John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden: Pseudo-satire in defense of NSA surveillance

OpEds | Thomas Gaist, WSWS
ANNOTATED VERSION

We are happy to see the WSWS.ORG site weigh in with their take on the recent Oliver/Snowden program. This is certainly a show that deserves scrutiny and further reflection. While we agree with much of the author’s class analysis, we are not so sure about his complete dismissal of Oliver as a bilious and insidious media figure ultimately bent solely on defending the imperial establishment and its shady tools of oppression. Overall, it seemed to us that Oliver was performing a clumsy tightwire act in which he appeared to denounce on one hand the proliferating surveillance machinery in place, while also cancelling the effect of his own denunciation by trivializing it through callow jokes and—we admit—a fair amount of regurgitation of the main accusatory lines against Snowden. That Snowden kept his composure and patiently and cogently answered all the questions and pseudo questions lobbed at him by his host only confirms his caliber as an intelligent critic of US foreign policy and activist for genuine democracy.

The above is not to offer a general defence of Oliver, whose brand of frenetic, frat humour is frequently not exactly palatable to us, and who has already shown several times arrogant ignorance and a clear disposition to replicate Washington’s hostility toward Third World figures, Russia, etc., but to suggest that a more nuanced approach may be necessary in his case. For, on many occasions Oliver has used his comedy pulpit to raise important issues, treating them with the kind of in-depth, dogged attention that his precursors and godfathers in this kind of faux comedy journalist schtick—Stewart and Colbert—never approached.

The reality is not exactly very heroic. Like almost all mainstream comedians and satirists (the latter sounds like an oxymoron in the current climate of acute self-censorship) making 7 or even 8-figure salaries, Oliver is clearly uncomfortable and nervous when getting close to the unwritten boundaries of “permitted speech” in America’s public space. Thus he treads gingerly on anything that might discomfit the Masters of the Universe, on whom his own burgeoning career depends. In this category, as readers will probably agree, few things are more flammable these days than the concerted effort of the global plutocracy, led by its American branch, to defend its interests by any means necessary, including unceasing wars and the elimination of whatever is left of real democracy, including genuine media criticism.

Fact is, as the abrupt dismissal of the legendary TV icon Phil Donahue proved in 2002, for his strong opposition⁽¹⁾ to the Iraq War, when it comes to its endemic foreign criminality, systemic ills, and myriad domestic abuses, the empire knows how to silence critics.

Furthermore, although there’s plenty of room for doubt, at this point we don’t know how “random” the appalling Times Square interviews actually were, or if they were redacted for effect, but ordinary Americans seldom disappoint when it comes to showing their Olympic ignorance, confusion, and indifference about important topics. Indeed, the almost total effective depoliticization of the American population, reinforced 24/7 by the establishment media machinery, a veritable Orwellian entity, is one of the great nefarious achievements of the US ruling class, and the phenomenon is not young. It is also extremely difficult to neutralize, as many of us who labor in this field can testify. In this discussion, since we don’t buy the automatic, knee-jerk workerist, PC Marxist position any more than the liberal one, we found one of the commenters —libbyliberal—particularly lucid in expressing our own views (we reproduce the original thread almost entirely). Here’s some of what libbyliberal said:

“Oliver is walking a razor’s edge in clown shoes, and in a corporate-sponsored role where he can fall off or jump the shark to the dark side…

I don’t know Oliver’s shows, but on the merits of this one I celebrate what he did. I have been trying to play leftist gadfly at a website that had many low information participants. Opening minds is TOUGH … let alone changing them…I work with very intelligent or potentially intelligent people at my job. Most of them know NOTHING about what is happening in the world and are chillingly indifferent and defensive about being so. They have totally bought into the lesser evilism meme, and Blue Team cronyism for the most part rules. Messengers are not welcomed.

—Patrice Greanville

Thomas Gaist

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]omedy host John Oliver conducted an interview with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow recently that was broadcast Sunday on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In the process, Oliver exposed his solidarity with the American state and its vast, illegal spying operations. He took the opportunity of the conversation to come out harshly against Snowden’s decision to leak large quantities of NSA documents.

Pushing for a confession that his actions were potentially “harmful,” the British-born Oliver demanded to know whether Snowden had personally read every single document contained in the files that the former NSA employee transferred to journalists beginning in the summer of 2013.

“I have evaluated all of the documents that are in the archive. I do understand what I turned over,” Snowden replied.

“There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading what’s in the documents. Because when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you’d want to do is read them,” Oliver retorted sarcastically. He went on, “You have to own that. You’re giving documents with information that could be harmful.”

Oliver repeated the favored arguments of the Obama administration and intelligence establishment to the effect that the preservation of “national security” required the elimination of civil liberties, such as Fourth Amendment protections against arbitrary searches and seizures.

“We all want perfect privacy and perfect safety, but those two things cannot coexist,” Oliver said, comparing the NSA spy programs to a “Badass pet falcon,” which he asserted could not live together with “an adorable pet vole named Herbert.”

Oliver’s attack on Snowden reached extraordinary and insulting heights. At one point, he interrupted the internationally respected whistleblower for sounding too much like “the IT guy from work… Please don’t teach me anything. I don’t want to learn. You smell like canned soup,” Oliver said to the courageous defender of democratic rights, who has now endured nearly two years of persecution and exile.

Oliver’s hostility towards Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is an expression of his staunch support, almost universally shared among well-to-do strata in American society, for the continuation of the US government’s surveillance programs.

In a couple of brief asides, Oliver half-heartedly suggested that minor reforms to the system of authoritarian shadow courts and antidemocratic laws erected to legitimize the spying might be necessary. But the development and permanent maintenance of mass surveillance programs by the US government went unquestioned.

If nothing else, the Snowden interview should help clear matters up for those who still had illusions about Oliver, Jon Stewart and their ilk. Behind their sophomoric antics, designed to dupe more naïve elements looking for something genuinely antiestablishment, lies a run-of-the-mill, conformist outlook, in keeping with the lavish material rewards they receive. (Oliver made an estimated $2,000,000 in 2013.)

In one of a few moments when he adopted a serious tone, Oliver cited the failure of the New York Times to fully redact one of the NSA slides, an oversight he claimed was a “f***-up” that exposed a US intelligence operation against al Qaeda in Mosul, Iraq.

In another, he warned viewers that WikiLeaks’ Assange was “even less careful than Snowden” about the material he was leaking. He mocked Assange, who remains trapped inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London as a result of his efforts to expose US war crimes, comparing him to “a sandwich bag full of biscuit dough wearing a Stevie Nicks wig.”

Pointing to video clips of street interviewees who showed increased concern over surveillance after Oliver referred to reports that NSA agents view nude pictures sent by targets via email and text message, the comedy host contended that Americans’ interest in the matter does not extend beyond such matters.

From here, Oliver arrived at the notion that the failure of even minimal reform of the surveillance operations to gain traction results from the fact that ordinary Americans can only be convinced to think about politics through appeals of the most backward kind. “Domestic surveillance, Americans give some of a sh** about. Foreign surveillance, American don’t give any sh** about,” Oliver said.

When Snowden noted that such abuses are “seen as no big deal in the culture of the NSA,” and that agency employees “see naked pictures all the time,” Oliver issued another absurd slander against the US population. “This is the most visible line in the sand for people. ‘Can they see my dick?’” Oliver said.

If wide sections of the population lack accurate knowledge about recent developments in government spying, it is the outcome of the systematic and deliberate efforts to conceal the truth by the corporate media to which Oliver belongs.

Snowden made patient efforts to work around Oliver’s willful ignorance and class arrogance, seeking to explain that along with the “dick pictures” obsessed over by Oliver, the NSA is collecting every other form of data on the planet, from US and non-US individuals alike, in open violation of the US Bill of Rights and international law.

“If you have your email somewhere like Gmail, hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or [if it] at anytime crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database,” Snowden commented. “Google moves data internationally and NSA catches copies during this process, through PRISM, with Google’s involvement. All the major companies, Yahoo, Facebook, the US government deputizes them to be its surveillance sheriffs,” he added.

Oliver is not engaging in political satire, of which there is a long and proud tradition, in any meaningful sense of the word. Genuine satire attacks the powerful, exposing their lies and hypocrisy. Oliver, on the other hand, instinctively aligns himself with the US ruling elite and its historically unprecedented surveillance apparatus, one of the foundations of a police-state dictatorship. Sunday’s installment of Last Week was an exercise in pro-NSA propaganda and cultural degradation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
[box] Thomas Gaist is an editorial writer for the wsws.org site, organ of the Social Equality Party. [/box]

In July 2002, Phil Donahue returned to television after seven years of retirement to host a show called Donahue on MSNBC. On February 25, 2003, MSNBC canceled the show, citing his opposition to the imminent invasion of Iraq by the United States military. Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time it was canceled, managing to beat Chris Matthews‘ MSNBC show Hardball in the ratings.^[18] But Matthews was a big proponent of the Iraq invasion and he cultivated a good relationship with MSNBC’s management before Donahue came to the network. He played a crucial role in procuring the firing of Donahue and “saw himself as MSNBC’s biggest star, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue’s show.”^[19] In the fall of 2002, U.S. News & World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthews saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network.

Soon after the show’s cancellation, an internal MSNBC memo was leaked to the press stating that Donahue should be fired because he opposed the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq and that he would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.”^[20] Donahue commented in 2007 that the management of MSNBC, owned by General Electric and Microsoft, required that “we have two conservative (guests) for every liberal. I was counted as two liberals.”^{[21] READ MORE}

SELECT COMMENTS FROM THE ORIGINAL THREAD

Felix Soucy • a day ago

This review is almost too mild in its condemnation of John Oliver and his entourage. From the very beginning, Oliver makes clear his view that the surveillance apparatus is necessary, that “the war on terror” is legitimate and requires “security” measures. To the extent that there are ‘excesses’, we are to believe it’s the fault of the ignorant masses (completely obscuring the fact that despite the barrage of lies upheld by the media, millions around the world know of and support Assange, Manning, and Snowden). Then, without a trace of irony, he simply attacks Assange in the lowest possible manner. It is all the more sickening that this servile and cowardly patriotic bile is being praised by naive or cynical liberals as being witty.

Jim B-W • a day ago

“Willful ignorance” is putting it mildly. Oliver’s interview used the vast resources of HBO, which is, incidentally, owned by Time Warner, not to enlighten its viewers into the motivations of Edward Snowden, but to use the whistleblower’s wide support to beef up their ratings and obfuscate the dangers posed by the state.

It is remarkable what passes for political satire in this 21st century! When the derision of so-called comedians like Oliver target the mass of the population for being ignorant, there is an underlying dishonest motive. The self-satisfied and complacent liberal mentality, which the Stewart-Maher-Oliver ilk appeals to, heartily buys into that outlook.

The smug presupposition of liberalism is that social crimes like the vast spying against the population is only possible because its victims don’t care and are too stupid to do anything about it, i.e., vote for politicians who will pass legislation to moderate it. Oliver claimed his program’s on-the-street interviews were totally random, reflecting the thinking of mainstream America—basically “don’t know, don’t care.” Anyone who buys that already holds a similar low opinion of “the rabble.”

Why would HBO bother to go to the expense of arranging the interview with Snowden if they believed that? The truth is that what is behind the mass spying is a profound fear of the masses, or more precisely, the working class. The worst nightmare of the oligarchy is the potential for a mass uprising resulting from the widespread anger of the populace.

As far as the comedic value of Oliver, I will paraphrase Stephen Hawking from an interview last June on Oliver’s program. When Oliver asked if it was true that there could be a parallel universe where “I was smarter than you?,” Hawking responded, “Yes, and one where you were funny.”

Marcus • 20 hours ago

I watched the entire segment, and Oliver clearly aligned himself with powerful interests. Snowden showed a great deal of patience with his antics, but he would have been completely justified in shoving Oliver’s bullshit straight down his throat.
And he’s dead wrong about Americans not caring about NSA spying. More than half of Americans consider it unacceptable for the government to spy on citizens, despite Oliver’s cherry picked “random” people on the street. The only thing Oliver’s interview exposed Is that he is a syncophant and a goof.

RayDuray • a day ago

John Oliver seems to be the successor to Johnny Carson who deliberately and infamously created FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) when New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison was a guest on the Tonight Show in 1968, just as Garrison was bringing Clay Shaw to trial for participating in a CIA conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Notice the similar obsequiousness to Establishment needs displayed by Oliver and Carson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

As to Oliver’s pet concern that Snowden’s exposure of NSA criminality might cause harm to agents of the military-industrial complex, I like to compare this faux worry to the way we were vastly more real back in the days of the revelations of “Inside the Company”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…, by Philip Agee, a disgruntled employee if there ever was one.

In that instance, Agee named 250 CIA agents. In the hope that they would be assassinated for being the criminals they were. We’re not living in that world any longer.

Serocco RayDuray • a day ago

Faux concern? The main thing I got from the interview was that most people don’t understand the logistical know-how of surveillance, so how do we get people to understand quickly and easily? Ah, nude photos.

It’s crude, but effective. It’s a quick and simple way to get ordinary people to understand how the NSA affects you, whether you’re on or off the internet.

Felix Soucy Serocco • 20 hours ago

It’s not just crude, it is trivializing, accommodating the prevailing media narrative, and intentionally obscuring the issues at hand. Oliver’s claim that Snowden’s clear and articulate explanations are ‘nerd talk’ incomprehensible to most people is incredibly insulting and condescending.

VJP Felix Soucy • 20 hours ago

So you think that the producers had to search through several million New Yorkers to find a half dozen who didn’t know who Edward Snowden is?

Felix Soucy VJP • 18 hours ago

I don’t know. What I do know is that most people who remain ignorant about Snowden are not to blame for their ignorance. John Oliver and the imperialist media establishment to which he belongs are the main culprits here. Nothing valuable could be learned through John Oliver’s show, especially for those who heard of whistleblowers for the first time. If one can learn anything through Snowden’s own words, it is despite the hostile way in which Oliver frames them.

If Assange is a horrible person, as Oliver maintains, then what exactly makes Snowden so great? If civil rights are important because we’re all prudish about our body parts, then why is everybody getting so upset about civil rights? If the spying agencies really do protect us, and ‘the war on terror’ really is necessary, then there’s really no reason to get so upset over “dick pics”. The Obama administration relies heavily on the type of confusion and lies that Oliver and his disgusting ass-kissing complacent ilk (liberals and the pseudo-left in their periphery) spread for considerable sums of cash.

libbyliberal Felix Soucy • 18 hours ago

Oliver did more in 15 minutes to raise the consciousness of a vast number of probably relative young minds than all of us in the remote (sadly) regions of the alternate media in terms of numbers as well as the consciousnesses of others who are older and more informed but needed a resounding reality check of mass ignorance and indifference, which he gave.

Let us celebrate where effective communication is happening. He was promoting Snowden. Did you want him to play sycophant to Snowden? He challenged Snowden which is what our journalists should be doing to everyone. And he is a faux comedy journalist, but better than the sycophants and/or demonizers of mainstream media. He is doing in the guise of comedy what the mainstream media won’t do and we in the alternate media can’t do.

He is garnering trust and open mindedness with part of an audience that is low information and already brainwashed by media.

Oliver is walking a razor’s edge in clown shoes, and in a corporate-sponsored role where he can fall off or jump the shark to the dark side.

Just as Olbermann and Stewart and Colbert were granted a long leash for a long while by corporate media, a leash will get yanked sometimes dramatically or will be pulled back subtly at times. But in terms of this show I say BIG SCORE!!!

Cenk what’s his name of the Young Turks had his leash yanked and he took it off and was honorable and did not sell his soul out. It showed the insidiousness of msm.

Oliver did something important and deserves validation imho. He also raised my consciousness of the degree of ignorance among our population, which I suspected but there is something powerful in having Exhibits A, B, C and so on actually shown before our eyes.

Times Square is filled with out of town tourists. I live in NYC. We are not talking New Yorkers, particularly. We are talking about cross-section America. I don’t think much cherry-picking was done. When I chat with average people, they know so little. Immigrants to America know a lot more about realpolitik than average lazy Americans, though some of these immigrants are very biased considering what atrocities the hegemonic US is up to in their countries.

I work with very intelligent or potentially intelligent people at my job. Most of them know NOTHING about what is happening in the world and are chillingly indifferent and defensive about being so. They have totally bought into the lesser evilism meme, and Blue Team cronyism for the most part rules. Messengers are not welcomed.

By the way, I do blame the willfully ignorant ostrich-stance Americans and I also blame the mainstream propaganda corporate run media for giving us a government saturated with corruption. I used to think the books of Vonnegut and Heller and Bradbury were exaggerated for satire. No longer. Orwell must be spinning in his grave. Reality can be gobsmackingly surreal and obscenely amoral and evil despite profoundly good and moral and committed human beings. We are in a particular Dark Spiritual Age at the moment. We desperately need a paradigm shift from patriarchy to humanism. We keep going to a deeper and deeper dark bottom, like an addiction ever-worsening. The enablers of the addicts, particularly the pseudo progressives, are responsible for the misery as well as the addicts running things, as I see it.

best, libby

Ronelle libbyliberal • 14 hours ago

Yes, libbyliberal, Oliver has done what no TV personality has yet done – he promoted Ed Snowden’s name and exposed the plight of his unfair exile to millions of young people who could not have cared less about their rights to privacy or anything else. Maybe, after seeing Oliver (who is their beloved “hero”) make such a fuss as to fly all the way to Russia for such an interview they will awaken from their ignorance and worry about something other than their dickpix problems. But, as that cool guy in Russia told them all – DO NOT STOP TAKING THOSE PICTURES! Wasn’t that wonderful?! Snowden stunned Oliver with that answer…….it was so brilliant and unexpected that I think Oliver may have even had some epiphany from Ed’s brilliant response. No, Snowden said, we should not restrict our behavior because that gives in to what the authorities want us to do – be afraid of them. What shocked me more than anything was reading the unhappy attack review here at my favorite website! I cannot understand the unrealistic attitudes expressed here because the majority of Americans are watching TV for news even if we don’t. (And – I definitely don’t!) If a popular comedian goes to Russia for 3 days just to interview someone they never heard of I think that is extremely helpful considering no one seems to know about him! Just the other day I wrote another angry email to the NY Times online because they allowed a story to claim “….Snowden fled to Russia” He never fled to Russia and they know it but everyone keeps writing that and saying that – even people who know the truth! It angers me so much that I continually correct people on that mistake because it was the desired outcome of Holder and Obama’s purpose in revoking Snowden’s docs and stranding him in Moscow. And, it really worked! Everyone thinks he fled to Russia with American secrets! This, above all, is the hardest aspect of his story to correct in the minds of uneducated, ignorant Americans who have gotten that way from years of TV News. But can we expect them all to come here?! Anytime soon?! They need to get scared and the point of Oliver’s satire was exactly that – get scared about your dick and then you will start to care! I thought it was brilliant and saw the satire as making fun of dumb Americans who don’t know or care about their civil rights but, superficially, care about their genitals! I thought Oliver devised an absolutely brilliant plot! In spite of Oliver trying to get cheap laughs out of the most serious heroes ever (Assange and Snowden) it was still a bright moment for me to watch how Oliver took up this issue of NSA spying. There were many polls done over the years that show regular viewers of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Oliver and other comedy shows learn more about important events from those comedians than they do from TV News.

libbyliberal Ronelle • 10 hours ago

Ronelle, thanks so much for validating my admiration of what I saw as a profoundly impacting and brilliant Oliver episode on and even with Snowden.

Yes, Snowden more than met the challenge and clearly surprised and delighted Oliver who went with it back at and with Snowden. I love that Snowden said he carries America with him. He didn’t push back the dick pix example, Snowden used it to amazing advantage.

Oliver’s persona is appealing and not far from the low information citizen — kind of one who just had a light bulb go off over his head and is giving a Jack Benny slap in the face look to his audience. The school of Stewart and Colbert. Oliver is a hip and lauded comic which gives him weight in his non-persona dimension. It makes his audience trust him and listen hard.

He has a microphone to millions. He did something important and worthy with it.

Snowden has more courage and citizen-identity and -integrity in his heart than most of ours melded into one. As for being “cool” — I didn’t think my admiration for Snowden could grow but it did seeing him in that chair. I cheered when he showed up for the interview.

It may come down to different individual temperaments and senses of humor, however, and with some who took offense a collective and well-earned distrust of the usual enemy — participants in profiteering corporate media by those of us on the far left, so disdained in our long-suffering and often thankless role as messenger.

I remember the old feminist joke asking how many feminists it takes to change a light bulb. Answer: “That is not funny!”

Those who demand that Oliver not only break throug colossal denial, minimization, ignorance, in a half hour or so episode but also to consciousness raise in more nuanced and thorough ways about Assange and Snowden and everything that has gone down are sadly lost amidst the dark unrealistic trees and can’t appreciate a rare and refreshing shot of a big and glorious forest of a success for a precious change.

As for the Orwellian and dizzying spin of the truth, yes, “fled” to Russia is a lie that is slid in all the time when Snowden is brought up and deserves to be challenged but is not. Thank you for doing it. Reminds me of how people conflated the names bin Laden and Hussein up to and after the Iraq War was launched when bin Laden and Hussein hated each other but the link of those two was on the agenda, Also, lying about 9/11 and Iraq was a great motivation for the obscene torture program that has made me fight to not hate my fellow low-information conscience-deprived zombied citizens on a daily basis.

Judith Miller now wanting to rewrite history is a recent unfunny “joke.” Ray McGovern calls her the drum majorette of the Iraq War, the gwot. She earned that title for sure.

Gore Vidal’s famous coinage, “the United States of Amnesia,” comes to mind. Though I think it is more a case of sustained ostrich ignorance than forgetting important events at this point with msm having circled the bowl nearly entirely. Obama’s “MLK” Trojan Horse act has locked so many citizens somewhere in the five stages of grief they may never tunnel out of it.

best, libby

Marcus libbyliberal • 16 hours ago

You don’t elevate the consciousness of “young minds” (or any minds, for that matter) with dick and fart jokes. He squandered an opportunity to enlighten his audience and opted instead for toilet humor.

True elevation of consciousness takes time and an unrelenting commitment to the truth. Oliver only confused matters with his, “ah, geeze, don’t you think you shoulda read all those documents, and what about dick pics?” routine. He actually framed the interview in a manner that pitted the releasing of government documents that reveal a vast spying apparatus on its own citizens, against mass surveillance on the same moral footing. As if the two are even remotely comparable!

There’s nothing to celebrate here. To those of us who actually paid attention, he was clearly hostile to Edward Snowden, and critical of his releasing government documents, and I thank Mr. Gaist for writing what so many of us “dumb” Americans were thinking.

Ronelle • a day ago

I think the person who wrote this scathing review did not watch the entire half hour program. Evidently, they only saw the video of the interview in Russia which was purposely set up to be provocative. I admit I had to wince at the disgusting and tasteless comedy but Oliver did a great job in the first 20 minutes before the video was shown. I didn’t get the sense that Oliver was anything but worshipful over Snowden but that may have been my own wishful thinking perhaps.

I think you should watch the entire 30 minute program – with Oliver’s very dire warnings about June 1st when the Patriot Act comes up for a vote – go here and scroll down to the bottom of Greenwald’s story to see the whole show:

https://firstlook.org/theinter…

JLusanne Ronelle • a day ago

Oliver exhibited a sneering contempt throughout the entire interview; a contempt that went beyond any style or tone associated with his brand of satire. Nothing about the front end of the program changes that, particularly because he treats the Patriot Act as a genuine response to the supposed threat of Terrorism. In that entire segment on its renewal, he didn’t once mention the wars or the use of data collection to spy on Americans domestically.

As much as he complained about the supposedly low level of American political knowledge in that show, the segment itself contributed to sinking it lower.

Serocco JLusanne • a day ago

“He didn’t once mention the use of data collection to spy on Americans domestically.”

That… was the whole point of the interview. It was about the NSA surveillance, ala domestic spying. He also said he dislikes the Patriot Act precisely because it led to such domestic spying.

Sneering contempt? The only contempt he showed was to the media. He mocked MSNBC for switching to Justin Bieber rather than stick with the NSA as a topic, for example.

Serocco Ronelle • a day ago

No, Oliver’s whole point was that Snowden should be applauded for releasing the information regardless of the consequences. He was too in-character, so to speak, during the interview, but the fact remains that he gave Snowden a chance to explain, in simple terms, how it affects average people.

Serocco • a day ago

Huh? This analysis is a bit off the mark. No, almost wholly off the mark.

Even the part where he criticized the revealing of an intelligence operation explicitly said by this article to be against Al Qaeda should be seen as common sense – surveillance against such reactionary folks as Al Qaeda is important, just as it would be important for a group like the KKK. It should not be used on the vast majority of the population or world leaders, though – I wouldn’t abolish it, but I would gut it to the point where the only thing it does is simply exist.

And at the very end of the interview, Snowden points two things out – that even with the surveillance, we should not change who we are because we’re embarrassed at what the NSA found about us. He also said, just for the very fact that he took the time to interview Snowden, Oliver is on the CIA’s hit list. JUST FOR THAT, the CIA now has a target symbol on John Oliver.

I honestly found this article a bit of a joke myself. This was spent mostly talking about how Oliver conducted the interview as opposed to the substance of the interview. Oliver was not mocking Snowden; Oliver, in a satirical sense, was expressing exactly how little fucks are given by the American people regarding the NSA scandal. The technical and logistical know-hows of surveillance is something that common citizens do not really understand, and thus, have nothing to care about until it is phrased (as Oliver himself did) in the form of something much simpler and much easier to understand.

He used “the IT guy” part as a way to personalize how hard it is to understand the technical logistics of surveillance. He wanted Snowden to give an example of something that Americans understand clearly and immediately that is being processed and stolen by the NSA. “It’s so complicated, we don’t fundamentally understand it.” The point about the dick pics was that Oliver found Snowden talking about how the NSA was parsing nude photos of American citizens, and he used “dick pics” as the best way to get citizens who knew nothing about Snowden to understand how the NSA steals their information.

It’s less about the media not wanting to send the truth and more about the vast majority of American citizens, whether in the media or otherwise, not understanding and not wanting to understand “The wires go here, the wires go there, don’t put that wire here, don’t put that wire there.”

Take myself, for example. I gave a token “Oh, that’s bad” towards the surveillance, but it wasn’t until Oliver got Snowden to talk about “dick pics” that I realized, in no small terms, exactly how the NSA gets a piece of data from you and processes it throughout their apparatus. I actually applaud Oliver for getting me and others to understand, even if it is in crude terms, how it affects us.

Now, I would have gone further. I would have asked, in addition to the dick pics, “Okay, what else do they capture? What else do they monitor? What else do they know about you or me?” The only part that I found wrong of Oliver in this interview was to say “The release of this information may harm American soldiers.” No, the information was never going to harm American soldiers, because since the release of that information, no American soldier has ever been harmed. There was no need to appear “neutral” like that.

Oliver also uses his satire to make perfectly clear just how important that the information be released despite such “consequences.” And yes, it is satire, because he has attacked people in power repeatedly, just like Stewart and Colbert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

Chris O Serocco • a day ago

You’re way off the mark here. Oliver did not use “dick pics” as a way to explain the NSA’s actions, but as crude humor directed against Snowden. He conducted the interview in a way to belittle Snowden, claiming that spying is necessary, and used the catchphrases of the Obama administration. I applaud Thomas Gaist for the excellent article.

Serocco Chris O • 21 hours ago

Oliver’s shtick is crude humor, for one. For two, he never defended the spying unless it was against Al Qaeda, and for three, he used “dick pics” as a way to get average Time Square Americans to understand what the NSA does. He also happily gave an Oscar to Snowden at the end of the interview to congratulate him on Citizenfour’s win at the Oscars; that wasn’t belittling at all.

Marcus Serocco • 18 hours ago

The Oscar award was chocolate.

libbyliberal • a day ago

I am such a fan of this website and its writers but though I found Oliver’s interview with Snowden edgy humor-wise and was often holding my breath I found it brilliant, satisfying to my leftist sensibility and effective at calling out the appalling and depressing ignorance and complacency of too many of the US citizenry. He went all the way to Russia to put a very engaging and intelligent Edward Snowden in front of his camera! Snowden came off brilliantly. Not only a good sport with a sharp mind and wit, but someone who is vulnerable, sincere and honorable.

I didn’t like the swipes at Assange, agreed! But Oliver was going after Assange’s looks not his backstory and I was grateful for that.

I have had many issues with Jon Stewart presenting war and political criminals as fun and engaging personalities in an amoral propagandizing way. When Stewart and Colbert did their civility campaign in DC I resented both of them. We need to be passionate and angry as citizens. I felt Stewart jumped the shark. Sold out to corporate media and the political hacks for access to them and good will from them and quid pro quo, good will back to himself. I admired Colbert for not letting people like McCain on his show. I don’t know enough of his policy to comment further on his guest restrictions in general.

I don’t have access to John Oliver’s show so I don’t know his pattern.

But this interview was confronting of Snowden and Snowden handled himself brilliantly as did Oliver. The dick pix context was not off-putting to me, it was dramatic enough to get a reaction from the Times Square visitors who have been playing ostrich in America and have refused to wrap their minds around the anti-privacy travesties. But as they rather seriously considered the context of dick pix there was such exposure of a vulnerability, obtuseness and potential of insight all at the same time on the part of our “average” Americans.

Oliver’s disclosures on the Patriot Act were also invaluable imho.

Serocco libbyliberal • a day ago

Gotta disagree with Stewart. What he does is he exposes and mocks the “Mayors of Bullshit Mountain” whenever they attempt to analyze the news, deliberately withhold information in their reporting, expose the lies they’ve made in their careers, and generally just disparage politicians. He even insinuated that Obama was a pussy for going on his own show the day before the CIA torture report was released.

Even when Stewart was approached by the establishment for an inside job, he turned it down.

VJP • 20 hours ago

Btw, when writers were on strike in NYC, Oliver wasn’t allowed to picket, because he would’ve been deported. He reported on the strike and on his opinion that he would’ve struck too, if possible.

He’s hardly the capitalistic tool portrayed here.

VJP • 20 hours ago

I enjoyed it, a lot! No one put a gun to Snowden’s head to appear on a comedy show, and he handled those expected “challenges” very well.

I don’t think the author, and perhaps some readers, are familiar with Oliver’s show. He’s tackled net neutrality, the US’s enormous imprisoned population, the death penalty, global warming, etc.

To paraphrase Emma Goldman, if I can’t laugh, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Larka VJP • 19 hours ago

You’re being EXTREMELY disingenuous if you claim the ICFI disallows its supporters to laugh. (And implying that if one does not like this program, one doesn’t have a sense of humor about anything else.) Furthermore, there are times in life to laugh, and times in life to be serious. The characterizing of the average citizen as ignorant and uncaring is a very serious matter that should be challenged whenever possible.

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Kim Hanna • a day ago

The Feds have been spying since spying became possible to do on us. They have never stopped a major terror attack (9-11, Boston, British trains, etc) and never will. They spy not to protect us but to persecute us. To find the citizens that oppose their crimes.

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