FA+
Shop
John Oliver insults me and my home state.
10 years ago
Fake news shows like "This hour has 22 minutes" are funny and entertaining. The important diffrence between 22 minutes and shows like John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" is that 22 minutes keeps a "Don't take anything we say seriously" undertone, while the Daily Show used to give the impression of being actual news shows with comedy sprinkled in.
This brings us to the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, where John Oliver pukes out a piece about the North Dakota oil boom that is neither factual or funny. As someone who is a lifetime resident of North Dakota, with immediate relatives in the oil patch, the segment on North Dakota can only be described as an anti-oil propaganda piece that didn't even have the decency to be funny.
Oh sure, he'll trot out the "I'm not a Journalist" cop out, which is bunk. A comedian doesn't hold interviews with celebrities and politicians. Journalists do.
I could go over the mistakes, but someone else has already done it for me. https://sayanythingblog.com/entry/a.....kota-oil-boom/
Oliver's segments always have a huge left slant, unlike 22 minutes, which makes fun of both sides. He COULD have pointed out that Iran has more favorable oil export restrictions than North Dakota, but that would be a swipe at Obama and his refusal to repeal the oil export ban. The OEB causes high grade ND Bakken crude to trade at a serious discount, costing North Dakotans millions in mineral royalty payments and is a serious political issue in ND.
John Oliver, you arn't funny. You arn't informative. You and your script writers need to go outside your bubble and learn how the real world is.
This brings us to the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, where John Oliver pukes out a piece about the North Dakota oil boom that is neither factual or funny. As someone who is a lifetime resident of North Dakota, with immediate relatives in the oil patch, the segment on North Dakota can only be described as an anti-oil propaganda piece that didn't even have the decency to be funny.
Oh sure, he'll trot out the "I'm not a Journalist" cop out, which is bunk. A comedian doesn't hold interviews with celebrities and politicians. Journalists do.
I could go over the mistakes, but someone else has already done it for me. https://sayanythingblog.com/entry/a.....kota-oil-boom/
Oliver's segments always have a huge left slant, unlike 22 minutes, which makes fun of both sides. He COULD have pointed out that Iran has more favorable oil export restrictions than North Dakota, but that would be a swipe at Obama and his refusal to repeal the oil export ban. The OEB causes high grade ND Bakken crude to trade at a serious discount, costing North Dakotans millions in mineral royalty payments and is a serious political issue in ND.
John Oliver, you arn't funny. You arn't informative. You and your script writers need to go outside your bubble and learn how the real world is.
In other news, I LOVE 22 Minutes!! It's filmed locally here :) I've gone to about a dozen tapings, too. I love their sense of humor. Everyone's game. XD
Another 22 minutes fan. Wonderful to hear that you've gotten to go to tapings. I'll be honest in that I haven't kept up with the program since I moved out of my parents house. Colin Mochrie was so perfect for that show back when he was on it.
Anyway, what you said is so true. A show like 22 minutes works because they look at what happened in as neutral a perspective as possible and then bend it in whatever direction is funniest. If your "side" is the one getting poked, you still laugh because you know they're not bending things all that much and in the next episode or even next segment they will be poking fun at the other "side".
By contrast, a show like Last Week Tonight would take a point of view that was already bent to one side and bend it even further. The problems are numerous. First because you alienate a large portion of your potential audience by constantly ragging on caricatures of their point of view, so they stop watching. Second, because even people sympathetic to the point of view the show's producers are bending things will still be put off by the degree of bending and stop watching. Eventually you are only left with the hardcore niche who will laugh at whatever caricature you have on the screen.
One could point to any number of both left and right leaning programs who have fallen into this trap. Some of them DO have good guests on, but the host has too many screws loose to the point you won't put up with them just to hear the good guests and story segments.
There were and are problems in the state that to one degree or another can trace their roots to more oil activity in the state. The problem for people like Mr. Oliver is that they mostly boil down to state and local politics. Political differences between the eastern and western parts of the state, and even between different city governments, doesn't make a good 15 minute segment. (Ok, a segment on Ray, ND literally running out of poop would make for funny TV.) Don't even get me started on the issue of property taxes, that's going to become a big issue again in the state in the near future.
In short: "Real Life. It's interesting to live, but makes boring TV."