John Oliver and his Last Week Tonight production team obviously enjoyed attending the Westminster Kennel Club’s 145th annual dog show last weekend, but Oliver wanted to tweak a few of the prize dog names.
Both “And Now, This” parts of Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” episode were about the dog show that took place in New York State on June 12-13. The first was John Oliver and his team of authors who suggested some new names for the dogs that participated and were placed in the dog show.
In typical Last Week Tonight satirical style, the show introduced the segment as if the joke dog monikers were actually real and said, “Well, please enjoy some of the better names from this year’s Westminster Dog Show.” Some the suggestions were pretty normal – like Dennis, for example. But a few were pretty much out there; though not necessarily bad names for dogs, especially if you want to make someone laugh at shouting for the dog in public.
This year’s Best in Show winner was a three-year-old Pekingese named Wasabi, and John Oliver suggested that Best in Show an appropriate name for the dog would be Jennifer Aniston. The second part of “And Now, This” was a supercut from local news anchors who basically insulted the dog or got blown off his huge hair. “It looks like a wig,” an anchor couldn’t stop shouting.
But in the blink of an eye one of the dogs was dubbed a reference to a popular theory about the murder of President John F. Kennedy – yes, we’re serious. The show named a canine competitor “Cuban exile and CIA activist Antonio Veciana claimed he saw a senior CIA officer meet with Lee Harvey Oswald in September 1963.”
It has long been speculated that the CIA was somehow implicated in JFK’s murder; Although nothing confirms this, Veciana is a real person and he has repeatedly said and written that he believes the agency somehow planned the November 1963 assassination of JFK.
Veciana was a certified personal accountant in Cuba who says he was recruited and trained to spy for the CIA with the aim of assassinating Fidel Castro. Veciana said he was recruited shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by David Atlee Phillips, a leading CIA spy also known as Maurice Bishop. Veciana was reportedly told to try to kill Castro with a bazooka in 1961, but the plan went awry.
Veciana has since claimed that he saw Phillips hang out with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man arrested for the murder of JFK – implying that the CIA somehow orchestrated the murder.
So why did Last Week Tonight throw this in? In all honesty, we’re not sure. It’s certainly a mystery, but it wasn’t the only quirky name that got into the mix. And in the case of a maddened coincidence, we have to ask ourselves: if you are reading this and you have a pooch you have named “Cuban exile and CIA asset Antonio Veciana,” he claims he saw a senior CIA officer in September. Officer with Lee Harvey Oswald met from 1963 “Please give us a call, we have several questions.
Among the other name suggestions that John Oliver and his team came up with were some named after food – like a small, oddly shaved dog they renamed Raisnet and a mastiff named Beef.
Also for some inexplicable reason, they hilariously decided that a giant Siberian Husky should simply be called “Crime” and nodded to “Star Trek” and Sir Patrick Stewart by renaming a Miniature Schnauzer “Captain Jean-Luc Picard”. Other suggestions included “Drama, Good Carl and Bad Carl, Smooth Chris, Dennis” and, perhaps most beautifully, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi they called the “Ragnaroth Devourer of Souls”.
