I am on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Oliver, but wow he is entertaining. I don't think I have ever watched a clip of his show without genuinely laughing out loud.
He's freaking hilarious and he's WAY farther to the left than I've ever been or likely ever will be. I have no problem with humor or truth no matter who says it but rather those who refuse to see or acknowledge something is the truth because it isn't what they want to see/hear and then turn around and parrot their own brand of propaganda and being sure it isn't propaganda at all, but just plain old gospel truth. Around here, as in the nation as a whole, it is perceived that the opposite of left leaning BS is truth, rather than the opposite of left leaning BS is right leaning BS (with truth being somewhere in the middle). So many people anymore can't or won't see that BS is BS, it's just that one pile of BS is more palatable than the other, because they already believed the pile they choose to go with, or as Fat Bastard used to say on the Austin Powers movies (about flatulence) "everybody likes his own brand...).
As for the story, it appears to be accurate, it's certainly troubling, and I have no problem with Oliver being the guy to present it. At the same time, we all know that the only place in America you would see a similar story about liberal bias is on Fox. Calling Fox biased is low hanging fruit and I see people from both sides do it. We rarely see guys like Oliver and Colbert calling out CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc. for their blatant bias. That is where the frustration comes in.
Fox is terrible, just like the others I mentioned, no more no less, IMO, but it always seems to go back to what I said above anything that goes against what I already thought/believed is BS or "Fake News". That started in earnest back during the early parts of W's presidency (or should I say Cheney's presidency), when CBS and Dan Rather did that story based on some half truths and hearsay and were rightly called out on it. The far right, Fox, and talk radio, along with every right leaning website in existence, took that and ran with it, saying basically that "you can't trust anything the liberal media says" and of course the second verse of that song was "so therefore you can trust everything we say". Well the fact of the matter was/is that anything either side says should be listened to/evaluated with scrutiny, but the kind of scrutiny that was/is used turned out to be, evaluating it based on who says it rather than what is said. That allows the individual to read/watch/see the information and still wind up at the same place he/she was to start with, and at the same time self satisfaction of "hell yeah, I evaluated the information carefully and found it to be lacking truth", but according to whom? Honestly I'm to the point where it just doesn't matter anymore. People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear and literally NOTHING is going to change their minds about its level of truth so the only person who catches hell for "it" is the messenger, so why bother? As a history person I think back to all the past generations and past civilizations who would have gladly given their lives for their children to be able to live in a country where they had the kinds of rights we take for granted every day. The problem is, there can be no rights, at least not for long, where there are not also responsibilities. Remember the statue's caption reads "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty", not faithfully tuning in to the left or right leaning BS machine that tells me what I want to hear and taking what they tell me as THE absolute truth, is the price of liberty.
Like all the nations and civilizations and people who have come and gone over the centuries and eons, we will one day have to answer for what we had to work with and what we did with it and how we had the greatest gifts of all and took them for granted and eventually lost them all, and deservedly so.
