I’m not sure what need John Oliver is supposed to fill – maybe a left-wing with a British accent’s answer to left-wing Jon Stewart? Whatever space he’s supposed to fill, he seems to just be filling time.
On his HBO show, Last Week Tonight, he spent half his half hour complaining about student loans. Oliver is supposed to be a comedian, but doing 16 minutes complaining about student loans is akin to doing a bit about how big of a jerk skin cancer is. It’s an easy target, everyone hates it, but from a comedy perspective it’s incredibly lazy. It’s the comedy equivalent to kicking someone in the groin.
No matter for Oliver, he thinks he’s funny. And some of it is.
But most of it is typical left-wing pap designed to make you hate for-profit colleges and come to the conclusion that poor, sweet, nourishing college students are entitled to a free college education because DEBT!
Here’s an idea, Ollie, rather than picking out worst case scenarios or a few bad actors, how about you let people make their own decisions in life? And, crazier still, have them live with the consequences of those decisions, and allow those consequences, good or bad, serve as examples for others? Nutty, right?
Rather than advocating to eliminate choices for people, how about you point out how government subsidizing education increases the cost? Or how universities are spending more and more on non-classroom related expenditures, like administrators, is driving up costs? Rather than rail against for-profit and trade schools, hoping to take away many people’s only options, how about you encourage people to make whatever decision is best for their personal situation?
Better yet, since the best comedy is based in truth, you focus on telling people the whole truth and do something really crazy – like be funny. If someone wants to borrow $20,000 and drop out of a for-profit school or $200,000 and major in Women’s Studies at an Ivy League school, they’re both idiots. And they should both have to live with the bad choices they’ve made.
Here’s the monolog:
