Daily Show Star on GOP 2012 Field: 'Very Gifted at Inspiring Comedy from Abject Despair'

October 28th, 2011 6:47 AM

The Washington Post's Express tabloid profiled British-accented Daily Show star John Oliver on Thursday, reveling in how he covered Sarah Palin's "flag-draped liberty coach" bus tour and told Jon Stewart on the Rupert Murdoch-harming News of the World phone-hacking scandal "I'm about to give you a schadenfraude-gasm, Jon."

He's no fan of the Republican presidential field: "I think all the candidates [are] very gifted at inspiring comedy from abject despair. Michele Bachmann certainly has a special quality to her. Her speeches are like semantic palindromes; they make exactly as much sense when you read them backward as when you read them forward." The paper didn't ask for Obama jokes.

On Occupy Wall Street, Oliver declared: "I think the vast majority of people in America fundamentally agree with their concerns over the financial system and over the increasing wealth gap. And I think the vast majority of people in America also have serious reservations over drum circles. So, it’s complicated." Oliver's report on The Daily Show sympathized with the movement's cause, and mocked the off-putting costumes and tactics that lost people.

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