(theme music playing)
(cheers and applause)
Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
And we begin tonight with a story
that has dominated the news all week--
the horrific terror attacks in France.
Now, one of the big developments of this week
was the fact that the ringleader
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed on Wednesday,
and his death was welcomed by pretty much everyone.
Man: "The New York Times" reports
when his family heard that he'd possibly been killed last year,
Abaaoud's own sister said, they prayed he was dead.
Holy shit.
Even his own family had prayed for his death,
which is absolutely understandable,
but it's also the darkest tale of a family's
homicidal tendencies towards one of their own
since the "Home Alone" movies.
Yeah, oh, you really think the McCallisters
left Kevin behind by accident twice?
No, they wanted that little shit out of the picture.
Open your eyes. The McCallisters were murderers.
Now as for the people of France themselves,
they have spent the week trying to resume
something resembling daily life--
an effort led by their president Francois Hollande.
(speaking French)
Translator: Life must resume in full.
What would our country be without its cafés,
concerts, sporting events and museums?
Oh, I can tell you what France would be like
without all these cultural institutions.
It would be Luxembourg, and nobody wants that.
Did you know that if you Google
"interesting Luxembourg facts,"
the result is just a page that says,
"No"?
Now-- now to their credit, many French people
have embraced this idea of returning to normal life.
And I think the most reassuring sign
that they're getting back to being their quintessential selves
was how they behaved at a concert just a few days after the attacks,
when someone tried to stage-dive.
(speaking French)
There is the Paris we know and love--
a city of people so aloof, they wouldn't lift a finger
to catch one of their own airborne pop stars.
(in French accent) "I do not care for-- how you say?
"Crowd surfing.
"Such a crass spectacle betrays nothing
"but a poverty of intimacy, non?
Beauf."
A French TV show actually took that video out
and showed it to people in the street,
and their response was fantastic.
(speaking French)
You know, to me, that is the best sign
that France is going to be okay.
It's sort of like how New Yorkers knew
this city was going to bounce back after 9/11
the first time a heavyset man in a Jets visor
stole a cab from them and told them to go fuck themselves.
That is what healing looks like.
Meanwhile, here in the US,
the Paris attackers touched off
a ferocious debate about Syrian refugees.
You may remember President Obama had pledged
to accept at least 10,000 over the next year,
but after news broke that one of the attackers
may have posed as a refugee and entered Europe
through Greece with a fake Syrian passport,
many US officials had second thoughts.
Woman: 31 governors now oppose,
are refusing or suspending
the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states.
Okay, that's pretty extreme,
but it's also pretty meaningless
for two reasons: One, governors don't have
the legal authority to ban refugees.
And two, even if they could,
Syrians can just walk between states like anyone else.
The lines on maps are not crocodile-filled moats.
Presidential candidates also got involved
with this anti-refugee rhetoric.
Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio
called for a halt to all Syrian refugees entering the country,
and others, like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, argued
we could take some if they were Christian.
And if you're wondering how that would work,
let Jeb Bush explain.
Well, you're Christian-- I mean, you can prove you're a Christian.
How?
I think you can prove it.
Eh. Eh.
I think you can prove it.
I'm pretty sure you can prove it. I'll tell you how.
You see, a Christian has ears that protrude out from the head,
whereas non-Christians lack external ears altogether.
You know what? Hold on. I'm thinking about seals and sea lions.
I often get them confused.
Forget everything I said about Christians and Muslims.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
And it was not just Republicans.
The Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia,
David Bowers, was so terrified of Syrian refugees,
he used the worst possible
historical example to prove his point.
Mayor David Bowers wrote, "I'm reminded
"that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled
"to sequester Japanese foreign nationals
"after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
"It appears the threat of harm to America from ISIS now
"is just as real and serious
as that from our enemies then."
Wow.
Did he not realize that Japanese internment camps
are one of this nation's greatest sources of shame?
It's one of the parts of FDR's legacy
his family would most like you to forget.
And bear in mind, this is a man
whose own biopic featured a scene
of him getting a hand job from his distant cousin.
(jazz music playing)
Did I have to show you that? No.
Did I want to? Absolutely, I did.
But this week's events actually call to mind
a chapter from FDR's time in office
that is even more shameful than the saddest
and classiest hand job of all time,
specifically, when in 1939
US authorities turned away a ship
containing more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees from Germany--
something American newsreels at the time
tried to put a positive spin on.
Man: 907 Jewish unfortunates without a country
permitted to land in Belgium
after five weeks of suspense afloat.
Through American generosity,
they will find at least temporary shelter
in France, Holland, and England.
Yes, we sent a boat of Jews
back to Europe in 1939.
More than a quarter of them then died in the war.
So this Thanksgiving, when your grandmother's complaining
about your new piercings, saying your generation is terrible,
simply reply, "Okay, Nana, but at least
we didn't send Jews back to Europe in 1939."
Then break off a turkey leg, drop it like a microphone,
and you've just won the dinner.
Dinner over. (laughter and applause)
Although, let's be honest here,
every generation has had
its own ugly reaction to refugees,
whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese,
the Cubans or the Haitians.
And those fears have been broadly unfounded.
In fact, there was only one time in American history
when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out
did actually come true, and we'll all be sitting around the table
celebrating it on Thursday.
And look, it is absolutely fair--
it's fair to be concerned
about safety in the wake of these attacks.
And it's fair to wonder who we're letting in
and what sort of screening system is in place.
Unfortunately, many of the people talking about it this week
don't seem to have the first idea of what we're doing.
Do we know who these people are? No.
Are they properly vetted? No.
How do you vet them?
There's no possible way to vet them.
There's virtually no vetting, 'cause there are no databases in Syria.
There are no government records.
We don't know who these people are.
Look, it is difficult
to vet people coming out of a war zone,
but it's not like we're just letting anyone in.
We are the United States of America,
not Arizona State. (laughter and applause)
Because, just for the record here,
let me walk you through what our screening process actually is.
If you're a refugee, first you apply
through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
which collects documents and performs interviews.
Incidentally, less than one percent of refugees worldwide
end up being recommended for resettlement.
But if you're one of them, you may then be referred
to the State Department, to begin the vetting process.
At this point, more information is collected.
You'll be put through security screenings
by the National Counterterrorism Center,
the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.
And if you're a Syrian refugee,
you'll get an additional layer of screening
called the Syria Enhanced Review, which may include
a further check by a special part of Homeland Security--
the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate.
And don't relax yet, 'cause we've barely even started.
Then you finally get an interview with USCIS officers
and you'll also be fingerprinted, so your prints can be run
through the biometric databases of the FBI,
the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.
And if you make it through all that, you'll then have health screenings,
which, let's face it, may not go too well for you,
'cause you may have given yourself a stroke
getting through this process so far.
But if everything comes back clear,
you'll be enrolled in cultural orientation classes,
all while your information continues to be checked
recurrently against terrorist databases
to make sure that no new information comes in that wasn't caught before.
All of that has to happen before you get near a plane.
This process typically takes 18 to 24 months
once you've been referred by the UN to the United States.
This is the most rigorous vetting
anyone has to face before entering this country.
No terrorist in their right mind would choose this path
when the visa process requires far less effort.
But nevertheless, the House still voted on Thursday
to add a few more steps.
Man: The House voted 289 to 137
for tougher screening procedures,
requiring the FBI director
to sign off on each and every refugee.
He signs off on-- That is ridiculous.
At this point, why don't we just include a pie eating contest,
a spelling bee and an evening wear portion?
But the really hard truth here is
no one can promise that someone dangerous
still might not slip through.
And while that risk should not be denied,
it also should not be wildly inflated.
Let me ask this. If you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts,
and you knew that in the five-pound bag of peanuts,
there were about 10 peanuts
that were deadly poisonous, would you
feed them to your kids? The answer is no.
Yeah, of course it's no.
For a start, you should give your kids an actual meal,
not a handful of peanuts, because they're human children,
not circus elephants. But second,
we wanted to do the math on what he just said,
so we bought five pounds of peanuts and we counted them.
There are about 1,000 nuts in there.
So if 10 of them are poisoned, Mike Huckabee is essentially suggesting
that about one of every 100 refugees is a terrorist.
But in reality, of the more than 784,000 refugees
admitted to the US since 9/11,
only three have been arrested for planning terrorist activities,
none of which, by the way, resulted in attacks here.
So the actual known ratio
of arrested terror suspects to refugees
is not one in 100.
It's one in roughly 261,000.
Peanuts themselves have killed
far more people in the last decade
than terrorist refugees. (laughter and applause)
Oh, I'll go one step further.
Men named Mike
have killed more people than terrorist refugees.
And I don't see us rounding all of them up.
And that's kind of the point,
'cause, as reasonable adults, we accept
tiny amounts of risk baked into our everyday lives.
We drive cars despite knowing
around 30,000 of us die in them each year.
We go swimming despite the fact
10 people a day die from drowning.
20 Americans every year are killed by cows,
but no one is saying we should expel
all cows from the country.
We're happy just taking them out one at a time, thinking,
"Well, we got them before they got us."
This is what freedom tastes like.
Any rational person knows,
you cannot completely eliminate risk.
You can only manage it. And we do it with peanuts
and cars and swimming and hamburgers
and men named Mike,
'cause we rightly think that they're worth the risk.
And I would argue, for the tremendous good we could do
and the low level of risk involved,
refugees are worth it too.
And you may disagree, but it is worth noting
that as we devise new ways to close our doors this week,
France, which had just suffered a terror attack
and has far less ability to police its borders, did this.
Man: French President Francois Hollande says
France will still welcome refugees into the country
despite the Paris massacre. (studio audience applauds)
Speaking at a gathering of the nation's mayors,
he said France will keep its commitment
to take in 30,000 refugees over the next two years.
Hollande added that France will remain a country of freedom.
Yeah, because they think it's worth the risk.
And it's frankly not ideal that Francois Hollande--
a man who broke up with his partner of 30 years
in order to shack up with a lover
who looks exactly like her, just 10 years younger,
only to quickly leave that lover for another lover
who looks exactly like the second lover,
just 10 years younger again--
that man is currently functioning
as an effective moral compass for our politicians.
And now this.
Announcer:
Here you have a little condiment package.
Here you have a bun
with a-- something in between.
And then you have a half of fruit
over on the other side.
This administration has been dangerously incompetent
in providing homeland security.
I have a couple of shots here
from this very same well,
where I gave a very similar speech.
"Don't tax me to pay for health care that you guys want."
Geraldo Rivera and Ted Koppel.
A large, orange, slovenly, lazy cat.
Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.
Steak,
vodka.
President Ronald Reagan.
We have Christmastime and we have socks.
It's a snowball.
It's a catfish.
US jobs.
This is the Pac-Man.
Chicken noodle soup.
(cheering and applause) Moving on...
Just so you know,
this is our final show of the year.
And after all the big, intractable topics we've taken on this season,
we thought it might be nice to go out
on a problem that's not just tidy
but also totally fixable--
the penny, once again on the cover
of this month's "Infant Swallowables" magazine.
The US Mint produces
around eight billion new pennies every single year,
which is strange, considering pennies are currently worth so little,
they're not even worth what they're worth.
Man: According to the government, each new penny
now costs roughly 1.7 cents to make,
rendering each a loss from the start.
It's true-- 1.7 cents to make one cent.
That really makes the phrase,
"You have to spend money to make money,"
ring painfully true.
So we spend around $136 million a year
making $80 million worth of currency
that, let's face it, no one really uses.
One study found that two-thirds of pennies don't circulate.
And yet the penny hangs around for no reason,
like the appendix
or the new "Muppets" TV show.
How is this still on?
And how did someone somewhere think,
"You know what the problem with 'The Muppets' is?
"Kermit doesn't fuck enough pigs.
"Let's have him fuck a different pig.
Let's do that. Let's all do that."
In fact, a few years back, a local station in New York
sent out a camera crew to put the penny to the test.
Man: I performed a little experiment on the street today--
dumped 150 pennies onto the sidewalk
and just watched-- who would pick them up?
People saw the pennies, like this woman, but kept walking.
After 25 minutes, not one person bent down.
Think about that.
A penny is actual US currency,
and yet the prospect of the free one on the ground
is treated like a free copy of Kirstie Alley's memoir
resting in a used diaper.
And if you're thinking, "Well, come on, John,
that's just one instance," no, it's not.
A few years later, a San Francisco news crew
ran the exact same experiment.
Man: It's your lucky day-- Abe Lincoln,
face-up on the sidewalk. Better move quick.
He'll be gone any second, right?
You don't want them? No.
What?
Throwing pennies on the ground
is essentially catnip to local news crews.
"Hey, did an old woman celebrate a birthday?" "No."
"Okay, did an animal do something funny?" "No."
"Okay, get me a handful of pennies and a camera.
"I'm getting us to the 10:30 repeat of 'Friends.'
Who wants a penny?"
But our indifference to pennies
doesn't stop there. In a 2002 Gallup poll
two percent of Americans admitted to regularly throwing
pennies in the garbage,
which means the US Mint
is spending millions to make garbage.
And that's not their job.
That's M. Night Shyamalan's job.
(cheering and applause) And while--
And when we're not throwing pennies in the garbage,
we're doing even worse things with them,
as attested to by a Reddit thread titled
"I put a penny in my butt
and now I can't get it out."
And, before you ask, apparently the reason they did it was,
and I quote, "I wanted to know what it would feel like
"to put a cold penny up my butt.
(I put it in the fridge for like... 2-3 hours.)"
First, a little-known fact.
That's actually how Daniel Day Lewis
prepared to play Abraham Lincoln.
And incidentally, and this is also true,
that penny is currently in your pocket.
And it's not just hard to carry pennies around.
It can be hard to spend them.
According to the Treasury Department,
private businesses are free
to prohibit payment in pennies.
And some of them have caught on to this.
Man: At a growing number of businesses,
including Mike's Bikes in San Rafael,
pennies have fallen from favor.
Now at Mike's, every cash transaction rounds down
to the nearest nickel in a customer's favor.
Their reaction has been
overwhelmingly underwhelming.
Whatever is easier. I don't care.
Am I helping?
(laughter)
I'm pretty sure, we just found the man
who gives the least amount of shits in American history.
Someone out there needs to meme
this beautiful man, and do it now.
In fact-- in fact, as far as I can tell,
there are only two things pennies are genuinely good for.
One-- you can throw a penny in a fountain to make a wish.
But at its current value,
no fountain is granting you a wish,
unless it's incredibly small,
like, "I wish somewhere in the world a mouse has a good day,"
or, "I wish I knew what a penny looked like underwater."
The only other option is
use pennies out of pure spite,
like this UNC-Charlotte student did with a parking fine.
Man: Coyle went to three different banks
to get five $25 boxes containing 2500 pennies.
That got him to reach his total of 11,000.
Coyle: And I brought them in three separate buckets for them.
Man: He sat there while two workers
counted every single penny.
It took them approximately three hours and 40 minutes.
Wow, that college kid sure taught those two employees
who had nothing to do with the policy he was protesting a lesson.
I bet the school gave him his own parking spot after that.
And it is worth noting,
pennies don't just waste our time.
Having them hanging around
can sometimes be downright dangerous.
Woman: Jack is a voracious eater, says his owner Tim Kelleher.
Kelleher: This is how it happened. He jumped up on the desk
trying to get something, and he chewed through the bag
and he knocked the box over and pennies were everywhere.
And he licked up the pennies and he licked up 111 of them.
Holy shit.
111 pennies.
At that point, that dog had more Lincoln in him than Mary Todd.
(audience exclaiming, laughing)
And by the way, and this is also true,
one of the pennies inside that dog is in your pocket right now.
So why haven't we gotten rid of the penny?
Well, one reason, believe it or not, is that there is a penny lobby.
And at the forefront is a terribly named group
called "Americans for Common Cents,"
whose spokesman has some pretty unconvincing arguments.
Americans overwhelmingly want to keep the penny.
And no one has explained how we would replace
the millions of dollars that are raised by charities
and charity drives every year if we didn't have the penny around.
Wait, so his argument is no one would give to charity
if they couldn't give something basically worthless,
which is a pretty cynical view of humanity.
I'll be honest, I don't think much of people,
but even I have to believe they'd be willing
to break out a fucking nickel.
And you might want to take his argument
with a grain of salt, given his group's backers.
Morley Safer: Weller is a lobbyist for Jarden Zinc,
the Tennessee company
that sells those little blank discs
for the Mint to turn into Lincoln pennies.
So they're in the pocket of Big Zinc.
And if not for the penny, what are they supposed to do
with all those blank zinc discs?
Hold a mini Olympic discus throwing competition
starring hamsters from around the globe?
Yes, that's clearly exactly what they should do.
But even that zinc company
doesn't seem to care that much about pennies.
So far this year, they've only spent
around $140,000 lobbying on it,
which isn't much, considering that Jarden Corporation,
their parent company, is a $10-billion business.
The penny contract is nothing to them,
next to the money that they make from products like,
and this is true, Yankee Candle,
Crock-Pots, and class rings.
Essentially, Jarden makes anything
that you would find left behind after a burglary.
(laughter) But--
but there is-- there is actually
one more staunch defender of the penny-- Lincoln enthusiasts.
Man: As the Lincoln Library told us,
they'll fight for the Lincoln penny
right down to the last cent.
Yeah, but why?
Lincoln doesn't need the penny for notoriety.
He's everywhere. We've put him on novelty bandages,
cup-and-ball games and creepy Chia pets.
And you know where else we put him?
The five-dollar bill--
you know, the thing that's worth
500 times more than the penny.
And if you're thinking, "Well, maybe we could make the penny
out of something cheaper," we can't.
The US Mint admitted that "there are
"no alternative metal compositions
"that reduce the manufacturing cost of the penny
below its face value." Essentially,
there is no cheaper way to make a penny,
'cause there is no other substance that is so worthless
without making them out of DVDs of "The Cosby Show."
(groaning, applause) And we don't want to--
We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that.
And if we wanted to get rid of the penny,
we could do it. Canada, Australia,
Ireland, New Zealand and many others
have all done so in recent years.
It wouldn't even be the first time the US got rid of a coin.
We used to have a halfpenny,
and guess when we got rid of it.
Man: The halfpenny was dropped
at 1857, because inflation
had rendered its buying power obsolete.
They knew it didn't make sense
to keep a currency that had no value,
and that was back in 1857,
when people were scared of the moon
and wiped their asses with rocks.
So come on,
let's dump the penny,
not 'cause we need to, not 'cause it will change a great deal,
but because there are certain things
we know are impossible to get rid of--
terrorism, herpes
and Guy Fieri.
But the penny is a nuisance
we could actually do something about.
So let's do it, America.
Let's get the penny out of our pockets,
out of our dogs, out of our fridges
and out of our asses. We can do this!
(cheering and applause)
And now this.
Announcer:
Man: "Shock Yourself Happy,"
tonight on CBS2 News at 11:00.
"Barcode Bandits," tonight at 11:00.
"Women are Shaving Their Faces," tonight at 11:00.
"New Age Networking. The Kava Craze."
"Secret Lives of Suburban Wives."
"Mirrored Pain." "Virtual Kidnapping."
"The ATM Panic Button." "Shaming Your Name."
"The Anger Room," tonight at 11:00.
"Scalp Botox," tonight at 11:00.
"The Vampire Facial," tonight at 11:00.
"Younger Hands," tonight at 11:00.
"Viagra for Kids," tonight at 11:00.
"Long Distance Chicken,"
tonight on CBS2 News at 11:00.
(cheering and applause)
And finally tonight,
this is-- this is our final show of the year
and we just wanted to take a moment to say
thank you so much for watching. We've had such a fun year.
And we made a sex ed video.
We created mascots for government agencies.
Dueted with both Kenny G and Michael Bolton.
I sat down with Edward Snowden
in the most terrifying 48-hour trip
of my entire life.
We replaced the Marlboro Man
with Jeff the Diseased Lung in a Cowboy Hat.
And we managed to get him onto billboards in Uruguay,
T-shirts in Togo,
and, thanks to you, a top spot
when you Google image search "Marlboro"
on the Internet. I can--
I can only imagine they're so pleased with that.
We got into a spat with the president of Ecuador
who called this show "more unpleasant than a diuretic,"
as well as with former FIFA vice president Jack Warner,
which culminated in us buying time on Trinidadian television
and nearly setting fire to the set.
You have no idea how true that is.
I also drank a whole Bud Light Lime
to celebrate Sepp Blatter's downfall,
which, for the record, tasted like unflushed toilet water
after margarita night at a frat house.
Oh, and I nearly forgot. We founded a church--
a church. (cheering and applause)
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption,
which raised nearly $70,000
and five cups of human sperm.
Praise be. Praise be.
Praise be unto sperm.
It has been quite a year, so thank you so much for watching.
And what more disgusting way to say goodbye
than by sipping on a room-temperature Bud Light Lime?
Cheers. (cheers, applause)
Repellent.
It takes like a lacrosse player's night sweats.
There are so many people I have to thank.
First, I have to thank my wife--
specifically, Wanda Jo Oliver.
Wanda Jo, my darling,
thank you so much for being here.
Wanda Jo, since the church has disbanded, how have you been?
Oh, my John,
I have been deep in prayer with our accountants,
studying the scriptures of US tax codes.
Praise loopholes.
Praise them. Praise unto loopholes.
Praise unto them, Wanda Jo.
Yes, and praise
the holy relics of our church...
Of course. Specifically, this...
Ah, behold. ...three-foot wooden penis
and this bag of seed. Praise seed!
Praise it. Praise it. Praise seed.
Now, Wanda... Praise seed.
Wanda, I have to ask, just for the record--
we actually took people's money
after making them unsubstantiated promises
about wealth coming their way.
Did we get into any trouble whatsoever for that?
Well, my John, does this answer your question?
It answers it pretty good. Whoo-hoo!
Praise be. I'm gonna make it rain.
Praise be. Make it rain.
Thank you so much, my darling Wanda.
I would like to thank our entire staff and crew,
including, of course, Janice from accounting,
who has worked hard, so hard all year.
Janice, have you had fun this year?
Ouch. Okay.
Is that my favorite coffee cup, Janice?
Wow, Janice don't give a fuck.
Oh, and before we leave, someone else wanted to say goodbye.
It's Jeff the Diseased Lung in a Cowboy Hat.
How are you doing, Jeff?
(coughing)
Oh, Jeff's not doing well.
In fact, he's doing objectively terribly.
And now, to play us out for the year,
please welcome the band responsible for our theme song,
Valley Lodge!
And with them, a few of our government mascots--
Stunk the Steampunk Skunk,
Cornelius the Illuminati Pyramid,
and Creepy Baby with Hulk Hands in a Tutu!
Thank you so much for watching!
We'll be back in February! Goodbye!
* My heart, my soul, I'm begging you for more *
* I'm on my knees, baby, please *
* Can I drink from your loving cup? *
* I'm too scared to say that I love you *
* But I know I gotta see you tonight *
* Odori ga sugoku umai des ne , baby *
* Oh, koko osawate, oh, come on, pretty lady *
* Odori ga sugoku umai des ne , baby *
* Do you got a little love in your heart heart heart? *
* Go, tell me what I want to hear *
* Tell me that I'm beautiful... *