John Oliver Blasts Mike Jerrick as “Gross” for Treatment of Female Colleagues

On Sunday night on HBO, John Oliver reacts to Mike Jerrick’s “gross” behavior.

In case you somehow missed it, last Thursday was International Women’s Day. Some marched. Some celebrated women who were influential in their lives. Some donated money to women’s charities. But Mike Jerrick chose a much, much different road, as comedian John Oliver pointed out in a segment on Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight on HBO.

Oliver showed puzzling snippets from news shows around the country culminating in a series documenting Jerrick’s antics on Thursday’s edition of Good Day Philadelphia.

“But those were all one-off moments,” Oliver said of the other shows, which included CBS This Morning. “Some news anchors were spending the entire day acting inappropriately, like Philadelphia’s Mike Jerrick. Now, we don’t have time to show you everything he did. This is just a sample of what he got up to on Thursday.”

What follows — we’re still waiting for HBO to officially release the footage — is downright embarrassing, even for Jerrick, who is well known to be something of a loose cannon on the show. Of course, that’s part of his and the show’s charm. But charm went right out the window last Thursday.

Here are the moments detailed by Oliver:

• Jerrick asks, “Why do you need your own day?”
• Jerrick notes that “they changed the Brawny dude to a woman” and then produces a piece of paper onto which “GOOD DAY” is written. “How can we change that into something good to celebrate women?” he asks rhetorically, as the camera zooms in on the “OO” in “GOOD DAY.”

• “How do you keep your girlish figure?” Jerrick asks. It’s unclear which woman at the desk he’s speaking to.
• “Have you ever cheated on your husband?” Jerrick inquires of Fox 29 reporter Karen Hepp. Then: “When was the last time you had sex?”
• A 3-D model of Jerrick’s co-host Alex Holley appears on the desk in front of Jerrick. He spins it to the side and rear. “What do you do with this doll that you have at home?” someone asks him. “I put it by my bedside, so I can wake up in the morning and see you as I open my eyes,” he tells Holley.

Oliver sums it up as follows: “That. Is. Gross. And I would say we should all now take a shower after that, but I feel like Mike Jerrick would hear that and say, ‘Nooooiiiiice.'”

But Oliver isn’t done with Jerrick yet. He moves onto an unfortunate poetry reading by Vladimir Putin in “honor” of women and says that if Putin somehow loses reelection, there might be an opening for him at Fox 29:

“Good lord,” Jerrick told us on Monday morning, adding that he hadn’t had a chance to see the clip. (He’s on the air until 10 a.m.) “Ugh.”

Ugh, indeed.