On His New HBO Show, John Oliver Will Relentlessly Mock Republicans...Just Like 'The Daily Show'

Thursday’s Washington Post promoted the forthcoming HBO news-satire show starring “The Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver, run by a former head writer for “The Daily Show.” But reporter Paul Farhi passes along claims that it won’t be like “The Daily Show.” Right. By story's end, it's clear he doesn't believe that, either.

But in classic Comedy Central fashion Oliver’s team previewed their tilt by releasing two YouTube videos mocking the Republican National Committee’s “latest outreach ad to young voters.” It suggests that young Republicans wear stupid clothes (too-small leather jackets), ride tricycles,  and engage in “non-vaginal intercourse with girls they met at Christian summer camp" (video below):

“The videos highlighted Oliver’s immersion in popular culture, as well as his political worldview,” Farhi wrote, as in socialist.

Don’t get him going on dull-but-important stuff like the federal estate tax; he thinks it’s a bit hilarious, and emblematic of Americans’ irrepressible optimism, that there’s no groundswell to do away with a tax break that exempts up to $5 million of wealth upon a person’s death.

“The inherent hope in Americans is amazing,” he says. “They think they’re going to go out someday with a $300 million estate, and they don’t want it taxed. That’s probably not going to happen, but they believe. I come from a world that goes the other way.”

Farhi didn't ask him to express amazement liberals in their naivete still think Obamacare is about to gain broad national acceptance. He wasn't asked why the question-authority lefties at Comedy Central have serious mental reservations about satire targeting Obama. Oliver is not a hater, just a class-resenter:

Oliver acknowledges that his comic perspective has been influenced by Britain’s well-honed class resentments. The son of school teachers, he attended “quite a rough” public school growing up in Bedford, an older industrial town about an hour north of London. He went on to graduate from Cambridge.

“There is a kind of class anger that is really hard to shake,” he says. “I remember when I first came here and American friends would say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why do you get so gnarled up about this?’ If I meet — and I still do this — if I meet English people here, I’m instantly on the defensive if I hear something in their voice that suggests they went to private school. And I haven’t lived in that country for nearly a decade. But it’s so ingrained in me.”

Oliver claims to hate the news media, which is why they design "fake news" to mock it. As if the real racket in journalistic sincerity today is to be utterly artificial. Like Jon Stewart, he claims the politicians and reporters are too close -- and then he mocks the Republicans and ignores Obama. Who do these men think they are fooling?