Oliver Willis, Author at The Daily Banter

Media Research Center Would Really Like To Talk Smack About Chelsea Clinton

The right wing Media Research Center would really like to talk smack about Chelsea Clinton, who recently announced that she is pregnant. Here is Tim Graham, the center’s Director of Media Analysis (also race-baiter and ghost writer for founder Brent Bozell) lamenting a Washington Post opinion blog noting that his side of the aisle has been… Read More

The Almighty Liberal Media, The Most Powerful Force Known To Man

If you listen to conservatives, you’d be at a loss to describe what exactly the liberal media can’t do. According to them: The liberal media has controlled the outcome of every election, except for 2004, 2000, 1988, 1984, and 1980 when it apparently went on vacation. The liberal media has chosen every losing Republican presidential… Read More

Yes, But What Does The Klan Guy Think?

In our ongoing efforts to include all voices in our great national discussion, I propose that we must include the voice of the Ku Klux Klan. Several people have argued that we are approaching an era of excluding voices, no matter how absurd they may appear to be, from these discussions. They have argued that… Read More

This Website Tricked Dumb People With Fake News, And Is Making Money Doing It

So here’s a new entrant in the morally sketchy, but probably financially rewarding sweepstakes that is the online content dash for cash. Meet TheNewsNerd.com, a website with fake news stories and poorly written satire. The motivation behind the site appears to be in line with The Daily Currant, a poorly written news satire website that… Read More

Kochs Should Stand By Their Words Or Get Out Of Politics

Count me among those confused by the conservative reaction to criticism of GOP financiers Charles & David Koch. People on both sides of the aisle have regularly vilified the big-pocket donors on the other side. In the 1990s liberals heard about Richard Mellon Scaife’s project to take down the Clintons, after that we heard about… Read More

Charles Koch & The New Conservative Wimp Culture

STOPPPPPP YOU’RE HURTING MY FEEEEEELINGS is apparently the new clarion call of the conservative movement. I’m still a little shocked by it. The latest whiny conservative is multi-billionaire conservative financier Charles Koch, who has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the official outlet of the poor put-upon 1%, to complain that he’s actually… Read More

#CancelColbert And Why Some Liberals Need To Grow The Hell Up

In instances like the entire #CancelColbert nonsense, the advantage with youth on the left side of the aisle can often feel like a liability. The real world is decidedly not a college campus, where the act of protest against college administrators often becomes enough of an annoyance or hindrance to daily operations that it results… Read More

Executive Vice President of the NRA LaPierre holds a 300 Remington Ultra Mag that was auctioned off after he gave the keynote address at the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo in Salt Lake City, Utah

The Perverse Reality Of Modern Gun Culture

I will concede that the left has been on the losing side of the battle over guns for some time. The right is unified, as it often is, while Democrats are afraid of their own shadows on the issue. Even when polling supports a position, the side of extreme gun advocacy — the NRA —… Read More

None Of These Men Will Ever Be President

I wish that the next presidential campaign was a long ways away,but it sadly isn’t. The race to succeed President Obama is already in extremely low gear, and as the 2014 elections end the mad dash will be accelerated. While I think that Democrats will be the favorite going into the election, there are some… Read More

“True Detective” & Embracing The Light

The following contains some slight spoilers for the finale of True Detective. I started on True Detective a while after everyone else, as usual, and I watched the whole run over the last four days. When I got to the finale, I was shocked that it had been so negatively received online. I’m a huge… Read More

Republican Voldermort: None Dare Speak His Name

In the Harry Potter books and films, the residents of the magical world fear the black wizard Voldermort so much that even a casual mention of his name is frowned upon. Instead they use “You Know Who” to refer to the man responsible for the deaths of many magicians and regular humans. George W. Bush… Read More

Fox News: The Left’s Secret Weapon In The War On The Right

No amount of liberal money could convince the right to adopt a losing electoral strategy, yet thanks to the financial and intellectual success of Fox News, precisely that has happened. Conservatives love to point out Fox’s long-running domination of the cable news ratings as if it proves a point. Fox is definitely better than CNN… Read More

Death To Liberal Pessimism

Imagine if the great progressive leaders and movements of the last century or so gave in to the most pessimistic view: Martin Luther King would have realized that it wasn’t worth going to jail time and time again, because he was away from his family and white Americans would never become enlightened enough to have… Read More

Ukraine Crisis Reminds Us To Keep Ignoring Conservatives On Foreign Policy

In case you had allowed yourself to believe conservatives had learned a single thing from orchestrating some of the worst foreign policy in U.S. History during the Bush years, forget about it. The same gang who led us into Iraq and defended the death and destruction that followed is still wrong on almost everything on… Read More

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No Tolerance For Bigotry

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham quoted a guest of hers, Heritage Foundation fellow Ryan T. Anderson, who complained that the left is trying to “stamp out every last vestige of opposition to same sex marriage.” My response? YES. All Americans, not just “the left” should be doing our all to stamp out bigotry and discrimination… Read More

Obama’s Vulcan Foreign Policy

It always kind of bugs me when people repeat the idea that liberals are always driven by emotion, while conservatives are the “just the facts” Jack Webbs of the world. Case in point: American foreign policy. George W. Bush’s foreign policy was often driven by emotion and off the cuff rhetoric. From the idea of… Read More

I Don’t Think You Actually Think Lupita Nyong’o Is That Great

Lupita Nyong’o does a great job in 12 Years A Slave, and she should win the Oscar she’s been nominated for. But I feel really weird at the way a lot of the media has focused on Nyong’o in the last few months. Every red carpet appearance she’s made and every magazine photo layout she’s… Read More

Can We PLEASE Give People Some Time To Understand Transgender Issues Before We Bash Them For It?

For many people this stuff is strange and new and they haven’t quite wrapped their heads around a lot of the real, serious issues it involves. Show them an open hand rather than a closed fist.