John Oliver dedicated most of Sunday's Last Week Tonight to the topic of workplace sexual harassment, and he began with a self-deprecating wink: "Who better to talk about it than me, a man? 'When will the male perspective on harassment be heard?' the public has been crying out. Well, wait no longer, tonight is the night." Sexual harassment at work has been a problem for decades, the most recent reminder being the new allegation against CBS boss Les Moonves, "and whenever the subject of workplace harassment comes up, you can bet on one thing: men getting very nervous." His examples came mostly from Fox News personalities."
It seems today "like we're on the verge of national reckoning about sexual harassment," Oliver said, but are we really? He compared the recent #MeToo and Times Up headlines to eerily similar ones from the early 1990s, prompted by Anita Hill's treatment from Senate Republicans. The 1990s effort to eradicate workplace harassment clearly "did not work," he said, "so tonight, since we seem to be going in circles on this issue, let's try and at least talk about it — if only because no one wants to see 'ending workplace harassment' as the unofficial theme of the 2048 Oscars."
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