Jon Oliver is a stand-up comedian and host of HBO's new late-night comedy show, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." In this episode, I discuss why Jon Oliver is the real heir apparent to Jon Stewart and why Bill Maher is not.
00:01:41.360But kind of that his time had come and gone.
00:01:43.440And that was just part of the cycle of, you know, his time in politics was really that late 90s, early 2000s look at kind of cynical political infotainment.
00:01:59.520And now he was doing a bunch of struggle sessions and things on television that were just really painful.
00:02:04.840And it was probably best that he kind of just buried that show when he had the option, when Apple kind of said, no, we want you to we don't want you to criticize China.
00:02:12.880We don't want to do these things like, oh, it's a good time to step away.
00:02:15.840Well, now we have John Oliver and John Oliver is somebody who basically just kind of carried the Daily Show format forward.
00:02:25.240Yes, technically, Trevor Noah is doing the Daily Show for like five people, I guess, on Comedy Central.
00:02:30.660I don't know, maybe he gets better ratings than that, but I don't know anybody who's ever watched a Trevor Noah kind of Daily Show and enjoyed it.
00:02:37.920And so kind of the real heir apparent, somebody who was on the show while Jon Stewart was there was John Oliver.
00:02:44.700And Oliver has been doing his show over on HBO.
00:02:47.860Part of them kind of these different people adopting the streaming format and picking up these different late night shows, you know, that that spun off from the Daily Show.
00:02:57.400So his is arguably the most successful post-Daily Show version of this, sticking to the same format.
00:03:03.900Obviously, Samantha Bee was a disaster.
00:03:06.220He's probably the one that's probably best, best continuing that tradition.
00:03:12.040His big thing is supposed to be deep dives.
00:03:16.000That's what's supposed to make John Oliver's show different.
00:03:20.820It's not just these kind of quick rundown of the news, make a quip thing.
00:03:24.920I mean, though he does that as part of the show as well, but he does these larger overarching deep dives into what's going on.
00:03:32.560And that's a big part of kind of his style, what's supposed to set him apart.
00:03:37.440So he did one recently on homeschooling, and it was rather comedic.
00:03:41.720Not for the reasons he would hope, not because Jon Oliver was actually funny intentionally, but because of how ridiculous his assertions were during this.
00:03:53.040So I'm going to go ahead and run through this, guys.
00:03:55.620I want to show you a little bit of what is happening here.
00:03:58.340I had to cut it down because, again, he does these deep dives.
00:04:03.080And most of what I cut was honestly John Oliver just not being funny.
00:04:06.440It's amazing that a professional comedian did a 25-minute bit, and I think I almost chuckled one time, you know?
00:04:12.660And so it's not very effective comedically in that sense.
00:04:16.620But there were some things that were absurd about it that I wanted to go ahead and run down.
00:04:20.460But before we do that, guys, let's go ahead and hear from today's sponsor.
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00:06:00.500Someone just made the joke in chat, they're stacking our gerbs, which is, that's pretty good, man.
00:06:09.020So why is John Oliver going to do a segment on homeschooling, the dangers of homeschooling?
00:06:14.260I mean, really, how dangerous could this be?
00:06:17.260But you actually want to pay attention to this because there is a very real understanding, I think, by a lot of people who are part of the ruling elite that homeschooling is going to be a real threat.
00:06:28.920Don't get me wrong, they've kind of always known this to some extent, but it's becoming increasingly clear how bad public schools are at the job.
00:06:36.100They're absolutely terrible, and they're full of horrific indoctrination.
00:06:41.440People know this, they want to take action, they want to do something.
00:06:44.600But it's increasingly important that kids get more and more government education because they need more and more propaganda.
00:06:50.700You have this deeply unnatural system, this deeply unnatural set of expectations that you're looking to inculcate into kids.
00:06:59.420You're trying to warp their expectations of all kind of things.
00:07:01.940You want to separate them from parents.
00:07:05.960You want to separate them from real history.
00:07:08.380And so you have to constantly just keep them in this flow of propaganda.
00:07:13.920And homeschooling is a big problem because it pulls people out of that, and that's a real issue.
00:07:18.880So you're going to watch this with me a little bit.
00:07:21.160And what you're going to notice for John Oliver is that the main issue is not homeschooling in general.
00:07:28.260He's actually going to take the very nuanced position that there is good homeschooling.
00:07:33.040But you'll notice very specifically who he thinks it's okay to be homeschooling and who he thinks have to be put back into the public school system.
00:07:43.820And, well, I'll give you a little hint.
00:08:00.400I'm glad to see parents taking an interest in their parents' education, especially during the pandemic and all the lockdowns and everything.
00:08:07.980People who are actually involving themselves in that remote education of the children I actually taught during that time.
00:08:13.720It was a very challenging time to be a teacher, a very challenging time to actually have kids learn anything.
00:08:21.600But you're going to notice there's a particular thing that he highlights over and over again that says it's okay to homeschool kids that are like this, but not like this.
00:08:30.520I think it will become pretty obvious pretty quickly, but let's go ahead and start the clip.
00:08:34.860But for some, homeschooling isn't just a pandemic-era necessity, it's a way of life.
00:08:39.740And you may have heard a stereotype of homeschoolers being Christian conservatives who object to what kids learn in public school environments.
00:08:49.980Take this man who offers this pretty shaky rationalization for pulling his kid out of school.
00:08:54.160I think the type of content on what they're teaching about sex or anal sex that my third-grade daughter should not be in a classroom where a teacher or someone else is teaching her about that.
00:09:08.460So this is framed as ridiculous, right?
00:09:11.720That's the whole point of this at the beginning.
00:09:13.600Oh, this is a really shaky reason to homeschool your children because you don't agree with what?
00:11:21.240And if there was any shred of honesty involved in his presentation, there's a million places he could go.
00:11:27.380We know that there is curricula where this is being introduced to young children.
00:11:31.780We know that there is evidence of teachers teaching, you know, first, second graders things about masturbation, things about sexual practices that are entirely inappropriate.
00:11:40.760We know that there are videos from libs of TikTok with teachers of young children talking about how they interject this stuff into their discussions.
00:11:50.480And we know for sure that the Democrats, that the left, hated Ron DeSantis for putting his bill in that protected children in third grade or lower.
00:12:01.580So, he specifically says, well, third grade, this is when this is allowed to take place.
00:12:06.680The left went nuts when Florida tried to protect kids in third grade.
00:12:11.040So, there's a specific reference point.
00:12:13.840The left has already opposed the protection of children at this age from this exact material.
00:12:34.340And so, he's just repeating this to an audience that he expects to be entirely ignorant of what's going on or is so thoroughly bought into his ideology that they're just going to completely, like, reprogram their brain to forget that they fought tooth and nail to get rid or to try to, you know, attack a bill and call it the don't say gay bill because it protected kids in third grade.
00:13:00.680This is just him lying, trying to make this guy look ridiculous with some canned laughter just because he's got a long beard and, you know, it doesn't look like he might have gone to Harvard.
00:13:09.420So, you know, let's just do the canned laughter thing.
00:13:13.040We'll chuckle and pretend that this isn't happening even though there's evidence everywhere that it is and even though we fought tooth and nail to try to prevent kids from being protected from exactly what this guy is concerned about.
00:13:25.800You could have just passed the legislation everywhere and then it's not happening.
00:13:29.240So, who cares if the legislation exists?
00:13:31.400But, of course, John Oliver cares deeply if the legislation exists because he's lying and he knows it.
00:13:37.320But the truth is, the homeschooling community is much broader than just right-wing parents afraid of hypothetical third-grade lube demonstrations.
00:13:45.660By one estimate, there are now around two million children being homeschooled in this country and parents can choose that for all sorts of reasons.
00:13:54.000Maybe their kids have social or health problems or disabilities that aren't being accommodated.
00:13:58.480Maybe they're families with legitimate fears about school safety or who are in the military and move around a lot.
00:14:03.640And there's also a growing number of black parents opting to homeschool due to whitewashed curriculums and zero-tolerance policies in schools that disproportionately criminalize their kids at an early age.
00:14:13.700Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here.
00:14:20.240Let's start from here and work our way backwards.
00:14:22.740So, first, John, why would zero-tolerance policies criminalize African-American children at an early age disproportionately?
00:15:03.980However, the fact that John Oliver specifically points out that African-American children are disproportionately affected by this begs the question,
00:15:12.580well, if they're a bad policy across the board, why specifically, right?
00:15:44.100We're just going to roll past that as if the conclusion is obvious because you're watching John Oliver,
00:15:49.880and so he can kind of rely on that fact.
00:15:52.500The other thing that's really obvious here is he acknowledges, okay, there are legitimate reasons why you would want to homeschool your child.
00:17:37.800And the fact is, for some kids, getting to be homeschooled can be genuinely transformative.
00:17:42.960At 15, Victoria asked her mom, Bernita, to take her out of Detroit schools.
00:17:47.720She says she was being bullied relentlessly for her appearance, and it didn't seem like her administrators cared.
00:17:53.640It made me not want to ask questions, you know, or not want to ask specific questions because I'm like, am I like, are they going to call me dumb?
00:18:01.900When you transitioned to homeschooling, how did you start to feel about yourself?
00:18:21.440A lot of people might say, well, you know, there might be some positive peer pressure towards, you know, towards, I guess, weight or whatever there.
00:18:27.600But, look, people can be really cruel.
00:18:30.100Kids can be incredibly cruel, especially in public schools, man.
00:18:33.520Again, I have taught at bad schools, and I have seen good, intelligent kids get entirely shut down because they're in terrible classroom situations where they're constantly berated.
00:18:43.060They're constantly attacked, and they would really, really, you know, benefit from getting out of that environment.
00:18:48.120I've seen them pulled out of bad classes, put into good classes, and all of a sudden that smart kid flourishes.
00:18:54.740And sometimes a kid just needs to be able to explore things a little bit.
00:18:57.800So I'm totally on board with this, and John should be on board with this, too, but not just for black kids.
00:19:03.480He should be on board for this for all kids.
00:19:05.840This should be okay for every kid, for every parent to remove their child from a toxic public school situation and homeschool them if they choose.
00:19:16.140That should be every parent's right, and he shouldn't be here trying to scare people about the dangers of this.
00:19:21.320He should be extolling its virtues for everyone, not just the people who happen to share the shade of skin that he thinks should be elevated in every situation.
00:19:30.940Because to an extent that you may not realize, in many parts of the country, homeschooling is essentially unregulated, which can result in enormous damage.
00:19:38.340So given that, tonight, oh boy, guys, unregulated homeschoolers.
00:19:42.940Sorry, you got a license for that homeschool over there?
00:19:46.780So you didn't go to a college of education for four to six years, acquire a bunch of HR diversity certificates, and then get down so you can not teach children to read, like happens in almost every public school.
00:20:01.300So again, I didn't get a teaching degree, I was a teacher, but I had to go back and complete a teaching kind of like certificate to attach to my normal degree.
00:20:09.120So I didn't go to a school of education, but I did take education classes in college.
00:20:13.700And I can tell you they were pretty much uniformly useless.
00:20:16.320They didn't teach you anything of value at all.
00:20:19.040I learned plenty of important things about educating children on the job.
00:20:22.660As somebody who had a background in politics and taught politics in history, I used my background, I learned the things that were happening actually in the classroom, and from other teachers who had learned valuable things, and I applied them.
00:20:50.900And let's start with the fact that there is a lot that we don't know about homeschooled kids, from exactly how many there are to what they are learning.
00:20:57.500When I said there are around 2 million of them, the reason that's an estimate is that, depending on the state, homeschooled families might not have to report what they are doing at all.
00:21:06.620In these 26 states, parents simply have to file a notice once a year with officials to let them know that they are homeschooling their child.
00:21:12.780In these 13, they only have to file a notice once with no requirement to check in ever again.
00:21:18.740And in the remaining 11, they don't have to notify anyone at all.
00:21:23.240And when it comes to the education itself...
00:21:24.740Yeah, so, oh no, these parents are, you know, they only have to notify the state that they've made the decision to homeschool their kids, and that's some terrible thing.
00:21:34.660Look, this was the default assumption for pretty much all of human history, up until like 100 years ago or even less.
00:21:42.780It was the default assumption that the parent was the primary educator of their child.
00:21:47.760If you were wealthy and you were very lucky, you might be able to pay a tutor or a teacher or a tutor.
00:21:53.500You might be able to send your kid to a boarding school or even a university if you were incredibly lucky.
00:21:59.520You know, and if you lived in an incredibly wealthy country, maybe they might have some rudimentary public education.
00:22:07.520But it was assumed that the parent was the primary educator of their child in pretty much every situation.
00:22:13.880The idea that the parent would need to seek approval regularly and observation regularly from the state is an insane, massive explosion of government power.
00:22:26.780This is just an insane intrusion of government into the private sphere, into the home.
00:22:34.080And this is why public education is, again, so important to these people.
00:22:37.940They understand they must destroy the family.
00:22:40.940They must destroy the bond between parent and child.
00:22:43.320They must destroy the expectation that parents are the main leaders in the household.
00:22:49.400And the best way to do that is to remove the child from the household as often as possible,
00:22:53.420put as many intermediaries between the parent and the child, as many experts as they can,
00:22:58.460to make sure that the parent does not have the say.
00:23:00.680And that's what Oliver is trying to say here.
00:26:18.100Well, because if you need a lab, then it facilitates the experts and the buildings and everything else that builds out this actual democratic machine, this leftist patronage network, and, of course, propagandize your kids at the same time.
00:26:36.940But, of course, you don't need any of that stuff.
00:26:38.320Of course, you can do this stuff at home.
00:26:39.680Of course, the supervision of a parent is a way more interesting and way more effective way of having a child learn this lesson than making them one of 32 kids waiting around hoping that a teacher might walk by and tell them something important.
00:26:54.660Like, obviously, that one-on-one interaction with that parent and his child is way better for that child than having them go to some public school lab somewhere where they'll be lucky if they even do something like this.
00:27:08.160But play it up for laughs, you know, play the laugh track, make it sound absurd, even though it's just obviously what a loving parent should be able to do if they can.
00:27:16.880That is why there are big publishers who offer materials specifically tailored to homeschoolers.
00:27:21.960And much of that market is dominated by these three Christian textbook publishers who promise learning through a biblical filter.
00:28:13.300Every good example he shows is a black child who was pulled out of school.
00:28:17.340And every bad example he shows was a white child pulled out of school.
00:28:21.300And the specific problem he states almost entirely is that they are getting Christianity instead of the current public education drip feed going directly into their veins.
00:28:31.540So he doesn't believe that it's okay for someone to raise their children with Christianity.
00:28:36.420And that's basically the whole point of this segment.
00:28:39.060But the quality of some of these books can be troubling.
00:28:43.060For instance, one current Abeka history book says that the beginning of the 20th century witnessed a cultural breakdown that threatened to destroy the very roots of Western civilization.
00:28:50.920The cause of this dissolution was no idea or philosophy known as liberalism.
00:29:10.140Meanwhile, a workbook from ACE celebrates the Confederate General Robert E. Lee as a devoted Christian who practiced his Christianity in all his dealings with others.
00:29:21.520So Robert E. Lee, well-known, actually is a good person, even though he ended up on the wrong side of the war for a lot of people, right?
00:29:29.720This is, this is something that's well-known.
00:29:31.200Of course, they just melted down this statue.
00:29:32.780I'm going to be talking with Lafayette Lee on Wednesday about this more in depth.
00:29:37.200But he made this joke before that happened, so I probably didn't understand how it was going to play.
00:29:41.400But yeah, no, this is, this is, again, something that was well-known and celebrated by most people before, you know, we, we decided to reset the country at year zero.
00:29:50.260A lot of people forget that a really critical part of the Civil War was the reconciliation.
00:29:56.660And part of the reason America was able to come back together, it was able to find a shared identity by saying the people of the South were not evil, they disagreed about something, and we can heal.
00:30:26.860And so the fact that this book reflects the view of the Civil War that existed for pretty much everyone until 10, 15 years ago makes it ridiculous.
00:30:35.760And a science book from Bob Jones University claims that biblical and scientific evidence tends to support the idea that men and dinosaurs existed at the same time.
00:30:44.940And if you're wondering what that would look like, ACE actually had a workbook featuring this rendering,
00:30:50.200implying that not only did men and dinosaurs exist at the same time, but they were totally cool with each other.
00:30:57.000But while all of that is pretty troubling, the truth is, in many states, the rules and oversight can be so lax, parents don't ultimately have to teach their kids anything at all.
00:31:07.860Just watch as this former homeschool student breaks down her daily schedule.
00:31:11.360So first, I'm glad we're going to TikTok for this, right?
00:31:37.660We're going to, we're going to, we're going to pull up a video on TikTok and this is going to, this is going to reflect homeschooling in general.
00:33:02.760We say, this is what homeschooling is, especially among white evangelical kids.
00:33:08.340It's just a Nazi factory or, or, or for, for parents who just want to have their kids listen to the Bible for an hour a day and call it a lesson.
00:33:15.560That that's the idea is we just, we just take this broad brush and that's everything.
00:33:44.180He's going to find a couple of, a couple of incredibly rare, incredibly obscure instances and say, this is, and this is the whole point of the segment is to say, this is the danger of homeschooling.
00:33:56.400If we don't grab every white evangelical kid and pull them out of their home and force them to go to school, they will all turn into secret Nazis.
00:34:17.860Well, in large part, it's thanks to a very powerful homeschooling lobby whose most prominent player is the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.
00:34:26.740We got big homeschooling, the most dangerous of all the lobbies, wielding untold power.
00:34:33.040Everybody knows, you know, if you, if you, if you want to get in good in Washington, yeah, you better, you better get Raytheon under your belt and you better get the credit card agencies or the telecom agencies.
00:34:43.600And then you better get the homeschooling lobby.
00:34:45.920That's where the real power lies, right?
00:34:48.280The most dangerous thing you can imagine.
00:34:50.000What he means is it's like another thing you could call this John Oliver is a union.
00:34:55.080It's like a union of homeschoolers that got together and tried to defend what they believed in.
00:35:00.360But, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of portray them as if they're big tobacco or something.
00:35:05.340You know, homeschoolers, the most dangerous thing imaginable.
00:35:09.000And here is where I will concede some ground because it grew out in an environment that was, in many places, overly restrictive of homeschooling with some states and local school districts effectively banning it entirely.
00:35:21.200And from the very beginning, it had a strong evangelical conservative outlook.
00:35:27.940So, and, and to be fair, I, I clipped a bit there because he went into the details of, of kind of places where it was banned.
00:35:33.660It was actually banned in, in, in Texas in the eighties.
00:35:36.160So credit to him for, for explaining some of that, but I clipped it because it would have just been a long, uh, explaining or there.
00:35:41.840Uh, but yeah, he acknowledges to his credit, the reason this exists, right?
00:35:48.160It's not some crazy high powered lobby that, that, uh, you know, uh, buys and owns politicians.
00:35:55.660It's something that parents legitimately needed to fight back against the power of the state, which should be, this guy is warning at the, about the power of the state.
00:36:04.840One side out of one side of the mouth.
00:36:06.540He's like, well, I mean, black parents have to pull their kids out of school because, uh, you know, they, they, they could be, uh, criminalized or they could be taught this whitewashed version of history.
00:36:17.140However, no one else should pull their, their kids out of school because the state suddenly becomes a beneficent and suddenly, suddenly becomes, uh, you know, this, this do-gooder when it comes to everybody else.
00:36:27.840And so the state is probably, you know, simultaneously this dangerous thing that you have to watch out for if you're one shade, but if you're another shade, it's actually this,
00:36:36.420uh, amazing thing that, that is the only thing that can actually teach you anything and pulling your children out is, of that is a problem.
00:36:43.800So like he acknowledges, okay, the state was overbearing in this issue, but his main problem is of course, not that this organization exists or even that it fights for parents.
00:36:53.240His problem is that it's evangelical and that most kids who are homeschooled are evangelical.
00:42:04.360Sorry, it's totally normal for people in political coalitions, especially when they're lobbying across a specific area, to not agree on everything.
00:42:14.520You don't have to ideologically agree on everything.
00:42:17.680And actually, not only do you not have to ideologically agree on everything, you'll notice what's more important to her.
00:42:22.740It's more important to keep her kid out of a government school than to have the people she's working with agree with her politically on other issues.
00:42:29.100Because she knows how bad the government school is.
00:42:31.220She knows how dangerous the government school is.
00:42:32.940So she's willing to sacrifice these theoretical ideological differences for the very real and tangible benefit of improving and protecting the education of her child.
00:42:44.620Because she has actual investment in her child.
00:42:50.960And so she cares more about the right to protect and rear and educate her child than she does about the political beliefs of these other people.
00:45:16.760Like, if you provide all these state oversights and you distribute the responsibility, the idea is somewhere in that line, somewhere in that chain of distributed responsibility, someone will step up.
00:45:27.960That might make sense kind of in theory until you see it in practice, where actually people are far more likely to pass the buck because you have removed the responsibility from the parent and you distribute it across all these surrogate parents.
00:45:42.160Because that's the action you have taken, instead of having parents become more accountable, they become less accountable.
00:45:50.840And because they become less accountable, all of those problems transfer into the schools.
00:45:55.640And all those problems transfer into the schools.
00:45:57.900And even more kids are held unaccountable.
00:46:00.840The students are, or rather the teachers and the social workers and everyone, they hold people less accountable.
00:46:07.780They just turn a blind eye to everything.
00:46:09.780And so, by removing that accountability from parents, you don't actually get more accountability because you distributed it into the system.
00:46:17.540Instead, what happens is you shove all these kids who weren't parented into the system.
00:46:22.460And then all of the teachers, the social workers, they can't do the job of parents.
00:46:37.520Sorry, but getting an education degree doesn't make you a good person.
00:46:40.680And if you're not sure about that, you can check out, like, Florida, where, like, seven, you know, like, like, like, 25-year-old women teachers are always sleeping with, like, these 13-year-old boys.
00:47:02.520The key problems here is child welfare laws were written before homeschooling was legal in all 50 states.
00:47:10.400So they rely heavily on the premise that a child is going to be in school and seen by other adults.
00:47:17.460Again, so this is child welfare laws are only written when homeschools are out.
00:47:22.620So there's this magical time, I guess, when public schooling, like, if you go back to 1890, sorry, there's not a lot of public schooling in the United States.
00:47:31.840You know, 1920, it's not like everybody had constant supervision.
00:47:35.600So you're really talking about this very rare moment in time between when homeschooling, you know, started to become a thing and most kids started showing up to compulsory education.
00:47:46.420You're really only talking about 30 or 40 years.
00:47:48.940This is not, we're not talking about going back to the Stone Age by having kids watched by their parents exclusively.
00:47:54.480We're just talking about returning to the rest of human history and not the immediate present.
00:48:29.480But let me tell you, there are way more students who are neglected and abused by parents who would have no interest in homeschooling them because they couldn't be bothered because they sent school kids to school to get rid of them.
00:48:43.040I taught at a school where a lot of parents just blocked the number of the school because they were tired of getting calls from teachers and administrators, letting them know how badly their student had behaved.
00:48:52.900I am used to that kind of interaction with parents.
00:48:56.740There are tons and tons and tons of parents who gladly send their kids to public school just to get rid of them.
00:49:04.620I'm sorry, but I'm much less worried about the people who actually take the time and effort to homeschool their kids.
00:49:11.240It doesn't mean there aren't problems.
00:49:12.680That doesn't mean there aren't shortfalls.
00:49:14.240But again, when we're looking at large numbers, when we're scaling up and looking at big systems, homeschooling is just better on average.
00:49:22.780Homeschooling parents are less likely to be abusing, less likely to be doing this stuff, and they're more likely to provide quality education to their children than a bad public school.
00:49:34.480Basic child safety protections to ensure parents can't pull their kids out of school to escape scrutiny for abuse.
00:49:40.580A few years ago, to its credit, Georgia passed a law that requires parents who pull kids out of school for no reason to send documentation within 45 days that they are homeschooling their child or proof of attendance at another school.
00:49:54.100If they don't do that, they're subject to a follow-up from the state.
00:49:57.620And even this Republican Georgia state rep acknowledges that it was needed.
00:50:01.680If the people in your world that you believe are most protective of you or torturing you or abusing you, who's going to look out for you?
00:50:11.980I mean, I don't like government intervention in a lot of things, but the government's the only person I know of that can intervene in this kind of case to save a child.
00:50:24.160There are actually a lot of people who can involve themselves.
00:50:26.500If you had robust communities, if you had functioning faith communities, you had churches, you had civic organizations, you had intergenerational families, if you had the kind of family unit and the kind of network that existed previously, again, throughout much of human history and definitely in the United States up to the last few decades, there would be lots of people involved in a child's life that could look into this.
00:50:52.280Now, again, there is no case where everything can be perfect.
00:50:56.500Yes, there will always be these opportunities.
00:50:58.700And again, it is horrific and tragic when it occurs.
00:51:01.120But the question is, who is in charge?
00:51:41.960Children belong to their parents, not to the state.
00:51:44.640That doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate reasons to step in when absolutely necessary.
00:51:49.100But the idea that you can't homeschool your children because there has to be this 24-7 constant intervention by the state to make sure that the children are safe from their very own parents is the most totalitarian thing you can imagine.
00:52:28.680He is fine with tons of government intervention.
00:52:32.620The only time he is skeptical of state is when it's interacting with, I guess, black children.
00:52:38.260Otherwise, he is 100% on board with the state taking any action at any time that it deems necessary, which is why he constantly thinks that you have to have experts, that you can't teach your own child, you can't evaluate your own child's performance, you can't decide their own curriculum, you can't do science experience with them.
00:52:54.260He has argued against parental autonomy and separation from state authority at every single instance, except if it's a black parent removing their child because they're worried there might be a whitewashed curriculum.
00:53:08.380But now he just lies at the end because maybe he won't notice.
00:53:10.560Social services and the government in people's personal situations poses a risk, especially to those who aren't wealthy and who aren't white.
00:53:20.160Again, you'll notice he's not unclear about the only groups that should be allowed to make these decisions.
00:53:27.380There's only really one group that I guess is required to send their kids to school to be oversaw because maybe all those parents are abusive.
00:53:36.500I guess there are no non-white abusive parents.
00:53:44.040The fear of giving the state room to poke around in people's lives or that I think our child protective services system is flawless, no notes.
00:53:50.800We are almost definitely going to be doing a main story on CPS one day.
00:53:55.700But it does seem like giving parents a get out of all scrutiny free, no questions asked card just isn't the answer here.
00:54:03.380Again, we don't need to go through the last bit of this because it's more of the same.
00:54:07.760The government is the one that should make all the decisions, at least when it comes to a specific demographic.
00:54:13.280They have to constantly be indoctrinated.
00:54:32.260You know, a lot of people I put on Twitter.
00:54:34.980Hey, I'm going to show John Oliver's an unfunny buffoon and let people like, yeah, but what are you going to do with the rest of the show after the first two minutes?
00:54:41.400I know this isn't the I know this isn't the hardest of assignments that I've given myself, but I thought it was important.
00:54:47.800I thought it was important to bring up a lot of the kind of the subtext of what he was saying here.