John Oliver is (Still) Part of the Problem

I get it: nominating John Oliver as a symbol of liberalism’s failures was well-worn territory a decade ago. This argument has already been made, all the ideological fruit plucked. And the broader debate about liberal condescension as a profound political advantage for the right has percolated in its current form since the 2016 election and in a more general sense for longer than any of us have been alive. I hate to fight yesterday’s war, and I hate to bore you with arguments that have already been made. But at some point, when you see liberals share the same videos week after week of an annoying British man sneering down a camera lens to tell you how stupid everyone else is, you do have to ask if the American left-of-center has any sense at all of how much their project has been damaged by their reputation for patronizing self-righteousness. If the Trump era has proven anything, it’s just how wildly sensitive voters are to the perception that someone somewhere is judging them. That lev

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