Hysterical, curse-laden and surprisingly informative — these are the traits we’ve come to expect from John Oliver’s main stories on Last Week Tonight.
He’s taught us about the intricacies of the FIFA scandal, he’s shaken his head at the mountains of food Americans waste every year, and this week, he’s reminding us all how silly it is that the District of Columbia has such limited voting rights.
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Unlike other U.S. cities, Congress controls the budget and laws of Washington D.C. while refusing to allow the district to obtain full representation in Congress. Or, as a short 2006 documentary entitled Un-Natural State put it:
“The Chinese pandas at the National Zoo have as much right to representation in the U.S. Congress as any resident in the District of Columbia.”
As Oliver quickly notes, that’s probably for the best. The last thing we need from pandas is their participation in our democracy, but point taken. It’s ridiculous that a region of our country more populous than both Vermont and Wyoming has significantly less say over the laws of the land than either of those states.
Watch the clip from Last Week Tonight below to see Oliver’s proposed solutions to the problem, which includes a slightly altered version of the 50 states song you might remember from elementary school:
