John Oliver’s segment on net neutrality this past June perfectly summed up what his HBO show Last Week Tonight is so good at: transcending apathy.
Oliver starts with a series of quick jibes about the Internet, hooking viewers with laugh lines about cats and coyote urine. Next he introduces the topic at hand—a topic that, Oliver acknowledges, doesn’t inherently lend itself to good TV: “The only two words in the English language more boring than net neutrality are ‘featuring Sting.’” Then comes a clip of a dry FCC hearing. When the camera cuts back to Oliver, his mouth is agape at the dullness of the proceedings. Two minutes in, and he’s not shaming viewers for failing to care about net neutrality before—he’s sympathizing with them.
Then Oliver’s tone switches. “But here’s the thing. Net neutrality is actually hugely important.”
Oliver grounds his explanation for the significance of net neutrality by focusing on the growth of well-known brands like Facebook. He’s simplifying things, showing how the beauty of the Internet lies in its level playing field, something that the loss of net neutrality would threaten. The jokes become less frequent, and real issues begin to take prominence. As the segment approaches its conclusion he begins to put it all back together, and you might be left wondering why you are frantically heading to the FCC’s webpage to complain about something even Oliver himself described as “boring even by C-SPAN’s standards” merely 10 minutes prior.
This is the magic of John Oliver. It’s been only 14 episodes so far (the show is slated for 19 this season) but the Last Week Tonight team has found a way to take a seemingly complicated issue, remove the talking points and cultural baggage surrounding it, break it into understandable parts—and then slowly rebuild it. It’s an ingenious formula that’s making a difference in the real world.
“Making a difference” isn’t hyperbole. The FCC’s website actually crashed from overwhelming web traffic the day after Oliver’s segment originally aired.
The crash itself may have been an unintended consequence, but it didn't just happen by accident. The last couple minutes of the segment consisted of Oliver imploring viewers (in this case, specifically, Internet commenters) to contact the FCC. “This is the moment you were made for, commenters,” he says before the inspirational background music begins and he continues to wax poetic about the importance of speaking up. It’s ridiculously cheesy, sure, but it’s not trying to be anything else.
Whether satirical or not, most of Oliver’s segments end with some sort of call-to-action like that. Sometimes the action is audacious or silly, but it’s still action. Even Vladimir Putin got some pretty annoying emails I’ll bet.
And Oliver is not just influencing viewers; he’s actually having an effect on the people he's criticizing. In the wake of his neutrality rant, an official FCC meeting began with a mention of the show, much to Oliver's amusement. Later, Thailand—yes the country—denounced “John William Oliver” in an official military document after a segment made fun of its crown prince. Oliver welcomed the criticism. “Let’s burn more bridges,” he said, before dissing other countries that have anti-free-speech laws like Thailand's.
Part of the reason for Oliver’s success comes by virtue of his show being on HBO. He’s liberated from the advertising concerns that affect network TV. His scathing take on General Motors’ disastrous handling of the recent recall crisis won’t win him any sponsorship dollars from Detroit, but he’s in a position where he doesn’t have to care.
Listen to how vicious he got at the news that the company first learned of flaws in its vehicles all the way back in 2001: "That means a child attending her first day of school the day you found out would be old enough to die driving one of your cars the day you fucking did something about it.” Contrast that with his old boss Jon Stewart's take on the topic over at Comedy Central. It was funny and informative, but it wasn’t fortified with anger, nor was it nearly as long.
It’s not that other satirists wholly shy away from any corporate criticism, but there’s a certain line that usually won’t be crossed. Oliver crosses it. In his August 2nd native-advertising segment he spent the first fours minute on a tirade, insulting random companies while repeatedly stating, almost like a whiny child, that there is nothing anyone could do about it. (The Atlantic’s scientology-ad scandal later got a mention.) He has described this immunity gifted to him as “a confusing amount of freedom.”
Yet for all of his strong opinionating, the show’s nowhere near as polarizing as you might expect. Though he does lean left socially, Oliver, who’s English, still approaches his topics from the viewpoint of an outsider sneakily peering over the hill (in this case across the pond) with his binoculars. It’s refreshing in this partisan age to hear from a commentator with a point of view, but not a political agenda.
For example, Oliver’s rant about wealth inequality was equal parts praising and criticizing. His ultimate point revolved around American optimism, “one of the things that I love the most about this country.” That's in contrast to his home nation, where, he says, “We’re raised in a rigid class system where we have all hope beaten out of us." Yet he turns the idea around, showing the dark side of the American dream: “Your optimism is overwhelming positive except when it leads you to act against your own best interest.”
The lack of commercial breaks coupled with its status as a weekly show also offers logistic benefits that allow Last Week Tonight to make a greater impact than many programs. Oliver’s able to go on and on about a topic uninterrupted. He also doesn’t have to report on the news of the day, freeing him from the pressures that lead others to produce superficial, quick-hit coverage. With his time allowances he’s able to truly delve into issues that much of society has either forgotten about or not paid enough attention to in the first place.
The most recent episode, for example, focused on the business of payday loans. Sure we’ve all seen those commercials promising fast cash, but how many people have given them a second thought? But Oliver took 16 entertaining minutes to dissect the payday loan scheme, exposing the multiple fallacies that drive the multi-billion dollar industry.
Segments like these prove out the wisdom of a line Oliver gave when talking about the FCC: “The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America: If you want to something evil put it inside something boring.” And if you want something done about evil, Oliver has found, you find a way to make it interesting.
"We've decided, as a society, that local police forces need greater armor capabilities than an invasion force in 2003."
"The general consensus here: if this is militarization, it's the shittiest, least-trained, least professional military in the world, using weapons far beyond what they need, or what the military would use when doing crowd control." [Storify]
A news crew, clearly no threat or impediment to the cops, films from a verge in Ferguson, Missouri. A pop and a cloud of white smoke marks the arrival of a tear gas canister at their feet, and the newscrew is forced to flee. Moments later, police pull up in an armored van and hurriedly try to break down the film equipment--until they notice that another crew is still filming them from across the street.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (who's in charge of overseeing the proposed Comcast/Time Warner merger) is receiving an award, for which Comcast and Time Warner Cable are "presenting sponsors," paying $110K and $22K respectively.
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Yup yup, this was at least as good as the previous entry.
The world is full of magical coming-of-age books... and they generally don't show much of what happens after the age has come. We only glimpse thirtysomething Harry Potter. But in The Magicians Land, Lev Grossman uses his meta-fantasy world to create a thoughtful portrait of what it's like to be a functioning adult.
We've featured Laurie Lipton's meticulous, darkly funny art on Boing Boing before. Here's a video profile of her.
Lipton was inspired by the religious paintings of the Flemish School.
All hands on the pussy pot products. Photos via the author
I’m not a big pot person. I can’t really find my “therapeutic window” when it comes to smoking weed. I know exactly how much cocaine or meth I can handle in one sitting, and morphine doses will ebb and flow with the consistency of my usage, but when it comes to smoking weed, every single toke is one too many, and I end up getting so “in my head” that I want to jump through an open window. I sound like my dad now, but pot is c-r-a-z-y these days. It’s goddamn super-pot. Pot on speed. Pot enhanced with more pot and then thrown in a bouncy-castle blender of THC and shaken up to be even stronger. I’ll do any drug in the world, but I usually shake my head “no” to a bong.
So when I heard about Foria, the world’s first cannabis lube designed especially to enhance female sexual pleasure, I thought that this would be an excellent way to beat my pot fear. My head wouldn’t be doing the work, my vagina would, and I trust my vagina more than I trust my head.
Last week in Los Angeles, I met up with Matthew Gerson, Foria’s creator (or “Wellness Director,” as he is referred to by his collective, the Aphrodite Group). After I emailed Foria asking for samples for my story, Gerson was eager to hang out and talk about his creation.
Gerson has this theory about females, sexuality, and plants. I think I’m with him.
“I have some marijuana plants growing right now,” he explained. “And if you spend time with this plant, it’s a fascinating weed. Marijuana is essentially a very horny female plant. It’s the female that is harvested and secretes the fluid, wants to be pollinated, and when it’s pollinated becomes stressed out and produces more and more. There’s this weird connection between the human female and the female plant. We have evolved with plants. We have a receptor that successfully absorbs THC. We have that capacity to absorb the pollen the plant secretes because our physiology co-evolved.”
Gerson isn’t your stereotypical pot activist, and maybe that’s because he isn’t one. Aesthetically, he’s not granola in the slightest, and he admits he only got into working with cannabis when the idea for Foria was dreamed up. In his 20s, Gerson was studying to become a Buddhist monk but soon changed his focus from the monastic to aspirations of health and wellness. (He’s a big Paul Farmer believer and is all about lessening human suffering.) Gerson then started Sir Richard’s Condom Company with his friend Mark Batiste when inspired by a friend’s TED Talk. It was an experiment in branding and safe sex that took him and Sir Richard's to Haiti.
“I was in that company for three years,” Gerson explained. “It got me a little more interested in the sex side of health.
“I haven’t been a pot smoker for a long time. It’s a strong medicine for me. The pot is better, and there’s more knowledge floating around. You can self-medicate, but you can also do it so, so wrong. I had used pot in my life with partners while being intimate. There’s something there, you know? I started doing research, and marijuana as an aphrodisiac is pretty well documented—Chinese medicine, Hindu practices, as well as many other cultures,” Gerson said. “No one just smokes pot anymore; there are all these super-refined ways of doing it. Soon I was introduced to oils. So, being from the world of condoms and sexual health, when I heard oil, I immediately thought of lube. I used coconut oil in Foria because it’s a really good one for feminine hygiene. It happens to mist really well.”
Gerson surrounded by the greenery he no longer partakes of. Photo via Facebook
Gerson spoke with physicians (he also grew up raised by two of them) and made sure what he was going to make was safe. It was. Foria went through many phases, and Gerson developed the best version of pre-lube (Foria should not actually be used as a lube—a few sprays an hour before sex is the trick) he could by working closely with proprietary scientists who could help him perfect the dosage and potency. No pesticides, no molds, no nothing. So far, Foria is only available in California for people with medical-marijuana cards. (Gerson admitted, until it can be purchased in other states and countries, he’s fine with helping people DIY it at home. Kind of a poor man’s version of Foria.)
But more importantly, Gerson was fixated on the idea that there were no products out there to help women who can't orgasm—women who feel like pleasure is an issue and can't even relax during sex to get there. For a sex-obsessed culture, we are juvenile when it comes to actually conversing about pleasure, our bodies, and how to get off. Viagra and Cialis exist because men can keep impregnating until they are old as fuck. Women hit menopause, and their sexual pleasure becomes irrelevant to their health. It makes me want to scream when I think about some women who have never had an orgasm.
Gerson set me up with enough Foria to get my vagina super stoned, and I thanked him generously.
“I’m going on a much-needed vacation,” he said. “But you can email me if you need anything.”
On the way home, I was curious, and I couldn’t wait. I decided to test the Foria orally first. I sprayed my mouth about five times, and then four more about ten minutes later. Plus, Gerson had mentioned that in their initial studies, women had reported that they got a head high when they sprayed Foria into their mouths, but when sprayed into the vagina, they did not. I wanted to see how strong the head high would be.
I went grocery shopping and cruised home. My roommate had a friend over, so we hung out for a while, and after about an hour or two I realized I was stoned. But not that horrible, immediate, my-hands-are-made-of-plastic-and-my-family-hates-me awfulness I get from smoking pot—just a really mellow, relaxed feeling. I felt light and calm, like the first wave of shrooms before it gets real, or the difference between crushing up an Oxy and snorting it and just swallowing the pill whole. It was a slow-grow high. Maybe pot could be lovely? Like, really lovely.
A close up of the goods
After my oral realization, I shot up off the couch and went into my bedroom to spray Foria onto my vagina. I knew my boyfriend would be home from work soon, and I wanted to give the THC enough time to get my pussy nice and stoned.
I wasn’t expecting immediate results from Foria. Like Gerson said, this wasn’t magic. When his team first started having women test out Foria, they used a huge range of ages; women in their 20s reported more intense orgasms, multiple orgasms, and a full-body experience, while older women (some as older than 70) said it helped them access pleasure they hadn’t been able to get to in years. It was more profound. They were sleeping better. Well, duh.
“You can’t reproduce sex. Like, let’s do those exact mechanics again, and it will be the same. No, it doesn’t work like that, and we have to look at the plant the same way. We have to work within these conditions,” Gerson had said. “So many things affect it... food, alcohol, what’s your relationship to your partner, your mood that day. That’s part of our job—to be OK with that level of uncertainty. People want to know exactly what is going to happen if they take Foria, and I can’t answer that. We try to pose it as, ‘Here’s this group of women who used it and what they reported to us. You might find your experience is similar.’ We are trying to experiment safely with this proven medicinal herb."
The first night my boyfriend and I banged with Foria, I was already stoned, so everything felt great. He ate me out and got stoned from licking the stuff off me, and it was killer. However, we have a healthy sex life, and I have never had trouble orgasming. My trouble was with pot itself.
I decided to dose my vagina with Foria religiously for a week.
Every morning I gave it four sprays and again in the mid afternoon. My boyfriend and I had a lot of sex and monitored how things were changing, if they even were. Sex was intense. I noticed certain things felt different and orgasms were longer, way crazier, and felt enhanced. When we were just banging the old-fashioned way, I felt it all over in a more focused sense, like everything was working outwards from my stoned little cunt. I mean, without sounding too granola here, it was pretty good, and I don’t know whether that was the mixture of the Foria between my legs and my mouth.
As the days went on, other weird things happened. When I was hiking up in the Hollywood trails and doing sprints with my pal who was helping me get in shape, I suddenly (in the middle of my brutal, exhausting, gross work-out) noticed my vagina getting all riled up. My body was in disgusting pain, and my genitals felt totally turned on. It was nuts.
However, I was more excited to get head-stoned and bang than to just dose my vagina. But wasn’t this still the point? Gerson had this whole theory about how we need to all just slow down and relax, to think about the overall health and wellness in our day-to-day lives, and how healthy sex and pleasure can really play a part in that.
“I don’t understand why the sexual response and the pleasure experience that we derive from our sexuality have been sort of banished into one aspect of our human experience, either with a partner or through masturbation in a very limited function,” he said. “Then we have this huge part of living a well-adjusted happy life, and yeah, our sexuality creeps into that, but allowing the pleasure of sex to inform our approaches to health and wellness seems to make a lot of sense. They are the power centers of our body.”
Orgasms make you happy. We need that pleasure and release. Maybe we are at the point where we need a THC-infused oil to chill us out and force us to do that?
I’m not sure if Foria completely changed my sex life, because my sex life was already pretty awesome, but it did make me realize that cannabis is an aphrodisiac that kind of rules when it’s not smoked from a soda can. Having proper doses and understanding what worked for me enhanced my relaxation, as opposed to that jumping-out-of-a-window feeling I mentioned earlier.
I’m still using Foria. I’m going to keep getting my pussy high. As Gerson said, it’s a slow-grow and I don’t want the experience to end. Plus, it’s fun to fuck when your genitals are stoned!
The 60s would have gone kind of differently if recruitment had really dropped to "zero" in the 40s, but, still an interesting story.
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In the post-World War II era, the Klan experienced a huge resurgence. Its membership was skyrocketing, and its political influence was increasing, so Kennedy went undercover to infiltrate the group. By regularly attending meetings, he became privy to the organization’s secrets. But when he took the information to local authorities, they had little interest in using it. The Klan had become so powerful and intimidating that police were hesitant to build a case against them.
Struggling to make use of his findings, Kennedy approached the writers of the Superman radio serial. It was perfect timing. With the war over and the Nazis no longer a threat, the producers were looking for a new villain for Superman to fight. The KKK was a great fit for the role.
In a 16-episode series titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” the writers pitted the Man of Steel against the men in white hoods. As the storyline progressed, the shows exposed many of the KKK’s most guarded secrets. By revealing everything from code words to rituals, the program completely stripped the Klan of its mystique. Within two weeks of the broadcast, KKK recruitment was down to zero. And by 1948, people were showing up to Klan rallies just to mock them.
So the newest version of Wonder Woman’s costume was unveiled yesterday, and although it has it’s defenders and critics, I think we can all agree that at least she’s not dressed as a secretary from the 31st Century.
WONDER WOMAN #7 (Dec. 1943) Art by H. G. Peter Words by William Moulton Marston
Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” is misleading the public again this year with several documentaries. So why are scientists allowing themselves to be featured in these pseudoscience disasters? There’s a simple reason: Shark Week producers have been lying to them.
Psychedelic drugs can sound suspiciously like miracle drugs: Research suggests that some can lift depression overnight, others may treat both post traumatic stress disorder and the terror many dying people feel, and, increasingly, a number of different drugs in the class that includes acid (LSD), magic mushrooms (psilocybin), and ecstasy (MDMA) appear to have potential ... More »
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How do you teach your child not to hit dolls or stamp chicks to death? Why, by beating them senseless, of course!
