Once again, it is a comedy show Last Week Tonight that provides a serious and balanced look at the carnage that is taking place in Gaza. Oliver points out how even calling for a ceasefire has been made controversial and Biden and Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau are tying themselves up in knots trying to avoid calling for one.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
I just watched it Sunday.
Every congress/senate person should be required to watch it. also anyone who is pro israel.
Before I watched I was chatting online with a good friend and I said that I did not think that John Oliver, a man I am in awe of, could pull off a thoughtful discussion of the fighting and carnage in Israel within the framework of a comedy show.
I have never been more wrong.
hyphenman, yes, I too was impressed. I endorse your sentiment.
hyphenman: You’ve hit on a HUGE pet peeve of mine: it seems that left-of-center commentary of any sort simply doesn’t get on the air unless it’s disguised as “comedy” so everyone who can’t handle what they say can simply tell themselves “it’s just comedy” and never actually address or engage with it. It’s almost like our media are going back to the days when someone like, oh, I dunno, Gene Roddenbery, couldn’t do a TV show about sensitive topics like, oh, I dunno, racism, proxy-wars, the Cold War, birth-control, that sort of thing, unless he pretended it was “science fiction” happening on a planet not named anything like Selma or Tulsa or Vietnam.
So, yeah, John Oliver pulled off that thoughtful discussion precisely because it was all within the framework of, as he admitted, “technically a comedy show” while hiding it better than most.
PS: We’re throwing around terms like “innocent Israeli civilians,” so why the fuck can’t we talk about “innocent Palestinian civilians?”
Oh bugger, FTB is losing comments again. Oh well, I guess it’ll reappear kinda soon…
Is it too much to ask people to view Palestinians as humans? Apparently so