John Oliver takes on Alex Jones and profitable conspiracy theories
John Oliver and Last Week Tonight returned from vacation to take on one of the loudest members of the conspiracy theory media – Alex Jones.
Most of us understand that Alex Jones – who shouts that tap water makes everyone gay and claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was orchestrated by the US government – is spreading unadulterated nonsense. In fact, according to Oliver, “the first thing you should know about the Alex Jones Show is ideally nothing”. Or, as John Oliver Jones colorfully described, he is “the Walter Cronkite of the screeching bats *** gorilla clowns”.
Why is John Oliver talking about this man?
It actually doesn’t have much to do with the fact that Trump is apparently a fan, nor does it have to do with the time Jones called Last Week Tonight on his own show InfoWars. Incidentally, that appeal included a sneaky compliment on Oliver’s presumably intellectual British accent. Wrong, said Oliver: “I sound like a chimney sweep going through a wood chopper.”
Joking aside, however, there are some serious problems with Jones’ show InfoWars. There’s the frankly horrific speculation about the Sandy Hook massacre, not to mention a cornucopia of paranoia, barely veiled homophobia, and Jones yelling about Satanists. Jones also promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which resulted in an actual gunman threatening innocent people in a Washington, DC pizza restaurant.
InfoWars’ source of income
However, “there is a context that you may be less aware of”: the show itself and Jones’ special way of making money. It takes four hours and Jones is always sending products on the air. In fact, Jones spent almost a quarter of the time selling InfoWars on their website. Including wet wipes, herbal shampoo and a “Bill Clinton Rape Whistle”, which is nothing more than a pipe on a lanyard for 6.00 US dollars.
Also, Jones’s store sells some high-priced wet wipes that awkwardly assure you that they are safe to use on the dam. This also means, by the way, that in Last Week Tonight you get a pretty straightforward illustration of what a perineum is.
Apart from that (and if you metaphorically wipe the image of a perineum out of your head), about two-thirds of the revenue from the InfoWars shop comes from a variety of high-priced vitamins and “nutriceutics”. These include products called Child Ease, Brain Force Plus, and DNA Force, the last of which is $ 120.00 per bottle. There is also a “Caveman True Paleo Formula,” which contains ground chicken bones and chocolate powder. Alex Jones claimed that “the ancients had better bones” for shilling the caveman formula.
John Oliver had a glass on the show and gave it a, say, bad review. “It’s coming at you in waves,” he said.
Jones now employs a consultant to support these products, a Dr. Edward Group III. Group claims that “I do research all the time” to bolster its credentials, and also says refugees spread disease – which, of course, means you should buy a supposedly immune-boosting dietary supplement.
Unfortunately, Group isn’t exactly an accredited doctor. Group graduated from Texas Chiropractic College with a degree in chiropractic. However, he did not graduate from a bachelor’s degree and only completed a non-degree certificate program from MIT. In fact, Last Week Tonight contacted MIT about the group’s participation there. In response, MIT said that “it is incorrect to say he graduated from MIT” and that it would be “imprecise and misleading to call him an alumni”.
Well, all of these things aren’t cheap even if you can get them for a much lower price elsewhere. Jones justifies this by saying things like “you absorb it more” and that cheaper competition “will kill you.”
What is Jones doing with all that money?
By the way, where does all the money go? Alex Jones claims all of the revenue goes into his show. Not to mention, it takes approximately $ 45 million to run the show, which is itself subject to “massive, ongoing economic attack”. He also asks viewers to “give me the energy and I will attack the enemy”.
Jones makes it sound like InfoWars is constantly on the verge of closing. However, ex-employees say his business is thriving. Jones seems to be particularly fond of Rolexes, of which Oliver counted at least three individual pieces. Which is fine on its own but doesn’t go well with its message of scrap and fight.
Jones awkwardly argued that he was disguising himself as a Rolex-adorned Satanist to … uh … show the world that … uh, “none of this means anything.” Well saved there. Even so, Jones should have to work so hard to prove his point. According to Oliver, “torturing Sandy Hook’s parents should get you comfortably into Satan’s club.”
So, “when you play [the clips] In context, “Oliver said of Alex Jones,” he looks like a seasoned salesman … selling you an answer. “As a particularly illustrative example, Oliver played a clip in which Jones claims that there are chemicals in the water, all of them feminize and lower fertility rates. Then he turns around and happens to be selling a bunch of expensive water filters.
Oliver then brought in Jack McBrayer as “Dr. Ted Throup III ”to sell the John Oliver Moisture-Armored Tactical Assault Wipe exclusively for the dam. “For God’s sake, don’t use this anywhere else.”
Fortunately, you can actually purchase these things from infowipes.com for $ 1,000,000. Incidentally, this amount goes entirely to Doctors Without Borders. Could it be worth the cost? According to “Dr. Ted Throup ”, the other towels will kill you while these“ frogs can heterosexualize ”. Thank god, we guess.
