John Oliver has a tendency to go off. Each episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight finds the former Daily Show correspondent zeroing in on an important subject and unrelentingly calling out those he thinks makes life for all of us worse than it is already. He’s also prone to absurdist asides. One of those came during Oliver’s most recent episode, when he singled out a Connecticut city for scorn and wound up getting met in kind by its current mayor.
This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, who noted that Oliver had brought up Danbury, Connecticut during an episode about racial disparities in jury selection. While speaking about how Danbury is one of many sources of this problem, he made sure to get in a little dig as well. “If you’re going to forget a town in Connecticut, why not forget Danbury?” Oliver said. “Because, and this is true, f*ck Danbury!”
One person not amused — or rather, willing to throw clap back — was Danbury mayor Mark Boughton, who responded with a more long-lasting gag. In a tongue-in-cheek video posted to Facebook, Boughton said he was going to name the local sewage plant after the Last Week Tonight host.
“We are going to rename it the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant,” the Republican mayor said. “Why? Because it’s full of crap just like you, John.”
For the record, Oliver did have a few nice things to say about Danbury before he sounded off. He noted its “charming railway museum” and its “historic Hearthstone Castle.” He also pointed out some of its achievements. “I know exactly three things about Danbury,” Oliver said. “USA Today ranked it the second-best city to live in in 2015, it was once the center of the American hat industry and if you’re from there, you have a standing invite to come get a thrashing from John Oliver — children included — f*ck you.”
Anyway, congrats? Then again, maybe this isn’t the best way to respond to accusations of racial disparity in jury selection.
(Via THR)
