{"id":1176,"date":"2015-10-15T20:36:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T02:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2015-10-15T22:41:16","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T04:41:16","slug":"john-oliver-on-our-lady-of-right-wing-nuttery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver on Our Lady of Right Wing Nuttery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My son recently read &#8220;Anthem&#8221; in school. I have read one Ayn Rand work, &#8220;Philosophy, Who Needs It?&#8221; Having done so, I can&#8217;t help but wonder how a functioning adult who has endured her cartoonish fantasies could possibly recommend such tripe to anyone in good conscience. <\/p>\n<p>I am reminded of <a href=\"http:\/\/kfmonkey.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/ephemera-2009-7.html\">one of my all-time favorite quotes<\/a> from a blog post (Kung Fu Monkey aka John Rogers):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font color=\"blue\">&#8220;&#8211; There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old&#8217;s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<p>More on the fire-breather herself, courtesy of John Oliver on <i>Last Week Tonight<\/i>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_8m8cQI4DgM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I often wonder this myself.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My son recently read &#8220;Anthem&#8221; in school. I have read one Ayn Rand work, &#8220;Philosophy, Who Needs It?&#8221; Having done so, I can&#8217;t help but wonder how a functioning adult who has endured her cartoonish fantasies could possibly recommend such tripe to anyone in good conscience. I am reminded of one of my all-time favorite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.desertscope.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}