Photo: ‘Last Week Tonight’ host John Oliver, ranting about evictions in 2020.
According to the Lamestream Media, the smart-mouthed host of ‘Last Week Tonight’ show, John Oliver, has made a public offer to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that might be hard to refuse.
Last week, Mr. Oliver announced to his viewers that he will gladly pay Clarence Thomas $1 million a year for the rest of his life, if Justice Thomas will resign from the Supreme Court.
To sweeten the deal, Mr. Oliver offered to include a $2.4 million luxury RV.
Apparently, all Clarence Thomas has to do is sign a contract, within 30 days, agreeing to step down off the Supreme Court. I’ve been unable to learn whether Justice Thomas has accepted the offer.
Some critics have described the offer as a “bribe”. But from what I’ve read about Clarence Thomas, that shouldn’t pose a problem. ProPublica reported last year that Justice Thomas accepted lavish trips from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow for more than 20 years, without disclosing them.
Harlan Crow says he and Clarence Thomas are “just really friends.” And that’s what friends do. They give each other lavish gifts.
Obviously, what Mr. Oliver is offering does not qualify as a gift, because it involves a deadline and a proposed contract to be signed. Which suggests to me that John Oliver and Clarence Thomas are not “really friends.”
Justice Thomas already owns a 40-foot luxury RV. B ut instead of purchasing the land-yacht on his own, he reportedly took out a loan from another wealthy ‘”friend” for the nearly quarter-million-dollar purchase price. As congressional documents have revealed, that “friend” collected interest payments from Justice Thomas for a while, but eventually forgave the debt, effectively gifting the RV.
Mr. Oliver:
“Honestly, it’s starting to feel like Thomas doesn’t so much have friends, so much as human ATMs,”
I apologize that we don’t have a photo of Justice Thomas to share today. Knowing that the Daily Post does not like to pay for photographs, I asked our editor to find a ‘free-to-share’ photo of Thomas to illustrate this column… ideally one showing Thomas standing in front of a luxury coach.
Doing a search for “Thomas Coach”… this is the best our editor could do, without paying a royalty fee:
Remarkably enough, it does look a little like Justice Thomas. IMHO. Especially how he might have looked right after the ProPublica article came out.
If you look up John Oliver on Wikipedia, you will see him described as “
My general impression is, if someone is described as a ‘comedian’, you can’t believe everything he says. Or anything he says.
Same goes for ‘political commentator’.
So Mr. Oliver has two strikes against him, right there.
He also has a tendency to displease the people he insults.
In August 2020, Mark Boughton — the mayor of Danbury, Connecticut — announced in a social media video his intention to rename the Danbury Water Pollution Control Plant as the “John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant” as a comedic symbol of his displeasure at Mr. Oliver’s hyperbolic insult to the city during a segment concerning alleged racial disparities in a jury selection process.
After reporting that Connecticut jury rolls had excluded two entire towns, Mr. Oliver said, “If you’re going to forget a town in Connecticut, why not forget Danbury?”
As a response to Mr. Boughton’s video, Mr. Oliver embraced the idea enthusiastically, promising to donate $55,000 to Danbury charities if the city renamed the sewage plant after him. After the city council voted 18–1 in favor of naming the $100-million plant after him, Mr. Oliver visited Danbury to attend the unveiling ceremony in person, wearing a hazmat suit.
I can think of some other names that might belong on sewer plant signs.
But that’s for a future column.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.