I am a more-than-occasional critic of John Oliver's "criticism lite," which takes aim only at pre-approved targets, perhaps most recently in <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=5239">John Oliver and SNL don’t cause enough offense</a>. I do not expect him to say a word about Israel, for example, until the entire rest of the establishment media has indicated that the coast is clear. Still, this video about the odious ADF is a good and funny entry in the war against stupid and disingenuous. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCAuHH5EYnE" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/sCAuHH5EYnE" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="LastWeekTonight" caption="Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)"> At about <b>07:40</b>, <bq>One of its key founders was <b>James Dobson, a man who looks less like a real person and more like AI's answer to the question, "What do they look like without their hoods?"</b></bq> Boom. 🎤 💧 At about <b>16:00</b>, <bq><b>John: </b> [...] this testimony from a teenage girl named Grace about what had happened to her team at her state softball tournament <b>Grace:</b> We stepped onto the field motivated to go in and play our hardest and to display how hard we'd trained. But that spirit of determination was quickly dampened with one of confusion and doubt when we discovered that our opponents were fielding a biological male who identified as a female. Our entire team's focus and motivation was affected as we grappled with the impact of this new player. Sure enough our opposing team won. The boy gave them an edge both physically and mentally that we couldn't match. I had heard stories like this happening to other girls in other states but <b>I never expected it would happen at my school.</b> <b>John: </b> <b>Well, I've got great news for you: <i>it didn't</i>. It didn't happen at your school at all because it turned out there was no trans girl on the opposing team.</b> That team's coach even told us <iq>they only <b>thought she was trans because she had short hair and was good.</b></iq> [😂 ] And, while Grace's team did lose, they also lost 16-6---an ass-whooping so bad no one player could be responsible for it. And, on top of all that, Grace isn't just any old high schooler. It turns out she's actually the daughter of Kristen Wagner. She's basically the ultimate transphobic Nepo baby or, to put it more winsomely, <i>transphobic person of nepotistic descent</i>.</bq> At about <b>29:00</b>, <bq><img attachment="a_metaphor_for_the_adf.webp" align="right" caption="A metaphor for the ADF">ADF, though, is something different. It's worked extremely hard to put a misleadingly friendly face on what is an utterly hateful ideology. And <b>it benefits immensely from people not knowing just how poisonous and disingenuous it is.</b> But for the record, this is a group that will talk winsomely about personal liberty, all while fearmongering about softball players that don't exist, shitty studies that don't apply, and pedophile cakes that no one will ever order. And it might actually be important for everyone to know that at the end of the day, ADF at its core is really a lot like the pews at an imaginary donkey wedding, which is to say, <b>absolutely full of shit.</b></bq>