His efforts included building a giant pūteketeke puppet to pose behind him on set, promoting the cause on Jimmy Fallon in a pūteketeke costume himself, and creating an info site complete with a pūteketeke dressed as Oliver and the new show title Best Beak Tonight with Pūteketeke. May the finest feathered specimen win and flourish.Īs for Oliver’s campaign, perfect. The eligible birds are endemic to the country (meaning they’re not found anywhere else in the world) and most of them are decreasing in numbers. And this competition isn’t all silliness! It’s run by Forest & Bird, New Zealand’s leading independent conservation group. I need these weekly doses of whimsy, and greatly appreciate the extensive lengths and exorbitant funds he takes to provide them. Man, I missed John Oliver during the writers strike. Maybe good luck next century, New Zealand.” And when we do that, the pūteketeke will be your Bird of the Century, and there’s nothing any of you can do to stop that right now. “And the reason it’s so easy for me to say that is, we’re not gonna lose are we? We’re gonna win, and we’re gonna win by a lot. And it would be an honor to lose to any of them when results are announced on Wednesday,” Oliver said. And while he did admit to making the country the butt of many jokes, he said “It’s not because I don’t like you, it’s because I f-ing love you.”Ī gracious, early victory speech: “And for the record, all of your birds are great. He teases because he cares: One thing Oliver wanted to clear up was the accusation that he makes New Zealand the butt of jokes because he doesn’t like them. “I’ll admit, that’s pretty good,” Oliver said. The Zazu connection: Multiple people also referenced the fact that Oliver voiced a bird named Zazu in 2019’s The Lion King, including one billboard that said “the only bird worse than the pūteketeke is Zazu,” with a Photoshopped picture that shows Oliver with a Zazu beak and feathers. The pūteketeke campaign manager also pointed out - and gave some love to - the response from other bird campaigns who accepted Oliver’s presence “with grace.” Like supporters of the kakariki karaka, who put up multiple billboards with the message: “Dear John, don’t disrupt the pecking order.” Oliver said that he respects their aggression with the amount of billboards, but was not impressed with their bird choice at all, calling it a “bright green cat toy.” He included a montage of various media reports and other social media personalities who took issue with him, mostly because they like their own choice for bird better. Oliver revels in the backlash: Oliver said that since the episode aired, not everyone has embraced his shenanigans with open arms in New Zealand. And sure enough, the conservation organization that puts on the contest, Forest & Bird, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “Oliver’s campaign for the pūteketeke to win Bird of the Century has kicked off with more than 10,000 votes coming in overnight! Verifying emails is a massive ongoing job - as you can imagine!!” A few days later, according to an email Oliver showed, Forest & Bird said that its “voting verification system was overloaded and temporarily crashed.” The pūteketeke got 10,000+ votes in one night after the show aired: Oliver reported last week that the winning bird in last year’s competition received less than 3,000 votes, a number he was confident they could surpass rather quickly and extensively. And the winner is… to be announced on Wednesday, because Oliver’s fans crashed the voting site. Then he unveiled the global campaign his team had rolled out on behalf of the noble pūteketeke, a move New Zealand called “alarmingly aggressive.” He concluded his pitch saying “This is what democracy is all about: America interfering in foreign elections.” Oliver shared the results on last Sunday’s show. After laying out his reasons for selecting the pūteketeke - chief among them being excellent plumage, an elegant mating dance wherein partners present clumps of grass to each other, shared parental duties, plus it’s just fun to say - Oliver confirmed the competition was not limited to New Zealanders. On the November 5 episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, titular host Oliver gave a call to arms for viewers to vote for his candidate, the pūteketeke. She meant New Zealand’s Bird of the Century competition. Silly me, Mother Kismet wasn’t talking about the general election. A post shared by The Tonight Show (BTS) was a mere two days into my vacation last week when I got an emphatic text from my mother saying “You HAVE to vote!!” I was like, what do you take me for? I’m an informed citizen who requested and turned in an absentee ballot well ahead of traveling out of state.
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