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Home / Entertainment

Karl Puschmann: Hey NZ, stop giving John Oliver material

Karl Puschmann
By Karl Puschmann
Culture and entertainment writer·NZ Herald·
24 Oct, 2015 10:30 PM4 mins to read

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John Oliver pokes fun at the New Zealand election campaign and the scandal over the National Party's use of Eminem's song.
Karl Puschmann
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
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We have been repeatedly insulted. Our customs have been mocked and our way of life jeered at. We've been called "Hobbit Australia" for gawd's sake!

There is only one thing for it. We must declare war on America at once.

Sorry about this. I hope the news hasn't ruined your breakfast.

But I can't see any other way around it.

Yes, we're outnumbered. Yes, we're outgunned. Militarily speaking we are pretty much out-everything-ed.

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But what we lack in armed forces, hi-tech weaponry and covert intel we more than make up for with ... er ... qualified peace keepers?

Look, I don't know what our forces consist of. I'm not New Zealand's Minister of Offense despite a healthy number of devastatingly cutting tweets.

But what I do know is that as long as America continues to screen Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Soho, Monday) we - and by this I mean me, you, your momma, your papa and your sister too - are all going to be continually and excruciatingly ridiculed by this John Oliver fellow on his satirical news show. And that will not do.

Sure, 100 per cent of the time everything Oliver says is entirely accurate and smashingly funny but still ...

We are a proud island nation, not the punchline to a superbly crafted, comedic monologue that is absolutely brutal in both its inherent truth and its relentless barrage of perfectly delivered zings.

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Okay, I'll concede that we make it incredibly easy for him with all the ridiculous goings-on that go on here.

And it probably doesn't help matters that recently we've resembled nothing more than a country made up of backwater yokels bumbling about at the ass end of the world rather than the increasingly cosmopolitan, favourites to win the rugby World Cup that we are.

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In recent memory we have come under heavily mocking, John Oliver fire for Eminem-gate, for ponytail-gate, for flag-gate and for Hauraki-breakfast-morning-crew-WTF-interview-gate.

Hold on, was that last one a gate? Yeah, why not? With some of the answers our dear leader Prime Minister John Key was offering up to hosts Laura McGoldrick and Jeremy Wells it bloody well should be ...

Startling admissions of past thievery, ablution urination, a wild and unruly pube topiary, and then, as if those bombshells weren't enough, he topped it all off with a massively controversial religious theory.

It's no wonder Oliver joyously labelled it, "the greatest political interview EVER!" as he leapt up and down behind his desk, practically breathless at the amount of totally killer, 100 per cent certified comedy gold we had just gifted him to mine.

Thing is, he's not wrong. It was pretty good. And that's the whole thing. For all his enthusiastic mocking and cheerily delivered burns, Oliver is never wrong.

While we do punch well above our weight with the top shelf quality of our own news satirists, Oliver brings an outsider's eye to the madness of our political world.

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His apprenticeship as a regular correspondent on The Daily Show with John Stewart, means his take downs are savagely efficient and frighteningly concise.

He follows the same blueprint, replaying politico clips and pointing at the rope the politicians within are using to hang themselves. But where Stewart was world-wearily exasperated by the sheer volume of stupidity proffered by these politicians, Oliver revels in it.

Having the whole of the American political system to work with, he only weighs in on our local matters of the utmost absurdity but when he does ... watch out. We're usually dismissed before he even begins.

Oliver's laughing at us and he's got the world laughing at us. By pointing out all the stupid stuff we say and do he's turned us into nothing more than a joke, a punchline, a laughing stock.

Or did we manage to do that all by ourselves?

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