30 most vicious John Oliver take downs
By Jeremy Dick
10. John Oliver asks how Columbus Day is still a thing
Americans have a lot of holidays which make sense and are necessary to honor those who deserve them. This includes Martin Luther King Day and Memorial Day, for example. American holidays like these honor heroes from history whose legacies will always be preserved with the country remembering them every year.
But one holiday that shouldn’t exist, according to John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, is Columbus Day. Sure, Christopher Columbus is credited as the guy who “discovered America” in 1492, but the history books have left out quite a few important details of that story. Perhaps if all Americans knew the real deal, Columbus Day wouldn’t be quite as celebrated.
Columbus isn’t exactly the hero he is cracked out to be. Using animated images, Oliver show’s parts of the adventurer’s actual path to the United States. This included brutal acts of slavery, murder, and warfare. The man has left so many bodies in his path that it’s baffling to see him touted as an American hero.
On top of that, it’s odd to credit him with discovering America. The country already had millions of people living there, and they’d been visited by Vikings a few hundred years earlier.
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