John Oliver

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by lawrenceRaider

Bee is clearly comedic fiction. Sorry, she is. Starting with a predetermined destination is no way to argue your point, at least not with any critical thinking involved.

Oliver is quite a bit better, but clearly has his own bias/blind spots as do we all. Plenty of critical thinking goes on with his show. I don't always agree with the conclusions, but I don't see any hard line agendas. There are often slants towards the left, but I think they are expected due to who Oliver is. I like that he calls out the lefts BS often enough to maintain some credibility.

Oliver has his own particular method of deflecting from his weaker arguments.

The triumph as well as the tragedy is, that method is usually the most entertaining part of the segment.

When he does the 3-second sound byte thing, rather than misrepresenting the balance of the quoted person's argument or slandering the intent, he veers into an absurdist tangent.

Senator X: [3-second soundbyte]

John: How can you say that Senator X? That's as dumb as asking a frog to carry your pocketwatch. A frog can't tell time, and it doesn't have pockets.

GIVE ME BACK MY WATCH MR. FROG! YOU HAVE NO USE FOR MY WATCH MR. FROG!!

[pounds desk]