Back on November 16, HBO’s John Oliver used his Last Week Tonight program to combine two liberal favorites: late night comedy shows and public broadcasting when he announced he was holding an auction to benefit public broadcasting because otherwise “people would die” as a result of it being defunded. The auction closed on Monday night and, according to Variety, brought in a total of roughly $1.54 million for the Public Media Bridge Fund.
Oliver had hyped the event as the “first-ever auction in aid of public media… to raise some much-needed money.” In the end, most of the money raised came from a 1986 Bob Ross painting from PBS’s The Joy of Painting that brought in $1,044,000, which is a record for a Ross painting.
Other items included actor Russell Crowe’s jockstrap from Cinderella Man that sold for $21,000, Oliver’s on-screen cabbage wife that went for $11,111, a $25,500 gold-plated sculpture supposedly based on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s male parts, and a $6,000 wax statue of President Bill Clinton.
On the more personal side, someone paid $100,025 to have their photo appear onscreen during a future episode of Last Week Tonight, a chance to meet Oliver in person went for $51,600, and a signed case of Oliver’s SauvignJohn wine sold for $13,025.
The fact that people are willing to pay over $11,000 for a three-year-old vegetable in order to fund public broadcasting, ironically, just confirms what conservatives have said all along. If liberals love public media so much, then they can fund it themselves.
