Whenever someone is funny while providing necessary commentary on the world, I think to myself: “Now this is someone who knows the responsibility to use their platform for good.”
The best kind of comedy refuses to exist in a vacuum. Instead, it uses humor to directly address societal issues and gets the audience to think critically about how society runs — that is the kind of socially responsible comedy that talk show host John Oliver powerfully delivers in “Last Week Tonight.”
In the Oct. 3 episode “Federal Courts,” Oliver does not hold back when scrutinizing the rightward shift of the United States judiciary. Take, for example, the vacant judgeships that former President Donald Trump filled while in office, which Trump describes as “a big beautiful present to all of us.” Oliver defines the reality of how those vacancies came to be: “Those vacancies weren’t gifted, so much as stolen” — wherein the former president outpaced his two-term predecessors to usher in a conservative takeover of the federal judiciary.
Oliver proceeds to compare this grim reality to the Oprah car giveaway, saying that “Oprah’s car giveaway wouldn’t have seemed nearly as fun if she spent the previous night carjacking everyone in Chicago.” This was beautifully delivered with a quintessentially over-the-top, “Last Week Tonight”-style graphic of Oprah gleefully throwing a screaming man out of his car.
Later in the episode, Oliver wastes no time turning to the heart of the conservative effort to remake the federal judiciary: the Federalist Society. As unserious as Oliver’s style of political comedy can seem, he still manages to track the Federalist Society’s rise to power with the seriousness that it deserves. He referred to its journey as “a student club to an incubator and pipeline for conservative lawyers to become public officials and judges.” Here, it is clear that viewers can take away the fact that “Last Week Tonight” never fails to link its material to society’s core issues.
I particularly loved how Oliver’s unique style manifests in scrutinizing the Federalist Society’s leader, Leonard Leo, in ways that powerful individuals like Leo wouldn’t appreciate. Leo, whose major political arm received over $24 million from just one anonymous donor, has dismissed the importance of where his political donations come from. Oliver bluntly responds, “Where things come from does matter for the same reason that Lunchables can’t just list its ingredients as ‘Mind your f—ing business!’” The audience members’ laughter underlines Oliver’s brand of humor that leaves no powerful figures off the table — even someone like Leo, who would otherwise escape the public eye.
Oliver also eloquently sounds the alarm on Leo’s “deeply socially conservative” agenda by honing in on abortion. In 2018, Leo dismissed public fears that more conservative justices on the Supreme Court would mean the death of the abortion rights provided by Roe v. Wade (1973). Leo decried those fears as “a scare tactic,” to which Oliver responds, “As I think we all know, it played out a bit differently.”
What I love about Oliver’s use of hindsight is that it captures exactly how powerful, and ultimately dangerous, the conservative influence on the federal courts truly is — following the Supreme Court’s catastrophic reversal of abortion rights.
Oliver shreds the narrative that would place these conservative judges on a pedestal of decorum, respect and borderline deification; he defines their legal lunacy in crystal clear terms. While the Supreme Court rejected an attempt to take the mifepristone abortion pill off the market, Oliver reminds the audience that the initial judge on the case, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, was heavily anti-abortion. With stunning comedic intention, Oliver declares that “their argument did not have a leg to stand on, which is a little ironic considering Amarillo has two of them that are just fucking hanging around for some reason,” clearly alluding to the “Huge Pair of Legs” tourist attraction located in the Texas city where the lawsuit originated.
While Oliver spends a substantial amount of time on the grim reality of the right-wing legal landscape, he wisely imparts a call to action upon the audience: “[Keep] Trump out of the White House and Republicans out of Congress in November.”
Oliver not only reminds the audience that a second Trump term would “cement the Supreme Court’s supermajority for a generation,” but also that the trend of stripping away rights and stomping on marginalized communities “only persists if we let it.” Here, Oliver delivers a masterclass on comedy as a cure to political inaction. Amid his election season goofiness and boldness, he never fails to remind viewers that democracy is on the line.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.