[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[upbeat rock music]
*
[cheers and applause]
- Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Just time for a quick recap of the week.
And we begin in Russia,
the real borscht belt.
Russia this week held a beloved annual tradition.
woman: Vladimir Putin is hosting
his annual call-in show right now.
He's facing questions-- more than 2 million of them
were submitted-- on everything from Syria
to the Russian economy.
- Yes, Vladimir Putin took questions for nearly four hours
on TV, and, look, we can all think of a few questions
we'd like to ask him, like, "Have you ever blinked?"
And, "Do you consider yourself more
of a Miranda or a Charlotte?"
But--
but the actual questions and answers were truly amazing,
such as when we was asked who he would save from drowning first,
the president of Turkey or the president of Ukraine.
- If someone is determined to drown,
you can't save them.
[applause]
[laughter]
- Wow.
I think we can take from that response that Vladimir Putin
would be the world's worst lifeguard.
"You have chosen to drown, my friend.
For you, there is nothing I can do."
Putin also answered questions submitted by children,
like this one from an 11-year-old girl.
- What three wishes would you--would you make
if you were to catch a wish-delivering magic goldfish?
- Oh, okay, the magic goldfish question.
That should be easy.
For your three wishes, you just pick
ice cream forever, invisibility,
and then unlimited wishes.
Easy.
But--but Putin went a very different way.
- Okay, three wishes...
I have to think.
You know, basically, we shouldn't really
rely on, uh...
miracles.
You know, even during the Soviet period,
we had this song,
"Nobody will help us...
"either a king nor a hero.
We have to do everything ourselves."
- Okay, two things there:
first, we all had that song.
It's called "The Collected Works of Bruce Springsteen."
And second:
this is the most amazing TV show ever.
They should put this on much more often,
because I would watch Vladimir Putin
crushing children's dreams every week.
This week on "Putin Says the Darndest Things,"
Putin tells a child his grandfather isn't watching
from above but is, rather, rotting in the ground.
But for now, let's move on to the U.K.,
where 2,000 years of civilization led to this face.
Last week--
last week, we discussed the fact--
It's--it's hurtful when you clap that.
Last week, we discussed the fact that David Cameron
was revealed to have a family connection
to an offshore company in the Panama Papers.
He faced questions in Parliament this week,
and one member, Dennis Skinner, brought up a conversation
that they'd had years ago concerning Cameron's finances,
and he closed with an explosive piece of name-calling.
- I didn't receive a proper answer then.
Maybe Dodgy Dave will answer it now!
- Oh, shit!
"Dodgy Dave"!
Cameron just got burned.
Or as we say in England, boiled for too long and served anyway.
Now, that comment set off a spectacular chain of events.
First, the Commons Speaker, John Bercow,
tried to calm everything down
in a quintessentially English manner.
- O-o-order!
Order. Order.
Order!
Order.
I must ask the honorable gentleman--order.
I don't require any assistance from some Junior Minister!
An absurd proposition!
- That--that is
the absolute height of Englishness:
yelling at everyone to be orderly
and then condescendingly mocking their status.
He then demanded that Skinner rephrase his remarks.
- I can't reasonably ask the prime minister
to answer the question.
All he has to do is withdraw that word and think of another.
- [unintelligible] Bercow: Sorry?
Sorry?
[unintelligible chatter]
- I think he knows the word beginning with D
and ending in Y that he inappropriately used.
- Now, if I were Skinner there,
I would have spent the rest of the session
just guessing words that started with a D
and ended with a Y.
Is it "dinghy"? No?
"Dignity"? No?
"Deadly"? No?
"Dillydally"?
Hold on, let me get a dictionary.
Oh, is it "dictionary"?
[laughter and applause] But--
but Skinner refused, which led to this amazing moment.
- I order the honorable member to withdraw immediately
from the House for the remainder of this day's sitting.
men: Hear, hear.
man: He's used to this.
[unintelligible shouting]
- And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is English politics in a nutshell.
An 84-year-old man just got sent from the room
like a naughty child who just called his sister
a "shithead" at dinner.
I am so proud.
And finally this week, Turkey:
a country, a bird, and the meanest thing
you could call someone in 1956.
This week, Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
caused a big stir in Germany.
- Chancellor Angela Merkel has accepted a request
to prosecute a comedian who mocked the Turkish president
on German television.
- Now, Erdogan had said that he wanted to take legal action
against this comedian because this comedian read a poem on air
that made very, very strong remarks against Erdogan.
- He wants to lock someone up over a poem!
Why doesn't he just do what the rest of us do about poetry:
listen to it politely because it's how Sarah
has chosen to cope with the divorce.
[laughter]
If--if you are wondering how on Earth an insulting poem
can be against the law, it turns out Erdogan may have
dug up a 19th-century German law stating,
"anyone who is guilty of an insult to a sovereign
or regent of a state shall be punished by imprisonment."
And for the record, let me just say,
I'm very glad America does not have a similar law,
or I would be in a maximum security prison right now,
and I would not thrive there.
But Angela Merkel is in a bit of a bind here because, clearly,
this is a free speech issue.
But the problem is, Erdogan is critical to Europe's plan
for processing migrants and refugees.
And it seems he has an incredibly thin skin.
- For Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
satire is no laughing matter.
Since he became president in 2014,
almost 2,000 cases have opened for insulting the president.
- It's true.
Nearly 2,000 legal cases have been opened
since he took office.
That's more than three a day.
And some of these cases have been unbelievably petty.
In October, a physician lost his job and now faces
a two-year prison sentence for sharing a meme
suggesting Erdogan's facial expressions resemble Gollum's,
which, by the way, they just do!
That's not a criticism.
It's not even a joke.
It's just a biological fact!
And last April, a journalist received
a suspended prison sentence simply for liking
a Facebook post that insulted Erdogan.
And liking something on Facebook
should never be a crime,
unless maybe you like
a coworker's beach photo at 3:00 a.m.
That is the one exception, because that is creepy.
And look, Erdogan is the one at fault here.
He makes it way too easy to make fun of him.
For example, in 2014, he gave an interview in which he said this.
- You can see that what Israel does to Palestine,
to Gaza right now, has surpassed what Hitler did to them.
- Holy shit!
That is very offensive to Israel,
and, honestly, it's a little offensive to Hitler,
who has to be thinking, "Are you fucking kidding me?
What do I have to do?"
And that same year, he caused a bit of a stir with this remark.
- You cannot bring women and men into equal positions.
That is against nature.
- Now, that statement is bad enough, but he said it
at an international conference for women.
The only way that could have been any worse
is if he'd then said, "But that's enough of me.
"Everybody please welcome Grammy-winning recording artist
"Chris Brown!
You're welcome, ladies. Chris Brown!"
And when Erdogan tried to smooth things over after that,
it didn't go so great.
woman: Erdogan did try to offer a compliment of sorts.
He says he used to kiss his mother's feet
because they smelled of paradise.
- Ooh. Oh.
Even at an international foot fetishist convention,
the sentence, "My mom's feet smell like paradise,"
is gonna get you some weird looks.
Look, Erdogan is clearly not a pleasant individual,
which is why it's so hard to be sympathetic when you see this
actual footage of him having his balls
stomped on by a horse.
Now, we've shown you that footage before,
and we'll probably show you it again.
Because the point is, Erdogan, if you are so anxious
not to be mocked, try not suppressing speech
in your country and others and generally acting
in ways that make everyone want to see you
get kicked in the balls.
And now this.
[cheers and applause] - Moving on.
Our main--our main topic tonight is lead,
the most dangerous thing in Led Zeppelin's name.
And I will remind you,
the other thing was "Zeppelin."
Now, we've heard a lot about lead over the last year
due to the horrific events in Flint, Michigan.
woman: Flint's tap water was laced
with dangerous levels of lead.
The state knew about it and did nothing.
man: There are 200 children under the age of six
in Flint with elevated blood levels.
9,000 children have been exposed.
- Yes, Flint has become a city whose very name
evokes disaster, like Benghazi or Waco
or Smurf Village.
Never forget.
Never forget what happened there.
Never forget.
Flint was a perfect storm of incompetence
from start to finish.
And the crisis began when the city switched water sources,
a decision which was commemorated thusly.
men: Three, two, one...
- Here's to Flint!
- Here's to Flint. - Hear, hear!
- It's a little weird to see people make a toast
as they essentially drink poison,
because under those circumstances,
you'd usually expect to hear something like,
"I'll see you all in hell,"
or, "The mother ship is coming,
and soon we will all ascend!"
That new water source corroded the city's pipes
and leached lead into the drinking water.
And with all the bureaucratic clusterfuckery involved,
politicians in Washington were lining up
to be vocally outraged.
- We've got children that have been harmed,
and yet we're sitting here equivocating over words
that may or may not establish blame.
- The safety and well-being of our citizens
is not a Republican or a Democrat
or an Independent issue.
It's a human issue.
- We're not some third world country
where you get 100,000 people who get poisoned--
poisoned--
for long periods of time.
- That's right, because there is only one poison
that thousands of Americans should consume,
and that is Mountain Dew Code Red.
Code Red:
the most delicious way of contracting red poisoning!
[cheers and applause]
[coughs]
That is horrific.
So we all care about lead in Flint now, which is great.
Unfortunately, the problem is not just in Flint.
A "USA Today" network report found lead contamination
in almost 2,000 additional water systems spanning all 50 states.
And we can't just act like it's not there,
the way we all pretend that the public swimming pool
is not 3% child urine.
That's generous, by the way.
And if you're thinking, "Well, we should just rip out
every lead pipe in the country,"
it's not quite as easy as that.
There are an estimated 7.3 million lead service lines
around the country, and we don't even know
where many of them are.
And if we did a partial solution, that could increase
rather than decrease lead in water.
But perhaps, more importantly,
even if we did replace all lead pipes,
that still wouldn't come close to stopping lead poisoning,
as one lead activist reassuringly puts it.
- Kids are not gonna get poisoned
from a water fountain at their school.
They're not.
They're gonna get poisoned from paint in their homes.
- [laughing] Okay.
I like how that starts off sounding reassuring
but ends up even more terrifying.
It's like saying, "Look, that boa constrictor
"isn't gonna bite you.
"It's not. It's just not.
"It's gonna crush you to death with its body
and then swallow you whole, because that's what it does."
But she is right.
The biggest threat of lead poisoning to children
does not come from water.
It comes from ingesting lead paint dust.
There are an estimated 2.1 million homes
all around the country that contain
both a lead dust hazard and a child under six.
And the CDC estimates over 1/2 million children
have elevated blood lead levels,
and that's terrible.
Lead is almost as much of a scourge
in young children's homes as "Frozen" merchandise.
Why do you need three Olafs and a singing Elsa, McKenzie?
Let "Let It Go" go.
[applause] And--
and if you're thinking at this point,
"Well, how--how big a deal is a little lead dust anyway?"
It's a big fucking deal.
man: How potent is lead?
A child can be poisoned by only 10 milligrams of pure lead.
To give you an idea of what a small amount that is,
this spoonful contains about 4,000 milligrams.
Today we know just ingesting small amounts of lead dust
can lead to brain damage and even death.
- Okay, first: maybe don't say "death"
in that jolly tone of voice over the photo of a baby.
But--but second: it is true that there is no safe level of lead.
It's one of those things so dangerous,
you shouldn't even let a little bit of it inside you,
much like heroin or Jeremy Piven.
Even--
even low-level exposure can lead to irreversible damage
like lower IQs, antisocial behavior,
and reduced attention span.
And the dangers are so severe that 20 years ago,
"Sesame Street" even produced a video to teach kids
how to deal with lead in their homes.
- Let's go, everybody!
From the top!
Wash your hands before you eat.
all: Wash your hands before you eat.
- Stay away from peeling paint.
all: Stay away from peeling paint.
- Enough! I've had it!
Who do you people think you are anyway,
the Lead Police?
[upbeat music]
all: * We are the Lead Police
* We are the Lead Police
- It's a close call, but as Police songs go,
the possibility of being poisoned by lead
is still less terrifying than "Every Breath You Take."
Every breath I take, you'll be watching me?
That's a crime. You're stalking me, Gordon.
You're a stalker.
That video was made 20 years ago,
and it's enough to make you wonder,
"Well, if lead paint is so dangerous,
"why the fuck is there still so much of it
in houses where kids live?"
And that's a good question.
Many countries around the world actually banned the use
of lead paint in the 1920s.
So we knew it was dangerous.
But instead of joining them, America decided
to put lead basically everywhere.
- Wait, "humble lead"?
It's a naturally occurring element,
not Meryl Streep's Oscar speech.
And also, if we're assigning personality traits to metals,
why stop with "humble lead"?
How about "passionate zinc,"
"free-spirited copper,"
and "extremely racist tin"?
And--and it wasn't--it wasn't just newsreels promoting lead.
The lead industry reassured us it was safe,
releasing things like this coloring book
inviting you to "The Dutch Boy's Lead Party,"
which sounds like the worst sex club in all of Amsterdam.
And even when the government finally got serious
about banning lead in the '70s and '80s,
the lead industry did not go down without a ridiculous fight.
Here is the head of a lead industry trade group
pushing back against the evidence
that lead was dangerous.
- The fact of the matter is,
if you look at a total national profile,
we have never been healthier;
we have never lived longer.
There must be something that--that we're doing right.
- What?
He's basically saying, "It can't be bad; I turned out fine,"
which is the number one argument made by people
who did not turn out fine.
It's like when your uncle says,
"Hey, I had my first beer at ten, and I turned out okay."
But did you, Uncle Stu? Did you, though?
Because your dinner last night was 23 croutons
dipped in frosting.
And that is not "turned out fine" behavior.
Make a change, Uncle.
And--and by the way,
there was already plenty of hard evidence showing
that childhood lead exposure was harmful,
due in large part to a study by this man,
Dr. Herbert Needleman.
man: In the late 1970s, Dr. Needleman studied
the baby teeth of healthy schoolchildren
in two Boston suburbs.
Needleman: When we looked at the data,
we found that children who had high lead in their teeth
but who had never been identified as having
any problems with lead had lower IQ scores,
poorer language function, and poorer attention.
- That's right.
It's time you knew, children: there is no tooth fairy.
Your baby teeth were all taken away
by Dr. Herbert Needleman.
We told you the fairy thing 'cause we knew
that would creep you out.
But you should be thanking that man,
because thanks to studies like his, America started regulating
and removing lead from our environment in the 1970s,
resulting in a graph of child blood lead levels
in this country that looks like this.
Now, lead paint was banned here, and leaded gasoline
was phased out all through here.
So getting rid of lead in paint and gas
was a major public health victory.
You know that 18-year-old intern in your office
who thinks he's so damn smart?
Well, he probably is because he was born
after America's lead epidemic.
"You got lucky, Sawyer. Now go get my coffee."
But even though we drastically cut back on the amount
of new lead that we put into the world, we were still left
with all the lead that was already there,
in our pipes and on our walls.
And while we all agreed it was a problem,
the cost of getting rid of it all
was surprisingly high.
In 2000, the estimated cost for testing for
and then totally removing lead from old housing stock
nationwide was $16.6 billion per year, every year,
for the next decade,
which is the sort of figure that turns the government
into parents with a sick family dog.
"Hey, I know we said we'd do anything to make this better,
"but we just got an estimate from the vet,
"and do you know that in doggie heaven,
"every meal is hot dogs?
"Don't you think Bandit would like to go live there?
I do. I do."
And look, nobody expected the government
to pick up that full tab.
That same report even ran an estimate of what it would cost
if the government used interim controls,
like sealing lead paint in or periodic cleanings,
and only did that in homes where families with low incomes lived.
And that cost came out to just $230 million per year,
which sounded lower and therefore better.
Unfortunately and amazingly,
we have never funded it at that level.
For instance, the main program to abate lead paint in housing,
HUD's Lead Hazard Control program,
has never been appropriated funding above $176 million.
It's been steadily going down since 2003,
and this year, we've allocated just $110 million.
That is just a little more than Americans spent
to go see "Ride Along 2,"
a movie which, incidentally, the "New York Post"
described as "as funny as lead poisoning."
And--
It's amazing. And--and look.
That reduction is by no means because we were done
removing lead from housing,
because remember, there are still millions
of homes with lead paint hazards in them.
And according to HUD, they were only able to fund
around half the applications for lead abatement grants
they received last year,
meaning many Americans still live in homes with lead in them,
and sadly, it is often the groups least able
to do anything about it.
- Well, people in the lower socioeconomic levels
go into older housing, less well taken care of housing,
housing where there may be absentee landlords,
and, as a result, are more liable to have
lead paint that has not been abated,
has not been taken off the walls.
- Of course.
And if you are in that situation,
you probably can't shop around for a new apartment.
So most people with lead problems are stuck in homes
they can't leave, trying their best to avoid danger,
which may sound familiar because it's the plot
of every fucking horror movie ever made.
And the crazy thing is, while lead abatement
is expensive, it's cost-effective.
For instance, some studies show a correlation between
decreasing lead levels and a fall in crime.
And when you combine that with lower medical bills
and greater economic activity, one study found that
each dollar spent on lead paint hazard control would bring back
at least $17 in societal benefits,
which is great, although the cost savings
still do rank a distant third on my list of reasons
to not poison children,
number one and two still being:
it's poison, and they're fucking children.
And you would think that our members of Congress
would be on board with doing more to fight lead poisoning.
After all, you remember how angry they were
about all those kids who got poisoned
in Flint, right?
- We've got children that have been harmed.
- It's a human issue.
It's an American issue that affects Americans' lives.
- We're not some third world country
where you get 100,000 people who get poisoned--
poisoned.
- They seemed so concerned-- concerned!
Which-- which is what--
which is what makes it-- but that's what makes it
so frustrating that last year, all of those men
voted for a bill that would have reduced
the already low funding for HUD lead abatement programs
by $35 million, amounting to a 32% cut.
And the truth is, if you cut funding like that,
a whole lot more children might get poisoned--
poisoned!
Now, the good news is, those cuts didn't go through.
The bad news is, the funding stayed flat.
And by the way, the other two primary agencies
that work on lead-related issues have had funding problems
in recent years as well,
which makes no sense, because I thought
poisoned children was something
we were all justifiably outraged by.
This problem was obvious enough 20 years ago
for "Sesame Street" to feel the need to address it.
And since we very much still have this problem,
it's clearly time to address it again.
["Sesame Street" theme music]
[both humming]
- Hi, Elmo! Hi, Rosita!
both: Oh, hi, Mr. Oliver!
- I can't believe that it has been two decades
since "Sesame Street" taught kids
how to avoid lead dust.
You two do not look like you've aged a day.
- Well, thank you, Mr. Oliver.
I moisturize. - Oh, very nice!
Very nice.
- You know what, Mr. Oliver?
Elmo's been hitting the gym.
[grunts] Oliver: Whoa, there!
Wow, I can see. You're ripped.
- Uh-huh. - Well, you both look great.
But unfortunately, I'm here to say
a lot of places still contain lead paint.
- Oh, no. Oliver: Mm-hmm.
- Well, what can we do about that, Mr. Oliver?
- Well, that's a good question.
We need to care more than we currently do
so that we spend enough money on containing it.
- Oh, Elmo has some money in his piggy bank.
- Oh, that's nice.
Well, how much-- - Aw, isn't that cute?
- How much have you got in there, Elmo?
How much is it?
- $1.76.
- Okay, that's a start. - Oh, yay! Elmo did it!
Elmo saved the day! Oliver: No, you didn't do it.
No, no, no, no no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Elmo, you didn't actually do it, because we're gonna need
a lot more of that money,
probably hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
- Ay mama! Oliver: Yeah.
- Wow. Oliver: It's a lot.
- 100 million is a big number.
Oliver: Sure. - Oh, come on, everybody.
Let's count to 100 million together!
both: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-- Oliver: No, no, no, guys.
No, no, no, we really do not have time for that.
The problem here is, people are worried that lead
is too expensive a problem to fix.
- That's ridiculous!
- Oh, hey, Oscar! How you doing?
[cheers and applause]
How you doing, Oscar?
- [grumbling]
How can anyone say it's too expensive, huh?
Aren't they aware that according to a study
in "Environmental Health Perspectives,"
every dollar we spend on lead paint hazard control
produces returns of at least 17 to 1?
- Wow!
That is an astonishing level of economic insight
coming from someone who lives in a trash can.
- Hey! This can is rent-controlled.
I've had it since the '60s. - Oh, okay.
But, Oscar, look, I-I know it's cost-effective,
but people just aren't willing to do it.
I guess it just seems too hard.
- Yeah, but just because something's hard
doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
Oliver: That's a good point. [lively music]
- Hey, should we sing a song about it?
- Ugh, do we have to? Oliver: Oh, okay, yeah. Okay.
Elmo: * La la la
* Lead's a really big problem
* Seems like it's everywhere
* We can do more to fix it
* But first we all
* Have to care
- Well, that does make sense, Elmo.
Things do tend to get done if you just decide
you want to do them.
Can you think of another example where that's true?
- Oh, I can! Oliver: You go.
- [clears throat]
* I wanted to tie my shoes
* I could never do it right
* Then I decided
* To practice it
* And now they're all
* Knotted tight
- They are! You did it.
You see, you just have to have a vested interest
in the outcome, and you'd be amazed
at what you can do.
Oscar, you take a verse!
*
- * Yes, my trash can is messy
* People stop and they stare
* I suppose I could
* Clean it up
* The problem is
* I don't care
- Well, that is unsurprisingly negative, Oscar,
but you know what?
That's actually a fair representation
of our institutional problems,
so there you go.
- Ugh, you mean I helped you prove your point?
- Yes, Oscar. You actually did.
- Argh!
[Elmo laughs]
- * Lead is still all around us *
* Our pipes, our walls, and our air *
* We should do more to contain it *
* But first we all have to care *
all: * Yes, first, we all have to care *
- That's our show.
Thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week.
Good night!
Thank you so much, guys!
Thank you, Rosita!
Thank you so much!
[cheers and applause]
- What are you clapping about?
Don't encourage him!
[cheers and applause]
[bright tone]