John Oliver on Astroturfing

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Its four years old so not recent. The actual episode is genuinely informative and interesting. I just can't see how he (and other commentators like him) can have been so aware of the techniques used by different interest groups to artificially inflate support and lobby decision makers but so utterly opposed/hostile to any suggestion that this could be a factor in the incredibly profitable field of puberty blockers and SRS.

It's not available in the U.K. when You say astroturfing, what does that mean? (I'm imagining some sort of disagreement about astroturf.)

I used to like John Oliver and enjoyed his shows. Then he did one on gender affirming treatment of children recently that was so full of lies, propaganda, dismissals, and arrogant insults of people with concerns that it made me question the accuracy of all of the previous stories he has covered.

My BIL was a diehard fan, has seen every show and he said exactly the same thing about that episode. He was quite upset about it.

Can’t open that episode either. I like John Oliver he is funny and informative and I’ve listened to a lot of his back catalogue on YouTube whilst cleaning.

I don’t like his stance on transitioning of children. Let kids be kids. Let kids do sport. No one talks about the violent sex offenders in womens jails. Puberty blockers just a stop gap and completely reversible blah de blah. It’s the same across the board with his colleagues Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers. I think they are so afraid of being cancelled that they just keep it going with cheery sound bites. It’s all about the kids folks nothing else to see here. Anything else and you’re a bigot.

Have you seen theEpisodes on opioids? How corporate greed fuelled an opioid crisis in the U.S. again I think it is a great comparison. Showing how sales reps and the medical community profit from the misuse of drugs at the behest of a corporation.

If it's this week tonight, it's available only on sky in the U.K. only the most recent series is available

It's where something is portrayed as a popular grassroots movement but is actually orchestrated by wealthy, powerful people.

I first came across the term in this article, now deleted from medium.com, but still available in the archives.

medium.com/@sue.donym1984/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq-movement-is-run-by-philanthropic-astroturf-and-based-on-junk-d08eb6aa1a4b

AstroTurf is synthetic grass, so “astroturfing” means creating synthetic grass-roots organisations which are in fact funded & set up by interest groups.

I first came across it quite a few years ago when there was a local spat about planning permissions.

Several of the letters which appeared in the local paper supporting the proposed scheme were from addresses that did not in fact exist.

We went to a public meeting where the representative of the supposed “local residents in favour of X” group spoke approvingly of the Chinese government’s ability to get through planning projects without all this democratic fuss, and showed a bewildering lack of local knowledge for someone who claimed to be directly affected by the scheme.

It was educational.

Ah thanks, I've got it now within this context.

Google didn't hugely help but your planning example helps. Especially when I consider the work of Gluck.

John Oliver will know and work with transpeople and know people with 'trans' children. Hes sticking up for his own.

What ive seen of his work is that it can be funny, but not very deep. And hes not likely to come up with a take thats completely different to what his audience expect - their world view is correct, everyone else is a bit stupid.

His show is written by comedy writers, all probably from a very narrow background, not safeguarding experts.

Ah, sorry! I am not in the UK so didn't realise it was unavailable there! Its a pity as it went into a lot of detail - showing how specific companies are hired by various industries to set up "grass root" campaigns, run adverts targeting core demographics, misleading names for non-profits, the willingness to tell outright lies (in this case non-existent babies being burned in candle fires). And at the end does a whole thing about how dangerous to democracy these techniques are and how important it is to think critically etc. And then 4 years later he's openly scoffing the very idea that puberty blockers could ever be harmful.

I think most of them are just quite dim. They come off superficially as smart, but you only have to scratch the surface and it's clear they are neither deep nor sophisticated thinkers. I remember watching TN try and argue the case for reparation payments in the US, it pretty much amounted to, people were bad and so that's fair. I was quite gobsmacked that was all he had.

John Oliver is the same - he repeats talking points which may be good or shitty, but he doesn't really know how to think.

'What ive seen of his work is that it can be funny, but not very deep. And hes not likely to come up with a take thats completely different to what his audience expect - their world view is correct, everyone else is a bit stupid.

His show is written by comedy writers, all probably from a very narrow background, not safeguarding experts.'

I think you're spot on here. The ironic thing is that he prides himself and his team on doing (supposedly) seriously deep dives into complex subjects, and being pretty fearless in their approach. Just not when it comes to this particular issue apparently....

That's some DARVO coming from George Soros' organisation. There's a reason it's been banned in many countries - along with NED, USAID, the Ford Foundation, etc.

I liked watching JO, sometimes interesting topics but yes, primarily there to entertain and make you laugh.
After the gender affirming care episode I'm giving it a pass from now on. As PPs have pointed out, makes you think about what propaganda he's pushing. Fool me once, etc..

I wonder about the cognitive dissonance of Stephen Colbert. He’s vocally a practising Catholic, makes a thing about appearing on TV with ash on his forehead, talks about his faith frequently etc, but is a TRA. The party line for Catholics is (meant to be) that no one is born in the wrong body, god doesn’t make mistakes. Anyway….

I thought Seth Meyers was trying hard to avoid commenting on the subject. I might have missed it though, I don’t watch him as often as I used to.

I used to watch most of them, but only occasionally watch SM now.

'I wonder about the cognitive dissonance of Stephen Colbert. He’s vocally a practising Catholic,'

Well I guess like a lot of practicing Christians, he picks and chooses. As far as I know, he's pro abortion rights and pro equal marriage rights. I'm not familiar with anything he's said about trans Vs women's rights, but I wouldnt be at all surprised to hear that he's TRA