Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the what's-the-good-word dept

This week, there was lots of talk about the lawsuit against HBO's John Oliver from Bob Murray over a report about his coal company. There was some back-and-forth about Oliver's political leanings and the like, during which one anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week by cutting through some of the partisan fog:

Look, I am anti-FCC & anti-regulation and completely understand that J.Oliver is clearly slanted left, but I appreciate this guy doing what he does. He shows up with a lot of facts and information and tells the story in a way other news organizations will not and usually in a very easy to understand way.

We need a literal "metric fuck ton" more of J.Oliver's running around on all sides here. I like his comedic humor and the way he tells the story about subject matter. Either he has stellar writers or he is news genius. I really don't care how he does what he does, he just needs to keep doing it!

In second place, we've got a response to the Supreme Court's statement that you cannot simply ban people from the internet. DannyB preemptively responded to those he suspected might take this entirely the wrong way:

Let me preemptively state this

This supreme court ruling does NOT mean that privately owned sites cannot ban, downvote or hide troll posts, such as this one. They can. They should. And they already do so.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another response to Bob Murray's lawsuit, this time from That One Guy pointing out how things are likely to get worse for Murray before they get better:

Yeah, Murray and his team really did not think this one through. It could have been over with, brought up in a single episode and then left behind as the show covered other topics, but by going legal they've ensured that it will be covered again, drawing even more attention both to the original episode and it's contents and now the fact that he's suing over it.

So congrats Murray and company, you just Streisand'd yourself quite nicely, and if you think you had it bad from the previous episode covering you, just wait until the next one.

Next, we head to our post about cord-cutting and the hilarious comment from Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge on needing to "move" customers "in the right direction" (read: higher prices), where TheResidentSkeptic offered an interpretation that makes more sense:

Tom may be correct...

... if by "move them in the right direction" he meant "towards the exit"

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is another response to the Supreme Court's take on internet bans. Roger Strong worried about other unexpected implications:

Now Trump's handlers will never be able to take away his Twitter account.

In second place, we've got a response to the expanded details of Bob Murray's lawsuit, which included a strange sympathy-play based on Murray's poor health. Roger Strong scored another win by expanding on one of their attempts to induce guilt:

"They did this to a man who needs a lung transplant,"

"This" being documenting his opposition to black lung regulations.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we move away to some new topics, like the big question about why the US government is giving the exclusive rights to a publicly-funded Zika vaccine to a private pharma giant. ShadowNinja did his best to contort the usual defence of patents and see if he could make it fit:

But Glyn, obviously the US government wouldn't have been motivated to develop the vaccine if they couldn't give the patent away to a foreign corporation and give them monopoly powers to charge whatever they want for the vaccine!

And finally, we've got a wonderful anonymous response to the Deputy Attorney General's request for $21-million to solve the FBI's "going dark" problem:

Must be some expensive light bulbs.

That's all for this week, folks!

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