Youtube Digest: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
This line by famed vaudevillian and humorist Will Rogers “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” has gone on living after him. That is perhaps not so remarkable; after all, writers’ words survive them so long those words have people to recall them. However, as increasing numbers turn to comics for information, these words have achieved a greater urgency.
Indeed, Steven Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart form a triumvirate of comics that are commonly approached as much for real information 
about current events as laughs about said events. For their efforts they have been justly praised and left to fighting over the awards, fighting, that is, not always in the purely figurative sense of the word.
It is the last of those listed (Stewart) that has given rise to the latest of the breed: John Oliver. An English stand-up, Oliver cut his teeth on Mock the Week and at comedy gigs across the UK before moving to the States. In the summer of 2013, Oliver stood in for Stewart on The Daily Show when the latter took time off to make Rosewater (a screen adaptation of the memoir Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy). Now he is fronting show on HBOs Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. A testament to the craziness of network news reporting and journalism generally in out time, the show is remarkable for its comed-entary (unlikely though it is, if this portmanteau sticks I call dibs).
For those that don’t get HBO in their part of the world, the Youtube channel is great. These are shorter videos that explore antiquarian, outmoded ideas and Ayn Rand How Is This Still A Thing? Slightly long, People Who Think Good sees John interview leaders in their field with knowingly facetious questions. Derivative? Perhaps. Still before making Ali G comparisons it is worth taking a look at his talk with Dr Jane Goodall:
Perhaps most inventive, the team has assembled a group of dogs to recreate the Supreme Court proceedings as a response to the inability to broadcast the oral debates. The likeness to Justice Kennedy is uncanny:
Still most important are the longer clips that see John dissect an event and its surrounding issues. Often these will result in interviews such as when discussing the effect of US missionaries on Uganda’s LGBT policy or more recently the how middle eastern translators are affected by visa bureaucracy. Both Pepe Julian Onziema and Mohammad make for necessary viewing, as does Fareed Zakaria for that matter.
I must stress that Oliver, while a comic first, never forgets to be funny. The video about translators provoked such feelings of anger and amusement that made me choke as my indecisive face and respiratory system attempted to express both emotions simultaneously.
It might not be a stretch to assume that necessity of comedy in the modern world would mortify Rogers, but while jokers are assigned this role, Oliver and LWT will make a great addition.
