Tonight I Want to Talk About John Oliver, Part 3
How 2024 Showed That John Oliver and The Rest of Late Night Had Learned Absolutely Nothing Since 2016
Those of you who remember my ‘Disruption Series’ in 2023 will remember that I regarded the strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in the spring and summer of that year as bringing out by far the worst aspects of the left in general and Hollywood in particular. Framed by those on the picket lines as a battle of working stiffs verses corporate oligarchs, what it was in reality was a group of privileged and spoiled rich people trying to shakedown an industry that was increasingly financially shaky.
All of the worst aspects of what I have come to expect from so many of the left were on full display: wealthy people demanding more than their fair share from a part of the industry that had no real money; further crippling an industry that was still shaky from the lockdown in 2020. Shouting down voices of dissent, who argued that this was hurting everybody. Refusing to think of the people who were suffering — the millions of people whose income depended on Hollywood but didn’t have the benefit of a union to lean on during a six month gap. Attacking viciously those few people who tried to help those were suffering from the consequences as being scabs. The certainty that their struggles were vital to the rest of the country, who by and large only cared that their favorite shows weren’t airing and were willing to blame everyone. And finally being forced to settle for not much more than the original terms after months on the pickets lines.
Late night was among the first to return and none of them went into detail about this. Unapologetically Oliver used his first night back to say he was angry that it took the studio to give a deal after five months “that they could have given on day f — -ing one!” That Hollywood had basically given that same deal on day 1 and the strikers had rejected it was somehow left out of that discussion.
This was not the first real sign of John Oliver’s leftist proclivities but over 2024 it became increasingly clear that was where he was. His pieces over that year, while still frequently funny, increasingly took on a strident and harsh tone towards every target. And during what was his tenth year on the air, some of the other flaws in Oliver’s programs were becoming clear.
For one while he continued to follow up on stories he had before, he never chose to do so if improvements or pleasant surprises came about. This was clear during a show he did in the leadup to the India election. In what was his third show on the Indian leader he went out of his way to illustrate how much worse things had gotten under the past decade, the history of his tyranny and how much worse the human rights abuses were becoming. But there was nothing in this piece about the opposition — lead by Rajiv Gandhi — and its attempt to regain power. When the elections the following week led to force Modi to lose a significant amount of his base and form a coalition government for the first time since his administration, it was viewed as a blow against him and a victory for democracy. But Oliver never did a follow up piece the next week or ever.
Similarly before the parliamentary elections in London that year, he devoted an entire show about the horrors of the past fifteen years of Conservative rule and the five prime ministers who had led England into ruin. But while he acknowledged Keir Starmer and Labor were going to win a resounding victory — which they did — not only did he not seem excited about, he went out of his way to show footage of voters who didn’t seem that thrilled with it either. Indeed he seemed more excited about Conservatives being swept out of power rather than any improvements Labor might be able to bring. A new era in politics might well be beginning — and Oliver seems uninterested in it.
By now it was very clear that the kinds of shows Oliver was essentially basing Last Week Tonight on were the kinds of deconstructionism that the far left is always thrilled to do in its histories. His episodes showed how industries, parts of the government and foreign countries had come to the state they were in, often by either American or Western malfeasance, leaving the industry and society in a ruin they were today. Then he began to make blanket statements on things the government should do, knowing full well that in previous pieces he had made it clear the government was powerless to change things. One frequently leaves the leftist argument in a state of despair, and Oliver made a running gag about how depressing the humor on his show could be. But he made no effort to change ten years in; the only comedy he was inclined to give was nasty and unpleasant about the evils of society.
Nowhere was this more clear then the events in Gaza. The piece he did after the attacks on October 7th were one of the most brilliant episodes of Last Week Tonight ever done and would eventually win an Emmy and a Peabody. It explained in great detail how the Palestinians were victims of Hamas and how Netanyahu had spent his entire career using them as a boogeyman t hold on to the power and all of that had gone haywire that year. He ended his piece with a plea for unity between the two groups, saying clearly that the citizens of Gaza and Israel were both victims of what happened.
But in 2024, he seemed to have embraced so much of Hollywood’s argument on Palestinians being repressed. This was astonishing considering the number of pieces Oliver had done on the Middle East prior to this, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar over the past years. He had occasionally been harsh on Israel during this period but by and large he had made it clear that the other regimes in the region were far worse. Now on almost a weekly basis, he chose to advocate for the people in Gaza, demanding that Netanyahu — who he had previously explained had everything interest in extending the conflict as possible for his political survial — should agree to a ceasefire purely on humanitarian grounds. He insisted the Biden administration do everything in its power to do so, as if it wasn’t already doing everything humanly possible and as if they could somehow convince both sides to come to the table on sheer force of will. And he increasingly took the sides of activists protesting on college campuses without any explanation as to context — which given the upcoming election should have been critical.
At one point when defending the takeover of Columbia, he pointed out the long history of student activism on that campus — including against Vietnam in 1968. Oliver had to know that it was in large part due to those student protests that led to the divide in the Democratic Party in Chicago in 1968. He also had to know that Nixon was able to use this in order to win the Presidency that year and usher in Republican rule for the next quarter of a century — something he’d referred to in so many previous independent segments as being part of the conservative rise to power in the first place. Oliver knew, better than anyone, that these kinds of protest could have backlash on the party in power. But at no time during 2024 did he even bring up the possibility that this could return Trump to the White House.
And to be very clear that year he did a show about what the second term of Trump would be like, including every detail of Project 2025. By this point, it’s worth remembering, he had already lived through the first Trump administration and had reported on every that had happened during his first term and what he would do in his second. Yet even after that he still couldn’t bring himself to give a full-throated endorsement of the Democrats then, or at any time during the year.
His summation, at the end of the episode, was weak tea at best. He made it clear even if Trump lost the GOP would probably rebrand it in 2028, implying that eventually the Republicans would someday carry it out. And then he seemed to apologize to his audience for realizing that they would have to vote Democrat not only this November but for the foreseeable future. “I realize you wish we had a better alternative,” he told them, “but this is the world we live in.” It was once said that the GOP was the ‘Let Them Drown Party’ and the Democrats were the ‘Status Quo Party’. Oliver seemed to still think that staying afloat was somehow as bad as drowning.
Throughout the next several months Oliver would essentially do shows that could just as easily have been found on progressive websites or The Nation. In addition to Project 2024, he told the story of the forming of the Federalist Society and how it had affected the Supreme Court and the potential horrors of mass deportations. He told the story of how the GOP had set things in motion that if results when badly on election night, it would be easier for the Republicans to steal the election. But even in that piece he seemed just as certain as he had been in the leadup to 2016 that Donald Trump would lose.
Throughout he had been just as harsh on first Biden and only less so on Harris, continuing to rage against Trump. He raised the reality of Robert Kennedy Junior as well as the fact his candidacy was likely there to help trump. But just as with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016, he made the same argument as before: he wasn’t for any Democrat candidate but against Trump returning to the White House.
Absent at any point during 2024 — or even before — was the possibility of anything being wrong with Biden’s mental capacity. After the debate, like everyone else in Hollywood, he was perfectly willing to embrace the removal of the President after the primaries in place of a candidate no one had voted for, with no concern of the repercussions on what voters who had gone for Biden in 2020 might react. When Harris took over the ticket that July — arguably the most shocking event in the history of Democratic Presidential politics this century — he never talked about it and went even harder on the evils of Trump and Vance. By and large his campaign coverage was entirely about the horrors of Trump and had almost nothing to do with the values of Harris until the week of the election. Similarly while he went out of his way to argue how Republican candidates were ridiculously unqualified for their office, he did nothing to advocate for Democrats in key Senate races, even in Texas where Ted Cruz was running for reelection. All of his election coverage dealt with the horrors of Republicans and what would happen if these idiots regained power. This was effectively the same speech late night across the board had been making for the past four years — and in truth was little different from much of their attitude in the leadup to 2016.
When Trump won the most resounding electoral victory of any Republican since 2004, the entire world of progressives went into shock. The same was true for late night. John Oliver seemed in denial the week after. “I did three shows on inflation!” he shouted, exasperated. “What more did you need?”
What happened to Oliver — and indeed late night and Hollywood — is actually very simple to explain. Oliver, based in New York and with an audience somewhere around 2 million people, somehow got the impression that his audience was the entire country. How he thought this could be possible when, like everyone else in Late Night he had gone out of his way to excoriate not only Trump and the MAGA movement for over a decade — making it clear his audience was above them — is impossible for the outsider to comprehend. But it is in keeping with Oliver who, perhaps more than any other late night host, was proud to be an elitist and clearly had little use for any institution, including democracy.
Like so many in the entertainment industry Oliver thought he was in a position of power; like almost all leftists, he believed his point of view was superior and he was qualified to lecture on it to a small audience. He had spent a decade railing against everything that was wrong in the world, saying that there was nothing that could be done to fix them, and refusing to show the real progress that was happening to his viewers. He went out of his way to attack his own network multiple times, particularly the various corporations that owned it “Punish me, Business Daddy’ was a frequent cry. Because he never interviewed guests, he went out of his way to attack every aspect of pop culture in a way that Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert never did, arguing that even though he was working in Hollywood, he wasn’t part of the industry. This is not uncommon with so many on the left who once they gain a position of authority in their given field go out of their way to mock it for being beneath them.
By its nature this was always going to have a limited audience and while Oliver’s might have been bigger than most, it was still very narrow and it had little to do with the electorate, who he was telling his own audience, had little real power to change things. Like everyone else in Late Night Oliver spends an enormous amount of time attacking Fox News and Newsmax but as I said before there’s no real difference between his show and the kind of pundits that he has reviled over the years. Oliver seems to have thought that because, like them, he had a camera pointed on him and a viewing audience, he had the power to change and influence the electorate. That this was not the case in 2016 — or indeed in so many cases in his career — doesn’t seem to have registered with him in the leadup to 2024. They say that a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. No one in late night seems to have learned that lesson — and the only thing they brought down may be their own industry.
In the epilogue to these piece, I’m going to ask the question Oliver does at the end of every show — “So what can we do now?” — but unlike him, I’m going to try and give a possible answer.