a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by Cumol
Cumol  ·  2599 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: John Oliver bought informational TV ads on D.C. cable news to educate Trump

While I really like John Oliver because he seems to get some things done and has a good style, he does not do good political satire. In fact, I don't think I have seen good political satire in the US, yet.

German TV is a little weird nowadays but their political satire is on another level. While we have shows that are on the level of John Oliver (or maybe a little worse) that are enjoyed by the masses like heute show, there are other shows that are much more informed, very sharp and go way beyond mocking a quote or a tweet.

Some examples are Neues aus der Anstalt, its continuation, Die Anstalt,

or a guy called Volker Pispers.

An example of what I mean is Volker Pisper's short history lesson of the US foreign affairs in the past century (here, with english subtitles).

Keep in mind that those shows are broadcasted on the national German channels.

Is there something similar in the US that I am missing?





user-inactivated  ·  2598 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oliver and his show are a different flavor of what the Daily Show with Jon Stewart provided (a show the heute show's wiki even cites as adapting from). I think that's what you have yet to have seen. Here's a sketch Stewart did that's a bit tangential to your own example's sketch. If that's not to the tune of what you're thinking, either I picked a bad example or its necessary to bring up that not everyone likes to hear about how bad things are. Example: the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore where race relations in America had a heavy emphasis if not the only subject. They didn't last long. Maybe his White house correspondence speech had something to do with the final jersey of the cord.... Anywho, Jon Stewart's mentee's are all across American media (Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Rob Corddry, and some others at CBS) and seem to channel him from time to time as satirist, but it does fall short when the content in question is merely tweets.