Political humorist John Oliver shatters Trump myths—then ends show with a ZINGER

The HBO talk show host who brings us political comedy seems to get funnier every week. He’s also become quite informative. Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver starts off his February 28 show about someone he has chosen, so far, to ignore — Donald Trump, who is “like a back mole that may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that he's gotten frighteningly bigger and it’s is no longer wise to ignore him.” In dispelling many of the myths believed about Trump by his followers, John Oliver goes after the Republican frontrunner’s integrity hard, saying:

I’m not even sure he knows he’s lying. I think he just doesn’t know what the truth is.

In his comic way, Oliver begins to stomp out Trump myths.

• Myth 1: He tells it like it is. Politifact rates 76% of what Trump says as “false” to some degree. Oliver reels off some Trump’s lies, including when the GOP candidate said he was invited on the show with Oliver—five times. Not true. READ MORE

April 12, 2012 12:21 pm ET

Both mainstream and conservative media outlets have responded to the recent spike in gasoline prices by circulating talking points rooted in politics rather than facts. As a whole, these claims reflect the misconception, perpetuated by the news media, that changes in U.S. energy policy are a major driver of oil and gasoline prices.   READ MORE

What would "drill baby drill" mean for gasoline prices?
Would the Keystone XL pipeline affect gasoline prices?
Is monetary policy to blame for the recent price spike?
How do U.S. fuel taxes compare to other nations?
Could we shift to a single national gasoline blend?
Why did oil and gasoline prices fall sharply in late 2008?
If we end tax breaks for oil companies, would gasoline prices change?
Do oil companies receive the same tax breaks as other companies?
How does current U.S. oil production compare to previous years?
How much oil is coming from federal lands relative to previous years?
How have U.S. petroleum imports changed in recent years?
Is the U.S. sitting on over a trillion barrels of oil?
What would "energy independence" mean for gasoline prices?
  ANSWERS

The Absurd Myths Porn Teaches Us About Sex

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Young people who have learned about sex from watching porn have a treasure trove of sadly mistaken beliefs and misconceptions about sexuality.

March 26, 2012

When Lynette, a college student, first hooked up with an ex-boyfriend, she came face to face with the unrealistic ideals mainstream porn can create about sexuality.

“I had a boyfriend who didn’t realize that women had pubic hair,” she tells us in an interview. “Because he had only watched porn, he had never seen a naked woman outside of porn, so he just sort of failed to realize they had pubic hair.”

“This came up somewhat before my pants came off,” she added, “so you can realize how awkward this was.” She paused. “His face was memorable. In an ‘oh God, what is wrong with me, I am never taking my pants off in front of anyone ever again’ way."

Porn has become immensely popular in the last century. With the rise of Internet pornography, no longer do you have to enter a sleazy sex shop in a shady part of town to witness an astonishing panoply of sex acts. A quick Google brings you sex acts from the mundane (happy amateur couples having missionary intercourse) to the bizarre (could looners, who have a sexual fetish for balloons, ever have met each other outside the Internet?). Many teenagers have their first introduction to sex from the glow of a computer screen.

And these days, it can lead to some hilarious misconceptions.   READ MORE
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"These myths about sexuality might seem humorous, but they hide a tragic truth. A generation of teenagers grew up under Bush’s record-breaking funding for abstinence-only sex education.

Although Obama has eliminated funding for abstinence-only and funded evidence-based comprehensive sex education, the damage has already been done. And both Santorum and Romney, the frontrunners for the GOP nomination, favor abstinence-only sex education—despite the evidence that it delays loss of virginity only eight months. According to research at the Guttmacher Institute, the rates of pregnancy and STIs among teenagers who received abstinence-only sex education are far greater than the rates among those who didn’t."
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Screwing Over Urban America: Why the GOP's Top Contenders Hate Cities

For the Republican contenders, urban areas are out of sight and out of mind.

January 3, 2012

The Republican presidential primary has covered significant ground. Against a backdrop of Iowan cornfields, candidates have debated socialism, capitalism, immigration and American exceptionalism, and have even touched on the finer points of Shariah law and the Federalist Papers. One thing you don’t hear about is America’s cities and the ongoing, and growing, urban crisis.

There are some oblique references, like Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that child labor laws be modified so that poor children can work as school janitors. “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods,” mused Gingrich, “have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works … They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”

Gingrich’s comment is a surviving dog-whistle politics that include new state laws to drug-test those on public assistance and the ongoing effort to cut food stamps (and Gingrich did call Obama the “food stamp president”). The specter of the black ghetto still scripts urban dwellers as villains (often as thieves robbing the citizen either directly, or as in this Rick Santorum comment, indirectly: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money”). But unlike the era of Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, today cities are more ignored than attacked. And this goes well beyond Iowa.

READ MORE