Those of us who occasionally make the mistake of reading the comments on a story can at least snap the rubber band around our wrists as a reminder: never read the comments.
But C-SPAN host Steve Scully has nowhere to turn. Part of his job is listening to hour after hour of viewer phone calls, and often, well, they’re quite offensive, even horrible.
As Jim Romenesko discovered, the gang at HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver discovered this, and fell in love with Scully, leading to a segment on the show where Scully is dubbed “The Most Patient Man on Television”:
“Last Week Tonight” executive producer Tim Carvell says of the Scully segment:
That was a lucky discovery by a producer named Matt Passet, [made] while working on our piece on infrastructure. He found that guy hosting a daylong call-in show, and we were all so enamored with him that Matt and one of our editors, Anthony Miale, started assembling montages of him.
Oliver & Co. have aired two “Most Patient Man” segments so far, but regular C-SPAN viewers know there’s material for many, many more.