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On Sunday, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver kicked off with a segment about the protests in Portland, which the host refers to as "the Nature Valley granola bar of U.S. cities."
Sure, it's not particularly surprising that the HBO show did a segment on the city's nightly demonstrations against racism, given that they've become international news, and the granola bar joke sounds like it was written five years ago. But it's still one of the more accurate takes late-night TV has offered so far on the Portland protests.
Along with refuting misinformation from Fox News and the White House, the writers clearly brushed up on local terminology—Oliver even throws in a "Tear Gas Teddy" jab.
LWT Portland 8-26 from Clips on Vimeo.
"The local police force—under the leadership of Ted Wheeler, incidentally—have routinely overreacted," says Oliver, "using things like tear gas to the point where Wheeler actually became known as Tear Gas Teddy, which I guarantee you is set to be this Christmas' worst-selling toy."
The real punchline, though, is the graphic: a plush bear with a gas mask seemingly fused to its face, and a canister of Mace in one of its paws.
Oliver goes on to poke fun at an image that the Portland Police Bureau tweeted of objects that were thrown at officers, which inspired numerous tweets and a whole Jezebel article.
Related: Portland Police Tweeted a Photo of Projectiles Thrown at Them by Protesters. It Didn't Go Over Well.
It's a pretty solid contribution to what's become a fruitful subsection of Twitter: "They have justified dangerous crowd control tactics by releasing photos like this, claiming they've been attacked with, among other things, a can of White Claw and a half-eaten apple, which is less a threatening display of weaponry and more of a summoning circle for ghosts who died on day three of Burning Man."
Your move, top antifa scientists.