{"id":66677,"date":"2017-02-20T21:40:33","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=66677"},"modified":"2017-02-20T21:46:06","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:46:06","slug":"john-oliver-is-an-idiot-or-why-you-shouldnt-get-your-news-from-a-comedian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=66677","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver Is An Idiot, Or Why You Shouldn\u2019t Get Your News From A Comedian"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Rob Port
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I dislike John Oliver.<\/p>\n

In fact, I dislike the whole comedian-doing-news-and-analysis schtick, and not just because Oliver was fantastically unfair to North Dakota recently<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If it were just comedy, then fine. We all like to laugh, and people like Oliver and Jon Stewart are hugely talented, and sometimes they even get it right (I\u2019ll admit to liking Oliver\u2019s segment on civil asset forfeiture<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The thing is, people take them seriously. Many in the public treat their polemics and diatribes as thoughtful analysis and responsible journalism. Oliver and Stewart know that, of course, yet\u00a0when they get called out by more serious commentators, Stewart and Oliver shrug their shoulders and use their comedian status as a get out of jail free card<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re just\u00a0entertainers<\/em>, you see.<\/p>\n

“They\u2019re just\u00a0entertainers<\/em>,
\nyou see.”<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a handy dodge, to be sure, but Oliver specifically may not be able to dodge the mess he\u2019s stepped in on the refugee issue.<\/p>\n

Back in September Oliver lit into critics of refugee resettlement (view that segment here<\/a> on Oliver\u2019s YouTube channel). \u201cHe mocked the idea that terrorists would, or could, infiltrate Europe with Syrian migrants, and invited his flock to laugh at the heathens who thought maybe they could,\u201d Ace writes<\/a> of Oliver\u2019s 17 minute rant.<\/p>\n

But then the attacks in Paris happened, and it turns out that critics of refugee resettlement maybe sort of have a point about the whole infiltration thing.<\/p>\n

How did Oliver react? He certainly didn\u2019t muster\u00a0the intellectual honesty to address his previous verbal assault on critics of refugee resettlement. Instead Oliver, 48 hours after the Paris attacks, devoted two minutes to the issue calling the terrorists \u201cf***ing assholes\u201d<\/a> and suggesting that they aren\u2019t going to win \u201ca Lifestyle and Culture war with the French.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not a word about refugee policy, a topic Oliver covered extensively not so long ago. Nor any pause to recognize that the terrorists\u00a0most decidedly are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0fighting a\u00a0culture war. They\u2019re fighting a real war with real bullets and real bombs and real people being murdered.<\/p>\n

Oliver doesn\u2019t address it, no doubt because it is inconvenient for his left-wing narrative, not to mention his posturing as a smug commentator who is right about everything. Which\u00a0is about what you\u2019d expect from a pseudo-intellectual\u00a0clown who hides his vapidity behind his status as\u00a0entertainer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ace<\/a> describes Oliver and his ilk\u00a0as \u201cprogressive televangelists.\u201d That sounds about right to me.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.sayanythingblog.com\/entry\/john-oliver-is-an-idiot-or-why-you-shouldnt-get-your-news-from-a-comedian\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}