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MinionOfCthulhu posted:Alls I can say about this show is first off, it better not interrupt The Bugle like last week Its a reference to Russia using its position as a major gas supplier in the wake of the Ukraine crisis as political leverage, particularly the none too subtle threats about the prices Ukraine would now have to pay in order to get its regular gas supply. Of course, most gas stations can't keep UN resolutions from being passed, likely arm militia groups, and in general be run by a Bond villain. One of the things I loved most was the potential implication that John is more aware of global politics because he bothers to continue watching the BBC.
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Apr 29, 2014 18:22
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and secondly-
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More to the point, John was lampooning the State at large for having commissioned that advert whilst the thing it was advertising wasn't working. Like having an ad for the new Godzilla movie still claiming its coming mid-May when its on an indefinite delay. Something which the dude running the Ad Agency somehow admits to anyway given the way he's tries to distance them from the website. Its just... weird.
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May 2, 2014 22:50
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Agreed. As a Brit, I can understand John wanting to generally lay out where he's coming from if and when he takes another stand in future on the matter. I suppose this is a gross example, but when people complain about superheroes like Superman or Batman refusing to kill (outside of recent film incarnations, admittedly), they don't seem to understand the concept that some people really do not see the Death Penalty as an immediate answer. I do think though that adding the 'And Now' for the little segments where ad breaks would normally be really does help with going from one segment to the next. Just feels... like there's more of a flow, I guess.
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May 5, 2014 11:57
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Thurm posted:The official Youtube channel put up two web exclusive videos. Man, with only his first episode, he got two separate corporations (albeit of varying sizes) to respond to his segments. I seriously want to see who else he takes shots at, if it'll be like this.
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May 5, 2014 18:45
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...The best/worse realisation from this is that now we know how aware John is that he no longer has to give a drat about this little thing called 'censors'.
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May 12, 2014 14:35
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zoux posted:LWT seems more willing to take a position than the other two, at least. Probably helps that HBO is a subscription based service, and currently enjoys massive success with ever rising ratings for Game of Thrones. John doesn't have to give too much of a drat about viewership ratings - though obviously dipping too low is still a problem - because its unlikely he'll be a massive determining factor in whether or not people are paying for the service. That's Game Of Thrones' job, and its unlikely a show like John's would ever get axed to put the budget to better use when he doesn't need all that much of a budget.
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May 13, 2014 20:42
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:You've also got to love how Bill begins to explain the human cost of having to move everyone away from the coast and one of those psychotic fuckwits says "But if we have money it'll be okay, right?" At this point, I'm not all that uncertain Colbert's remarks/implications (I realise, wrong thread) that these people nigh-on worship capitalism is accurate. They prioritise a goddamn economic system over seemingly everything else, whether its fair politics, education, welfare, even their own supposed faith and adherence to a religion where the main dude's #1 rule was 'love people'. They'd be blowing a gasket if they knew about the AstraZeneca/Pfizer talks over here, because the government dares to involve itself with the dealings of big business to make sure it won't end up screwing us over in the long run.
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May 14, 2014 20:17
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I think the interview worked because it was more akin to the kind that tends to happen mid-show on TDS and TCR - rather than someone stepping on to promote a book or whatever, Oliver was asking Zakaria to better clarify the political situation. It flowed from and continued the commentary, and I honestly don't think this episode's coverage would have been complete without it.
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May 19, 2014 11:03
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Jesus loving Christ, Oliver is going absolutely nuts with this new show, and it is beautiful. The only thing he honestly missed with the Fifa segment, as part of the whole religion analogy, is that it also raises the hopes of millions, dashes them repeatedly and with certainty, yet they'll still cash in on a blind hope that maybe this is their year. For England especially, its like some kind of trauma we're just not willing to address. And yet, we're still gonna be tuning in.
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Jun 9, 2014 12:16
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Y-Hat posted:I understand John's point about how America should be above the politics of xenophobia because of the fact that we're a nation of immigrants while European countries aren't, but isn't our hilariously complex immigration system more or less par for the course in the grand scheme of things? Australia treats immigrants detained on Manus Island so badly that it caught the attention of Amnesty International, and good luck getting asylum in most European countries. John barely scratched the surface of Britain's (England's especially) sordid past with the treatment of immigrants. See, post WW2 we had a massive influx because, well, the Commonwealth/Empire and a bunch of other nations have kinda saved our asses, so as a general 'thanks', almost anyone who fought in our name (save Gurkhas, a matter which was actually only resolved very recently) was given a pass to come and settle. Naturally, the government somewhat underestimated how much interest there was for that, and soon enough a great number of immigrants were on the way (including my grandfather, previously of the polish resistance). And since people in the fifties and sixties were much more willing to be open about their bigoted attitudes (though the likes of UKIP have made it attractive again), poo poo got very tense as race riots erupted and folks like Enoch Powell made his infamous 'River of Blood' speech. Studying that period of our history was part of the History curriculum here with very good reason, and I'm legitimately worried given how UKIP ended up the most popular of the UK parties in the European Election.
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Jun 16, 2014 17:42
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Anyone who uses the guise of Christianity to spread hate speech, from televangelists like Pat Robertson and Glenn Beck to the religious right of this country. It'd be nice, and I'm saying this as a Catholic, for there to be more popular and well known atheists that weren't subsequently known to also be dicks about it. Religions need critics in order to improve, both from within and from without, or otherwise it just ends up a damned echo chamber, and the echo can be quite disastrous. Stewart and his associates delve into it at times, but they're more on the 'this is how its supposed to work you nitwits' end of the spectrum, rather than a direct deconstruction and weighing of values therein. I'm occasionally left wondering sometimes what would have happened if the Red Scare weren't a thing, and America hadn't buckled down so fervently on God and Capitalism so as to distance themselves from the Soviets. I mean, its around and in the aftermath of that, that a lot of the current idiots seem to have come out of.
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Jun 18, 2014 21:24
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IRQ posted:Problem is the two sides that engage in these conversations have made it pretty central to their identity. The angry atheist very much included. For the atheist who doesn't believe and sees no reason to make it part of their lives it's just a non-issue, like not being a vegan, or not playing golf. I suppose one way a person might frame it, is having the argument as 'here is how you can love and have a fulfilled life without needing a spiritual/religious reinforcement', rather than 'religion sucks, ruins everything, and here's why!'. But that does vary somewhat, as naturally the reasons for Atheism vary as well. Sometimes its, as television most commonly depicts, disagreement with or dissent against religious belief, whether one a person has previously had or that they see in others - ie, the whole 'how can there be a God if bad stuff happens?!' train of thought. For others, they - fairly enough - do not see sufficient evidence that supports the existence of some kind of higher power, and are satisfied to base their life and existence in things that can be tested, verified, and proven, finding certainty in things that are actually certain. For others, they do not need a god of any kind because they instead have the natural beauty of the universe itself, a vast, intricate mechanism that is so many regards far easier to understand, based in mechanics and logic, yet at such an unfathomable scale that it brings out true awe. Needless to say, the kind of Catholic upbringing I had, both from family and from my schools, was fairly open minded. RE wasn't just reinforcement of our own faith - but quite often studying and understand others, or the lack thereof. Hearing the way some places handle it in the States (though I imagine its more than just there) makes me shudder.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:12
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The funny thing is, earlier this week I attended by sister's leaver's mass (Catholic secondary school, its a thing they do), and the presiding priest was from Uganda, specifically because of how his church is twinned with our local one. He's been in the country a few times before, with the last time I saw him personally being at Christmas mass last year. He has an unfortunate tendency to... rant, with long, overly drawn out speeches when he's not sticking to the actual parts of the ceremony, particularly with regards to the role of women in society. Now I realise its not immediately relatable with the issues faced by the LGBT community over there, but listening to him speak, and trying to think of what context his words could particularly make sense in whilst sounding so earnest and progressive (whereas in stopping to think about what he was saying, every part of my family felt more than a little put off), you start to get a picture of just how messed up things can be over there. Like, here we'll point out that a woman should be and is free to wear whatever she feels like so long as it doesn't violate public indecency laws, because yeah, she's her own person and has the right to freely choose her attire, with anyone who then claims they were 'asking for it' in the event of an assault being kind of an rear end in a top hat. But from the way the priest put it, a woman in Uganda has to be extremely considerate of how she dresses because it has a significant chance of keeping her safe - for context, just before he'd gone on the bit about women in the leaver's mass, he had devoted a good chunk of his segment on men to being about good self-restraint. And that's just dealing with gender equality, let alone gay and transsexual rights. And of course I'm seeing all this as a British person, so yeah, legacy of responsibility and all that.
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Jun 30, 2014 12:55
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Kevyn posted:My hometown paper, which unfortunately is also Scott Lively's hometown paper, had an article about Oliver's segment featuring some choice quotes from Lively The hilarious bit about this is that either the article omitted them (which is then on them rather than Oliver), or Lively never actually bothered to counter anything in Oliver's rant other than the fact that he had made the rant and painted Lively negatively. I mean geez, this will sound weird, but Bill O'Reilly at least when called out on his bullshit can at least be bothered to try and specifically counter points raised against him. Here, what is Lively actually saying other than 'John was mean and tried to paint me like I'm crazy'?
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Jul 2, 2014 16:44
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raditts posted:He was hardly the only one that went over there and encouraged that poo poo, IIRC quite a few congressmen that are part of that creepy "C Street" mini-cult played a part too. It's not that insane at all, it's a regular right-wing tactic. Go all extreme and spout out a bunch of crazy poo poo to get your audience all riled up and scared, then when one of them is inspired by you to commit murder you wring your hands and go all "oh no, that isn't what I meant at all, I have no part in this tragic event." ...drat, I take back what I said. I mean, yeah he sometimes defends himself but... Jesus loving Christ. Wasn't aware of this.
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Jul 2, 2014 20:31
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Ape Agitator posted:
And then finally if a breather is needed, "And now, this." Because gently caress that guy. An article I found suspected that part of what may be helping John succeed is that he uses his British origins as a means of self-deprecation, both bringing him down whilst also introducing how certain aspects of American society seem from an outside perspective. The bit where he explains on how Britons tend to know roughly what class they're in and base their plans ahead on that (though there is some social mobility, as my own parents have proved) is a good example of both at the same time.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:56
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...Holy hell. How can nuclear weapon safety in the country that first dropped the bomb be like this? Shouldn't there be some kind of requirement to have this stuff updated and brought up to par at least once in a while? ...Then again, par might be rather low in some cases...
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Jul 28, 2014 12:16
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nuzak posted:Seeing as his point on wealth inequality began with an impassioned defense of inequality in principle, I don't see why anyone should assume that LWT would take the left's perspective on Israel. Maybe after a lot of decrying Hamas rockets and terrorism and Israel's right to exist. I wouldn't really call John's defense 'impassioned', when he compared it to cinnamon 'adding a bit of spice' to life, and then followed it up by lampooning how the severity of the wealth gap could be - and pretty much is - a problem that needs serious curbing before it gets already more out of hand than it already has, and how many people's optimism that the system being so heavily rigged doesn't matter so long as they're one of the lucky ones really isn't helping. As to him commentating on Israel or not, I wouldn't be surprised if his views were more in the realms of criticising it (certainly Israel doesn't see as much love here in the UK, when you have men like Jon Snow ripping in the Israeli spokesperson right on the air, and opinions of it were 72% negative as of a 2013 bbc world service poll), but he may be careful on trying to directly address it. After all, it pretty much involves a quandary of hot button topics (the middle east, US involvement, a US ally, terrorism, anti-semitism, military support, etc, etc) that even Oliver may be a bit cautious in how many he dares to press at once - which is made harder when seemingly all the buttons are hotwired to go off at once.
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Jul 31, 2014 11:52
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The British Empire was a very mixed bag when it came to carving out its Empire. Sometimes, we'd be clever, and support local lords favourable to our cause, and then using both financial and military support, make them reliant on us to a point wherein we would simply wield de facto control before taking over (see: the Carnatic Wars, followed by the effective subjugation of the Mughal Lords). Sometimes, we'd, to paraphrase Blackadder, simply make sure that the enemy didn't have guns before going in. And sometimes, we'd still gently caress it up anyway because nobody had enough foresight (or enough care to have foresight) to double check where we drew country borders or how we had balanced economic systems (see again: India, specifically how we bled Bengal dry from the richest of India's provinces to one of its poorest, though time has healed some of the damage). So yes, cartoon supervillains - starting out each episode's scheme somewhat conniving and tricky, before finding some way to stupidly screw it up in the most obviously avoidable fashion by the twenty minute mark so we could ultimately be thwarted. On the episode itself, having just watched it (catching up from a week's holiday), I'm officially glad that we have a news organisation actually paid out of the TV license. Means we don't have to worry about advertising issues like these.
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Aug 8, 2014 15:24
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BigRed0427 posted:Since I accidently posted in The Daily Show thread, here is what I posted. There is literally a game series called Diplomacy, which mostly deals with internal politics rather than international relations, and is basically winnable if you throw on a carbon emissions tax from the get go, since you'll eventually generate enough money to budget anything. I may have also poked John's official twitter about checking it out, though I will admit to doubting if he'll see it.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:08
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Gonz posted:Wow, the Brits really have dropped the ball on their case to maintain the union, haven't they? Its a mixed bag scenario, partly stemming from how the two sides can't possibly overlap their priorities entirely. The Yes campaign wants to prioritise Scotland, whilst of course the No campaign is looking at how their independence could adversely affect the rest of the UK. So each side has to set things so that the other side doesn't really matter so much, or make a half-assed attempt to somehow claim that the vote - whatever way it goes - won't have any negative consequences whatsoever. Of course, I'm not exactly in the best position to commentate, given I live in one of the few major urban areas that's actually managed to benefit from Westminster's London-centric economic policies - and that's largely because its close enough to London to not be inconvenient, but far enough out its cheaper for companies to set up branches here. Personally, from a historical and cultural perspective at least, I would prefer for Scotland to stay, but its not exactly hard to see where their various grievances are coming from, with the sheer geographical - and consequently economical - differences. My family kinda wishes that, if the Union were preserved, that there might be some steps to actually create a more federal Great Britain, with the administration of England (and perhaps London as well) devolved away from a government that should be looking out for the entire thing, and not just the sizeable pocket making them the most money. gently caress, move it to an island in the Irish Sea so its at least closer symbolically to being between them all, since we no longer live in an age where instantaneous communication over vast distances is impossible, and the monarchy and/or government no longer has to be within easy range of campaigning a war against whatever European nation we managed to piss off this week.
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Sep 15, 2014 12:21
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MikeJF posted:Please tell me in the interests of journalistic honesty John did, in fact, tweet 'u up' to that One Direction kid before the show. That is one hundred times better than what I expected 
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Sep 15, 2014 18:33
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I think it helps that Oliver and his crew have the rest of the week to decide, research, and then summarise whatever issue they want, as opposed to going from night to night with maybe a weekend extra to get set up. As a result, whilst he'll use the first half to maybe react to things, the latter segment is clearly planned out and likely well set up before hand, which makes it easier to get songs written, guest stars available, etc.
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Sep 22, 2014 18:33
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:Oliver was saying they were researching the Miss America thing well into the eleventh hour, though. Could be the numbers in this case were that impenetrable, but I don't think they put the full week's time into it. That said, I don't think they could do this four nights a week either. Oh, I don't imagine they use the full time, but its like, they've got the first few days to mull over to themselves just what they might wanna look into, and then spend maybe several days before the show doing the research. As to the research for this being right up to the last minute, I think they just had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:23
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thehustler posted:Was the show on last night? The twitter account certainly claims it, but found nothing yet.
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Oct 6, 2014 12:13
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OhYeah posted:I'm sorry to say but the same loving over of translators happens in some European countries as well. I remember signing a petition last year over Afghan interpreters that had helped British troops, but since the thing was delivered to Number 10, there really hasn't been any news on how its progressed (or hasn't). The closest thing I can find as followup is a report back in June that three Afghan interpreters were taking the government to court on how the policy regarding Afghan interpreters (general gist: You still had to be working with the army and be doing so for twelve months or more) was absolute bollocks. I cannot find any follow up to that story anywhere.
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Oct 20, 2014 11:30
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Otto von Ruthless posted:
As they say on Melee Island™: When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice!
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Nov 3, 2014 20:43
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democracy in action.
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JohnSherman posted:He should see how far he can go with this. A well placed Falklands war joke could lengthen the list even further. I'm not entirely convinced that this wouldn't actually start a new Falklands War.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:22
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Is it just me, or does 'Let's remove Maybe from their vocabulary' sound kinda rape-y? Kinda gives away the whole 'smoke our product or else' vibe.
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Feb 16, 2015 15:21
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Random Stranger posted:Of course, maintenance is always the toughest thing to get people to spend money on effectively. Do it right and the people holding the purse strings start going, "Well, why the gently caress do we need you? Everything is fine!" It gets extra problematic because of the differing degrees to which one considers 'sufficient' in terms of repairs. Ie, do you want it to last twenty years, ten, or just fill in the hole ASAP? My brother works at one of the rail companies here in Britain, and whilst he's only been employed for half a year now, he's quickly discovered the very precarious balance between getting the most for their money whilst staying under budget and not inciting anger due to delays.
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Mar 2, 2015 17:33
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My bank's idea of 'security' is basically just to do two passwords but with different inputs. One you type standard and all, the second you have to select three letters/numbers from drop down menus, based on the specified character from within whatever you put for the second code. Ie, you select the 1st, 2nd, and 7th characters, whilst next time you might have to pick the 2nd, 5th, and 10th characters. I have no clue as to the math involved so I'm not sure if that's better or worse protection really.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:52
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Having just run 8 dollars through a currency converter, that's about the standard price for a whole chicken over here in the UK. Onto the actual subject of the episode, its unfortunately one of the most damning aspects of an increasingly global economy, particularly one that is heavily disparate in terms of working standards and wages. Unfortunately, trying to solve it runs into all sorts of issues regarding corporate culture, both from the massive companies that ultimately fund (and seek out, whether directly or indirectly) such cheap labour so as to maximise profits, and those countries where having any work is seen as good work, especially for families living in perpetual poverty. So its not just a matter of being more stringent on contractors so that they don't just seek out the lowest bidder, but trying to get global economic standards up to a point, along with cultural standards, that families aren't willing or forced to put up with this crap because they really, really need the money. This is, much as conservatives loath the concept, why particularly rich and powerful nations have a benefits system for those out of work.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:08
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Gyges posted:None of that is nearly as stylish as Nazis. Which is probably one of the biggest reasons they're so popular. If we didn't have gently caress Nazis deeply embedded in our cultures, and didn't have a vast supply of grandpas with war stories about fighting Hitler or grandpas/grandmas with Holocaust stories, I could maybe see Nazis having a chance at culturally being more than evil incarnate. Pretty much. Especially in Europe, which of course got the direct end of Hitler's ambition stick, there is very much the cultural recognition of how horrible that was and why you can't touch it without very clearly intending to vilify or belittle the Nazis as a result. But in South East Asia its more of an academic understanding than a personal, cultural one. Especially when you also consider that most of their media is produced by and for themselves, the people who would be particularly offended aren't in Thailand. To an increasingly globalised west that's a massive oversight, but not necessarily the case outside of that.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:44
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I guess as a point of comparison you could look at how they talk about Pol Pot. He might not have gone around conquering people like Hitler but he was still horrible and much more local to SE Asia. I don't actually know how he's treated there but that might be a good barometer on their attitudes towards genocide in general. A somewhat specific example within the west would be the treatment of Oliver Cromwell. A lot of people see him as a champion of early democracy, breaking the power of feudal monarchs, so forth. The Irish don't generally take kindly to that view. njsykora posted:Sepp Blatter just resigned as FIFA president. Oliver has got to be kicking himself for blowing the load on a sequel report too early.
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Jun 2, 2015 18:16
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A fair enough point. Also, John may well do it. Edit: And now the show twitter is getting in on it. Astro Nut fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 19:19
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...That bit on bail was loving terrifying. Do the shows at least double check that the people being hunted have at least something to give audience sympathy for the bounty hunters, or does nobody actually care what the targets did or didn't do?
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Jun 8, 2015 18:27
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He really wants to paint this as the heroic stand of a local boy against the TYRANNY of... comedians. Okay, I get the complaint that Oliver's bit was possibly (if not probably) in some way offensive to the population of Trinidad and Tobago (personally, I'm a little surprised Warner didn't go with the angle of British colonialism for calling John out). But he's making this sound like the beginning of the end for their culture for simply allowing Oliver to buy a couple of minutes to have such mockery take place.
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Jun 12, 2015 12:57
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SlothfulCobra posted:Man, I thought the whole gamergate debacle was over by now. Its the double edged sword of things. The wild west analogy works fairly well, since to go with the freedom the 'untamed landscape' allows, where people can do a lot of stuff they never could before and achieve where otherwise they might have failed (even just as a casual thing, I regularly speak to people from the USA, Sweden, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia. When I was born that would be mindblowing), you have tonnes of 'bandits' who care little for social norms and know there is little in place to stop them. Btw: What is John's little pyrotechnics display from? Might have missed an episode due to being on a field school.
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Jun 22, 2015 21:47
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Most of the Abolitionist groups believed God wanted them to end slavery...and good handful more were anti-slavery simply because they were so personally racist that they felt the best course of action was freeing them just to send them right back to Africa before some liberally-minded government in the near or far future could make miscegenation legal. You've got to hand it to us - our racism's so wonderfully complex that we even flirted with expatriaxenoracism. Hell, we still do if they're Salvadorean! I wouldn't necessarily give yourselves too much flak in that regard - that same strategy was actually advocated by numerous black leaders around the first half of the 19th century. The exact reasons why varied, from feeling that it was 'going home' (forgetting of course that most African Americans had never been to Africa), to a belief that racial integration and harmony was so impossible that it was literally easier just to take every black person in the USA across the Atlantic. Though, from what I've been able to piece together, apparently some history courses for schools in the USA just sorta... skip events after the end of the civil war. I apologise, being an outside observer looking in and all, but it seems like a weird omission given the relative cultural significance, compared to say, learning about the Tudors.
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Jun 25, 2015 07:59
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Thanks for the additional insight. Admittedly, my look into things was itself somewhat specialised (history GCSE, done around ages 15-16), so I suppose its not an apt comparison, but it still proves fascinating to contrast. Though, to Cheshire specifically, one of the oddly most useful subjects I had in secondary school for learning about other cultures was RE. Sure, as a Catholic school, Christianity ended up the focus for our later tests, but years 8 and 9 were dedicated to Islam and Hinduism respectively. I'm not sure if that's because my town is relatively diverse (only around 65% White British as of the last census), or the school being more open minded, or some other reason. But it was really, really drat useful.
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Jun 25, 2015 08:49
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