John Oliver took a bit of a break from tearing apart the government’s COVID-19 response to come to the aid of its United States Postal Service (USPS).
The USPS is in dire straits in the age of email, and President Trump isn’t doing anything to help our federal mail-delivery service, the HBO host opined on Sunday. Also, written communication going digital isn’t even the post office’s biggest problem, the “Last Week Tonight” personality informed viewers. And then Oliver made fun of “Avengers” star Jeremy Renner’s music career — hard.
Watch the video above.
First, let’s get to the meat-and-potatoes of Oliver’s segment. The “Daily Show” alum blamed the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act for the postal service’s current dark days. Among other unhelpful guidelines introduced, the act required the USPS to prepay 50 years of health benefits for employees, while simultaneously putting a price cap on its first-class mail.
Now, we know why you’re really here — the arrows Oliver slung at Marvel’s Hawkeye. The late-night comedian used Renner’s 2020 album to illustrate why we can’t lose physical mail for the electronic stuff.
“While you might be able to buy medicine online, you can’t actually download medicine from the internet,” he said. “To clarify, you can download ‘The Medicine,’ Jeremy Renner’s collection of music-like noises, from the internet. But, and this is very important, you shouldn’t do that.”