Last Week Tonight Review: John Oliver’s Good Deed for the Day

review

JOHN OLIVER LAST WEEK TONIGHT TRUMP UNIVERSITY

John Oliver managed to close out what, for him, had been a slightly sub-par show with a noble gesture, which, as you might expect from the comedian, he loudly boasted, nearly doubling in magnitude the massive car giveaway that Oprah Winfrey provided her audience with a few years back. Up to that point, it had been an OK show, but a little short of his best work.

Unlike his show from two weeks ago (with a week off in between), Oliver did not try to cover a myriad of short subjects in addition to his lead story. This time, he went back to his two introductory pieces, only one of which was amusing.

Oliver’s first bit was the amusing one. He gave us a more in-depth look at the so-called Trump University, which, as he correctly pointed out, was not a university in even the most generous definition of the word. This may have actually been the most relevant part of the show, when you stand back and take a look at the big picture. Of course, mention has been made of the fiasco of Trump University by his political opponents in both parties, but it has generally taken the form of Trump the not-so-successful entrepreneur, rather than Trump the swindler, which is perhaps the more realistic light in which John Oliver cast the enterprise. Feel free to check it out in the link offered below.

His next short piece was the time-waster. Fortunately, it did not waste all that much time. With all the horrible stuff going on in the nation and the world, Oliver chose to take a cheap shot at Wolf Blitzer for overusing the word “obviously,” in a ménage of his broadcasts in which he used the word, the implication being that he is an unimaginative clod of some sort. Considering the hours and hours of broadcast time the man has been on the air, the (entirely proper) use of the same word nine or ten times hardly makes him a dolt. The same tactic could have been applied to Mr. Oliver with far more effectiveness. If you were to put together a compilation of all his f-bombs, he would come off sounding like a borderline lunatic with a severe case of Tourette’s. Yes, yes, I fully understand that the word can be and often is used for comedic effect, and I am fine with that. Still, it seems that John Oliver has a different take on the unwritten rule of repetition in comedy: do a bit once or do it three times, period. Oliver must have misinterpreted the rule to read, do it once or three times or 89,674.

Oliver’s main story was about debt buyers. There are, as you may already know, a number of enterprises that will buy up the debts that banks, hospitals or other corporate entities may have considered too difficult to collect, for only pennies on the dollar. They will then attempt to collect the debt themselves in the hope of recovering the full amount. Like divorce lawyers or orthodontists or members of Congress, those people may be operating in a sleazy area, but, insofar as they do their jobs properly, they are not criminals, even though Oliver would have us believe that the debt buyers are, just by the very fact of being in that business.

He began the segment with a particularly sad example of a couple who were being hounded by debt buyers to the tune of $80,000 after the husband had been rushed to the hospital to fix the minor inconvenience that he could not breathe. His bill was not covered by his health insurance carrier. In his hasty zeal to excoriate the debt buyers, Oliver overlooks the far more serious story of how the insurance company had been able to weasel out of the obligation to cover the patient.

He spends a lot of time focusing on the abusive law-breakers in that field and on the corrupt state governments that have permitted more abusive behavior on their part than they should be permitted. He spends little or no time on the collective efforts on the part of the American government to rein in the abuses that used to be perfectly legal in the past. After all, how can you get any laughs out of government actually protecting the people it is supposed to serve?

It is at the end of the segment, though, that the host redeems it. Demonstrating how ridiculously easy it is to become licensed as a legitimate debt buyer, he formed a dummy corporation for that enterprise, then bought up nearly 15 million dollars of bad debt, which cost his show and HBO several thousand dollars. Then, instead of trying to collect on the debts, which he was entitled to do, he discharged them all, taking about 9,000 people off the hook.

Good for him and good for HBO.

 

Last Week Tonight, HBO, June 5, 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.