I admit that I
failed to take "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" seriously. When it
premiered roughly a year ago on HBO, I didn't think of it as a real
competitor to "The Daily Show"." because it was so far from the typical
late night format I had come to expect. No interviews, no obvious
gimmickry, and it was only on once a week. On top of that it was airing
on HBO of all places, which is premium cable and thus inaccessible to
the majority of the population. Of course, I didn't realize that HBO
would regularly be making "Last Week" segments available on Youtube for
free. Or that John Oliver would take advantage of the commercial-free,
sponsorship-free platform to construct much more pointed political and
social commentary than "The Daily Show" ever allowed for. I've seen
several of his longer opinion pieces over the past year, including the
one that some folks believe may he helped turn the tide in the recent
battle for net neutrality.
Today, like everyone
else, whenever a new John Oliver piece pops up online, it moves ahead to
the top of my list of videos to watch. I find it absolutely
fascinating how Oliver has managed to insert himself into policy debates
so effectively, and I think a lot of it has to do with the format.
(Paging Marshall McLuhan!) Let's take the net neutrality piece as an
example. I've been following the issue for a while now, so I was aware
of most of the information being presented. However, John Oliver
managed to package the mostly dull, technical arguments in a way that is
entertaining to watch as well as being informative. The segment is
thirteen minutes long, which isn't nearly as long as some of his others,
but still longer than a regular broadcast news program could devote to a
story without adding a commercial break. The extra time allows Oliver
to get much more in depth on his subjects, often using extensively
fact-checked independent research. But the most vital moment is at the
end, where Oliver directs viewers to the FCC's website to go comment on
the newly proposed net neutrality rules and "focus your indiscriminate
rage in a useful direction." So when the video went viral, it
actually created a mass political action and ultimately helped to
shape policy.
And while that's great for defenders
of net neutrality, it's also a little scary. We've seen Jon Stewart
and Stephen Colbert toy with actually trying to influence politics
before, but in very limited ways. The "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or
Fear" was really a get-out-the-vote event. I can recall only one
instance where Stewart devoted an episode of "The Daily Show" to pushing
for a specific piece of legislation - a 9/11 first responders health
bill that wasn't remotely controversial. John Oliver, on the other
hand, seems to have no problem with crossing over from comic presenter
to outright pundit, using many of the same satirical tactics from his
time on "The Daily Show," but with a different intention. While there's
a lot of humor in "Last Week Tonight," there's far more argument
crammed into one of his segments than jokes. And the thing is, Oliver
has proven that this combination of "Frontline" plus fart jokes is
amazingly effective. The reason the net neutrality video took off is
because it is hysterical. He compares the FCC chairman to a dingo and
the telecoms to the mob. His recruitment of the internet trolls to be
his minions against the FCC is one of the best bits of comedy from last
year.
I'm not so worried about John Oliver
wielding this kind of power, because Oliver has proven to be a
responsible, moral individual who cares passionately about what he's
doing and advocates honestly for his positions. He's being backed up by
a crackerjack research team and some of his pieces have more reporting
in them than actual news stories. The one about the Miss America
pageant organization fudging its scholarship award numbers is one of my
favorites. In short, John Oliver is trustworthy. Others in the news
media universe, however, are not. And after the recent controversies
with Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly, it's good to remember that there
are real concerns about conflating the charisma and personality of a
pundit or presenter with the information that they're providing. In the
age of 24 cable news channels and non-stop news commentary filling in
for factual analysis, there are plenty of people who are already
employing many of the same entertainment-boosting tactics that John
Oliver does, and we need to remember that there are inherent dangers in
this.
The net neutrality video's success was
probably a fluke to some degree. None of Oliver's other segments have
had nearly so much impact, though there have been some fun instances of
the "John Oliver Effect," as TIME magazine has dubbed his influence. I
don't know if he'll be as successful or as respected as Jon Stewart in
the long run, but John Oliver certainly deserves all the acclaim that
he's enjoyed this past year and I'I expect I'll be watching "Last Week
Tonight" for as long as it's running.
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