Last Week Tonight Episode Review: John Oliver Schools Us on Schools

review

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Before I get into the most recent broadcast of Last Week Tonight, your narrator needs to apologize for a minor, but double, error he made in last week’s entry, with his casual mention of the “robbery” in Rio. First, I got my swimmers mixed up, confusing Ledecky with Lochte. Then, I bought into the story that the incident was a robbery at all. Ah well, having teed the ball up, taken my mightiest swing and missed the thing completely, let me give myself a mulligan and press on.

Actually, Oliver did go into the aforementioned Mr. Lochte in greater depth for his first segment. In this day and age, when almost all your athletes are carefully schooled to regurgitate the safest of clichés by your ultra-slick PR types, it is refreshing to run across an unashamedly dumb jock. After finishing that bit off, the host once again eschewed the easy throw-away second segment and got into a matter of some substance. As a matter of fact, it was his main topic for the night, an item that usually bats in the #3 position.

Tonight’s main topic was charter schools. As Oliver pointed out, there is something to be said for the idea, especially when you are confronted with the situation of bright children who would otherwise be too poor to attend anything other than a failing public school, as many of them are, let’s be honest. The thrust of his presentation was that, even if you have a good idea, if you don’t do the proper follow-through, it turns to garbage. In this specific instance, granting entrepreneurs the right to educate our young people (for a modest fee, of course) turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea if you do little or nothing to make those charter-holders at all accountable or, at the very least, force them to demonstrate some ability to run a school.

I will leave it to you to get the gory details on one of the show’s many re-broadcasts or elsewhere. As you might expect, when he is presenting a topic that is more a cause for alarm than laughter, the seriousness of the situation tends to somewhat overwhelm the inherent humor.

What Oliver used for his third segment was a re-working of an idea that Seth Meyers first brought up in his late night talk show. Believing, as Meyers does, that our favorite toxic circus clown does not really want to be burdened with the annoyance of having to be the leader of the free world. John Oliver used this last bit to suggest that Mr. Trump drop out and proclaim the whole thing to be a colossal joke he pulled on the American right wing in particular and the American people in general…oh, right, and maybe Vladimir Putin as well. That was not exactly what Meyers had in mind, but the end result would be the same. It is this very amusing final segment that I have set aside for your weekly sneak peek. Enjoy it as much as you would enjoy the idea of Donald Trump never, never ever living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Last Week Tonight, HBO, August 21, 2016

 

 

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Thomas Cleveland Lane

Thomas Cleveland Lane is a semi-retired freelance writer for pay and a stage actor for nothing more than the opportunity to make a fool of himself. Well, he does get a small stipend from the Washington Area Decency League, after playing the role of Hinezie in The Pajama Game, to never, ever appear on stage in his underpants again. When he has not managed to buffalo some director into casting him, Thomas can often be found at his favorite piano bar, annoying the patrons with his caterwauling. Thomas is the author of an anthology called Shaggy Dogs, a Collection of Not-So-Short Stories (destined to become a cult classic, shortly after he croaks). He is also the alter-ego to a very unbalanced Czech poet named Glub Dzmc. Mr. Lane generally resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and was last seen in the mirror, three days ago.
Thomas Cleveland Lane
Thomas Cleveland Lane
Thomas Cleveland Lane is a semi-retired freelance writer for pay and a stage actor for nothing more than the opportunity to make a fool of himself. Well, he does get a small stipend from the Washington Area Decency League, after playing the role of Hinezie in The Pajama Game, to never, ever appear on stage in his underpants again. When he has not managed to buffalo some director into casting him, Thomas can often be found at his favorite piano bar, annoying the patrons with his caterwauling. Thomas is the author of an anthology called Shaggy Dogs, a Collection of Not-So-Short Stories (destined to become a cult classic, shortly after he croaks). He is also the alter-ego to a very unbalanced Czech poet named Glub Dzmc. Mr. Lane generally resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and was last seen in the mirror, three days ago.