John Oliver dissects the Miss America pageant

The show Last Week Tonight continues its series of serious investigative journalistic pieces wrapped in humor and satire. This time it takes on the Miss America pageant, an American institution that deserves to be ridiculed, but he spares the contestants who are the usual butts (ha!) of the jokes in such pieces. Instead he focuses on the organization itself, its anachronistic nature, its hypocrisy, and its misleading claims about what it represents and the scholarships it gives away.
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How The Daily Show did the Washington shoot

When watching The Daily Show, one often wonders why some people allow themselves to be made to look silly on the show. Sometimes they end up looking like such fools that one wonders whether they are actually actors following a script. Recently, they did a show about the fans of the Washington football team and their ridiculous devotion to the racist team name.
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Congresspersons who do not specify religious affiliation

Stephen Colbert interviewed a congressman from California and zeroed in on the fact that in his bio he gives his religious affiliation as ‘unspecified’, like 10 other members of Congress. This is up from six in the previous Congress. Colbert suggests to him that he is in fact a hell-bound heathen but is trying to hide the fact.
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Child abuse

The media has been abuzz with the atrocious behavior of football players assaulting the women and children in their lives. As disgusting as that behavior is, what is also odious are the defenses being offered by prominent figures such as CNN’s Don Lemon and Charles Barkley for such abuse, saying that they received similar treatment from their parents when they were children and see nothing wrong with it or that it is somehow some cultural thing.
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Zephyr Teachout

I did not follow the race for the New York Democratic primary because the odious current governor Andrew Cuomo seemed assured of an easy win. But although he did win as expected, his opponent with the unlikely name of Zephyr Teachout made a very good showing, getting 34% of the vote, despite the fact that she had very little money and Cuomo completely ignored her and refused to even debate her.
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