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Ah, I don't seem to have written anything about the MPs' expenses scandal. This just about covers it, I think.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 10:21 AM
20 Comments
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Ah, I don't seem to have written anything about the MPs' expenses scandal. This just about covers it, I think.
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20 Comments:
am i the only one really quite offended by some of this?
Depends what you're offended by.
It's very very tongue-in-cheek. The fact that John Oliver plays along shows there's obviously no malice in playing up to all the obvious stereotypes.
I found it really interesting looking at ourselves from an outsider's perspective. Britain really must look quite ridiculous sometimes. We need to keep a sense of humour about it though
I cringe every time I think of Americans or any other nation reading about the moats and duck houses. What a nation of fools we must appear from the outside.
I find The Daily Show unsubtle, irritatingly bombastic and largely unfunny.
This clip demonstrates that take perfectly...
So much material to work with and they waste half the skit doing a pale comedy accent? It's hardly Private Eye, is it?
I'm an American living in the USA, and you folks shouldn't feel at all bad about this.
1) This treatment was pretty mild conpared to what The Daily Show (TDS) does with our own rich people and to some states such as Kentucky, Alaska, and Arkansas.
2) I'd wager that John Oliver is the most popular correspondent on TDS right now -- and the only one recognizably from another country (Canadians tend to slide by as Americans, more or less).
3) Paying for a private moat-cleaning with public funds is really friggin' funny. (At least the duck house is cute.)
So fear not -- this didn't change my opinion of the UK at all, though I tend to have a pretty high opinion of your nation and a fairly low opinion of politicians everywhere.
It's rather hypocritical of people to be offended by such a charming and affectionate skit. Those who are offended - have you ever made a joke about Americans (either a subset or the whole lot) being stupid, violent or fat? Thought so.
The Daily Show is a fine vehicle for John Oliver - remember seeing him dying on his arse on Mock The Week a few years ago, but he shines over there. Good luck to him. All hail The Bugle.
I hope I'm not being lumped in with the offended...
I just didn't think it was funny.
ditto swineshead
not so much offensive as just plain unfunny - yes, we call our politicans MPs! which is like, different! and the accents are like, totalli not the same as americans or whutevz! lawlz!
shame really, because i rate the daily show highly and wasnt offended per se, just feel they could have come up with something slightly better than just falling back on the consensus of Americans knowing nothing about the world and simply laughing at their own ignorance/the amazement of people elsewhere doing things differently. ho hum...
Mr Chafe
I agree that it wasn't a particularly funny piece from an objective point of view. The Daily Show is certainly capable of much better. It's hit and miss, but the good bits are really good. Great for witnessing the psychos on Fox news without actually having to watch the channel, too. I just thought that, rather than being an example of great comedy, the clip was more a curiosity. Maybe Andrew felt the same, but I wouldn't make the assumption.
If you're looking for something a bit more subtle and satirical, Jon's old mate Stephen Colbert is great on the Colbert Report. It's less silly and more biting for it.
Cheers for the recommendation, Darren. Will check it out.
And maybe revisit the Daily Show.
Ain't the internets great?
At least they didn't make any 'soccer' hooligan or bad-teeth references...
I really don't see why people rave about the Daily Show. I've caught it a few times, both here and in the US, and I've heard better satire in my kids' primary school playground.
It's funny - I didn't expect a debate about the quality of The Daily Show. I just thought the expenses item was pretty funny. And I think The Daily Show is funny. I never accounted for anyone not finding it funny. Just shows how blind I am. The Daily Show is certainly repetitive, but then it is daily, and US politics is pretty repetitive too. What keeps it fresh, for me, is the supreme confidence of Jon Stewart. And that fact that some of the punchlines are just him pulling a face. Not many frontpeople could do that.
The "satire" seems mainly to be about taking examples of either political verbiage or the ranting of the news media, and editing them together to make a point. If I was American, I might not find it so illuminating, as I'd be seeing this footage anyway. As it is, I'm not going to see Fox News, for instance, unless I watch The Daily Show. So it provides a service for the non-US viewer.
As for their treatment of a British story - how often does a British story merit comment on the news show of another country? We are not that significant to most Americans, I wouldn't have thought.
I think that's what I dislike - the face-pulling for a punchline thing.
But then, I am a miserable sod.
Like most American tv that is good, The Daily Show is overated. Which isn't to say it isn't good, because it is, but it isn't as good as is made out.
This was fine though. Do they mean us? They surely do.
The US TV news covers us plenty. (That's a horrible sentence but I really am too tired to come up with a better one.) Madeleine McCann? Covered. Even now. Anything to do with the royals? You bet. The 2007 floods? They were the lead story, once they hit close enough to London. (They're obsessed with the weather, Americans. All of them.) Reality TV star dying? Who is she? I don't know but she's famous somewhere. And she's dying. It seems to be treated like news from the homeland...
But US comedians have their stereotypes to play with and they stick to them, just like ours do. They think we're obsessed with royalty and protocol, when in fact they are. They think we have bad teeth because our film and TV stars don't all have Hollywood smiles. They think our cuisine is odd and badly cooked, which really is a bit rich.
It's like everything else: when they're talking about something you know about, they sound less well informed. (Hence some people outraged at the overblown coverage of swine flu but happy to believe that the head of every MP should be mounted on a pointy stick.) But most TV satire resorts to stock jokes about the targets of the humour, rather than skewering the actual story it's dealing with, because it's easier and quicker. And the audience still laughs.
This didn't make me laugh. But I'm tired. Did I say?
Wow. Seems to be a serious sense of humour failure going on here. I saw this and laughed my arse off. The Daily Show lampoons everything and everybody as a way of presenting important stories. It's satire. I think the standard of writing is excellent and the delivery first class. I didn't realise so many sensitive and glum people would be reading the blog of a humourist.
John Oliver is much better on this subject on the generally excellent The Bugle podcast, which is also done by Andy Zaltzman.
It's still not as funny as Collings and Herrin though.
It IS funny. Surely we can laugh at those idiots in parliament. We spent enough time laughing along with our US friends when they had a leader who couldn't string a sentence together.
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