JAYFORCE

Comedian John Oliver put on a clinic on how you deliver stinging social commentary as thinly veiled comedy. VERY thinly veiled. On the last episode of his Last Week Tonight show on HBO, he spent a huge chunk of the show talking all things Ferguson. The delivery vehicle – a satirical news-formatted TV broadcast – puts viewers (except for hardened Conservatives dead set against the Liberal-leaning Brit they know from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart) in a “hey-you-gotta-be-able-to-laugh-at-things” mode to start. He expertly pulls some chuckles in his segment about the recent events – Mike Brown’s fatal shooting by Ferguson (Missouri) cops, the brutality and militarization of American police departments, etc. But he kept raising the temperature on the presentation until his beef with the entire situation was well cooked. Smoke. Fire. BURN!

Sure, we laugh. But it ain’t funny. John knows…and he let the viewer know he knows this is some bullsh!t.

Here’s the thing the mayor [of Ferguson] doesn’t understand. No one should ever be allowed to say, “There is no history of racial tension here.” Because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth!
– John Oliver