Not saying I do or don't agree with him, but you don't have to be wrong to be preachy. When you're a comedian you need to be at least 80% funny. If you're 50% funny 50% preachy I'm not going to bother. Southpark use to danced this line pretty successfully.

People used the "You're a comedian so just tell jokes" line against Jon Stewart for years.

There's absolutely no reason someone has to adhere to some arbitrary ratio of comedy to seriousness (edit: or preachiness, etc).

It's important to use the same words when discussing like this, because "preachiness" and "seriousness" mean very different things in this context.

We're talking about comedy v. preaching to the audience, not when to make a joke and when to make a serious point. They're completely different discussions.

And to the Stewart point, he was perfectly able to explain (using comedy) why he believed something without implying that you are lesser for disagreeing with it. Oliver seems to be able to do that at most 1/3 as much as Stewart. The remaining 2/3 is "not only am I right for believing this, and not only are you wrong and you should feel bad about yourself if you don't, but you're so wrong that I can't even comprehend how you could possibly disagree."

Exactly! It's more condescending and "holier than thou" than anything, with such clear bias that I don't find it fascinating or interesting at all.

> he was perfectly able to explain (using comedy) why he believed something without implying that you are lesser for disagreeing with it.

Not completely. If there was a subculture that he didn't get along with, he'd feel completely at home with completely steam rolling them. (I.e. Dungeons and Dragons) What I liked about Colbert is that he would try to jump into the culture and make absurd jokes with the community.

John was smart, likable, and funny. Even my most vocal right wing buddy watched him because he was informative and entertaining. Stewart was quick on his feet and could out think anyone Fox news could pit against him. Colbert was Stewart on steroids in a verbal battle of wits and watching him repeatedly dismantle Bill O'Riley and President Bush made my jaw drop. No one has to adhere to an arbitrary ratio of anything but if you fail to at very least keep a broad audience entertained and just resort to political pandering you aren't playing in the same league as Stewart and Colbert.

John Yoo pwned Stewart when he had him on. And what about the infamous "How are you holding up?" interview with Kerry?

True, but John Yoo is lawyer than had been thinking about his ideas (read: rationalizations) for years, written books, taught classes and so on. You couldn't really expect Stewart to win the argument...

He doesn't have to, but when it's a mix of serious and funny, it's easy to end up both not serious enough and not funny enough

It's worth pointing out that the Last Week Tonight clips that you see online are generally the second half or so of a longer-running HBO show: you only see the main story, and it generally comes with a spectacular call-to-action at the end (it's an intentional decision about what note to end the show on).

So the ratio for the full show is less 50/50 and more 25/75, which is much closer to your sweet spot.

I think the reason he sounds preachy even more so than Stewart is that he uses a lot of over the top analogies over and over again.

I think he (Oliver) is funny but I prefer the Colbert and Southpark satirical model as well. For some reason satire just seems less "preachy" even though it can be just as much so.

The genius of Colbert is that the way he presented it you were defensive internally of what he was saying. Questioning what he said. Maybe it was the Republican blowhard persona that made me do that but it worked. Southpark is obviously satire so it makes it a lot easier but Parker and Stone do such a good job of presenting controversial subjects across all media formats without making it seem like they were biased in one way or another. Truly "We Report, You Decide".

You don't have to be non-preachy to be genuinely funny, though, despite your arbitrary % guideline. Check out Bill Hicks. Nobody has ever accused him of being either too funny or not preachy enough.

I wasn't being literal about the percentages. It's subjective. At this point we are trying to dissect humor and killing it in the process.

That would then include a lot of comedians and many legends. George Carlin comes to mind, to begin with. I do not agree with - you are X so you do X only.