Patton Oswalt is annoyed with Salon, and his reasons are pretty hilarious.for reasons that are full of some industrial-grade cognitive dissonance:
Let me just make one more point. John Oliver doesn’t have many bigger champions in the media than us. We have a been a big fan and celebrator of the important work he did on “The Daily Show,” the job he did filling in for Stewart, and then his own show. But it’s valid to look at the big-picture of late-night TV — Fallon, Kimmel, Letterman, Conan, Meyers, Stewart, Ferguson, Colbert — and to say it’s exclusively white. Exclusively white, straight and male. I don’t think it takes anything away from the brilliance of John Oliver to point that out.
It qualifies his triumph in what he does and it makes some people stop looking at the content of what is coming out of the face. All they’re saying is, “another white male,” and they take it down a couple notches.
But if all the faces are white males, shouldn’t people say that? Are we really suggesting that in every case, these are the most talented people?
But in John Oliver’s specific case, what did he have to do with that? If anything, all he’s done is champion the transgendered, champion women that are fighting against oppression and misogyny and stuff like that. So it’s an irrelevant point at that point. Again, it goes back to, you’re just looking at beans. You’re just counting. If you want to do a bigger article about that subject, that’s fine, but to slip it into an article just about John Oliver and his show, what does that have to do with anything?
…
That one sentence, you think, takes away from the individual?
It totally does. You’re focusing on something that has nothing to do with the actual content of what he’s doing.
So let’s get this straight. He thinks it’s unfair and ridiculous to focus on factors that are beyond the individual’s control in assessing the quality of their work.
And that’s his argument AGAINST worrying about the problem that only straight white guys manage to get jobs in this field.
Look, Patton Oswalt is a funny guy, and smart, and he seems to have put some thought into his positions. But it’s sort of like he spent 20 minutes looking over the wine list, asking about each varietal…and then decided to just drink out of the toilet.