The Sacklers (previously) are a reclusive, super-secretive family of billionaires whose fortune comes from their pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, manufacturers of Oxycontin, the drug at the center of the opioid epidemic, which has claimed more American lives than the Vietnam war, with the death-toll still mounting. Read the rest
Every 90 minutes, the office phones of all five FCC Commissioners rings and John Oliver's voice comes out of it, demanding that they take action on robocalls, reversing FCC Chairman (and former Verizon exec) Ajit Pai's policy of relying on carriers to self-police their anti-robocall measures, and heading off his plan to gut the existing, weak protections. Read the rest
A ton of criticism, anger and pain has come from the family separation policy being enforced on the southern border of the United States. Few pieces of commentary on the subject nail the fine points of the topic with such humor and sadness as John Oliver's passionate rant against the inhuman practice on Last Week Tonight. Read the rest
Watching John Oliver bring the noise to Fox News is a great way to start the week. Read the rest
Facebook usage is falling in the US and Canada, especially among young people, but it's still dominating the internet overseas, especially in countries where Zero Rating is legal. Read the rest
John Oliver's big enough to admit when he's wrong. He's so damn large, in fact, that he sat down behind his gigantic desk just to post this series of retractions to YouTube.
Thank you, Kaiju John Oliver, for taking your giant time to make these giant corrections. We, the small people of the earth, salute you. Read the rest
After a month off, John Oliver is back and, where Facebook's bullshit apology for all of the greasy stuff they've been doing with their user's data is concerned, he's taking no prisoners. Read the rest
Apparently Facebook is running TV ads apologizing for being a creepy stalker optimized for organizing Nazi hate-mobs and genocidal pogroms (also apparently: now that all the young people are leaving Facebook, TV is how you reach the company's core user-base). Read the rest
It's been a year since the Mueller investigation began and the Trump administration and its goons have been working harder to derail it than they have on pretty much anything else, aside from creating massive divides in the American people. I've gotta say, things are looking a bit dark. Read the rest
Children being forced to represent themselves in a court case that could determine their future? Sure, why not. Read the rest
Depending on your political leanings, the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, available on YouTube for the world to enjoy/loathe, will provide you with some catharsis or fill you with loathing. Read the rest
John Oliver is on fire (naturally) in his season finale segment on the first year of Trumpism, a year so busy and scandal-plagued that it really needs to this kind of revisiting to bring its full ghastliness to light. Read the rest
Lax anti-trust enforcement is destroying American democracy, growth and equality; it laid waste to minority-owned small businesses and "fleeced" the middle class, creating its own parallel "justice" system and laying waste to whole industries, with the complicity of the Democratic party (and the $1,000/hour expert "consulting" by superstar economists), and there's no end in sight, from Yahoo to Whole Foods. Read the rest
To appeal to the people of North Korea, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver enlisted the help of "Weird Al" Yankovic to write an accordion-based song about how Americans are not that bad (because North Koreans supposedly love accordion music). The brilliant ditty is called "The North Korea Polka" and the chorus is aptly, "Please don't nuke us, North Korea!"
image via Al Yankovic Read the rest
You only need to read the Table of Contents to know the ACLU of West Virginia's Amicus Brief on the case where coal company CEO Robert Murray, of Murray Energy, is suing John Oliver for defamation is gonna be special.
I am especially looking forward to section III.
John Oliver's new season kicked off with a spectacular episode on a dismal subject: whether or not there is such a thing as truth, why Donald Trump seems so poorly acquainted with it, and how it is that so many people have been dragged into the unfactual universe with him. Read the rest
John Oliver talked HBO into letting him release his whole 29-minute, must-watch show on resisting the normalization of Trumpism, with its endorsement of rape; torture; mass-deportations; elimination of environmental, health and safety safeguards; and Islamophobia. Read the rest
