"With our show… no one in their right mind would try and do a show about prison health. No one. No one wants to hear about that. But they should know about it! And so we’re going to force-feed it to them, and we’re in a very very lucky position, because we don’t have the commercial pressures that other certain news outlets do have. So we are lucky to be able to follow whatever interests us, and force-feed it to people, but they can’t or won’t do that.

"And so you are left with kind of yammering talking heads on TV who are are really not talking about much. The problem with being in a perpetual election cycle – and we’re in election year now, it never really feels like the election year stops – that’s the problem, right? And that takes out all the air from a room, because you’re just talking about people, candidates, politicians – whereas policies are much more important than politicians.

“But we are focused on the personalities, and that’s easy to do, but it’s not the most important stuff.”

-John Oliver

  • Talaraine@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Honestly one of the more interesting Hot Ones episodes and it’s not because I don’t like the others. I do.

    Mr. Oliver simply said the things that I think a lot of us are thinking but aren’t able to articulate as effectively. Just so happens that’s what makes a talk show successful, yeah?

    • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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      9 months ago

      Yeah. There are other episodes that I think are more entertaining, but it’s genuinely rare and special to see someone who cares about journalism have an opportunity to be on TV and talk about it. He didn’t even have a chance to say that much and he still managed to fit some gold in there.

        • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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          9 months ago

          I thought he handled the heat pretty well to be honest, was excepting his pasty British face to melt off lmao.

    • engityra@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, I watched this a few days ago and also came away thinking it was one of the better episodes I’ve seen.

    • tryagain@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Not that I won’t go back and watch the whole thing, but also I wanna see the quote, so thank you

  • CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Aside from the great interview and jokes John put down, I’m genuinely impressed this self-effacing, extremely British man made it through all the sauces. And he gave an all-time quote for the existence of Da Bomb too.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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      9 months ago

      My observation is that a lot of the people who whine about how difficult it’s going to be honestly do fine in the end. I think the same straightforward from-the-heart-ness that leads them to say “man this sucks, I hate this” helps them a lot when things get real.

      Bill Burr did the same thing. He whined a lot about it and then Sean told him he didn’t have to do the last dab and he got all mad and said gimme that fuckin’ thing.