The Guardian - Interview: John Oliver (The Daily Show) "From our own correspondent"

[Up2Late]

(I hope this link works, I found this in the Palm version of The Guardian, but they made do a basic registration and then a additional registration to get to the "MediaGuardian" stories. Let me know if you have trouble, I might be able to post more down thread)

Interview: John Oliver

From our own correspondent

He's the British comic who plays a spoof reporter on US cable comedy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. So how did he get from the London standup circuit to the hottest satire in the States, asks Edward Helmore

Monday July 23, 2007
The Guardian

A year ago John Oliver was doing stand-up comedy in London; nowadays, he works in a Manhattan office block that his employer shares with Larry Flynt's Hustler Club. Oliver, 30, thinks the juxtaposition is hilarious, although he won't say if he's a patron of Flynt's establishment. He will say that he considers himself to be in an almost perfect position for a comedian. "It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge," he says....

(edit)

...For the past seven years the show's primary target has been President Bush. But jokes about incompetence are wearing thin, so today it is the absurd posturing of the Democrats in Congress over the issue of withdrawing troops from Iraq. The party has called for an all-night debate, and camp-beds have been wheeled into Congress. This pantomime has achieved nothing. "History will judge them very badly," Oliver says. "How they didn't even manage to beat or even challenge Bush and Cheney in 2004 is not just shaming, it's a disgrace. It's actually pathetic...."

(edit)

...But the surreal bad joke of contemporary politics, and indeed of an equally complacent US news media, strains even Oliver's sense of the absurd. Three weeks ago, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that because he was not facing re-election, he was not bothered about his low approval ratings. "He genuinely didn't seem to care," says the comedian, incredulously. "At no point did compassion or shame kick in. To take it as far as Cheney has - 'pulling a Cheney' - is incredible. His ferocious confidence is almost impressive."

But not quite. For the sake of comedy it is better if things are not quite so black and white. People often ask Oliver if having Bush as president is good for comedy. "I tell, them, 'No, it's been terrible'. What's happened is so extreme, and so incompetent, it defies comment. Sometimes you just hold your head in disbelief. But since the mid-term elections we have had the chance to write a different kind of joke. Otherwise it's just administration-bashing like a stuck record, like Thatcher-bashing in Britain in the 80s...."

(more at link) <http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2132278,00.html>

[twenty4blackbirds]

1. Thanks. n/t

[Up2Late]

2. kick n/t

:kick: