Comedian John Oliver took on the eventsin Kenosha last week on Sunday's "Last Week Tonight," connecting the reactions to the shooting of Jacob Blake and the shootings of three protesters, allegedly by a 17-year-old vigilante to the "flagrant double standards baked into American society."
Oliver showed news footage of the aftermath of the shootings at Tuesday night's protest in Kenosha, when three protesters were shot, two of them fatally. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois, who has been charged in the shootings, is shown walking as police vehicles zoom past, although he has his hands up and a long gun strapped across his chest. That footage is juxtaposed with video of Blake being shot in the back seven times by Kenosha officer Rusten Sheskey as Blaketries to enter a car.
RELATED: Juxtaposition of two videos from Kenosha: A Black man gets shot seven times from behind; a white teen with a gun walks past police
"Why two different responses? I think the answer to that ispretty obvious. It's the same reason why, ahead of the shooting (at Tuesday's protest), there was video of the police trying to enforce a curfew against protesters, even as they offer water to Rittenhouse and the militia saying, and Iquote, 'We appreciate you guys we really do.' "
To underscore the disparities of the response by Kenosha law enforcement,Oliver also showed a clip of Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis, saying the protesters who were shot shouldn't have been out after curfew; and a two-year-old video ofKenosha County Sheriff David Beth, advocating a detailed plan for warehousing offenders that included preventing them from fathering more children, then adding that "we have to stop being politically correct."
Comedian John Oliver hosts "Last Week Tonight," airing Sunday nights on HBO.(Photo: Courtesy of HBO)
"Sorry, can I quickly interrupt you there?" Oliver responds. "Because calling for American citizens to be stopped from having small children isn't politically incorrect, so much as it is politically 1940s Germany."
Oliver called the events in Kenosha "especially infuriating" because they took place during last week'sRepublican National Convention, where he said the rhetoric focused on showing that America wasn't racist while "fear-mongering about violent crime threatening law-abiding citizens."
He noted that Los Angeles Clippers coach and former Marquette basketball star Doc Rivers summed it up best at a press conference Tuesday, when he called the speeches at the RNC "spewing this fear We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones who were denied to livein certain communities. We've been hung, we've been shot, and all you do is keep hearing about fear. It's, it's amazing to me whykeep loving this country, and this countrydoes notlove us back."
Oliver pointed out as a bright spot the wildcat strikes begun by the Milwaukee Bucks and spreading to the rest of the NBA, WNBA players and other sports, and shared the message by Blake's sister,Letetra Widman, at a press conference Tuesday: "I don't want your pity. I want change."
Contact Chris Foran at chris.foran@jrn.com. Followhimon Twitter at @cforan12.
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'Especially infuriating': John Oliver links RNC rhetoric and the response to the Jacob Blake shooting by police in Kenosha - Milwaukee Journal...
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