|
I understand that feeling of this episode leaving a sour feeling. Oliver's better when he's exposing the failures of the state rather than amplifying the state's position. Obviously, I'm not literally referring to the president when I refer to "the state". Trump is, for all intents and purposes, the state now, even if there's friction between him and the deep state. Even if you want to make the case that the U.S. "should talk to its enemies" (like Obama kind of did when he first ran for president), that's not the tone of how Trump is handling Putin. Like not at all. Trump acts like we should drop our guard when it comes to Putin. And U.S. public opinion of Putin has improved somewhat, sadly. I won't lie. I wasn't too concerned with Russia's meddling in the US in part because I believed it was a way for liberals to externalize Trump as something un-American rather than looking inwards at the problems in the US that helped enable Trump. I'm finally admitting after the whole Flynn thing that there's a lot of smoke.
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 18:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 08:40 |
|
|
Sivart13 posted:
Most other episodes aren't covering a general knowledge issue. Most people don't have a fully formed opinion, or potentially even know, of issues like net neutrality or pharmaceutical companies marketing to doctors. That's where he excels, because these are issues that aren't strictly partisan.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 19:35
|
|
|
I was also not impressed by the low-hangingness of the segment (Putin bad!). However considering the scandal involving Flynn it was impossible to not talk about the elephant in the room, especially since there is a good chance it will come up again and again in different ways, and he probably wanted to get it out of the way in a coherent argument he can point back to in later episodes. In terms of TV dramas, think of it as the boring episode that lays character development foundations. If the Russia ties allegations are true, it's gonna pay dividends throughout the season.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 19:58
|
|
|
I thought trump would provide a whole bunch of content for these late night shows, but it's all the exact same poo poo day in day out show to show and it's not substantially different than the actual news. I get it, Trump bad, piss party, lolrussia. I feel like for us to get anything worthwhile out of this season, Oliver has to pretend Trump doesn't exist, and let every other news/comedy/newscomedy show keep fuckin that chicken.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
Conversely, I really wonder if he could get away with ignoring Trump. I hope he moves to just doing coverage of the week but moves to different in depth storylines.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 22:23
|
|
|
I'd feel annoyed if another major disaster in policy happens with Trump and we're instead focusing on the intricacies of repossession rackets or local tax code loopholes or whatnot. Like, these topics are definitely interesting, but not what I want to learn about when the country's one bad tweet away from launching a nuke and ending the world.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 22:29
|
|
|
JazzFlight posted:I'd feel annoyed if another major disaster in policy happens with Trump and we're instead focusing on the intricacies of repossession rackets or local tax code loopholes or whatnot. Like, these topics are definitely interesting, but not what I want to learn about when the country's one bad tweet away from launching a nuke and ending the world. That's kind of the problem of Trump, though. Everything falls by the wayside because he's SUCH an impending disaster that nobody can focus on anything else. It's a golden age for lovely people to get away with doing lovely things because they know nobody will be paying attention. It would be good if LWT stuck to that to give that kind of stuff the coverage it doesn't get anywhere else.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 22:32
|
|
|
Medullah posted:Conversely, I really wonder if he could get away with ignoring Trump. I hope he moves to just doing coverage of the week but moves to different in depth storylines. Well he can't get away telling the same jokes colbert and noah were telling all week. JazzFlight posted:I'd feel annoyed if another major disaster in policy happens with Trump and we're instead focusing on the intricacies of repossession rackets or local tax code loopholes or whatnot. Like, these topics are definitely interesting, but not what I want to learn about when the country's one bad tweet away from launching a nuke and ending the world. If last week tonight is your only source of information from the outside world, you're hosed either way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
This is exactly why trump is doing all the crazy poo poo he does. It's only been a month and people are already just tired of hearing about it. In 6 months nobody will bat an eye when RBG suddenly comes down with a nasty case of polonium.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 23:10
|
|
|
It is honestly pretty exhausting keeping up with all of the dumb stuff that happens with Trump and the people around him if you have anything else going on in your life. I'd much rather have John Oliver go into semi-random little known things that are horribly broken and can be easily fixed, but I can also see the appeal behind digging a bit deeper into Trump's dumb crap. Then again, I'd also love it if John Oliver would also rake the 3 major news channels over the coals about the dumb poo poo that they do, and why Trump and his supporters actually have some tiny amount of ground when they say "Fake News". Granted they are pointing to a few dozen stories not counting FNC,
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 23:27
|
|
|
Endless mockery is one of the few successful inroads we have to rattle Trump's cage. He doesn't like being made fun of and it causes him to lash out. Wearing on his mental state is about the only way forward at this point in time. He needs to be goaded into behavior that the GOP can't gloss over without risking their positions in the next election.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 23:40
|
|
|
Until the montage I didn't know how many times trump used the line "Wouldn't it be nice if russia was our friends?" that was quite a lot.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2017 23:46
|
|
|
I agree with the sentiment that some of this is Oliver catching up with what he missed during the hiatus. Sooner or later he'll be caught up with everything he wanted to say that we've already heard. But at the same time, he outright said that its just impossible to do the show and ignore the insane poo poo happening around Trump. I like the part of Oliver's show that is talking about issues that don't get talked about, but when the President of the United States is doing the things he's doing he really can't ignore that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 00:14
|
|
|
Pretty good episode even if I knew a bunch of the stuff about Putin. What's kinda frightening is Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of the guys he mentioned was a dissident of Putin was on Samantha Bee's show a few months back talking about how he was poisoned in 2015. Dude has the exact same symptoms Feb 2nd and is in a coma now, so it's a little spooky. I remember talking with my Russian history professor and how he was talking how when he was on the subway in Moscow people on the car all went silent when they were under the former KGB headquarters. Russia is hosed and Putin is dangerous as hell but this isn't exactly uncommon. I think I can still dig jokes about Trump provided it's not the focal point of the show. He's better when he scrutinizes stuff that we generally don't care about. Besides, I can get Trump jokes/hate watching Sam Bee / Daily Show / Colbert for thirty minutes. He himself said he was more interested in covering stuff nobody has heard of, especially worldy events. We get plenty of current US politics events by watching or reading literally anything else than a program on Sundays. "A Racist Voodoo Doll Made of Discarded Cat Hair" and "A Clear Plastic Bag Filled with Cheeseburgers and Confederate Belt Buckles" got me laughing pretty hard though. Servaetes fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 00:35
|
|
|
I feel like this show is doing the best at capturing the appropriate level of incredulity for current events.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 00:53
|
|
|
Medullah posted:Conversely, I really wonder if he could get away with ignoring Trump. I hope he moves to just doing coverage of the week but moves to different in depth storylines. Like the Election, I think it will eventually move to "lets see the crazy poo poo he did this week" at the start of the episode then move on to something else. Baronash posted:Most other episodes aren't covering a general knowledge issue. Most people don't have a fully formed opinion, or potentially even know, of issues like net neutrality or pharmaceutical companies marketing to doctors. That's where he excels, because these are issues that aren't strictly partisan. With the way the Election went and the massive misunderstanding of things like statistics, the media and what is actually going on in the world/country, I'd argue the points John is making are not "general knowledge". With that said, I guess he is once again preaching to the choir, but if I was him, I'd still want to vent and would feel that they are important points that need to be made. For me as a foreigner, although I recognise the insanity of this Trump stuff, it's fascinating hearing more in depth pieces that explain things like how he gets away with it, why people believe it, how we got here etc.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 02:28
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:I agree with the sentiment that some of this is Oliver catching up with what he missed during the hiatus. Sooner or later he'll be caught up with everything he wanted to say that we've already heard. But at the same time, he outright said that its just impossible to do the show and ignore the insane poo poo happening around Trump. I like the part of Oliver's show that is talking about issues that don't get talked about, but when the President of the United States is doing the things he's doing he really can't ignore that. I think the day of Trump's insane press conference, that made everyone say "wow", one of the late night shows made a point to describe a segment they worked on that had little to do with Trump directly, and then the news conference happened so they had to ditch the segment. It's easy to say "Oh, just ignore Trump and talk about other things." The problem is that Trump is the President of the United States of America and is a goddamn nutjob of Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon grade. Ignoring the crazy poo poo Trump did this week is like refusing to put Godzilla destroys Tokyo on the front page because man it would be nice to talk about how Godzilla's buddy is also a scary monster even if he isn't currently destroying Tokyo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 03:04
|
|
|
And honestly, there's a kind of social responsibility here because the second the late night hosts say "eh, Trump did something scary and outrageous but we're tired of that so we're going to talk about something smaller" is the day it all becomes normalized.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 03:09
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:And honestly, there's a kind of social responsibility here because the second the late night hosts say "eh, Trump did something scary and outrageous but we're tired of that so we're going to talk about something smaller" is the day it all becomes normalized. That's essentially it. The moment we stop going WTF, it's normalized. That's the #1 message that Oliver gave when the break started. Not talking about it out of fatigue is the worst thing that can be done now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 03:27
|
|
|
Well if we get 4 years of every comedy show being an hour long Trump Dump when the actual media is already spending 23 hours a day attacking it, people will just stop watching, it just becomes noise, and like others have said, it lets other terrible shitlords sneak under the radar like all the ridiculously lovely things state governments are doing behind trump's smoke show. We know trump did terrible things yesterday, we know he's going to do terrible things tomorrow. If you want to know exactly what go to any news website or channel at any hour of the day. Comedy shows joking about something other than Trump won't normalize his behaviour, comedy shows incessantly joking only about trump won't stop him. This one wouldn't have even been so bad if it was something often unexplored with Trump, but it was exactly what every other show talked about all week. LWT had a unique voice in finding and showcasing terrible things that rarely make it beyond the human interest section and they've completely lost that. It's not John Oliver's job to impeach Trump. It's John Olver's job to pique my interest and make me laugh, and he doesn't do that when his show is indistinguishable from TDS or full frontal or fox and friends or morning joe. At least those last 2 can talk directly to trump every morning.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 04:10
|
|
|
Take it easy and have a little bit more faith in John. I am sure he has a hit list to work through and going after Putin is a valid target on the list.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 04:35
|
|
|
Gyges posted:I think the day of Trump's insane press conference, that made everyone say "wow", one of the late night shows made a point to describe a segment they worked on that had little to do with Trump directly, and then the news conference happened so they had to ditch the segment. Edit: The segment in question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar-XQGtoB6o pwn fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Feb 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 06:07
|
|
|
Pretty sure Trevor Noah said the same thing. That's the point. They can prepare other topics but if the President calls the media the enemy of America or his top advisor resigns because he's been lying about his connections to Russia or the President makes him a terrorist attack that leads the country in question to publicly question him... Well it's going to overshadow a story on gerry mandering or something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 06:17
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:That's the point. They can prepare other topics but if the President calls the media the enemy of America or his top advisor resigns because he's been lying about his connections to Russia or the President makes him a terrorist attack that leads the country in question to publicly question him... Well it's going to overshadow a story on gerry mandering or something. Who cares? This isn't The Newsroom; they don't need to throw out the rundown because Trump said something stupid. They can ignore it and do the story on gerrymandering rather than being the 239th person to cover whatever dumb bullshit spilled out of Trump's mouth that day.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 07:12
|
|
|
Maybe he doesn't want to ignore something he thinks is important because some of his viewers might be at max consumption? I mean, the guy literally apologized for it in this episode and said as much.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 07:17
|
|
|
If he desperately wants to cover the ins and outs of the administration, then I guess that's his prerogative. But he probably shouldn't, because he's not a news network, and it's definitely led to his weakest episodes.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 07:28
|
|
|
I just think it's reasonable to give him a pass as he catches up to what he missed and figures out the new state of things, especially since he owned up to as much in the episode and asked for that pass. In two or three weeks from now if he's still doing 30 minutes of Trump or Trump related content then it's a different conversation and maybe the show has become something else that some of its viewers don't like. But that time hasn't come yet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 07:41
|
|
|
Not only is he catching up, but these have been two very eventful weeks in politics, and ignoring them would have been very weird. Eventually Trump is going to settle down and be no crazier than expected, and no major developments will be taking place every week, and at that point I'd expect the show will shift its focus elsewhere.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
TyrantWD posted:Not only is he catching up, but these have been two very eventful weeks in politics, and ignoring them would have been very weird. Eventually Trump is going to settle down and be no crazier than expected, and no major developments will be taking place every week, and at that point I'd expect the show will shift its focus elsewhere. Oh you sweet summer child
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2017 23:19
|
|
|
TyrantWD posted:Not only is he catching up, but these have been two very eventful weeks in politics, and ignoring them would have been very weird. Eventually Trump is going to settle down and be no crazier than expected, and no major developments will be taking place every week, and at that point I'd expect the show will shift its focus elsewhere. people still believe this?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2017 02:14
|
|
|
TXT BOOTY7 2 47474 posted:people still believe this? Apparently. Though, I agree in a way...not that I think Trump will stop doing crazy, alarming stuff, but that the sustained craziness of his actions will start to feel routine, like we're frogs in boiling water. Maybe at that point, the show will stop focusing as much on the madness of it all. "Sure, we're living in that Twilight Zone episode about the 9-year-old who can manipulate reality, but let's talk about financial regulations!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2017 03:00
|
|
|
mainstream news outlets apologizing to their watchers for news overconsumption is absolutely precious, though http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...4b0860f99daec81
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2017 04:21
|
|
|
The episode was pretty weak. A lot of the "Pro-Putin Trump clips" were taken out of context. Yes, he said it wouldn't be great if we got a long with Putin, but he said during a long list of "wouldn't it be great if we got along with *insert nation/group the US has poor relations with*?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2017 19:18
|
|
|
coyo7e posted:I think you've been off of the internet, and TV, and radio for a very long while if you somehow believe stuff like SJW and trigger warning are somehow new terms which popped up over this election cycle. That's not fair at all. I admittedly wasn't reading ANYTHING between the election and the inauguration, but these terms popped up in like 2 months and took everything over and it's really obvious from my pov. I live right outside DC. My friends and their families are maybe 90% involved in the political system or government agencies in general, and although it is technically anecdotal, I get most of my news from the people who are actually involved in the government itself, and I don't see how watching a shitload of youtube videos by hilarious right-wing idiots would have made me a more impartial or better consumer of news.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2017 19:54
|
|
|
DoggPickle posted:That's not fair at all. I admittedly wasn't reading ANYTHING between the election and the inauguration, but these terms popped up in like 2 months and took everything over and it's really obvious from my pov. Yeah I guess you just missed it then because SJW has been quite prevalent since the beginning of gamergate.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2017 20:45
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:The episode was pretty weak. A lot of the "Pro-Putin Trump clips" were taken out of context. Yes, he said it wouldn't be great if we got a long with Putin, but he said during a long list of "wouldn't it be great if we got along with *insert nation/group the US has poor relations with*?" I don't think they were, do you have a link to video? I've never seen him be kind to any country as Russia.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2017 21:05
|
|
|
socialsecurity posted:I don't think they were, do you have a link to video? I've never seen him be kind to any country as Russia. I find it surprising that I have to link an example of this. Trump never stopped using the "wouldn't it be nice?" line. He always used it right before or after his "why we against Iran? just leave them alone and kill ISIS."
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:I find it surprising that I have to link an example of this. Trump never stopped using the "wouldn't it be nice?" line. He always used it right before or after his "why we against Iran? just leave them alone and kill ISIS." He literally has been threatening towards Iran on multiple occasions to the point people are sure he wants a war with them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 01:10
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:The episode was pretty weak. A lot of the "Pro-Putin Trump clips" were taken out of context. Yes, he said it wouldn't be great if we got a long with Putin, but he said during a long list of "wouldn't it be great if we got along with *insert nation/group the US has poor relations with*?" Sorry youre a moron
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 04:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 08:40 |
|
|
socialsecurity posted:He literally has been threatening towards Iran on multiple occasions to the point people are sure he wants a war with them. Okay, that was a terrible example, but my point still stands he often says "wouldn't it be nice if *insert something here we have negative relations with" were better. huge pile of hamburger posted:Sorry youre a moron What a cunning argument.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2017 09:08
|
|