John Oliver has slammed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over his knee-jerk repeal of Walt Disney Company's special district and tax breaks over the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“Yeah, it’s true: In the part of central Florida where Disney World is, the company technically functions as a self-contained government, providing essential services — except, crucially, a morgue,” Oliver joked, before noting that the new law repealing its district may violate the contract clause in the Florida constitution. The new Florida law also requires that the surrounding county assume the district’s debt, which is estimated to be upwards of $1 billion for Orange and Osceola counties where Disney World is located.
Previously, DeSantis accused Disney of going “woke” after denouncing “Don’t Say Gay.”
On a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver weighed in on data brokers and privacy infringements as he essentially blackmailed members of Congress.
After discussing rabidly right-wing and conspiracy-driven One American News getting dropped by AT&T-owned DirectTV, Oliver steered the conservation to a much more vital issue that's often overlooked in our ridiculously short-lived news cycle: data privacy. In discussing data brokers, Oliver pointed out how they often end up collecting more information about us than we are comfortable with -- and using it in ways we would never approve.
But since Republicans care only about issues that personally affect them, Oliver ended the episode by revealing that he and his team put together their own data-harvesting experiment on members of Congress in Washington D.C., and that it yielded surprising results.
“If you’re thinking, ‘How on Earth is any of this legal?’ I totally agree with you. It shouldn’t be,” the host says in his conclusion to the episode. “And if you happen to be a legislator who is feeling a little nervous right now about whether your information is in this envelope, and if you’re terrified about what I might do with it, you might want to channel that worry into making sure that I can’t do anything.”
Oliver seemed to up the ante when discussing human bunion Ted Cruz.
"We could ... and then target that list with ads that might attract those men to click, like 'Marriage shouldn't be a prison' or 'Can you vote twice?' We could also throw in 'Do you want to read Ted Cruz erotic fan fiction?' — just to see what would happen. And if anyone clicked, we'd be able to harvest even more data from them, which we could then theoretically take steps to de-anonymize."
Watch The Entire Segment Below:
Michael Hayne is a comedian, writer, voice artist, podcaster, and impressionist. Follow his work on Facebook and TikTok
You might expect John Oliver to return from hiatus for the global coronavirus crisis – and so he does. Stuck in home isolation, he and his crew nevertheless contrived an electronic studio. And he somehow manages to amuse and edify us in the face of the Trump administration’s terrifying incompetence.
Amid the emergency, even in the dire horror that is Italyright now, it is possible to find humor, as Oliver does. But neither Trump norany of the right-wing loonies who want America to “get back to work” escape hiswithering scorn.
With his usual Manhattan studio almost certainly contaminated by coronavirus, John Oliver taped Last Week Tonight from an undisclosed, audience-free location. But the strange “new normal” circumstances didn’t discourage Oliver from providing his usual calmly cutting analysis of the situation – you know, the pandemic.
Reviewing the epochal events of this past week, Oliverfocuses laser-like on the Trump administration’s myriad missteps, falsehoods,and failures, with a brief pause to praise Dr. Anthony Fauci (the sole trustedvoice on the White House podium). For instance, he eviscerates in detail Trump’sevasion of responsibility for disbanding the pandemic response division of theNational Security Council.
But what Oliver realizes is that with a president likeTrump, we’re on our own. He gives a ten-minute tutorial on how to slow the spreadof disease and potentially save lives that every American should watch. As hesays, we must help our health workers, “who are going to be in the shit forsome time to come.”
Amazingly, there are even a few laughs. Click, watch, be safe and well.
