(theme music playing)
(cheering)
Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
Thank you so much for joining us.
I'm John Oliver.
Just time for a quick recap of the week,
and we start with Russia,
Earth's Death Star. (laughter)
Their leader, Vladimir Putin,
has a lot on his plate at the moment,
but this week, he decided to add one more thing.
Let's get to the breaking news.
Russia launches its first airstrikes in Syria,
saying it targeted ISIS positions
near the city of Homs.
One official says the Pentagon was taken aback
by the Russian action.
Oh, great. That is just what
the geopolitical shit salad that is Syria needed--
a little Russian dressing on top.
And if you are wondering why Putin has suddenly decided to intervene in Syria,
there's actually an interesting theory.
And you can argue in some ways
that what Putin is doing now in Syria
is potentially a way to distract
the Russian population from a combination
of its worsening economy
and from the fact that its forces
are bogged down in Eastern Ukraine.
What? You can't just bomb Syria
any time you need to distract people
from mistakes that you've made.
When Tom Brady was accused of using deflated footballs,
he did not order airstrikes on Aleppo.
He screamed into an UGG boot
while masturbating into a different UGG boot!
Just a normal, healthy response
that he does.
Yet there seems to be some concern
about whether Russia is actually getting involved
to shore up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
And one journalist tried to bring this up
during a photo op with John Kerry
and the Russian foreign minister this week,
but the question was rebuffed in memorable fashion.
(woman speaks) (cameras clicking)
We'll do-- We'll do some...
Okay. Okay. Two things.
First, it is a sign of how few fucks Vladimir Putin gives
that that awful man is one of his diplomats.
And second, that is the exact moment
when John Kerry realized
he has a terrible job.
Not only does he have to stop a civil war from spinning out of control,
but now he has to calm a room that has just witnessed
a foreign minister attempt to neg a female journalist into a blow job.
That's a terrible job he has.
So, let's move on to the UN,
the sister organization of the International House of Pancakes.
The UN hosted its general debate this week.
We don't have time to talk about all of it,
but there were a few spectacular moments you may have missed.
First, Robert Mugabe chose to defend Zimbabwe's laws
on homosexuality with a jarring statement.
We equally reject attempts to prescribe new rights
that are contrary to our values,
norms, traditions, and beliefs.
We are not gays.
Wow. "We are not gays."
And in case you're wondering, he did not follow that up
by saying, "We are not gays, because no one is gay
"and no one is straight.
"Sexuality is a vast beautiful spectrum
"and any attempt to impose a dichotomy
"upon our shared human experience
"is both narrow-minded and oppressive."
He did not say that.
That's not how he finished that thought.
Also-- Also, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu
chose to criticize the assembly for what he saw as its indifference to Israel
by essentially engaging in a staring contest with the entire room.
The response from nearly
every one of the governments
represented here
has been...
absolutely nothing.
Utter silence.
Deafening silence.
(studio audience laughing)
That went on for 45 seconds.
I swear that is true. And staring at a room
for 45 seconds is never a good idea,
because I guarantee you half the room thinks you're a dick,
half worries you might be buffering,
and one guy is desperately trying to hold in a fart.
That's what happens in 45 seconds.
But perhaps the strangest moment of the week
involved Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko,
who got people talking simply by how he used his plus-one.
Woman: This happens to be the contingent from Belarus.
Who is this young chap? Man: Yes. This young gentleman--
it looks like the youngest son of the president,
Lukashenko, Alexander Lukashenko.
Yes, Lukashenko brought his 11-year-old son
to the UN, and why not?
Kids love the general assembly.
It's like if everyone from the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World
came to life and hated each other.
And interestingly, this is not unusual behavior.
In the past, Lukashenko has brought his son to meet the Chinese president,
to meet the pope, and even to military parades
where his son wore a matching uniform,
like a militaristic Mini-Me.
And if you are thinking, this could not look any more
like the origin story of a Bond villain,
you're wrong, because here is a final photo of him
showing the former Russian president his actual golden gun.
Listen, world, if we learned one thing from the UN this week,
it's that we are going to need to find
a way of paying the trillion-dollar ransom
that this kid is soon going to demand,
or else he kills us all with his space laser.
And finally-- finally this week,
we move on to the Secret Service,
the only people on Earth who can pull off aviator sunglasses...
Gwyneth.
It has been-- It's been a rough few years for the Secret Service,
and unfortunately, this week, there was yet another scandal.
Some new trouble for the Secret Service
after a review by the Homeland Security's Inspector General
found dozens of agents improperly accessed
Congressman Jason Chaffetz's
unsuccessful job application for the agency.
That's right. The Secret Service attempted to embarrass
one of their biggest critics, Congressman Jason Chaffetz,
by leaking his rejected application to join them,
essentially behaving like a high school table of mean girls.
(snobbishly) You only hate us,
because we won't let you sit with us, Jason.
Don't look at our food. You're making it uncool.
(scoffs)
(normal voice) And I don't know what's worse here--
the fact that the Secret Service is so petty
that they broke the law to embarrass Jason Chaffetz
or the fact that they're so stupid,
they didn't realize if you want to embarrass Jason Chaffetz,
just wait and he will do it for you.
Just this week, he tried to ambush the president of Planned Parenthood
with a seemingly damaged slide--
damaging slide, and watch how that went.
Chaffetz: It's the reduction
over the course of years in pink--
that's the reduction in the breast exams--
and the red is the increase in the abortions.
That's what's going on in your organization.
Richards: This is a slide that has never been shown to me before.
Chaffetz: I pulled those numbers directly out
of your corporate reports. Oh. Excuse me.
My lawyer's informing me that the source of this
is actually Americans United for Life,
which is an anti-abortion group,
so I would check your source.
Chaffetz: Then we will get to the bottom of the truth of that.
You want embarrassing? That's embarrassing!
And that's a guy who just announced today he wants to be House Speaker,
and yet his chart was so misleading,
a journalist later pronounced it
"terrible and dishonest," saying...
(laughter)
And it's true, 'cause his chart doesn't even have a "Y" axis...
which means you could literally write anything down the side of that,
including "Total number of angry owls in millions"
or "words ascending vertically on a line,"
and it would make just as much sense as his.
And you don't even need charts to embarrass Jason Chaffetz.
You just need to google him.
We did, and we immediately found
this photo of him and Anthony Weiner
looking like they're being blown by a pair of goats.
Or-- Or-- That's just the beginning.
Or there's this video of him taste-testing burgers
on Capitol Hill and saying this.
Just a very plain cheeseburger.
Not much excitement going on in that meat.
Oh. That's-- That's funny.
That's exactly what that goat was thinking when it was blowing you.
Or-- Or how about-- how about that time-- (cheers, applause)
how about-- how about that time in 2009,
he got weirdly choked up about the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Sadly, only six weeks into his second term,
the president was shot and killed at Ford's Theatre.
200 years after he was born,
(emotionally) this humble man of great courage
and conviction...
(sighs deeply)
continues to be...
one of our country's...
most beloved statesmen.
What? What are you crying about?
It was 144 years ago!
It's time to move on.
He was going to be dead by now, anyway!
My point is, Secret Service, shame on you.
If you had known anything about Jason Chaffetz,
you should have already known you cannot embarrass him more
than he can embarrass himself.
And now, this.
(fanfare) (announcer speaking)
Piperlime is not well-known to a lot of men.
Jamie Berlin, my producer, had no idea what it was.
My producer says it's not a record,
but I'm disagreeing with him on this.
Man: I really don't like this stuff,
but our producer, Anthony Catchatoorian,
felt it was necessary to put in here, but really terrible.
Man 2: My producer can't fit into this dress.
Man 3: As you know, I wanted to show
the cartoons from the week of the massacre,
our lily-livered executive producer,
Tom Johnson, wouldn't let us do that.
Man 4: And forgive me, because I did not write this,
or choose this. This is all our producer.
Do you know what my supremely intellectual
executive producer just whispered in my ear?
My producer's telling me I have to go,
and I'm actually going to take issue with him later.
My producer has said "Wrap," in my ear twice.
My producer said we have to talk about this
for the next couple of minutes.
I do not know who my producer is.
Well, that would be Dave. I don't even know who the director is.
(applause) Moving on.
Our main story tonight concerns mental illness,
the thing actors pretend to have in order to win Oscars.
Now, in real life,
mental health can be something of a touchy topic.
We don't like to talk about it much,
and as one psychiatrist explains,
when we do, we don't talk about it well.
Stigma still is a very big issue.
It manifests itself in the ways that we think
and talk about the mentally ill,
in the terms, the words,
that we use to describe them. For instance?
Wacko, psycho, cray cray.
Okay. Okay, first,
hearing a bearded middle-aged man use the term "cray cray"
may have already killed that word forever.
It's like when your mom says something is "on fleek."
It's done. It's just over at that point.
But second, he is right.
"Cray cray" is a terrible name
to call someone with mental illness,
although it is an excellent name for a cartoon crayfish
who just won a scuttling contest.
You did it, Cray Cray! You won the race!
The point is, we don't talk about mental illness well.
Sometimes, even TV personalities
with "doctor" in their names can get it disastrously wrong.
Announcer: On the next "Dr. Oz," everybody wants to know...
Should you be worried? This behavior is...
It's not normal.
Have you gone completely insane?
I mean, serious-- Have you gone completely insane?
Completely insane people go outside,
suck on a rock, and bark at the moon.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Sucking on a rock and barking at the moon
is not a sign that someone is mentally ill.
It's a sign that they are a wolf with an iron deficiency.
You're thinking of anemic wolves, Dr. Phil.
You're getting confused.
But perhaps the clearest sign of just how little we want to talk about mental health
is that one of the only times it's actively brought up is,
as we've seen yet again this week,
in the aftermath of a mass shooting
as a means of steering the conversation away from gun control.
This isn't guns. This is about, really, mental illness.
In many of these shootings, we have people who have
mental disturbances.
Do we need to do a better job in mental health?
You bet we do.
Yeah, it seems there is nothing like a mass shooting
to suddenly spark political interest in mental health.
Although, it's worth noting that Governor Huckabee's state
got a grade of "D-"
on mental health care while he was in office.
And you can't lecture people
on something you got a "D-" in.
It's like passionately delivering a speech
on proper English grammar by saying,
"We need to thunk better about how we does word stuff.
"We need to get it did."
And the aftermath of a mass shooting
might actually be the worst time to talk about mental health,
because for the record, the vast majority
of mentally-ill people are nonviolent,
and the vast majority of gun violence
is committed by non-mentally-ill people.
In fact, mentally ill people are far likelier to be
the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators.
So, the fact we tend to only discuss mental health
in a mass-shooting context is deeply misleading.
It would be like if the only time we talked about Coca-Cola,
it were in the context of this.
I'm standing here with this ice-cold, thirst-quenching,
deliciously-satisfying Coca-Cola,
and it actually tastes better.
Now, more than ever, Coke is it!
Sure. Sure, that happened and Coke was undeniably involved in it,
but most cans of Coke are not that one,
and it would be unfair if every time you thought of Coke, you thought of that.
But if now is our only opportunity
to have a public discussion about mental health,
then perhaps we should do it, because in 2013,
and estimated 43.8 million American adults dealt with a mental illness,
and an estimated 10 million of us suffer from a serious mental illness each year.
10 million! That's almost as many people as live in Greece,
and most of us know a lot more about Greece
than we know about our mental health system.
Think about it. You know at least three things about Greece.
It's economy is collapsing, Yanni is from there,
and Greek yogurt tastes like the ice cream
they'd make in a town where dancing is illegal.
(laughter) You know at least three.
And when you look at how our current system deals with severe mental illness,
you'll quickly realize it's a mess and it always has been.
We used to lock people up in asylums,
which were often so bad they were known as snake pits.
And that doesn't sound like an attractive place to live, even if you're a snake.
You'd want some kind of snake loft or snake bungalow.
I don't know. I'm no real e-snake agent.
And then-- And then-- (laughter, applause)
And then, in the 1960s,
President Kennedy signed a bill
to try and close as many of those asylums as possible.
Kennedy: Under this legislation, custodial mental institutions
will be replaced by therapeutic centers.
It should be possible within a decade or two
to reduce the number of patients in mental institutions
by 50% or more.
And that was a really good idea,
because when you see horrible places doing unspeakable things to people,
you are supposed to try and shut them down.
That's why there are so few Quiznos left.
But-- But before you get too proud,
of the fact that we shut those snake pits down,
it turns out we never followed through and properly funded
the community mental health centers JFK had wanted to replace them.
All of those patients had to go somewhere,
and some of the places they wound up are shocking.
For instance, a few years ago, the AP found that
nearly 125,000 young and middle-aged mental health patients
were being placed in nursing homes.
And it's not a great idea to just stick a young person
in with some old people and then hope for the best.
It's like casting Taylor Lautner
in the new "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" movie.
It's unsuitable for everybody involved in it.
And some states have been involved in something called Greyhound therapy,
and unfortunately, that does not mean getting to hug
a trembling dog who's 98% bone and gristle.
It's an even worse kind of Greyhound--
the kind with four wheels and a broken toilet.
Man: This is Rawson-Neal,
the only state-run psychiatric hospital in southern Nevada.
Rawson-Neal has been accused of "Greyhound therapy"--
a practice critics call unthinkable--
discharging seriously ill patients too soon,
then supplying them with a one-way bus ticket out of town.
I'm sorry, but you cannot
just put people you'd rather not see on a bus to another city.
If you could, that's how every breakup would end.
Look, Greta, it's not you, it's me, but on the other hand,
I think you're gonna really enjoy your new life in Syracuse.
And we have not even got into the most depressingly common place
that people with mental illnesses can end up.
Man: Two million people with mental illness
go to state and local jails every year.
That's meant there's now 10 times
more people behind bars
than in state-funded psychiatric treatment.
That is terrible.
Finding out jails are our largest provider of mental health treatment
is like finding out Lil Wayne lyrics are
our greatest source of sexual education.
No, Darren, you can't smack it up, flip it like a spatula.
Where did you even learn that?
What does it mean, "flip it like a spatula"?
Would you like it if I did that to your mother? No, you wouldn't.
You wouldn't Darren, so don't say it.
Look, look, using the criminal justice system
to treat the mentally ill isn't just ineffective,
it's expensive and it's dangerous,
because often when someone is having a mental health emergency,
the police will be called, and that can end tragically.
By some estimates, an incredible half of all incidents
involving the police use of deadly force
involve a mentally-ill person.
And to their credit, some police departments
are changing the way they do things,
even creating special units like this one.
Man: These officers are experts
in what's called crisis intervention training.
Man 2: Would you say that you really don't want to die,
but you want the pain to stop?
Would that be-- Okay. (woman speaks)
Are you willing to get some help today?
Man: This woman agrees to get help.
We'll go in there together.
You'll ride with us. We're in an unmarked car.
Man: It's all part of a pioneering program
where the mentally ill are diverted out of jails and into treatment.
Okay, well, that seems really good,
but calling it a "pioneering program" is a little heartbreaking.
Pioneering ideas should not be completely obvious things
we should've been doing all along.
They should be outlandish things that push the limits of the possible,
like a fitted sheet that's easy to fold,
or marshmallow airbags,
or a sex doll without such judgy eyes.
Don't look at me like that, Linda!
I'm lonely, and we both know it!
Unfortunately, only 15% of law enforcement agencies
even have crisis intervention training programs,
let alone special units.
And taking that training is typically voluntary,
and how can something so essential to your job be voluntary?
Take the mascot for the Tampa Bay Rays.
We don't let him decide whether or not to wear that costume,
because without it, things can get ugly fast.
It's important for doing his job right.
And look, that's just a tiny fix.
Our whole system needs a massive overhaul, which won't be easy.
The public safety net for the mentally ill spans Medicaid--
which is different across the country--
eight federal agencies
who administer 112 different programs
that in some way touch on mental health,
and the social service agencies in each of the 50 states.
It is a clusterfuck, except that's an insult to clusterfucks,
'cause at least in them, there's the potential of a satisfying ending.
This is more of a frustrating cluster-dry-hump of some kind.
And that's not to say there aren't programs that work.
Let's look at just one-- assertive community treatment.
It's designed to let those with serious mental illnesses
live in the community by providing regular in-home visits
and help coordinating assistance in things like housing and employment.
Listen to just one social worker explain how it can work.
What makes mental health might not just be
a visit to your psychiatrist.
It might also mean having your entitlements in place.
Or it might mean having your rent paid on time.
So, instead of meeting with a person
and talking about how they're doing, how they feel,
once a month or twice a month,
what we do is everything that it takes
to keep people in the community, living independently.
That's fantastic. "Everything it takes"
sounds like a much better option
than what we've apparently been trying, which is nothing,
not anything, very few things,
not much, and prison.
And yet, in many states, assertive community treatment programs
are in jeopardy, thanks to everything from budget cuts
to Medicaid reimbursement problems,
despite the fact a study found that these programs pretty much pay for themselves,
which is fantastic.
Government programs are like graduate students on a first date.
If they are able to pay for themselves, it's a fucking miracle!
And look, again, that's just one program.
There are many more designed for many different levels of need,
and we, as a society-- we have to figure out how to fund them.
Not just because it makes fiscal sense,
but because it would save lives.
And if I remember rightly, there are some politicians
who claim to be pretty motivated to address this problem.
This isn't guns. This is about, really, mental illness.
In many of these shootings, we have people who have
mental disturbances.
Do we need to do a better job in mental health? You bet we do.
Okay, fine. Do it then,
because if we're going to constantly use mentally ill people
to dodge conversations about gun control,
then the very least we owe them is a fucking plan.
And now, this.
(fanfare) (announcer speaking)
Woman: "Kelly File" exclusive.
Kim Davis will talk to us.
Woman 2: An ABC News exclusive,
one-on-one with Kim Davis.
Man: Joining us live
for an exclusive morning interview.
Welcome Senator Rand Paul.
How are you?
Woman 3: An exclusive interview with Donald Trump
on "Morning Joe."
The polls have been amazing. Just amazing.
Trump: You're a wonderful show that I love so much.
We appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
Moving on. Finally, tonight,
social media-- that thing Cher almost understands how to use.
Almost.
This week, a new social media app got a lot of attention.
It's apparently like Yelp for people.
A new app called "Peeple"-- with a double "E"--
allows you to rate and review every person you know
using a one-to-five-star rating scale--
friends, co-workers, romantic partners, even your exes.
Woman: Ooh!
(mockingly) Ooh!
That sounds absolutely awful.
Yes, there is apparently a new app coming out
that's being labeled as "Yelp for People,"
and it's the kind of bullshit mash-up that Silicon Valley loves,
like Snapchat for music, Skype for sandwiches,
Tinder for geese, Shazam for Kazaam,
and Uber drivers for SCUBA divers.
As you might expect,
an app that allows people to rate you as a human being
without your consent has been met with some concern,
but its creators, frankly, do not understand why.
Nicole McCullough: We want to clarify that this isn't--
this isn't a judging website.
We don't want to judge in the sense of being mean.
We want to actually bring the better out in people.
Julia Cordray: We want to be given the opportunity to prove to you
that the world is predominantly good,
filled with people that absolutely love you
and want to lift you up.
I'm sorry.
Have you ever been on the Internet?
It's basically-- The Internet, let me try and explain to you what it is.
The Internet is basically a faucet (cheers, applause)
that dispenses hate, racism, and the occasional sad orgasm.
And yet, the creators of this app
remain completely oblivious to its lack of appeal.
Watch this video that they themselves posted
of them pitching their app to a cab driver.
We're building the Yelp for people,
where you can actually go in our app
and rate and comment on anybody you know
professionally, personally, or romantically.
What do you think? (flatly) Wow.
Wow, right?
That's a good reaction. "Wow." That's a start.
I'd say that's a reaction. Yeah.
Uh...
(exhales sharply)
Oh, that is not a good reaction.
Generally, when you tell someone your idea,
you don't want them to respond with the sound
of their soul leaving their body.
But wait. But wait, it gets better.
As backlash to this app started to spread this week,
in what I'm sure is a complete coincidence,
one of the app's founders took to Facebook to ask...
That's right. The creator of an app
that would allow people to give each other unsolicited criticism,
wants to block unsolicited criticism.
She is opposed to the very core of her own idea.
It's like if the CEO of Airbnb hated sleeping on strangers' semen.
It would make no sense. That's what his business is.
And that actually illustrates the main problem here.
The Internet essentially exists
so that people can say vicious things about each other,
and we don't need another app to facilitate that.
What we need is something which helps stop people from getting hurt.
That is why we have launched
an new actual website called...
It gives you all the catharsis
of typing hateful things about people
into the Internet with none of the human consequences.
I'll show you how it works.
The way it works is you simply type whatever awful thing you're thinking,
hit the button at the bottom of the page
and the message will be deleted forever!
It's brilliant! It's brilliant!
It feels good to get out, and no one has to hear it.
I encourage you to use it.
And if you still somehow feel an inexplicable desire
for an app that will judge you, we'd like to introduce you
to an even less harmful alternative.
Announcer: Nowadays, there's an app for everything.
There are apps to let people rate restaurants, hotels.
And now, because the world is a ceaseless nightmare,
there are apps that let people rate each other.
And, look, no one wants to be rated by random people.
You want to be rated by someone you can trust.
That's why we're launching Peeble,
the only app where you can be rated
by actor, director, and producer Mario Van Peebles.
Hmm. This sister's mysterious.
I like it. Four stars.
Can you get hepatitis from a picture?
Umm, one star.
And that's a five-star cat
with a three-star guy.
Announcer: Getting started with Peeble is simple.
Download the app, upload a photo of yourself,
and wait for Mario Van Peebles to assign you a rating
from one to five stars based on his initial impression of you.
I can tell that girl gets it. Four stars.
Zero stars. Is that Steve Buscemi?
I think that's Steve Buscemi.
(announcer speaks)
Oh! That's a pug dressed as a pumpkin.
(laughs) Four stars!
Say what you will-- Say what you will,
that is no dumber an idea than that stupid Peeple app.
Thank you so much for watching the show.
Our thanks to Mario Van Peebles.
We'll see you all next week. Good night!
(theme music playing) (cheers, applause)
Ah! Trying too hard. Two stars.
Mmm. No, not trying hard enough. Two stars.
Ah. She got a bad attitude.
Four stars.
Now this is a rat-faced bastard right here.
Two stars.