With the retirement of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from their comedy shows, many of us feared the loss of sharp political satire. But while The Daily Show itself has struggled to find its footing with its new host, alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, and also Seth Meyers, have been terrific in picking up the mantle. Of the three, Bee is the most consistently funny but all are analytical and informative.
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She looks at how the NRA has managed to get so much power that they strangled even the minor attempts at some form of gun control. Unfortunately, you have to see once again the repulsive Ted Cruz, who had seemed to mercifully have disappeared from view after getting humiliated by Donald Trump.
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On Thursday, the United Kingdom votes to see if it continues to be part of the European Union or leaves, the latter position being known as ‘Brexit’, a neologism that is a combination of ‘Britain’ and ‘exit’. I don’t really know much about the pros and cons of the issue except that the worst elements of British politics like the political party UKIP want a vote in favor of Brexit.
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Seth Meyers takes a closer look at the way that Donald Trump manages to speak in such a vague, unfocused way or say so many different and even contradictory things, so that his actual beliefs are obscure and can be inferred to span a wide range of policies. This enables his supporters to read into them what they want to hear.
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Of all the silly things that people in politics make a fuss of, one of the silliest is the use of a teleprompter. Somehow not using it when giving talks is considered admirable while using one is seen as a weakness. Some people are more skilled at using it than others and president Obama is particularly adept and yet that very skill has been used against him, as if it is a sign that he cannot think on his feet, whereas he has convincingly proved that he can at unscripted events like interviews and at press conferences.
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I have been getting increasingly disenchanted with TED talks. I keep getting sent links to them by people because the speaker supposedly says something interesting but quite often I find the talks to consist of overhyping something banal or exercises in self-promotion. I hear that the speakers are extensively coached and assisted in giving polished presentations which may explain why the talks seem to impress people more than is perhaps warranted.
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She looks back at how we got to this point in the Republican race where the media with its Trump-obsession helped give him $3 billion worth of free advertising and forced nearly all his former rivals to eat their words and support him. (She does not mention that Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush have not as yet capitulated to Trump.)
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On his show Last Week Tonight focused his attention on the dubious business of debt collection in which people’s debts to some institution are sold cheaply by that institution to agencies that then try and strong-arm people into paying them back, even if the debts have expired. Oliver shows how easy it is to set up a company that can purchase the debts of people.
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