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I'm not a fan of wrestling, but I am sure a fan of workers' rights, so I hope the best for the wrestlers. I'm surprised John didn't mention the time that the Iron Sheik called him out on the Bugle.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:51
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STAC Goat posted:Its basically a UPenn/Paterno-esque story of WWE employing and covering up for MULTIPLE pedophile abusers. This is the writeup done but I actually don't think it even touches on things. Through the course of that whole thread we kept digging deeper into it and learning worse and worse poo poo.  jesus gently caress, please tell me people are in prison for this
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Apr 2, 2019 12:18
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SlothfulCobra posted:I'm surprised John didn't mention the time that the Iron Sheik called him out on the Bugle. To be fair, getting called out by the Iron Sheik isn't a hard thing to make happen so it's hardly impressive.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:42
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This may be a very nice question but why didn't McMahon just...you know...fire them? It's not like Penn State where these people were valuable talent that couldn't be lost without effect.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:16
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A mix of the perpetrators being among the old guard/friends of McMahon and firing them would admit liability which would damage the WWE’s image and make them susceptible to lawsuits. Even now they won’t admit anything happened and they’re very good at white washing sordid details. Like how you will not find any official mention of Benoit ever working for the WWE.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:34
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punk rebel ecks posted:This may be a very nice question but why didn't McMahon just...you know...fire them? It's not like Penn State where these people were valuable talent that couldn't be lost without effect. It's a very common theme in these things that the powerful men who let these things happen don't actually give a poo poo. I don't know if it's social norms not permeating certain strata of society or if just being wealthy makes you stop caring. Or maybe there's a whole horrifying secret world the wealthy live in, but that line of thinking is what made people invent the pizzagate conspiracy.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:10
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A lot of it is probably open defiance. Vince has always been the kind of rear end in a top hat who would rather keep doing something terrible just to stick it to the people criticizing him rather than admit some flaw and give them what they want. The third guy in the Ring Boy Scandal is Pat Patterson and he was not only brought back but he was kept around for a long time and presented as one of the most beloved backstage people. And most fans didn't even realize he had done anything wrong because whenever the subject came up people within WWE and wrestling dismissed it as unfair character assassination because Patterson was gay. So they basically turned him into a trailblazer to cover up his crimes.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:47
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Well that was a frustrating episode, why did he end it by telling everyone to protest live at Wrestlemania, while omitting any actual way they could identify themselves as being part of that? No specific chant like "pay your workers" to do in unison? Not even a hash tag to write on the signs? He just told a bunch of fans to make confusing mismatched noises to ineffectually voice anger in ways that will not be obvious live on air
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Apr 7, 2019 04:47
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He should have called for a boycott of WWE/Wrestlemania or something but maybe he's just savvy enough about wrestling to realize that people's interests levels are usually at one of two settings with it. Either "That's Way Too Stupid For Me To Waste Thought or Energy On" or "I Know This is Scummy But I Don't Care At All Because I Love It". So convincing people who give WWE money to stop and skip something they're looking forward to is hopeless and all you can get them to do is maybe do a chant and carry some signs.
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Apr 7, 2019 05:15
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they love spending obscene amounts of money on this show for public displays, I don't understand why they didn't, like print thousands of signs and hand them out outside of the arena where it's being held or something along those lines. Find some wrestling phrase that you can get 20 individuals to spell out with letter signs that also rearranges to #WrestlerUnionNow or something like that or poo poo, if they wanted to go full Russell Crowe Codpiece they should have hosted a wrestling event somewhere else that night, called it a Pay-Per-View and given any proceeds to a charity for injured wrestlers or something. (maybe get the amazing people behind Choke Hole to perform)
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Apr 7, 2019 09:01
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Maybe the HBO lawyers were too scared of vince coming after them in the ring 
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Apr 7, 2019 10:24
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When has Daily Show/Last Week Tonight ever advocated for boycotts of anything This is why Jon Stewart hosed everything up - saying "look at how dumb this one party of capitalists is - what a bunch of dummies!" for 15 years while failing to advocate actual solutions to real problems just weaponized the Republican rhetoric even more Oliver is doing more of the same
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Apr 7, 2019 16:04
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Dumb Lowtax posted:Well that was a frustrating episode, why did he end it by telling everyone to protest live at Wrestlemania, while omitting any actual way they could identify themselves as being part of that? No specific chant like "pay your workers" to do in unison? Not even a hash tag to write on the signs? Vince will just write contract protests into the script for the show
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Apr 7, 2019 16:20
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The bits they use to button up segments can be pretty hit and miss; I still remember "Drumpf". They're very informative in the segments, and they like making big flashy public moves, but they really shy away from actual activism or direct moralizing because that's more responsibility than they're exactly comfortable with. A coal baron or cigarette companies sure, simple enemies to face. Throw some money at charities when the opportunity comes, definitely. But they're not going to do some kind of long-term activism. And I know the idea is to finish off with something funny, but they really miss the mark sometimes. You just know the funniest thing to finish off this segment would've been a whole wrestling bit, but I bet John Oliver's dead-set against physical comedy.
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Apr 7, 2019 17:25
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SlothfulCobra posted:I still remember "Drumpf". That, and the people who picked it up online, annoyed me so much. How is "Drumpf", which just looks kind of German I guess, a dumber-sounding name than "Trump", which literally means "elephant noise", "trumpet noise", and "fart"? And the whole "that's his real name" thing when he was born a Trump and it was his grandfather who changed the family name.
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Apr 7, 2019 17:48
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EugeneJ posted:When has Daily Show/Last Week Tonight ever advocated for boycotts of anything Yeah sadly this is the problem with this show. CSPAM pointed it out to me and now I can't unsee it. Feelings are *not* nice towards John Oliver there for this reason, and last month they wouldn't let my attempted thread about the show stand. From now on I'll be watching all episodes of this show through that lens. "It's great that he's brought an unheard of leftist cause into the public awareness, and his research team dug up some great stuff, but is he proposing a solution?" Does he seem to believe that lack of "awareness" alone is the problem, therefore putting the blame on individual voters for being ignorant, and not the system at large for being willfully callous and exploitative? Does he have nothing at all to say about what to do to the system? At the end of the day it's HBO's fault really, not his. As much as the show makes him the center of attention, that's more an entertainment choice than anything. The fact is hundreds or more people work on this show and a handful of executives have a say in its messaging. If word comes down to HBO from on high that: 1. Bernie Sanders is not to be mentioned as a serious candidate (due to an organized media blackout), or that 2. Venezuela is not to be described as a coup, or that 3. No direct activism can be called for, or that 4. (This week) the media's Russiagate failure is not to be discussed, Then we can't blame John much for not doing otherwise. At the end of the day he is just one man who happens to be employed as a funnyman in this multi-person effort, in a vast company that has its own capitalistic goals. This show might be helping the left, but it is also part of the problem by spreading the centrist lies that nothing is worth fighting for, that nothing can be different systemwide, and that any attempts to change it are not only a waste of time, but in fact cause disharmony that is the only true problem in society must stamp out. That the true onus lies on voters, not rulers, to learn better and to fix things or else get out of the way. SlothfulCobra posted:but I bet John Oliver's dead-set against physical comedy. Um... did you see how many times he played the McMachon face getting pushed into an rear end clip Tiggum posted:That, and the people who picked it up online, annoyed me so much. It was the latter's fault. This was an unfortunate bit to do because the public ran with it in a way that missed its message, which was just "let's use Trump's rhetorical weapons against him more". Instead the public was too dumb for the message ("Trump says anyone whose family name changed is dishonest, what a dick") and simplified the message themselves into "Trump's real name is DRUMPF! It sounds foreign and stupid, good reasons to gang up on him. Team Hillary!" Leftists who do not watch the show saw this on social media and decided the show is trash. It's not, but it's part of the problem for other reasons. Happy Thread fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 18:18
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Tiggum posted:How is "Drumpf", which just looks kind of German I guess, a dumber-sounding name than "Trump", which literally means "elephant noise", "trumpet noise", and "fart"? I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but "trump" has been used for basically hundreds of years to mean the high-ranking suit in card games. Or as a verb, to beat someone by pulling those high cards out. I mean, I don't like the guy any more than you do, but the word's a pretty good pick for a name over "drumpf" for positive meanings associated with it.
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Apr 7, 2019 18:31
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What I'm saying is that the episode should've ended with John Oliver in a wrestling ring, and I bet he would rather chew off his own leg than take off his shirt.
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Apr 7, 2019 18:40
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Phenotype posted:I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but "trump" has been used for basically hundreds of years to mean the high-ranking suit in card games. Trump meaning fart is a British thing at the least. Before 2016 if you asked a Brit what ‘to trump’ meant, they’d most likely say fart. It’s a shame it never really came across the seas.
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Apr 7, 2019 18:49
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Phenotype posted:I'm not sure if this is a joke or what, but "trump" has been used for basically hundreds of years to mean the high-ranking suit in card games. Or as a verb, to beat someone by pulling those high cards out. I mean, I don't like the guy any more than you do, but the word's a pretty good pick for a name over "drumpf" for positive meanings associated with it.
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Apr 7, 2019 19:28
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The Drumpf thing was meant to separate Trump the person from Trump the brand. For some reason a lot of people see the Trump name as a seal of quality (literally the only good investment Trump ever made was in hiring whatever PR firm is responsible for convincing the public that he's a good investor), so the point was that he should be evaluated based on his actual record, rather than the fictional brand persona he's invented for himself. This was of course way too high concept for people so instead it just became "let's call him the wrong name because it annoys him, probably".
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Apr 7, 2019 21:44
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SlothfulCobra posted:What I'm saying is that the episode should've ended with John Oliver in a wrestling ring, and I bet he would rather chew off his own leg than take off his shirt. I would have been okay if he put on a referee shirt, got in the ring, and called a match between b-ball tiger and Mr. Nutterbutter (or bring back traffic zebra as the ref). I don't follow wrestling, I can name a few guys currently wrestling, but I'm curious if some of the clips of matches they played were just random clips, or if they focused on wrestlers that were getting hosed over by the contracts the most. Like, I noticed Kofi Kingston (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Kingston) was shown in like three of the clips. IDK if that's implying he's been having huge contract fuckery issues/health problems or if it's coincidence because he's party of a pretty popular tag team. I'm sure I'm overthinking it.
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Apr 7, 2019 22:05
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LadyPictureShow posted:I would have been okay if he put on a referee shirt, got in the ring, and called a match between b-ball tiger and Mr. Nutterbutter (or bring back traffic zebra as the ref). Kofi Kingston is actually getting a World Title shot at Wrestlemania and has been part of a hot but kind of convoluted worked shoot storyline about Vince McMahon ignoring him, disrespecting him, and putting unreasonable hurdles in his path while the other New Day guys talk about how its about their race and that they should just give up and walk away because they'll never get a fair shake. So I imagine it was just the topical guy with a bit of how his story is kind of paying lip service to some of the problems while not actually addressing them.
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Apr 7, 2019 22:34
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EL BROMANCE posted:Trump meaning fart is a British thing at the least. Before 2016 if you asked a Brit what ‘to trump’ meant, they’d most likely say fart. It’s a shame it never really came across the seas. I've literally never heard anyone refer to a fart as "a trump". "A trumpet"? Sure. I've never heard anyone refer to it as a trump though. Calling a fart a trumpet makes far more sense than calling it a trump too, given a trumpet is a musical instrument and often associated with bad puffing sounds, where a trump as another person pointed out is mostly associated with cards and has been with centuries. tsob fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 22:38
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Tiggum posted:It means those things as well, sure. But outside the context of either card games or surnames its a funny-sounding onomatopoeia. Wheras "Drumpf" is just vaguely German-sounding. The whole "call him Drumpf because it sounds dumb" thing just comes across as really weird, because, you know his actual name is "Trump", right? "Trump" sounds way dumber than "Drumpf", unless you think there's just something inherently funny about German-sounding words, I guess. My entire point was that "Trump" sounds better than "Drumpf" because of the positive associations with card games. No one thinks onomatopoeia trumpet sound when they hear "trump", they think trump cards, getting trumped, etc. Outside the context they're intended for, EVERY word is just a funny-sounding collection of syllables, when it comes right down to it.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:24
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It was just a dumb joke about Trump being a fake hypocrite because he made the weird tweet to Stewart about his name. Its weird how much SO MANY people tried to dig deeper into the joke than that for SO MANY different reasons.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:26
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I'd rather they call him more directly what he is. Con-man, Fraudster, convicted criminal, mob affiliate. No pussyfooting around pretending like he's not got a well-documented 40 year record of crimes and fraud.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:47
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That doesn't roll off the tongue that well in a monologue full of information and jokes though to be honest.
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Apr 7, 2019 23:53
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Oh good, tonight's episode is another thing I can add to the list of reasons Warren Buffett is a ghoul and why him giving "half" of his grotesquely disproportionate wealth to charity doesn't mean jack poo poo.
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Apr 8, 2019 07:48
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Oh, hey D'arcy 
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Apr 8, 2019 10:28
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Dumb Lowtax posted:From now on I'll be watching all episodes of this show through that lens. "It's great that he's brought an unheard of leftist cause into the public awareness, and his research team dug up some great stuff, but is he proposing a solution?" What the heck are you talking about, he proposes solutions pretty darn frequently. This episode he was pushing for "first right of refusal" laws in more states to give resident groups the chance to buy their parks if they come up for sale, last episode he was asking fans to pressure the WWE to take care of their performers because that's the only kind of pressure that's ever made the WWE change anything ever, in previous episodes he's informed people about important but relatively unknown polls on important issues and urged them to turn up and cast their vote, he's raised money for specific charities, he bought his own mobile clinic truck, etc etc.. Also note that the show would still be perfectly fine if it never did anything like that because that's not their job and it's a ridiculous standard to hold them to. Even if you judge the show purely on current affairs values and not just comedy/entertainment values it's still a dumb standard to hold them to, no one ever said "60 Minutes is a failure because they only expose stories, they don't propose solutions" or "The 6 O'Clock News is a failure because they only report the news, they don't propose solutions." This show takes complex situations that are often hard to follow and full of tedious information and makes them entertaining so they're easier to digest. Asking them to go further and actually solve the problems they cover is unrealistic. Dumb Lowtax posted:This show might be helping the left, but it is also part of the problem by spreading the centrist lies that nothing is worth fighting for, that nothing can be different systemwide, and that any attempts to change it are not only a waste of time, but in fact cause disharmony that is the only true problem in society must stamp out. The show absolutely does not spread the message that nothing is worth fighting for or that disharmony is the only true problem, that's an weird thing to say. If you're going to throw around claims like that you're going to have to bring some pretty good arguments to back it up. Dumb Lowtax posted:That the true onus lies on voters, not rulers, to learn better and to fix things or else get out of the way. The true onus DOES lie on voters, and learning more and being better informed (which is what this show is all about) is an essential element of that. That's how democracy is supposed to work, and that's the only way that actual solutions have any chance of being enacted.
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Apr 8, 2019 12:36
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John Oliver constantly brings up problems and then maybe not fully setup a large scale solution, but he always, always, always highly encourages and supports people to inform themselves, make up a mind on their own, decide what they want to do if they do want to do something about it and they spend thousands of dollars for ridiculous but yet informative portions. Be it that they buy URLs to circumvent the FCC trying to shutdown discussion by having every comment going through an ridiculous amount of forms, be it that they buy ad time on various networks to raise awareness of a problem, even if that problem is just the POTUS not knowing what he's doing or asking fans of sports to use their voice and power they have due to being customers to at least make problems heard. As snowglobe said, it's unrealistic to expect them to sort out solutions for highly complex problems and then try to enact those solutions, they are already busy trying to unfold the problems at hand, explain them carefully and in an appropriate manner for a large scale audience, while constantly pointing out that it's not the job of the viewer to know everything about a certain aspect, as it's incredibly complicated. Holding up the standard that they as an HBO show that runs for 30 minutes are supposed to then propose full scale solutions, at best system wide, is ridiculous, not to say that you might not be happy with what they could propose either as you then would probably demand that they also support your own ideas. That said, just because he's pointing out flaws by the GOP and Trump, he's not exactly enthusiastic about the left all the time either. He has his own mind and along with his staff brings up things that they consider as problems, no matter if left, right, up or down.
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Apr 8, 2019 12:56
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Wow, this one was illuminating for me. I wouldn't think they'd be quite so shameless about how their plan is to squeeze the poor til they're dry, even in their ghoulish little seminars, but here we are. It's a measure of how good their wordplay game is that I didn't immediately establish "manufactured home" = "mobile home" -- John only described it as "a home that's put together elsewhere and moved to the site" versus a home built onsite, and the title graphic for the story showed what looked like a small home surrounded by grass, and I kept thinking "what's so bad about that?" until I realized they were talking about trailer parks. Why do they only ever decrease in value? Are they just made from much shittier materials than real homes? Good lord, why would you ever want to do this? What on earth is the benefit over just renting an apartment or condo? It doesn't even look like it's really much cheaper -- apparently the price of the home itself is around $50k or ($100k for a double) and the lot rent can range from $300-600 monthly depending on where you live. I suppose after you pay off the trailer itself, you own THAT and just have to pay lot rent for the rest of your life, sure hope that doesn't ever go up...
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Apr 8, 2019 14:39
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Phenotype posted:Why do they only ever decrease in value? Are they just made from much shittier materials than real homes? Houses go up in value because of the land rather than the house itself. Over time the house itself just has more damage and wear and tear on it, which brings down its value. Since mobile homes don't have any ownership rights to the land, it makes sense they would only go down in value.
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Apr 8, 2019 15:25
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Also, stigma. I know a few people who bought manufactured homes to install permanently on land that they own. The houses are nice and once the prep work is done, they go in fairly quickly. But, there's no getting around the fact that people look down on trailers, mobile homes, double-wides, etc. That's why that commercial that he aired had the woman saying, in surprise, "you bought a house!" Or "home." I can't remember. But she was careful to say anything other than manufactured home, mobile home, trailer, double-wide, etc. Truth be told, manufactured homes can be better in build quality, because they're made in a factory by people whose job is making that home. Traditionally built houses depend on local contractors who may or may not give any number of fucks about quality control.
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Apr 8, 2019 16:11
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This thread has enlightened me, for now I can not laugh at a joke until the person telling the joke has come up with a serious solution to the sheer absurdity of the situation they are explaining to me.
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Apr 8, 2019 16:33
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I'm a bit disappointed they didn't point out that "mobile home" doesn't come from the homes being mobile
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Apr 8, 2019 17:01
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Dumb Lowtax posted:This show might be helping the left, but it is also part of the problem by spreading the centrist lies that nothing is worth fighting for, that nothing can be different systemwide, and that any attempts to change it are not only a waste of time, but in fact cause disharmony that is the only true problem in society must stamp out. That the true onus lies on voters, not rulers, to learn better and to fix things or else get out of the way.
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Apr 8, 2019 18:05
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:Oh, hey D'arcy If you are like me and spent way to long racking your brain to figure out who the other girl is, its Lauren Adams, who plays Gretchen on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:22
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so after watching last night's episode I saw a local news piece that a friend posted on Facebook from yesterday morning and it's incredibly relevant!"North Liberty mobile home park residents form collective, demand meeting with Havenpark posted:Residents of North Liberty's Golfview Mobile Home Park have voted to form a collective action group in the face of a coming rent hike. i hope these people tell the rich assholes to gently caress off and that said rich assholes do, in fact, gently caress off
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Apr 8, 2019 19:27
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