John Oliver turns Ted Cruz's ESPN booing into Seuss-style verse
John Oliver turned boos for Ted Cruz on US college football TV into a Dr Seuss rhyme on Sunday's Last Week Tonight.
The HBO late-night show, a weekly comedy-news programme that mixes jokes with explainers, picked up Cruz's recent appearance on ESPN's College GameDay, the network's travelling pre-game show for US college athletics, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter. That spot was meant to promote the Protect College Sports Act, a bill dealing with college sports. It ran roughly nine minutes.
It was noisy. The crowd packed in behind Cruz booed throughout and chanted "Ted, you suck."
Oliver played the clip and said the crowd gave Cruz "the exact reception he deserves." Then he answered in verse modelled on Green Eggs and Ham, the 1960 Dr Seuss picture book built around a repeated refusal.
His version opened with the line "I do not like that man Ted Cruz." It ended with a nod to the ESPN crowd: "But I love him being told he sucks."
Cruz had responded to the ESPN reception on X, writing: "Whole crowd came on a blitz this morning, I stayed in the pocket." A blitz is an all-out rush at the quarterback in American football. Staying in the pocket means holding your ground behind your blockers.
What makes this travel is the sound of it. Nine minutes of sustained jeering is unusual for a policy pitch on a football pre-game show, and Oliver let the chant do most of the work before adding the rhyme.
It is not the first time he has used Seuss to needle Cruz. A 2022 version of the gag included the lines "I do not like him in a room" and "I do not like him in Cancun," according to Yahoo. Last Week Tonight airs Sundays at 11PM on HBO, according to its official YouTube page.
