Entertainment

Controversy Erupts Over Whether John Oliver Can Say ‘We’ And ‘Us’ When Referring To America

(Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for NARAS)

Jena Greene Reporter
Font Size:

John Oliver, a British ex-pat known mostly for his show “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” has made a name for himself by offering up scathing criticism of the President and satirizing conservatives across the US.

The only problem is, John Oliver isn’t American. He’s not American by birth and he’s not American by paperwork. He holds a green card and is married to an American, but he himself is not a legal citizen of the United States. He doesn’t vote, he doesn’t qualify for a slew of American welfare programs, and he can’t advocate to bring family members over to the US. The only thing that makes him ‘American’ is his weekly platform that allows him to pontificate about politics and flex a Constitutionally-endowed right to say what’s on his mind.

This wasn’t lost on Piers Morgan, a fellow British ex-pat who called Oliver out while watching his show.

“Watching John Oliver repeatedly say ‘we’ & ‘us’ when discussing America is comical,” he tweeted.
“Mate, you were born in the Midlands to a pair of Liverpudlian parents & speak in a thick Brummie accent. You’re about as American as cricket & mushy peas, you shameless old fraud!”

It seems that Morgan has taken a page right out of the Trump-style-Twitter handbook because his opinion elicited a deluge of feuding Brits and Americans.

It’s worth noting that Piers Morgan is also not an American citizen yet his publication, The Daily Mail, covers the US Presidency on a regular basis. As critical as Piers Morgan may be though, he never pretends to be American and I’ve never once heard him refer to himself in a collective ‘us’ or ‘we’ sense. In fact, his hook is that he looks at the US from a “foreign vantage,” and says things like, “I come from another country, I look at this with a pretty clear, open mind.” Witness:

Say what you will about Piers Morgan, he may have a point about John Oliver taking liberties he may not technically have.

Follow Jena on Twitter.