UN John Oliver Is Censored in China

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/world/asia/john-oliver-china-ban.html


June 21, 2018
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HONG KONG — In a 20-minute segment about China that aired Sunday on the satirical news show “Last Week Tonight,” the host John Oliver brought up President Xi Jinping’s resemblance to Winnie the Pooh.

That, among other delicate references, seems to have touched a nerve in China, where the British comedian has now been censored on a major social media platform — just as the cartoon bear had been.

“Apparently, Xi Jinping is very sensitive about his perceived resemblance to Winnie the Pooh,” Mr. Oliver said on the show. “And I’m not even sure it’s that strong a resemblance, to be honest. But the fact he’s annoyed about it means people will never stop bringing it up.”

Apparently so.

Attempts to create posts containing the words “John Oliver” on Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform, resulted in an error message on Thursday saying the post may violate “rules and regulations.” Quite a few posts mentioning Mr. Oliver were visible on the platform, but none referred to the China episode, and the most recent had been posted a few days before it aired.

In Sunday’s segment, Mr. Oliver walked viewers through Mr. Xi’s rise, becoming China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Besides joking about the Winnie the Pooh ban — which censors imposed after social media users began pointing out the resemblance — Mr. Oliver made harder-hitting critiques of China’s human rights record, including its “dystopian levels of surveillance and persecution” of Uighur Muslims and the imprisonment of dissidents like the Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.

He also said that by removing presidential term limits, Mr. Xi was dismantling important safeguards. “It’s worth knowing that the term limits he had successfully eliminated were put in place for a pretty good reason, specifically to avoid another Mao, under whose regime some horrific things happened in China,” Mr. Oliver said.

He added that Mr. Xi’s concern for his public image stemmed from his fear of an Arab Spring-style revolt as China’s economic growth slows.

“Clamping down on Winnie the Pooh comparisons doesn’t exactly project strength,” Mr. Oliver said. Instead, it suggested “a weird insecurity.”

 

[Tookie]

IMO, I kind of think he's a bargain bin Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart had his moments. John Oliver is a smarmy soyboy cuck just like the rest of the CURRENT YEAR late night hosts..

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Chinese: "Who is 'John Oliver' and why does the inside of his mouth look like a broken chainsaw?"

 

[melty]

win-win situation. China doesn't have to deal with Current Year Man slandering dear leader and he gets to make a bit next episode bragging about how he was censored.


his entire formula for the show condenses to cherry picking examples from a wide ranging, complex issue while trying to shoe-horn non sequiturs and intern-created shoops. That said I think the show is a good springboard for giving light to issues and is often rebutted by people like Steven Crowder in an entertaining way.

Basically this. I liked the show at first but they use the same ideas over and over. They do a lot of irl shitposting that gets less funny with time. The most recent one was buying a bunch of domains related to Rudy guilianni and putting pictures of ferrets having sex on them because guilianni didn't like ferrets over a decade ago. I'm pretty sure they've done that tactic multiple times and its getting old.
Also the refugee piece from ~2 years ago aged horribly. Of course.
Making fun of world leaders and the world leaders getting mad is never not funny though.

 

[vertexwindi]

The dorky british man makes fun of the glorious orange leader of 'murica, so 80% of the farms already dislike him like all the other late night hosts.

You know, widely different opinions and stuff. You aren't missing anything. You like whatever you want; conformity is for squares.

I don't know if it's really about that. I mean yeah we have some really die-hard Trumpers but I think the lack of any funny material surrounding the president from so-called "comedians" is much more offensive than anything else. It's just stupid shit like REEEEEEE TWO SCOOPS REEEEEEEEEEE KILL BARRON SMALL ORANGE HANDS and it's getting really embarassing. Then again, I don't think Trump is good material for jokes anyway. When America's elected a reality TV star who trolls people on Twitter because he was still the better candidate than Clinton, that's the punchline. Not much further you can say.

 

[Hatoful Dandy]

Never forget

“That’s true – if Europe doesn’t open its doors to more migrants, this is not changing face of Europe they should be frightened of – this is.”

 

[Coldgrip]

Never forget

Ver archivo adjunto 481229

“That’s true – if Europe doesn’t open its doors to more migrants, this is not changing face of Europe they should be frightened of – this is.”

What a skele-phobic shitlord. IT'S CURRENT YEAR!!

 

[robobobo]

I've no issue with John Oliver himself, but with the late night political comedian genre in general. I feel that it takes a fairly shitty person to broad-brush a situation, tell their viewers how to feel about it, never admit when their take is misleading or flat out wrong, and cash their paycheck with a big shit-eating grin. It doesn't matter which bias is being shown, and I wouldn't care if they went at it with an air of 'ha ha we're fuckups who get things wrong a lot, you're a tard if you take this seriously'. But if they're gonna act like they're virtuous people, the only way it's not insufferable is if they're actually somewhat virtuous.

 

[polonium]

Nobody will ever find John Oliver as funny as he does.

 

[frozenrunner]

I'm genuinely confused; what's wrong with John Oliver? Everyone here seems to hate him. Am I missing something?

What he helps broadcast isn't even comedy. It's comedy-flavored talking points mixed with virtue-signaling. It's not so much amusing its audience members as soothing them out of their partisan 'tard rage. "Hey, that's right! My enemies are all stupid, and I am right about everything!"

It's the same thing that eventually happened to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They started out as funny political shows, but they quickly turned into smug, incredibly angry, and bitter "humor" for constantly outraged mega-lefties who unironically believe in and get angry about nonsense concepts like "white privilege." I can't imagine what it must be like to watch the show regularly and not be aware of that.

 

[Wesley Willis]

I like how left wing TV pundits are all foreigners who bitch about Russia (and now China). Go back to your shantytowns.

 

[BestUserName]

I'm astonished and appalled at the willingness of so many Kiwi to support oppressive government censorship and damn liberal secular humanism just because you don't personally like the person talking. When you are so willing to shitcan one of the most important values in western society just to punish your enemies, don't be shocked that it leads to SJWs becoming such a menace.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

I'm astonished and appalled at the willingness of so many Kiwi to support oppressive government censorship and damn liberal secular humanism just because you don't personally like the person talking. When you are so willing to shitcan one of the most important values in western society just to punish your enemies, don't be shocked that it leads to SJWs becoming such a menace.

Lol wut? I don't think I saw anybody really suggesting that.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

John Oliver is just an unfunny cunt who's been in business for too long, look what happened to any other television host who sustained audience out of sheer luck and no talent. There used to be a timeline where political comedy was funny for its hot takes, and didn't apply the "well actually" rhetoric. Now it's "funny because it's our definition of truth" which isn't a notion of being clever, nor particularly funny.

I'm against censorship of any kind but I have no respect for the current slew of late night TV hosts.

 

[Haramburger]

I'm baffled at how this is even news. Everyone knows China censors everything. I wouldn't expect John Oliver to even be relevant in China. The New York Times is entirely too eager to suck britbong dong here.

On a side note, I'm hoping we get a nice primer to Weibo when the international cow efforts start coming together. I keep hearing the name and imagine it'll be an interesting frontier soon.

 

[Kyria the Great]

Honestly if people like John Oliver that is fine as at one point very early in his show had some decent material. That being said he was hit hard with Trump Derangement Syndrome like all Late Night Comedy hosts, his parent company Time Warner was a massive donor to Hillary Clinton so you can suspect who does the real talking, and his humor wears thin very quickly.

To those who said he is a good springboard for talking about issues, he isn't. Though he brings up ideas and what may be wrong, he never proposes anyways to fix it as it only serves to make it seem like the other side are stupid monsters and your side are geniuses, a blight on current political thought right now. Heck most of the good talking points come from when people thrash these late night comedy hosts' ideas (or writers/studios ideas) as at least some more personal thought was put into it.

All and all unless you wish to shittalk it, for the love of God, don't watch late night comedy news.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Wait, did nobody else pick up on the most supreme irony of this? He said by abolishing term limits they were opening themselves up to another Mao. I thought Mao was a good guy to the leftists now?

It's also funny to see someone pretend changing term limits in china matters. Oh, so instead of identical party member #263, they get the current party member over and over. What makes anyone think the votes are legitimate to begin with, they're censorship capital of the world?

Late night comedy has always sucked in proportion to how much they talk about political topics. Comedy is about exaggeration, about a quick witty statement that sounds right when you hear it. Hey guys, what's the deal with airline food? Why don't they just make the airplane out of the black box?

It doesn't have to make sense upon further analysis, it just has to be funny in the moment. Politics is complex, political solutions aren't easy and snappy witticisms. So political comedy has a problem, in that comedy cannot represent a political issue. All it can do is reduce it to a simple premise and a witty punchline. That's ok if you agree with the premise, but it's really annoying to see your position reduced to a strawman and dismissed with a dumb joke. The worst part is, that is the most prevalent form of punditry now. You'll hear people repeat these dumb jokes thinking they're a legitimate political argument.

The bigger issue is that all these comedians have the exact same fucking opinions. A dumb joke once is ok. A dumb jokes 100 times is annoying. A dumb joke being treated as more legitimate than a logical analysis is infuriating.

 

[Coldgrip]

I'm astonished and appalled at the willingness of so many Kiwi to support oppressive government censorship and damn liberal secular humanism just because you don't personally like the person talking. When you are so willing to shitcan one of the most important values in western society just to punish your enemies, don't be shocked that it leads to SJWs becoming such a menace.

I'm astonished that after reading through this thread and seeing nobody support an oppressive government you came to this conclusion.

Wait, did nobody else pick up on the most supreme irony of this? He said by abolishing term limits they were opening themselves up to another Mao. I thought Mao was a good guy to the leftists now?

It's kind of hit and miss with Mao. Seems that about half the time lefties don't know who Mao is, the other half do know to some extant but either don't want to admit he's done wrong or believe most of the atrocities are just capitalist propaganda. With a smaller sub-set knowing what he did but see no problem with it.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm baffled at how this is even news. Everyone knows China censors everything.

Xi Jinping is really, really sensitive about that Winnie the Pooh thing, which is why everyone makes that joke in the first place.

With a smaller sub-set knowing what he did but see no problem with it.

Somehow, I find the tankies less noxious than the rest, because at least they aren't denying reality. Also because their open endorsement of shit like that drives people away in droves, ensuring they'll never get a significant following.

 

[Medicated]

I'm astonished and appalled at the willingness of so many Kiwi to support oppressive government censorship and damn liberal secular humanism just because you don't personally like the person talking. When you are so willing to shitcan one of the most important values in western society just to punish your enemies, don't be shocked that it leads to SJWs becoming such a menace.

Most of this is stuff someone either already knows, or can assume just from reading the talking points about every major media outlet.

Except throw in a Family Guy reference at the end so it doesn't quite look like it's actually a smug twerp just shouting their opinions at the audience.

 

[TowinKarz]

I've no issue with John Oliver himself, but with the late night political comedian genre in general. I feel that it takes a fairly shitty person to broad-brush a situation, tell their viewers how to feel about it, never admit when their take is misleading or flat out wrong, and cash their paycheck with a big shit-eating grin. It doesn't matter which bias is being shown, and I wouldn't care if they went at it with an air of 'ha ha we're fuckups who get things wrong a lot, you're a tard if you take this seriously'. But if they're gonna act like they're virtuous people, the only way it's not insufferable is if they're actually somewhat virtuous.

The Daily Show in it's original late 90's formulation was funny because they knew they weren't being serious. The instant they looked at all the show fans and thought "We're as popular as a real news program, we must be REAL NEWS!" and started acting like what they were doing had actual social weight, they went to shit, and so did every comedian and late night talk show host who decided that was the winning formula.

I don't laugh at any "comedian" these days because they simply aren't funny, they aren't telling jokes, they're telling the self-evident truth with memes, and that's not how humor works. They only get laughed because not laughing would be admitting the Emperor has no clothes.....