The Tail Wag: John Oliver's Net Neutrality Rant

Every Sunday morning at 11am, The Tail Wag examines something that made me happy in the past week.

Net Neutrality is a really, really big deal. But no one seems to really, really care but it's a really, really hard issue to wrap your mind around.

Even during my day job at the Newspaper Association of America, we are monitoring the net neutrality debate to make sure that readers everywhere will be able access newspaper content without being deposited to a slow lane.

While it rightly caused a bunch of consternation on social media, the gist of the chatter had been that there was a problem that no one could articulate properly because it was so "nuanced" and, well, confusing for the purpose of being confusing.

Enter John Oliver. I've written previously about the greatness of his new show and his latest rant on Net Neturality, clocking it a nearly a quarter-hour, perfectly encapslates everything I was trying to explain. He is not looking out for the right or left, not going after Republicans or Democrats, he is going after people that are wrong.

One week it was GM for cars that killed people. Climate change dissenters bore the brunt one week. And this week, Oliver aimed all his venomous attacks at the corporate entitites that Americans hate the most: cable companies.

It led to comedic genius and a bit that actually crashed FCC servers in the name of a great cause.



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