HBO’s Last Week Tonight host John Oliver traveled over to his old stomping grounds at Comedy Central and The Daily Show on Tuesday where he and temp host Ronny Chieng discussed what it is like to be an immigrant in America who tells jokes about America. Using the specific issue of guns, Oliver tried to argue that he can “talk shit” about America as a way of “expressing love.”
Chieng was the first to bring up the idea of guns in America, “Yeah, it's a bit like, you know, you can come here and you can joke about America on a very surface level, and you can-- that will do well for you for, you know, if you have a 15-minute set, maybe 30-minute set. But after nine months or a year in America, the audience can kind of smell the bullshit of like ‘you’ve been here long enough, like, guns shouldn't be weird to you.’"
After Oliver affirmed this, Chieng continued, “Don't tell us we have guns. We know we have guns. Tell us something else.”
Oliver concurred, “Yeah. Exactly. If we know nothing else about ourselves, it is that we have guns to a genuinely problematic extent. That is not a fresh insight. We genuinely know. Yes, exactly.”
A bit later, Chieng would ask “I guess my question to you, how do you answer the people who are like, if you don't like it here, leave?”
Oliver conceded it was a “horrible point,” but nevertheless “a fair question” and claimed that “I felt at home here long before my legal status was solid… So, yeah, despite the fact immigrants tend to talk shit it’s generally the kind of way that you talk shit with someone that you genuinely love. Also, as a comedian, I only really talk shit as a way of expressing love.”
The problem for Oliver is that based off his previous comments about America having a problematic amount of guns is that it doesn’t come across as love for America in the form of corrective humor or good-natured teasing, but a contempt for Americans who believe in the Second Amendment and want to see it protected coming from just another angry partisan.
If an American were to immigrate to Oliver’s native Britain and devote his career to joking about how why the monarchy is an outdated institution that needs to go—kind of like how liberals treat the Second Amendment— it would be a fair for native-born Brits to question the sincerity of that person’s love of Britain.
Then again maybe it is only natural that someone from Britain doesn’t like the idea that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms.
Here is a transcript for the November 21 show:
Comedy Central The Daily Show
11/21/2023
11:23 PM ET
RONNY CHIENG: Yeah, it's a bit like, you know, you can come here and you can joke about America on a very surface level, and you can-- that will do well for you for, you know, if you have a 15-minute set, maybe 30-minute set.
OLIVER: Yeah.
CHIENG: But after nine months or a year in America, the audience can kind of smell the bullshit of like "you’ve been here long enough--
OLIVER: Yes. Right.
CHIENG: --Like, guns shouldn't be weird to you."
JOHN OLIVER: That's true. That's right.
CHIENG: So, really what the-- how profound your two-year thing was, like, it takes two years to learn the nuances of America, so you can make fun of them in ways which they appreciate.
OLIVER: Yes, exactly. Exactly
CHIENG: Don't tell us we have guns. We know we have guns. Tell us something else.
OLIVER: Yeah. Exactly. If we know nothing else about ourselves, it is that we have guns to a genuinely problematic extent. That is not a fresh insight. We genuinely know. Yes, exactly.
CHIENG: So, you are going deeper and deeper and deeper into it, which, you know, that was my guiding light as well when I first got here.
OLIVER: I am so glad my incredibly insightful advice of wait 24 months works.
CHIENG: It worked like a charm. I still can't believe it.
OLIVER: I just deep down didn't want to hear from you again for two years. That’s all it was.
CHIENG: Yeah, but, like, that’s the thing, we are both immigrants in America.
OLIVER: Yeah.
CHIENG: Do you ever -- I guess my question to you, how do you answer the people who are like, if you don't like it here, leave?
OLIVER: Yeah.
CHIENG: Because I get that a lot.
OLIVER: Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean, it is a horrible point, but it's a fair question. I guess, now my answer would be, I’m a citizen. You can't do that, but I think the tricky thing is, I felt ownership -- it's very dangerous. A British person saying, "I felt ownership of this country," historically does not bode well.
It is amazing. "I just went to India and I felt like I belonged" but I felt at home here long before my legal status was solid. That's the tricky thing as an immigrant. The more I felt at home here, the more cognizant of you are of the fact that it is not up to you whether you get to stay or not.
CHIENG: Right.
OLIVER: So it was a massive relief to get my green card--
CHIENG: Yes.
OLIVER: -- and an even bigger relief to get my citizenship. So, yeah, despite the fact immigrants tend to talk shit--
CHIENG: Yea.
OLIVER: -- it’s generally the kind of way that you talk shit with someone that you genuinely love.
CHIENG: Sure.
OLIVER: Also, as a comedian, I only really talk shit as a way of expressing love.
CHIENG: Professionally.
