John Oliver

Satire made in The Daily Show’s image made politics seem like entertainment, lulling viewers and voters into complacency

Thank goodness for Section 331—it helped make our election of actual interest to Americans, and everyone knows Canadians like that

Let’s review: ‘They packed a lot into those 78 days’

It’s the type of routine where Jon Stewart is not the straight man. Usually Stewart feeds straight lines to the “correspondents” and reacts to their replies, and that’s fine; he represents us, the normal person trying to hold onto real-world logic while under bombardment from news-media inanity. But every once in a while, as in last night’s piracy routine with John Oliver, the writers will reverse it: they’ll make the correspondent the straight man, trying to do a serious report on an important issue, and Stewart will be the guy who’s focused on trivialities.