Remember in L.A. Story when Steve Martin’s “wacky weatherman” Harris Telemacher pre-taped his weather report so he could get away for a weekend of uncomplicated sex with Sarah Jessica Parker’s SanDeE*—and got fired after a freak storm sank his boss’ boat? Well, it’s not really Oliver’s fault that his weekly comedy/tragedy news program Last Week Tonight chose to tape on Saturday after a four-week hiatus—after all, as the Last Week Tonight Twitter account posted on Sunday morning, “‘Hey, let’s switch our taping day to Saturday, no big news ever happens on a Sunday afternoon.’ — some idiots.”
Well, President Joe Biden did choose Sunday to announce that he is withdrawing from the beyond-pivotal presidential race, which is, honestly, sort of the definition of “big news.” And so Last Week Tonight merely kicked off with this pre-credits title card:
The red printing on the date sort of hints at the bigness of a story Oliver will, one assumes, have an entire week to come to grips with, but he still brought his thematically relevant main story home in the form of the just-concluded Republican National Convention’s predictable yet stomach-churning appeal to its overwhelmingly white, only slightly less overwhelmingly bigoted base on the subject of immigration. (Oliver did note, with spooky prescience, “The news is moving so fast—we are taping on Saturday and who knows where things will be by the time you actually watch this.”)
When the dust settles over the next seven days and Oliver presumably comes back with his take on the Democrats’ last-minute switcheroo in the fight for the literal continued existence of American democracy, tonight’s story on just how egregiously, shamelessly, and baselessly the Trump-led GOP engages in racist fear-mongering will be even more relevant to the mythical “undecided voter.” Still though, the thought of Oliver and his team frantically pulling together their own last-minute Biden exit story with the clock ticking down to 11:20 is one of those missed TV opportunities we’ll never get back.
All that Republican racism aside, Oliver also had time to make his pitch for his favorite weirdo sport to be selected for next year’s World Games. Oliver introduced much of the blessedly ignorant world to the full, lunatic majesty and scope of this eccentric Olympics alternative, putting his weight behind yet another oddball sporting event that is undeniably fascinating in its strangeness. Oliver, as is his way, called upon viewers to take action, here urging like-minded fans of the bizarre and skillful to flood the unusually receptive World Games sport selection website with their own unlikely hybrid competition akin to actual World Game events like combat juggling and some sort of kayak soccer. Just think back to your childhood when you one day idly mused, “Man, I’d really like to see people with giant industrial fans strapped to their backs trying not to die but totally dying while attempting various acrobatic aerial maneuvers,” and you’ll get into the World Game spirit. For Oliver, that means pushing hard for a featured World Games “blade sports” event, backed up by a clip of a middle-aged, denim-wearing contestant studiously hacking away at everything from two-by-fours to a single sheet of paper with a big-ass knife. Plus, the low rent yet reliably David Lynchian closing ceremonies put the Olympics’ to shame, as reenacted by Oliver to end the episode.
It’s Been a Busy Week
Or rather, a busy month, since John Oliver and crew’s summer vacation saw them missing: the first presidential debate (where Joe Biden’s tongue-tied sluggishness was deemed more important by the national media than Donald Trump’s incessant lies); prominent Democrats (including several big money celebrity donors) demanding Biden drop out a mere four months before the election; some MAGA idiot with the ever-predictable AR-15 taking shots at Trump (one supporter died, 2 were injured); Biden defiantly promising to stay in the race barring some sort of medical emergency; God apparently thinking it was a funny joke to immediately give Biden Covid; and, finally on Sunday, President Biden announcing that he would, in fact, be exiting the race, throwing his enthusiastic support behind Vice President Kamala Harris and leaving the obviously unwell, 78-year-old Donald Trump to hopefully inherit the press’ thirst for a juicy “is he too old?” feeding frenzy.
But what Oliver truly wanted to pluck from the month’s cache of wretched missed news was the Republican National Convention. Specifically Trump and his MAGA minions’ seizing upon what they obviously feel is a winning message to their core demographic of aging, terrified, and gullible white people who run to post a panicky message on Nextdoor every time a Black person is walking down their street. Sure, as Oliver noted, there was plenty of concurrent idiocy, bigotry, and full-volume ranting to go around (plus the bottom scrapings of the celebrity barrel that were Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan). But Oliver zeroed in on immigration as GOP scare tactic, delivering a blistering takedown of Republicans’ hoods-off racism armed with his signature raft of iron-clad facts. Given the fact that genuine reality bounces off of the average Republican voter like Japanese soldier bullets off Godzilla, Oliver’s efforts may prove fruitless, but the perpetually animated host is nothing if not persistent.
The requisite clips of Trump and friends repeating the phrases “migrant crime” and “immigrant invasion” like cheap jump scares in a lousy horror movie set the stage for Oliver to rebut the hell out of the GOP narrative with some of those pesky facts that Fox News regards as both inconvenient and irrelevant. Donald Trump claimed that illegal immigrants kill “hundreds of thousands of people a year,” an accusation so divorced from that aforementioned reality that any self-respecting political party would ship him off on a bus. Speaker after RNC speaker echoed Trump’s lies about rampant migrant crime, their racism aided by the GOP’s pre-printed signs reading “Mass Deportations Now!” held aloft by the whooping crowd.
The thing is, Oliver noted with ample backup from actual statistics, virtually all crime under the Biden/Harris administration is down, drastically. And the number of violent crimes committed by immigrants to America is now—as it’s always been—far less than crimes committed by native born Americans. All this vein-popping, race-baiting GOP invective is, as Oliver noted, “not reflecting anything happening in the real world.” What is proliferating like the imaginary “migrant crime” plague Trump hammers away at are the number of hysterical stories aired by Fox News and its lower-rent “news” imitators.
As ever, Oliver brought the (actual, empirical, non-hyperbolic) receipts. You know, how Trump’s promise to create literal concentration camps pursuant to deporting millions of people whose skin is only slightly lighter than his chosen foundation color hypes up his crowds, primed as they are to racist frenzy by Fox’s non-stop fear-stoking and the GOP’s habit of saying any crime committed by an immigrant is representative of all immigrants. (Sort of like how all Republicans are now adjudicated rapists and convicted felons because they’ve chosen someone of that description as leader.)
Jumping on two high-profile Fox News “gotcha!” stories of supposed “migrant crime,” Oliver had his furious fun debunking the hell out the Murdoch-owned propaganda outlet’s racist dogwhistle du jour. Showing Fox’s incessant coverage of a Times Square brawl where “immigrants” beat up a pair of innocent, helpless New York cops, Oliver teased us along until the inevitable shocking-but-not-really conclusion. That the cops in question instigated a confrontation with a group of Hispanic young men, got violent when one of them disparagingly called on of the male officers “Ugly Betty” (Oliver provided photographic evidence to support the claim), and then played victim via immediately media-saturating images—until additional bodycam footage showed how full of crap they were.
Because nobody doubles down like a bigot with a camera in his face, Oliver then showed how former NYC mayoral candidate and lifelong volunteer racial profiler Curtis Sliwa (of Guardian Angels fame) interrupted a press conference supporting the police officers in question so his red beret-sporting thug buddies could beat up a person they claim was shoplifting—and who also happened to be Hispanic. Oliver—using those damed facts again—revealed how the beaten person was not shoplifting and was singled out for goon squad abuse for speaking Spanish and attempting to brush past Sliwa ranting about “taking back 42nd Street.”
As ever, the effects of all this whipped-up racial hatred falls on the people being unfairly demonized, as Oliver showed how one young man—seen defiantly flipping the double bird to news cameras upon being released from jail—was plastered all over Fox as the face of Trump’s fictitious “migrant invasion.” Thing is—and here I’m guessing the more astute of you can guess—that the young man had nothing to do with the brawl and was defamed in over 66 Fox News stories in the process. (As Oliver noted, the double-flipper wasn’t even in Time Square at the time.) “The NYPD apparently mistook him for a completely different person,” Oliver noted, setting up for the punch line, “for a mystery reason that, I’m sure, wasn’t racist at all.” Concluding, Oliver said that, after being falsely accused and arrested, exploited by a major “news” network as part of a hateful agenda, and then being held in jail for two days, the double middle finger was never more called for. (His graphics department mocked up a third hand flipping off the camera for emphasis.)
So crime is down across the board, “migrant crime” is ludicrously overrepresented by Trump and the GOP to score grimy, ugly votes, and innocent people are paying real-world consequences. (A GOP website hyperbolically named BidenBloodbath.com predictably can’t back up its accusations of a lawless criminal invasion on the southern border. Also, what will they call themselves now that Biden is gone? Suggestions in comments.)
Ramping up to a satisfying pitch of anger and outrage himself, Oliver concluded, “If you want to prevent crime and death, that’s a great idea, and there are absolutely ways to do that. But when you draw a circle around a few members of a particular group, especially one identifiable by race or nationality then generalize about what this means about all of them, no matter what you say, you’re not having a reasoned debate about crime or safety. You’re being racist.” As for the actual people who have come to this country in search of that American dream white people keep proving was always an illusion, Oliver noted, “As we know, immigrants aren’t causing more crime in this country. If they’re leading to more of anything, it’s more good food and more people who can’t believe how mean we are to our moms.”
And Now This…
Just a montage of the RNC freak show, complete with Hulk Hogan tellingly comparing his bloody WrestleMania victory to Trump’s assassination attempt, Kid Rock atonally not-wowing old white people, Peter Navarro emerging from prison just in time to speak, some North Korean-style tales of Trump’s mythical golf skills, and dog-murderer Kristi Noem claiming she only reads her kids the Gettysburg Address. (Old Yeller is probably too on the nose.)
Cardus Endus
Like most comedians worth their yucks, Oliver paid tribute to Bob Newhart, who died this week at the age of 94. Even if John Oliver’s clipped and precise, rapid-fire takedowns and one-liners are worlds away from Newhart’s legendarily halting, stammering comic genius, there aren’t many great comics around who don’t claim Bob Newhart as a king, as connoted by the card’s legend, “Stammerus Iconicus.”
Last Lines Tonight
“It feels like she told her bridesmaids she wanted to see a bunch of dicks onstage and they tragically misunderstood the assignment.”
ON a shot of a miserable-looking RNC attendee wearing a “bride to Be” sash
“You expect to see certain things at the RNC. Elephant logos. Cowboy hats. A massive spike in Grindr usage.”
Gay dating app Grindr did crash during the convention of very straight republicans
“I do not like that man, Ted Cruz/ I do not like his toxic views/ I do not like his nasty speeches/ I do not like the sh*t he preaches/ I do not like him when he fishes/ I do not like him when he kisses/ Pulling off that beard he ain’t/ That man Ted Cruz looks like a taint.”
from Oliver’s ongoing Dr. Seuss-ian ballad of Ted Cruz
“And violence is never an acceptable response to someone being insulted that correctly. Do you think there haven’t been moments when I haven’t wanted to throw someone against a wall because they called me “Worst Sheldon,” or “a less sexual Screech,” or “what would happen if the ret and the chef from Ratatouille f**cked? Sure.”
On an NYPD officer flipping out after being called “Ugly Betty”
“Pickleball, the thing that keeps white suburban moms off of QAnon subreddits.”
on another potential World Games event