Old bitter comedians

It has become common to hear well-known comedians bemoaning that they are no longer allowed to do the kind of comedy they want to do because audiences have become too touchy and sensitive and object to what they like to think of as ‘edgy’ comedy. People like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Louis CK, and Dave Chappelle are among the most prominent whiners.

Now Monty Python’s John Cleese has also joined in, framing his complaint in the form of saying that people no longer understand irony.
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The Good Liars confront Trump supporters

Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler are two comedians who call themselves ‘The Good Liars‘ and pull political pranks such as attending a rally for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and then yelling “boring” and saying that they “came here to be entertained” before they were escorted out. In the clip below, they do something similar to what Jordan Klepper does, and that is attend an SSAT rally in Greensboro, North Carolina and talk to the people waiting in line to get in.

The convoluted ‘reasoning’ of SSAT supporters is a source of endless fascination. Listen (first at the 4:58 mark and then again later) to the guy who insists that he has no problem with gay people existing (how generous of him!) but objects to how the gay community is forcing their lifestyle on everyone. When pressed by Selvig as to specifics as to how the presence of gay people adversely affects him, he of course could not say, but then finally resorts to saying that nowadays gay people are everywhere in the media, even in cartoon shows, and hence he feels oppressed.

I wished that Selvig had asked him whether, by that same logic, the much greater prevalence of heterosexual people in the media meant that heterosexuals were forcing their lifestyles on everyone else and oppressing them.

In another case, the duo interviewed school book banners and got them to confront the fact that the Bible is full of the kinds of things that they claim to deplore in books.

John Oliver on executions

The program was especially powerful in making the case why the death penalty should be abolished. The practice is so shameful that the manufacturers of the drugs used in lethal injections have refused to allow them to be used for this purpose so states that implement the death penalty have resorted to extreme secrecy to hide the name of the companies that they have mange to persuade to give them the drugs.

The investigative team at Last Week Tonight have identified a company that is not an authorized drug manufacturer but is the secret supplier to states of one such drug.

Jon Stewart blasts the Biden administration over Gaza

In a blistering piece on The Daily Show, he blasts Joe Biden and his administration for their hypocrisy in using high-minded language while avoiding doing anything meaningful to stop Israel from slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans and laying their entire community to waste. He also focuses on something that is not being talked about much and that is how Palestinians in the West Bank are also being killed by Israeli forces and settlers and their lands taken, even though they had nothing to do with the October 7th attacks. It is clear that Israel is using those attacks to justify yet another land grab, even though those violate international law.

The negatives of food delivery services

Many people take advantage of the convenience of food delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Door Dash. Their popularity soared during the Covid lockdown era when people were reluctant to go out and they were a boon to restaurants struggling to stay afloat then. But they have stayed popular even after things returned to almost normal as people had got used to the convenience and. continued to use them. It definitely helps those who for whatever reason are unable to cook their own food or are unable to go out.

In his latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a close look at this business and finds that the two categories that we think benefit most from this model (restaurants and delivery workers) are in fact benefiting the least.


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