{"id":137248,"date":"2014-08-15T21:04:20","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T21:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137248"},"modified":"2014-08-15T21:05:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T21:05:07","slug":"httprinf-comalt-newseditorialsterrorizing-southeastern-ukrainians-heading-toward-eastwest-confrontation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/media-news\/httprinf-comalt-newseditorialsterrorizing-southeastern-ukrainians-heading-toward-eastwest-confrontation\/","title":{"rendered":"How John Oliver Torpedoed the Reassuring Tropes of Fake News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “Last Week Tonight” host isn’t interested in offering a balm for tough times. He wants you to pay attention.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Almond<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been something of a shock \u2013 and a joyous one \u2013 to see how quickly John Oliver\u2019s HBO program, \u201cLast Week Tonight,\u201d has gone from an awkward up-and-comer to an outright hit.<\/p>\n

Not only is the program wildly\u00a0\u00a0popular<\/a>\u00a0with critics in the big markets, it\u2019s being hailed in plenty of smaller regional venues. It\u2019s pretty safe to say that landing an extended rave in\u00a0\u00a0the Auburn Citizen<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 circulation 10,000 \u2013 means you\u2019ve broken out of the New York City media bubble.<\/p>\n

The significance of the show\u2019s surging popularity goes beyond its various laudable, and widely lauded, elements (the more diverse writer\u2019s room, the commercial-free format, and so on). What the success of \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d suggests, on a deeper level, is that American television viewers may finally be tired of the frantic bombast generated by the Stimulation Media.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, after years of making do with the therapeutic jibes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, they are finding in Oliver a figure more interested in making sense of the world than in making them laugh.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that Oliver isn\u2019t funny. He and his writers and guests have come up with some uproarious bits, most recently an infomercial supplied by comedian Sarah Silvermanurging<\/a>\u00a0Americans in dire financial straits to do anything other than borrow money from a predatory payday loan firm. \u201cPeople will pay you to pee on them,\u201d she confides. \u201cThat\u2019s true. Doodies too! Doodies are more. Like double.\u201d But a bit like this is not the point of the show. It\u2019s merely the scatological kicker to a much larger story, one about the rapacity of an industry dedicated to exploiting our most economically vulnerable citizens.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “Last Week Tonight” host isn’t interested in offering a balm for tough times. He wants you to pay attention. Steve Almond It\u2019s been something of a shock \u2013 and a joyous one \u2013 to see how quickly John Oliver\u2019s HBO program, \u201cLast Week Tonight,\u201d has gone from an awkward up-and-comer to an outright hit. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-media-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}