The Washington Post's Style section occasionally publishes the online Q&As with its TV critic Hank Stuever...even when they get testy.
On Friday, someone lauding the "excellent" work of John Oliver on HBO mocking the Miss America pageant. Stuever's apparently heard this line too much among liberals, and insisted that Oliver (and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert) get praise for "reporting" things that they could easily find in a newspaper or even an old Spy magazine (which stopped publishing in 1998, the Year of Lewinsky):
Q: John Oliver is another solid nod in favor of HBO over Showtime. His show is good and getting better. The exposé on Miss America from a couple weeks ago was excellent.
Stuever: Agreed, but can I just take this opportunity to point out something? People have been giving the very same complaints and asking the very same questions about the Miss America pageant for decades. Decades. And then I noticed John Oliver fans have given him credit for blowing the lid off police seizures of cash from detained motorists (aka “civil forfeiture”), which has been deeply reported by news outlets, including The Washington Post.
Between the “Why is This Still a Thing?” reports on Miss America report and Ayn Rand, it’s as if John Oliver and company are going through old issues of Spy magazine to find their material.
It drives me a little bonkers because viewers then turn around and credit John Oliver with reporting the stories that “no one else” reports. When even John Oliver would probably tell you that what he and his writers are doing is reading newspapers and online news sites and watching investigative news broadcasts to put a show together. Same with Jon Stewart, Colbert, etc.
End of rant.
This shouldn't be surprising. Stuever also stuck a fork in Oliver when his show began:
The overall effect is an unhinged spew....
Oliver has delivered exactly what his audience and HBO want – another show in which people commonly outraged by all the usual inanities of the world can once more gather and make fun of everyone else. It’s hard to make the argument that viewers need another show like this, particularly as a come-down from the thrill rides we strap in for on Sunday nights, when TV’s heaviest dramas and meanest comedies fully occupy our minds. “Last Week Tonight” looks like it will be an intelligent use of biting wit, but it also seems like a depressing way to get ready for a Monday morning.
