The Daily Show graduate makes impassioned 13-minute plea on his weekly HBO news series
Former Daily Show reporter, writer and guest host John Oliver’s weekly HBO news satire series Last Week Tonight has been getting solid notices from critics and audiences alike; but he’s getting some of his most enthusiastic praise yet for a soaring 13 minutes of editorial comedy on the subject of net neutrality delivered on this weekend’s episode of the show.
Launching from a riff on how the “boring” details of the net neutrality issue is preventing the public from being informed of the issue, Oliver went through a detailed and brutally funny “plain english” explanation of what’s at stake (short version: the U.S. government is on the verge of allowing internet service providers to offer superior “fast lane” connection speeds for corporations willing to pay extra, which many believe will create an anti-competitive class-division among tech companies) and some the questionable entities and players involved in the current decision making. Appropriately, the crowning moment was saved for the finale, as Oliver made an earnest (if still sarcastic) plea for the “monsters” of internet comment forums to rise up and use their trolling for good – by giving the Federal Communications Commission’s comment page an earful.
Launched earlier this year, Last Week Tonight is a weekly news and current-events comedy series in the vein of The Daily Show but unencumbered by the former’s basic-cable content restrictions.
Source: Last Week Tonight
