“They sell you something that looks appetizing, but leaves you feeling nauseous for hours afterwards.” ~John Oliver on Fox News

That’s how John Oliver described the similarities between Fox News and the fast food industry. In an epic take-down of Fox (video below), Oliver brilliantly exposed the selfishness, hypocrisy, and stupidity, of the network’s upper-crusty pundits’ callous attitude toward working people who have the gall to rally for a living wage.

The segment features multiple Fox scrooges insisting that workers should be grateful to have any job and stop whining about how toiling full-time in harsh conditions doesn’t provide sufficient compensation to feed and house their families. Oliver notes the risks associated with a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate fairly compensating their employees:

“If you raise the minimum wage. people will never stop working in the fast food industry. They’ll get so comfortable in the hot kitchens, in their acrylic uniforms, relaxing in that grease fog, smelling like processed meat no matter how many showers they take.”

But the real victim of Oliver’s harangue was Fox’s VP of financial news, Neil Cavuto, who bragged about his own youthful experience as a fast food employee. Cavuto touted the opportunities for advancement and months of success he enjoyed slinging fish and chips. Unfortunately, he also demonstrated how ill-equipped he is to be commenting on financial matters. In his fanciful flashback he noted that “it all started at two bucks an hour.” But as Mother Jones reported…

“[T]he math makes the opposite point Cavuto intended — adjusted for inflation, he made a lot more money as a teenager than the fast food employees who walked off their jobs in seven US cities this week. […] $2.22 per hour more than the current federal minimum wage.”

So, there goes Cavuto’s argument against raising the minimum wage. And he set himself up for Oliver to make the astute observation that, “Working at Arthur Treacher’s was the last job Neil Cavuto was qualified for.” Of course, Cavuto is the Glenn Beck of business news. He engages in non-stop, brazenly partisan, propagandizing on behalf of the conservative agenda of his network bosses, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Cavuto is a Tea Party boosting, climate science denying, harbinger of economic Armageddon.