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Last Week Tonight By John Oliver

Decent Essays

With an English accent and a smize, John Oliver hosts the show “Last Week Tonight”, which features Oliver comedically attacking various people or organizations. With the use of rhetorical devices and satire, John Oliver comically conveys various ideas regarding politics, faulty companies, and beauty pageants. In explanation of his ideas, he frequently utilizes satirical techniques and rhetorical devices such as reductio ad absurdum, incongruity, caricature, invectiveness, false/weak analogies, and logos to explain his points.
As John Oliver airs his weekly program, “Last Week Tonight”, he educates viewers on relevant issues, and incorporates factual evidence along with his opinion. He uses both horatian and juvenalian satire in order to …show more content…

In order to create a better understanding of the history of dialysis and healthcare, Oliver scholarly explains, “In 1972, something amazing happened. Richard Nixon...signed a bill into law which said the government would pay for dialysis for anyone that needed it...” In order to make his explanations credible, Oliver incorporates facts which increases his logos and ethos. To expand on the idea of the kidneys being the sole organ which obtains government funded healthcare, he declares with a picture of kidneys sitting in the snow of Canada, “Your kidneys, and only your kidneys are Canadian!” This statement is another example of incongruity; again, Oliver presents a statement which is contrasts greatly from the current situation of which he is in. While he is discussing the role government plays in dialysis, he delivers the idea of kidneys sitting in the snow of Canada, which assists him in his argument of the government only providing healthcare coverage of the kidneys. Just as the Times stated in their review of Oliver, “[He] is willing to voice genuine passion over his subjects”, he voices his passionate displeasure towards Trump in his “President-elect Trump” segment. Oliver targets Trump on a specific debate in which he was mistakenly unaware of the nuclear triad, and he critically reveals, “The components of the nuclear triad are important. It is unacceptable not to be able to name every single one of them. They are

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