of its victims. I have no reason to suspect his coverage on prison labor would have been any different.

It might be just that he wasn't aware of the issue?

I think it is fair to say that there is so much wrong with the American prison system that it would be impossible to adequately address it in as little time as he had in that segment.

Malor wrote:

It might be just that he wasn't aware of the issue?

I'd hazard a guess that at least one of the ten or so writers he employs would be aware of the issue.

OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:

It might be just that he wasn't aware of the issue?

I'd hazard a guess that at least one of the ten or so writers he employs would be aware of the issue.

It took me three years in this country to put two and two together.

I daresay John Oliver took considerably less time.

He did indeed miss a big opportunity to bore his audience by adding more information to the segment than he needed to in order to get the main point across.

Well, he probably could have made it pretty funny, but it would have taken more than 12 minutes.

boogle wrote:

...excellent podcast also starring Andy Saltzman, The Bugle podcast...

A fellow Bugler!

Whatever the impact his show has, John's greatest contribution to mankind is, and always will be, the f*uckulogy, the now-traditional post-mortem tribute to the world's greatest dickbags on the happy event of their passing. Previous recipients include Saddham Hussain and Osama Bin Laden. I want a top-grade douchenozzle to pass away very soon, to see if the f*ckulogy makes it to HBO.

spider_j wrote:
boogle wrote:

...excellent podcast also starring Andy Saltzman, The Bugle podcast...

A fellow Bugler!

Do we ceremonially exchange puns now or something?

Yonder wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

I think we still need to remember that this is supposed to be a comedy show. I think it's a testament to Oliver's having a soul that he didn't try to make fun of the free prison labor thing.

I think that saying it's "supposed to be a comedy show" does it a large disservice. I also think that they can and have mentioned important things without making fun of it. I don't think that free prison labor is any more off the table than prison rape, and I feel like his coverage of prison rape didn't make fun of it, or at least not of its victims. I have no reason to suspect his coverage on prison labor would have been any different.

Perhaps. Then again, as others have said, the issue of prison labor could warrant its own show. Maybe it will be.

boogle wrote:
spider_j wrote:
boogle wrote:

...excellent podcast also starring Andy Saltzman, The Bugle podcast...

A fellow Bugler!

Do we ceremonially exchange puns now or something?

How about heart-felt swears in honor of the extended hiatus they are taking?

I don't think Oliver needed to spend 10+ minutes on the topic. Just an off hand remark about making sure this coming Valentine's Day that you purchased a nice bra, thong, and garter set from Victoria Secret made with the sweat of 25-cent-per-hour prison labor for your special lady or something of the sort. Mentions something not a lot of people know about, hopefully urges folks to satiate curiosity and do a little research and is brief enough that it can fit into the segment effortlessly.

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