For years, the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver YouTube channel used to be one of the best channels in existence, and I was a subscriber and an avid follower.
The show itself has much more content, and runs on HBO, and the YouTube channel only posts excerpts; individual stories. However, these used to be really, really interesting for the most part. It used to be one of the last bastions of actual investigative journalism, and many of their stories were extremely illuminating and interesting, and have taught me a lot.
For example the story FIFA and the World Cup is one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever seen, even though it uses (as all their other stories) copious amounts of humor. I would recommend this video to anybody. The channel is (well, was) in fact full of very interesting stories about all sorts of sociopolitical issues, such as predatory lending, civil forfeiture, multilevel marketing, and so on and so forth.
The show has always been quite left-leaning, "blue-pilled" so to speak, but that has only occasionally shown. There was a story about the "wage gap", which is one of their weakest episodes by far (and I'm not just saying it; it really has some of the least amount of research and references, compared to their average episode). A few episodes have some leftist agenda claims, but it happened quite rarely. Overall it happened so rarely that it wasn't at all bothering.
Then Donald Trump got elected the president of the United States, and the channel went completely down the drain, at one fell swoop.
While previously the channel discussed all kinds of sociopolitical issues (with only a slight left-leaning agenda here and there), after the election it has become a full-on anti-Trump propaganda channel.
John Oliver simply cannot shut up about Trump. Every single story must be about him, no matter what. From the 24 or so videos uploaded to the YouTube channel since the election, I think only one or two don't mention Trump at all.
Some of the videos are just 100% anti-Trump propaganda, from the beginning to the end. The rest often take jabs at Trump, no matter what the actual topic of the video might be. And we are not talking about just making light of him, making some humorous remarks. No, full-on attacks against what he has said.
It really doesn't matter what the topic may be. The importance of vaccines? Surely that doesn't need any anti-Trump bashing? Nope; he has to attack Trump. The French elections? Of course he had to bash Trump. No matter what the topic, Trump-bashing must always be part of it. In fact, I think that the topic seem to be chosen precisely if Trump-bashing can be included.
I got completely tired of it quite quickly, and unsubscribed, and stopped following the channel. I'm not especially fond of Trump as a world leader, but I'm not interested in a single-issue channel that has become just pure anti-Trump propaganda. I want to see interesting stories, like the FIFA one, or the multilevel marketing one. I don't want to see just Trump-bashing, and stories that have been created just to present more Trump-bashing.
That seems to be the only thing that John Oliver can talk about anymore. He's obsessed. A quote attributed to Winston Churchill describes him perfectly: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
The show itself has much more content, and runs on HBO, and the YouTube channel only posts excerpts; individual stories. However, these used to be really, really interesting for the most part. It used to be one of the last bastions of actual investigative journalism, and many of their stories were extremely illuminating and interesting, and have taught me a lot.
For example the story FIFA and the World Cup is one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever seen, even though it uses (as all their other stories) copious amounts of humor. I would recommend this video to anybody. The channel is (well, was) in fact full of very interesting stories about all sorts of sociopolitical issues, such as predatory lending, civil forfeiture, multilevel marketing, and so on and so forth.
The show has always been quite left-leaning, "blue-pilled" so to speak, but that has only occasionally shown. There was a story about the "wage gap", which is one of their weakest episodes by far (and I'm not just saying it; it really has some of the least amount of research and references, compared to their average episode). A few episodes have some leftist agenda claims, but it happened quite rarely. Overall it happened so rarely that it wasn't at all bothering.
Then Donald Trump got elected the president of the United States, and the channel went completely down the drain, at one fell swoop.
While previously the channel discussed all kinds of sociopolitical issues (with only a slight left-leaning agenda here and there), after the election it has become a full-on anti-Trump propaganda channel.
John Oliver simply cannot shut up about Trump. Every single story must be about him, no matter what. From the 24 or so videos uploaded to the YouTube channel since the election, I think only one or two don't mention Trump at all.
Some of the videos are just 100% anti-Trump propaganda, from the beginning to the end. The rest often take jabs at Trump, no matter what the actual topic of the video might be. And we are not talking about just making light of him, making some humorous remarks. No, full-on attacks against what he has said.
It really doesn't matter what the topic may be. The importance of vaccines? Surely that doesn't need any anti-Trump bashing? Nope; he has to attack Trump. The French elections? Of course he had to bash Trump. No matter what the topic, Trump-bashing must always be part of it. In fact, I think that the topic seem to be chosen precisely if Trump-bashing can be included.
I got completely tired of it quite quickly, and unsubscribed, and stopped following the channel. I'm not especially fond of Trump as a world leader, but I'm not interested in a single-issue channel that has become just pure anti-Trump propaganda. I want to see interesting stories, like the FIFA one, or the multilevel marketing one. I don't want to see just Trump-bashing, and stories that have been created just to present more Trump-bashing.
That seems to be the only thing that John Oliver can talk about anymore. He's obsessed. A quote attributed to Winston Churchill describes him perfectly: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Comments
Post a Comment