“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver took a brief look Sunday at the absurd underbelly of politics in his home country.
With an election coming up in May, the UK’s Labor Party has decided to aggressively pursue women voters. Oliver pointed out that they may have overstepped their bounds.
The party dispatched a hot pink van in an effort to reach out to women throughout the country. It received instant backlash and earned the nickname “the Barbie Bus.”
“It is a little insulting that you’re attempting to appeal to adult women voters the same way that Mattel attempts to appeal to 8-year-olds,” Oliver said, flashing an image of an actual toy Barbie hot-tub bus.
Oliver rolled a painful clip of a member of the Labor Party struggling to avoid using the word “pink” when asked about the color of the van on live TV.
“Hot…uh, I tell you where we got the, I mean it’s like pink, cerise,” she stuttered. “I don’t know, people will call this color…it’s certainly a version of pink, I would say.”
“I think she may have just hit rock bottom,” Oliver said. “You can see her thinking, ‘I got into politics to make a difference, and now I’m on television, desperately trying to act like I don’t know the color pink.'”
“‘What happened to my life,'” Oliver imagined the MP thinking.
Watch the clip, courtesy of HBO:
What a contrast between what’s considered patronizing to women there versus here. A pink bus seems rather tame versus something like trying to control women’s access to health care or denying coverage for birth control.
UK, US, it’s all the same. A group of good ol boys/old school tie guys fantasizing what will appeal to women - you know, those “people” who don’t have the same important plumbing they do, because it’s all about the plumbing.
The Tory Party denounces the false rumors that they took the Pretty Pony to the glue factory!
it would be interesting to know what political operatives from the u.s. are involved in this … since all of them head overseas to subvert elections, once they’ve finished up with the latest election in this country.