Shot in the Dark

Cultural Nausea

I want to make a video, fisking John Oliver’s moronic piece claiming Australia’s gun laws “debunk” the “American gun ownership myth”. Spoiler: the only parts that are wrong are the parts where Oliver is moving his lips.

The problem is, watching John Oliver gives me a very unpleasant physical reaction. Watching him literally makes me ill.

It’s not just how he smugly mangles context and cherry picks factoids, and mugs for the trained seals in his audience; that was Jon Stewart’s schtick, too. But I can watch (and heckle and fisk) Stewart and enjoy doing it.

John Oliver could read a phone book, or “Goodnight Moon”, or even quotes from Margaret Thatcher and William F. Buckley, and I’d still feel my skin crawing, and start wanting to throw up.

I don’t even react like this to the useless Steven Colbert.

I literally get ill watching Oliver.

The only other thing like it? I get a headache watching Tim Burton movies. No kidding – I even got a headache watching one Burton movie even before I learned what it was and who directed it. It can be a Burton movie I love (“Nightmare before Christmas”) or hate (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), but it’s the same headache. Something about his style. I don’t know.

But even that reaction is nothing like the one I get from John Oliver.

No, I’m not exaggerating.

Does this happen to anyone else?

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Mitch Berg

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6 responses to “Cultural Nausea”

  1. Prince of Darkness_666 Avatar
    Prince of Darkness_666

    John Oliver and Samantha Bee were great as correspondants on the Daily Show back in the day. Since they got their own shows they have proved that not only are they no Jon Stewart (I think almost no one in comedy these days is) but they suck solo.

  2. Prince of Darkness_666 Avatar
    Prince of Darkness_666

    Also since Stewart retired the Daily Show has gone from funny (but obviously slanted/biased, but you knew that going in) to nasty, unfunny and unwatchable. I watched one segment and couldnt get over how vitriolic and unfunny he is.

  3. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    My take is broader; too many comedians (most these days really) have forgotten the feather and decided to use the bludgeon of profanity and shock for cheap laughs. Oliver fits into that crowd too well.

  4. Swiftee Pinochet Avatar
    Swiftee Pinochet

    too many comedians (most these days really) have forgotten the feather and decided to use the bludgeon of profanity and shock for cheap laughs.

    Amen to that BB. It’s especially noticeable with female comics. They’re uniformly leftist, of course, and seem to think that asserting their power necessitates using the most vulgar, nasty, slutty language. It’s not funny, well not funny to anyone older than 16 years old.

    We see the same thing with female leftists who do not purport to be funny as well. Marching around in vag suits is considered tame for the left in the current year. Trend setters are often down to sub human behavior, so I wonder if it’s just another symptom of leftist mental illness.

  5. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    So libs endorse gun confiscation these days? That ought to give Trump a comfortable margin of victory in 2020.

  6. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    MP: vulgar language and their bodies. Oh, for the good old days of comics wearing suits that concealed all that information. You want to take some of them aside and say “Ma’am, I don’t care if physically you’re a 10 or a 2, there are some things I don’t need to know about you.”

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