John Oliver is the voice of sanity for these troubled times
EVERY GENERATION has its voice of sanity. In the 1950s when the McCarthy witch hunts threatened the same freedoms it claimed to safeguard, America had the esteemed news anchorman Edward R. Murrow. In the 1970s when the oil crisis, the Watergate scandal and the unwinnable war in Vietnam shook American self-belief, it was the unimpeachable anchorman Walter Cronkite. In the early decades of television, the audience looked to news anchors to help them understand the world. Anchormen were solid, trustworthy, the foundations of a world that made sense.
But the world grew bigger and scarier, and then it was no longer enough to have the news delivered on TV every night. There were too many questions and unsatisfactory answers. Those in charge were hiding things; the people didn’t know whom to trust anymore. So they turned to someone who did not claim to have all the answers. Not only did he not profess to know the truth, he even described his nightly broadcast as a fake news show. He shared the audience’s anxiety, and he dealt with this anxiety by laughing in its face.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 14th, 2016 at 19:36
YES. I, too, am a huge fan of the wonder that is John Oliver.
http://manontheotherside.blogspot.com/2015/09/im-obsessed-with-last-week-tonight-with.html
March 15th, 2016 at 16:39
BILL MAHER for me. But John Oliver knows more witty stuffs than Bill. Stephen Colbert is a bit tamed than before because of mainstream media. If Jon Stewart’s back in HBO (what happened to his supposed “return”), then we have the Mount Rushmore of “Fake” (but very honest) news.
March 16th, 2016 at 17:11
Please check out as well Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Bee’s also a TDS alum and is I think the second woman ever to host a late-night show after Joan Rivers…? Anyway, this was one of her segments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5y70oKbAKY