In what’s become a weekly occurrence, John Oliver provided a look at a the week’s top story with ample — and appropriate — measures of outrage and humor. The target of last night’s Last Week Tonight episode was the ongoing situation in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9.
A few of Oliver’s best barbs:
- “If the police wanted to distract everyone with a video that had absolutely nothing to do with Michael Brown’s shooting, they should have just released Ghostbusters instead. It’s exactly as relevant to everything that happened afterwards.”
- “Here’s the thing the [Ferguson] mayor doesn’t understand: As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say, ‘There’s no history of racial tension here,’ because that sentence has never been true anywhere on earth.”
- “If you are white in Ferguson, you’d need to be snorting cocaine directly off your dashboard to get stopped by the police.”
- “If you are getting high in your dorm room right now, you are not paranoid. There is a SWAT team outside and they are coming to get you.”
Make sure you watch all the way to the end, when Oliver delivers an ultimatum of his own to match the one issued by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on Saturday.
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