Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/01/what-youve-been-waiting-for.html
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Looks like they put the whole show on YouTube this week. Is that normal?
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Yes and no.
HBO/LWT adds the keynote piece of the show in its entirety each week on Youtube. Normally that takes up roughly 10-15 in of the show. So the YT portion doesn’t include his opening prologue or the epilogue.
In this case, the primary piece was the entire show beginning to end. So yes…it’s the full episode this time around.
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I haven’t been keeping up with LWT. I kinda wish John Stewart had just retired five years ago (instead of three years ago) and Comedy Central had kept Oliver on as their regular nightly host, once it was obvious he could do the job.
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In actual fact, John Oliver’s take on this will have no impact on Kavanaugh whatsoever. Oliver isn’t destroying anything.
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Video not available. Does anyone have a link for something I can see in Canada?
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So it is your estimation that if an epic character take-down of someone in fact has no impact on said person, then it’s a tree falling in the woods and no one is there to hear it?
Good to know.
Last time I checked, because Brett Kavanaugh has I am sure never watched an episode of LWT doesn’t mean that John Oliver cannot still destroy the entire bullshit deposition that Kavanaugh gave.
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“Destroy” means to put an end to the existence of something.
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Man, as many times as Trump and his people have been DESTROYED with one perfect tweet and ANNIHILATED by a John Oliver/Samantha Bee/Michelle Wolf segment and WRECKED by the latest HuffPo piece, it’s weird how they’re still around and calling the shots, isn’t it?
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Yeah and no; while the nomination process is not strictly beholden to public opinion, in a perfect world there would be electoral consequences for the party responsible for ramming through an appointee with such serious allegations under investigation.
Oliver’s take is an important component in creating the backdrop for those consequences.
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Last time I checked…words are defined by a single item. Many even I dare say most words have multiple definitions…albeit perhaps only slight variations.
In this case “to destroy” a person is not solely to “end them” it also refers to an epic take down of their character.
Oliver does that quite well in the latest episode of LWT. Were you expecting him to have dropped a smart bomb on Kavanaugh’s house and blow him to bits or something?
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Well the worry for them is that if they don’t at least SEEM to be taking the accusations seriously they will lose control of the senate BECAUSE they backed Kavanaugh to the hilt instead of just getting another far right judge next down on the list.
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Words have multiple meanings, based on context and contemporary usage. You and I and everyone else here knows the sense of “destroy” @frauenfelder used the word in. Stop being a pedantic killjoy, will you?
The ideal outcome, of course, would be for them to fail to push Kavanaugh through, and to lose the senate. Let’s hope it comes to pass.
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Yup. “Wait for” and “destroy” raise my hackles too . . . and I luv John Oliver and am ashamed that Kavanaugh has been on an upward trajectory since high school.
So, here’s a replacement article by Nathan J. Robinson that makes much more modest claims but has a much deeper bite. In short, Robinson demonstrates, we have plenty of evidence right in front of our faces, to know that Kavanaugh is straight up lying about important things, lying that should immediately disqualify him for SCOTUS and create serious legal problems that will make it hard for him to hold on to current judgeship. Kavanaugh’s lying ought to “destroy” his career.
Robinsons starts with “Given what we know now, after the hearings, what can we conclude for certain?” and then spends enough time in the weeds to land here:
“The Democratic senators were predictably useless in trying to figure out the answer to the simple question of whether Kavanaugh was telling lies. They left important questions unanswered, failed to pursue promising threads . . . while the FBI investigation may turn up additional useful information, at this point there is absolutely no need for it unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it. It’s completely unnecessary . . . even the very limited questions already asked of Kavanaugh have yielded disqualifying answers. Kavanaugh is lying, it’s provable, and that’s all there is to it. Unless you think it’s acceptable to have someone on the federal bench who treats duly sworn oaths as meaningless, the guy shouldn’t be holding any office.”
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I’m with you on that. I’m just worn out with hyperbolic use of words like Destroy and Slam and Crush and Devastate.
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As long as no one says “Decimated”, I can just about hold it together.
Edit: Aaaaagh! I got a few lines in to that article linked by @numbertwopencil (what a great user name?) and ran in to this, “The hearing did not offer any obvious moments that would decimate either party’s claims.” 
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The irony is thick with that one! Because the person usually means “utterly destroy,” but they’re probably exaggerating a situation where no damage was done at all, but the word itself means “reduce by one tenth.”
I have not gained much good will by pointing this out to my wife over and over again.
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That was a long piece, but it is really thorough about just how dishonest Kavanaugh was during his testimony.
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Wouldn’t we need 10 acusers for them to be decimated?
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