Thakur
Banned
- Joined
- 30 Aug 2013
- Messages
- 14,856
- Reaction score
- 8,575
I t is a rare television show that rouses its
audience to do something. Stephen
Colbert did it a few times on his Colbert
Report, most notably in his farcical 2008 bid
for the presidency, which raised tens of
thousands of dollars for underserved
classrooms via Donors Choose, and with the
creation of his super PAC, which not only
raised more than a million dollars but also
raised awareness of campaign finance reform.
It is not surprising, then, that the latest show
to carry the call-to-action mantle is that of
fellow Daily Show alum John Oliver.
Oliver, who was a correspondent on The Daily
Show for seven and a half years and filled in
as host for Jon Stewart last summer, launched
his own program, Last Week Tonight With
John Oliver, on April 27 on HBO. He has
spent the nine weeks since tackling topics that
the mainstream media has mostly ignored,
such as the recent Indian general election
(the biggest election in human history) and
net neutrality, which he claimed is discussed
in such boring terms that people don’t pay
attention to the insidiousness of paying
Internet service providers to create fast and
slow lanes on the Internet.
TAKE ACTION: PLEDGE
Consider the Source of Your Media
6.3
COM
That latter 13-minute-long segment has
become famous because it ended with Oliver’s
rousing call to “Internet trolls” (translation:
everyone watching) to leave comments on the
site of the Federal Communications
Commission during its 120-day commenting
period. So many people took him up on his
request that the FCC’s Twitter account
announced that the site was experiencing
“technical difficulties” due to overwhelming
traffic. Oliver took little credit for crashing
the site, telling Terry Gross on Fresh Air that
if the FCC’s website is designed to be
commented on but is crashing when people
are commenting, then “there is a much bigger
problem than our [show’s] involvement.”
It wasn’t the first time his young show had
spurred its audience to action (though it was
the most high-profile). During an earlier bit
about Europe’s new “Right to Be Forgotten”
ruling, which allows EU citizens to petition
Google and other search engines to remove
from their search results links to damaging or
embarrassing information about them, he
suggested the Twitter hashtag
#MutuallyAssuredHumiliation. “If we all put
our worst photo into the world together,
none of us will ever be in a position to judge
any of us for it again,” he said before showing
a geeky picture of himself, replete with
creepy, large glasses, and a puffy ’80s hairdo.
audience to do something. Stephen
Colbert did it a few times on his Colbert
Report, most notably in his farcical 2008 bid
for the presidency, which raised tens of
thousands of dollars for underserved
classrooms via Donors Choose, and with the
creation of his super PAC, which not only
raised more than a million dollars but also
raised awareness of campaign finance reform.
It is not surprising, then, that the latest show
to carry the call-to-action mantle is that of
fellow Daily Show alum John Oliver.
Oliver, who was a correspondent on The Daily
Show for seven and a half years and filled in
as host for Jon Stewart last summer, launched
his own program, Last Week Tonight With
John Oliver, on April 27 on HBO. He has
spent the nine weeks since tackling topics that
the mainstream media has mostly ignored,
such as the recent Indian general election
(the biggest election in human history) and
net neutrality, which he claimed is discussed
in such boring terms that people don’t pay
attention to the insidiousness of paying
Internet service providers to create fast and
slow lanes on the Internet.
TAKE ACTION: PLEDGE
Consider the Source of Your Media
6.3
COM
That latter 13-minute-long segment has
become famous because it ended with Oliver’s
rousing call to “Internet trolls” (translation:
everyone watching) to leave comments on the
site of the Federal Communications
Commission during its 120-day commenting
period. So many people took him up on his
request that the FCC’s Twitter account
announced that the site was experiencing
“technical difficulties” due to overwhelming
traffic. Oliver took little credit for crashing
the site, telling Terry Gross on Fresh Air that
if the FCC’s website is designed to be
commented on but is crashing when people
are commenting, then “there is a much bigger
problem than our [show’s] involvement.”
It wasn’t the first time his young show had
spurred its audience to action (though it was
the most high-profile). During an earlier bit
about Europe’s new “Right to Be Forgotten”
ruling, which allows EU citizens to petition
Google and other search engines to remove
from their search results links to damaging or
embarrassing information about them, he
suggested the Twitter hashtag
#MutuallyAssuredHumiliation. “If we all put
our worst photo into the world together,
none of us will ever be in a position to judge
any of us for it again,” he said before showing
a geeky picture of himself, replete with
creepy, large glasses, and a puffy ’80s hairdo.
