What do you know about the country Togo?
My guess is, some of you may not even know what continent it’s on. I, being a busy college student that knows less about the world than I probably should, didn’t know much either. But here are some facts. It’s in West Africa, it covers roughly 22,000 square miles (by comparison, it’s just smaller than West Virginia, our nation’s 41st biggest state) and it has GDP of 636.44 US dollars per capita. That makes it one of the poorest countries in the world. Bill Gates alone is worth 18 times as much as the country’s total GDP ($79.2 billion compared to $4.339 billion).
I learned this from watching the Feb. 15 episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. That day, I saw something amazing. It was a video feed of 20-or-so Togolese people dancing, all wearing white t-shirts with the image of “Jeff the Diseased Lung.” Who is Jeff the Diseased Lung, you might ask? He’s the hilarious cigarette mascot that Oliver and friends created to combat tobacco companies who have been suing countries – yes, entire countries – for implementing smoking restrictions.
The Last Week Tonight team sent those shirts to Togo just after Philip Morris International threatened to sue the country (remember – GDP of $4.339 billion) for passing legislation requiring written warnings on cigarette packages. Even though the rule might have saved lives, and 40 percent of the country is illiterate anyway. The image of those people, wearing those crisp, white, American-made t-shirts was almost poetic. It was hilarious because real people were wearing the image of a diseased lung wearing a cowboy hat and spurs smoking a cigarette. It was horrifying because those shirts were now probably among the nicest clothes those people owned, and because those people live in a country that just got strong-armed by a tobacco company after their government tried to look out for their citizens.
And that’s the beauty of John Oliver’s brand. He brings you the world – all the terrifying and evil parts of it – and presents it in the form of comedy. Of course, Last Week Tonight is not the first show to put a comic spin on the news. It’s a formula as old as time, from Johnny Carson to The Daily Show (where Oliver was a correspondent for eight years).
But rarely, if ever, has a show prompted more actual change, especially considering the show hasn’t even been on the air for a year. Last June, they ran a fantastic segment about net neutrality, something that Oliver defined aptly: “The only two words that promise more boredom in the English language are ‘featuring Sting.’” Net neutrality is the most important issue that no one is talking about – this Thursday, in fact, the FCC will vote on whether or not to keep it. For those unfamiliar, it’s the idea that all data on the Internet is treated equally, and startups can allow their users to receive data at the same speeds as established sites like Facebook or Netflix. It’s the invisible hand, if you will, of the digital universe, and cable companies like Comcast (as well as the politicians to whom they lobby) want to eliminate it, creating an Internet “fast lane” and “slow lane.”
Why does no one care? Because it’s so boring, that’s why.
Watch any news segment on net neutrality if you don’t believe me. And here’s where Oliver discovered the truth about America: “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of ‘Mein Kampf’ inside the iTunes user agreement, and you’d just go, uhh, agree. Agree. Agree!”
And that’s just what Last Week Tonight is here to do – decode the dull, boring and cryptic things in the world that people just need to know, and feed it to the public in the form of witty, digestible humor. He’s attacked payday loan companies (“Payday loans are the Lay’s potato chips of finance – you can’t have just one, and they’re terrible for you!”), the horribly complex organization that is FIFA (“Telling someone about the inner workings of FIFA for the first time is a bit like showing someone ‘2 girls, 1 cup’ – you do it mainly so you can watch the horrified expression on people’s faces.”) and the fact that American nuclear weapon software runs on floppy disks (“Those things barely look powerful enough to run Oregon Trail!”).
At the end of Oliver’s segment on net neutrality, he outlined a way people could actually get their voices heard – and that was to troll the the FCC on their public comments page. And here’s the amazing thing – his rant may have actually crashed the FCC’s website due to the high volume of comments. He reached a group of people who otherwise probably wouldn’t have even heard of net neutrality and rallied them to action, including Northwestern junior Kevin Ford, who emailed his congressman.
“[Oliver] made the issue funny, which young people appreciate because, at least in my experience, we have a separation between us and politicians,” he said. “But more importantly, he made the issue accessible. He told us why it should be something for us to care about, and gave us an easy route to take action.”
Depending on how the FCC votes, Oliver might have even saved the open Internet. He’s also rallied the public at other points, often via Twitter. To market the aforementioned Jeff the Diseased Lung mascot, he crated the hashtag #JeffWeCan to try and take down big tobacco. A week earlier, he again called upon Internet trolls, this time to harass Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who had repeatedly fined journalists who criticized him and called out other critics by name on his weekly TV broadcast. In response to multiple corporations vehemently misusing Twitter to advertise their product, he created this exactly-140-word hashtag. And if you think the people, corporations and countries that Oliver attacks view his jabs and one-liners as trivial, you would be horribly mistaken. Just watch this.
Last Week Tonight is on HBO – the same channel that hosts Game of Thrones, Entourage and Sex and the City. It’s a premium cable package where millions of people go each day for sensational, high-quality entertainment. But Oliver’s show is more than just entertainment – it’s the weekly showcase of a team of fearless journalists, with a highly charismatic leader at the helm. And it’s a brilliant way for young people – especially students – to process the news in much more entertaining terms.
“Whether or not college kids spend their days reading The New York Times or CNN, Last Week Tonight is a must watch,” said Weinberg junior Arianna Yanes. “It makes news accessible and enjoyable and incites me to learn more and dig deeper. Carving out 20 minutes a week is completely feasible and gives me a wider glimpse at national and international news.”
I urge all of you reading this to take those 20 minutes out of your week and watch Last Week Tonight. With John Stewart’s impending leave from The Daily Show looming, along with Stephen Colbert replacing David Letterman, John Oliver is the best late-night political satirist we have left. If you don’t have HBO, don’t worry – all of the clips are available for free on YouTube, plus a variety of web exclusives. Not only will you roll on the floor laughing at one of the best comedians in the game, you might just learn something along the way.