*
[Cheering and applause]
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver.
My guest tonight: Fareed Zakaria will be with us.
Very exciting.
But quick, quick roundup of the world:
It was something of a week of angry protests
around the globe.
In Brazil,
people took to the streets over government corruption,
while in Turkey, thousands of protesters
protested the government after a horrific mine accident,
and the Turkish prime minister responded in an unusual way.
MAN ON TV: Many people here are also angry
because of a video that has emerged
that appears to show the Turkish prime minister
slapping someone
as he was mobbed by an angry crowd when he visited Soma.
And a Turkish newspaper today
is quoting the Prime Minister during that altercation
as saying, "If you boo the Prime Minister,
you get slapped."
Whoa. Whoa.
Yeah. Yeah.
Boo me, you get slapped.
Scowl at me, purple nurple.
You respectfully disagree with me, it's a tickle attack.
In happier times here at home,
yesterday was something of a wonderful anniversary.
10 years ago today,
Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
Yes! Yes, the 10-year-- that's right--
10 year--
10-year anniversary of gay marriage.
And that sound you hear is a lesbian somewhere
in Northampton just figuring out why her partner
was in a mood all day yesterday.
Yeah. Happy Saturday, I guess, Linda,
seeing as that's all this seems to be to you.
10 years!
Since...
Since then, we've come even further with gay marriage.
It's now legal in 17 states and counting.
But for all the accomplishments
in the political realm,
marriage equality still faces some unusual obstacles.
Nintendo is the target of a social media campaign.
In the company's upcoming video game called "Tomodachi Life,"
you can make your avatar do just about anything.
But what your avatar cannot do
is marry another avatar of the same sex.
I mean, sure, you can use a civil union cheat code,
but it's just not the same.
If you're interested,
it's up, up, down, down, be gay, be gay, start.
But...
Keep that to yourself.
But in a happy sign of progress,
Nintendo made a historic announcement this week.
MAN ON TV: Nintendo is now apologizing, pledging to be more
inclusive in the future.
And while it says it's too late to change the game now,
it is committed to building virtual equality
into later versions of the game.
Yes, virtual eventual equality!
That's the dream.
All right, now let's see how this news went down
in Nintendo's world this week.
As you can see, Mario just got the call,
and there he is.
He's overjoyed about the news.
Here's his friend Link, and they are--
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
I didn't know--I did not know either of them were gay.
Link seems a little young for Mario.
Here's, uh...
Oh, that's Princess Peach and Princess Zelda.
I called that years ago.
Let's leave them--Let's give them some privacy.
Let's give them some privacy, shall we?
Oh, that's wonderful.
Yoshi and Toad wasting no time getting married, and...
the beauty is they've now got access to instant benefits power-ups.
Pensions in a box, that's great.
You love to see stability in a game like that.
And, well, this is bittersweet.
Bowser's just received death benefits
after the death of his longtime partner, Donkey Kong.
So--Well, that's good.
They had a wonderful lifetime together.
Donkey Kong would have wanted him taken care of.
Why are you so sad?
Donkey Kong dies multiple times every day--
Would it make you happier if I restarted the game?
Is that something...
OK, let's do that. Restart the game right now.
There you go. See?
They're back. They're alive and well...
and enjoying brunch together.
See?
Happy now? They're brunching.
Are you not entertained?
And now this:
ANNOUNCER: And now,
"The Past Week in Bullshit National Holidays."
It may be Wednesday to you,
but it's National Biscuit Day to us.
It is National Nylon Stockings Day.
And it's National Odometer Day.
MAN: Third Shift Workers Day.
Piercing Day!
WOMAN: Hepatitis Testing Day.
International Museum Day.
MAN: Pack Rat Day.
It is National Ride Your Bike to Work Day.
Wear Your Lifejacket to Work Day.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Day.
WOMAN: Dance Like a Chicken Day.
It's National Limerick Day.
So... Oh, boy.
There once was a girl named Sue...
That's never a good thing.
Apple Pie Day. Ahh, yes.
It's National Hummus Day.
National Pizza Party Day.
BOTH: It's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.
[Cheering and applause]
Let's move on.
Our, um...
Our main story this week concerns a titan of American industry,
General Motors.
Few companies in history have ever sold more cars.
And as of this week,
few companies have ever demanded as many of them back.
This is the year of the recall
for General Motors.
Today, GM recalled 2.7 million more cars.
MAN: That brings the total to 11 million
recalled vehicles this year.
11 million cars!
At this point, we are approaching a total recall...
which is, of course, where you return your car to your local
3-breasted GM representative.
And...by and large,
these cars' flaws are frightening,
from steering loss to power brake failure
to the fact that airbags, brakes, and power steering
could suddenly all switch off at the same time.
And if you're thinking, "I'm amazed no one's been killed by that,"
you would be wrong.
MAN ON TV: The government's own files show as many as 303
accident-related deaths.
The company admits 13 people have been killed.
Here is a sign that your corporation is in trouble:
When the statement "our product only killed 13 people,"
is your defense.
But don't worry, this week,
the government stepped in and held GM to account.
MAN ON TV: Just a few minutes ago, we learned that
General Motors is going to have the pay the government $35 million.
Wow, $35 million.
That is a lot of money for a car company...
in 1923.
But--but for today's GM, however,
it amounts to less than one day of revenue.
And there's only one GM employee who's up in arms over this,
and it's this guy.
And he's up in arms...
over basically everything.
President's Day, whenever it's windy...
The point is, this is a paltry amount of money,
and it's about to seem even paltrier when you learn how
long GM waited to tell customers about the problems.
MAN ON TV: The carmaker now says it found the problem with
an ignition switch back in 2001 during preproduction
of the Saturn Ion.
So you knew of a potentially fatal ignition problem
for 13 years!
Let's be clear, that means a child attending her first day
of school the day you found out would be old enough
to die driving one of your cars
the day you fucking did something about it.
And I don't really feel like people are quite angry enough with them at this point.
Maybe this will help.
MAN ON TV: Years after finding out definitively about the link,
they continued to tell families of accident victims
that they did not have enough evidence of any defect
in their cars.
In one case, GM threatened to come after the family
of an accident victim for reimbursement of legal fees
if the family did not withdraw its lawsuit.
So GM doubled down on their awfulness.
They just couldn't help themselves,
much like the people stuck in their shitty cars.
Actually, to be fair, just this Friday,
we learned that GM was holding meetings at the time
about dealing with their defective cars.
But you'll never guess what they were talking about.
MAN ON TV: These are slides from a PowerPoint presentation
given in 2008.
Workers were told not to use the word "defect" or
"defective," but rather, "does not perform to design."
And GM had judgment words that were banned, including
dangerous, crippling, life- threatening, hobbling,
and 65 others.
How did they even come up with that list?
Was it just word association at that point?
OK, everyone, say the first word that comes to mind.
Cadillac XTS. Life-threatening.
Perfect. Um...the new Chevy Sonic.
Crippling and dangerous. Fantastic. Keep 'em going.
There are no bad ideas here, just bad cars.
And there were--No, no.
There were...
There were a lot more words on that list
than just those 4 mentioned,
because the banned words include--and I'm gonna
show you the document to prove that they are real as I read them.
They include "deathtrap," "decapitating,"
"grenade-like,"
"Hindenburg," "Kevorkianesque,"
"powder keg," "rolling sarcophagus,"
and "you're toast."
When demons have sex, those are their safe words.
Luckily...
[Cheering and applause]
Luckily, GM still left us with a few ways to describe their
vehicles, such as hell taxis,
the GM reapers, and "like Hotel Rwanda, but a car."
Um...
GM--GM is clearly in deep trouble.
Their only hope might be that their recently appointed CEO
has something that most CEOs don't have,
and that is two X chromosomes.
General Motors announced something new for 2014.
For the first time in its 105-year history,
the company will be run by a woman.
And here we have this new CEO, first female CEO
of the big 3,
really trying to represent the new GM.
We had a discussion last week
about whether a man or a woman
would handle this differently.
WOMAN: She's also a mother,
and, you know, I think that there will be some thinking around child safety,
child accessibility,
and just kind of the things that moms think about.
Yeah. Mary Barra is, apparently unfathomably, a woman.
And the fact that she so stubbornly refuses to be a man
means that she is forcing commentators to define her
by her gender.
So let's see if we can discern a woman's touch in her
handling of this crisis.
Her first move, back in March,
was to issue an internal company letter,
reading, and I quote, "our process for determining
"whether and when to recall a vehicle is
decided by experienced technical experts."
OK. Not--not really detecting a woman's touch there,
or indeed a human's touch.
But that was when a male commentator kindly stepped in
to tell her how a woman should act.
She is a mom with two kids.
Her first responsibility isn't as CEO
of the company.
It's a mom and two children.
She could personally relate to those people
who lost their family members.
Because everyone knows that people without kids could barely give a shit
when 13 people die.
I don't have kids. You tell me that 13 people died,
I am like, so?
Why are you telling me this?
I could be sleeping or counting my disposable income
right now.
You are wasting my plentiful free time.
But, yeah, look. It's a classy idea.
Deploy your own family as a human shield or a human air bag, if you will.
And within days, it was clear
that Mary Barra was actually listening.
As a member of the GM family and as a mom with a family
of my own, this really hits home for me.
There you go.
That's the lady stuff. Getting much warmer.
I mean, not as warm as the brights on a Cadillac XTS,
which can start a fire for no apparent reason.
Let's just say--Let's just say warmer, though.
But even the new video seems slightly off.
Something went wrong with our process in this instance,
and terrible things happened.
Yeah. That sounds less like a person expressing sympathy
in a human manner and more like the distress message from
a doomed spaceship in a sci-fi movie.
[Static, distorted speech]
After all, something went wrong with our process in this
instance, and terrible things happened.
[Screams]
[Static]
So...So, look.
[Cheering and applause]
So to recap,
Barra's first statement had serious design flaws.
So she introduced a second hastily assembled statement
with many of the same catastrophic issues
as the first.
But then this week, after recalling 11.2 million cars
and paying a fine worth less than 24 hours of corporate
revenues, she rolled a shiny new statement proudly off
GM's p.r. assembly line.
Today, CEO Mary Barra had this response.
Quote, "e have learned a great deal from this recall.
"We will now focus on the goal of becoming an industry safety leader."
We will emerge from this situation a stronger company."
Oh, good.
You will be a stronger company.
So this was all a great thing, really.
A learning experience and a refocusing of goals.
I'm telling you, somewhere the CEO Of Blockbuster Video
is going, "Shit, we should have just killed 13 people."
It's the magic recipe.
[Applause]
And while some people might see this as yet another depressing
entry into the annals of corporate malfeasance,
let's take a moment and celebrate together a milestone.
At a time when women leaders are routinely questioned in ways
they shouldn't be,
Mary Barra, the first female CEO of a major car company,
has defied gender stereotypes and issued
a statement every bit as shitty as one from a male CEO.
Congratulations, Mary. Congratulations.
You haven't just shattered the glass ceiling, you have
been ejected through the glass windshield.
Now...
we--we don't technically have commercial breaks
on this show.
But frankly, after this,
I think we all might just need one
just to get away from this story altogether.
So if you'll excuse us, we'll be right back.
ANNOUNCER: General Motors makes cars that America
can be proud of,
cars you can never describe as defective or catastrophically flawed.
Gruesome, potentially disfiguring
rolling sarcophagi?
That's not our cars.
We make sleek, non-grenade-like anti-Hindenburgs
that are very opposite of Kevorkianesque.
So why not tell your family you love them and come test-drive a GM car today?
Driving a GM car is so smooth, it is like butter...
and you're toast.
General Motors.
Why walk through the valley of the shadow of death
when you can drive?
[Cheering and applause]
Welcome back.
OK. Let's talk about something else.
The Internet.
In Europe this week,
there was some potentially significant news.
It is said the internet never forgets.
Until now, that is.
In a huge ruling, the highest court in Europe
ruled that Google and other search operators like it
must delete search results if they are requested.
They are calling it the right to be forgotten.
The right to be forgotten,
which, incidentally, is definitely my favorite nonexistent Morrissey song.
* I have the right to be forgotten *
* Ohh, ohh
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
What the ruling amounts to is that if there is something
embarrassing on the Internet about you, then EU citizens
can now ask Google to take down any links to it.
I'll tell you who seems weirdly excited about this potential new right:
The newscasters reporting on it.
Let's hypothetically say when you were in high school,
you toilet-papered someone's house, you were arrested.
But that one night of wild drinking in college
can haunt you forever online.
What if 10 million people suddenly approach Google
and say, "By the way, you know that story about me
"running over a squirrel on my bicycle while drunk and naked?
I want that removed."
OK. OK.
That--that is way too specific to be something
that he just came up with off the top of his head.
I guarantee you that there is a photo of that man naked
on a bike crushing a squirrel.
And if there isn't, then frankly there is now.
Yes.
Meet--Meet your new top Google image hits, Brian Sullivan.
And live with this for the rest of your life.
But--but maybe--maybe my favorite newscaster fantasy
spurred by this ruling
came this week from Fox News' Shep Smith.
I'm trying to think what I would give
to just be forgotten. Shep...
I might go rob all of the banks on the planet.
Hold on, Shep.
Just because you erase yourself from the Internet
doesn't mean you won't be caught for robbing banks.
That's not how basically anything works.
But it's genuinely charming that you think it is.
I just like to rob banks. That's all I--
That's kind of my thing.
Look, maybe this new ruling, though,
addresses a genuine problem.
The Internet has an unforgiving memory,
and it can ruin people's lives.
So if all the ruling does is let people take down links to
minor indiscretions from their past, it's probably fine.
A source that has knowledge of these requests
says that a man in Europe
who was convicted of child pornography
was among the first people to request
that links to articles about his conviction be taken down.
WOMAN: Of course.
A politician with some bad behavior in office.
Even a doctor with a negative review.
OK, a fail-safe question to ask yourself when drafting a law
is, "Might child pornographers like this?"
If so, maybe take another pass at it.
But luckily, the only thing from stopping this ruling from
doing real damage is that it is, by its nature,
completely ineffective,
because what the EU court doesn't understand
is that the Internet is like quicksand.
The more aggressively you fight to remove yourself from it,
the deeper you're going to sink down into it.
And the case in point is the guy that started all of this.
The case originated in Spain.
A man there argued that when a Google search
turned up an auction notice of his
repossessed home from back in 1998
that somehow that being out there was a violation
of his privacy rights.
That Spanish man is Mario Costeja Gonzalez.
This is his photo, which was on an article from the "New York Times" about his crusade
to remove links mentioning his debts from 1998.
In doing so, he is now world-famous for being
that Spanish guy with debts from 1998.
The only thing I know about him is the only thing he
didn't want me to know.
And that--that is why-- All of this...
All of this is why the right to be forgotten
is no longer workable in the Internet age.
Nothing you are embarrassed of on the internet
is ever going away.
And we all have a horrifying photo from our past
that undermines the very person we are now,
professionally and personally.
And we can all live in fear of that thing ever surfacing, or
we can all hold hands, jump at the same time,
and save each other,
which is why we are launching tonight
#mutuallyassuredhumiliation.
If we all put our worst photo into the world together, none
of us will ever be in a position to judge anyone else ever again.
And I am not talking about the cute, mildly embarrassing photo,
like, I don't know, that one of yourself wearing a, let's say,
homemade sweater with your own name on it.
Hypothetically, hypothetically.
You know, the kind...
the kind that you--That's real.
The kind that you claim is embarrassing but actually
somehow humanizes you a little.
No. I am talking about this.
Toxic, weapons-grade awkwardness.
In fact...Yes.
I am putting this photo up online right now.
We all have to do this together.
I am trusting you all to do the same.
3, 2, 1.
You have to do this with me, right?
Go.
You better fucking have done that as well, or I just made
a horrible mistake.
And I think I may have just made a horrible mistake.
And now this.
ANNOUNCER: And now..."Shame."
Shame on the little totalitarians of the left.
Shame on HGTV.
Shame on Thailand. Yes, Thailand.
Shame on the Australians.
Shame on Warren Buffet.
Shame on the legal profession.
Shame on you, Hank Aaron.
Shame on you, Copenhagen Zoo.
Shame on them. Shame on you, too, Chris.
Shame on you guys.
Yeah, shame on us.
It's a Rove-down dirty shame.
[Cheering and applause]
Moving on, finally-- finally tonight,
you may remember on our very first episode, we talked
about the election in India.
Well, after 5 long weeks and after 500 million votes,
on Friday, there was an announcement.
MAN: It appears at 9:37 A.M., and we are calling the election.
And Narenda Modi, with these numbers,
should not find it difficult to be the next prime minister of India.
Whoa!
That is a seizure-inducing amount of information
on that screen.
If you followed this Indian election,
you've known two key things:
one, Narenda Modi was destined for an historic victory;
and two, no one covers an election
like Indian news networks,
who are apparently sponsored by Adderall.
I mean, look at it.
We are not speeding this footage up.
I feel like I'm playing a slot machine in a Mumbai casino
while high on peyote.
And just a small word of advice to Indian news networks:
This is not the most relaxing way to watch television.
The only thing that this is good for is potentially
putting your elderly viewers
in the hospital.
But I digress. Take it down.
Take it down.
The real news regarding this election is that Narenda Modi
is set to become the new prime minister of India.
He is a transformative albeit controversial figure.
Some worry he might be a little too harsh and authoritarian,
so perhaps one of his family members can reassure us.
REPORTER: His younger brother remembers their days together.
Narenda really loved flying kites.
I had to hold a spool of string.
But if I refused,
he would get angry, and he would hit me.
In Modi's defense, how difficult is it just to hold
a spool of string?
Fuck this guy.
Anyway...Anyway...
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What were you saying?
REPORTER: Were you scared of your brother, I asked?
I am still scared of him even today.
So should India be scared of him?
Anyone who is concerned for the well-being of the country
has nothing to fear.
Only those who work against the country
need to be scared.
Oh, that's certainly reassuring.
He should have just run his entire campaign slogan on that.
Don't worry, only my brother and those oppose me will be
beaten to death with a child's kite.
Here to talk more about the Indian elections
is my guest tonight, CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
[Cheering and applause]
Ah, Fareed... thank you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Let's talk India.
You were born there.
My people were temporary custodians.
This is--
Temporary self-appointed custodians.
Let's just be clear.
We felt we were kind of inherently invited
in some way.
That's basically the excuse of the British Empire.
I am sure you... It was lost in the post.
Yep.
This was an amazing election.
And it's been described, the result,
as either an exciting or a frightening time for India.
Which is it?
It is mostly exciting. You are absolutely right.
It's an amazing election.
Here is this guy, Modi,
the son of a tea seller himself,
sold tea, really humble origins,
extraordinary disciplined politician
running against a political dynasty really like no other in the world.
I mean, this is-- Rahul Gandhi,
the guy he was sort of running against for prime minister,
his father was prime minister.
His grandmother was prime minister.
His great grandfather was prime minister.
It would be like Chelsea Clinton's fetus having a child
and then running...
[Laughter]
Does it have to be like that?
Could it not be a different image?
But everything about this election
was different from normal.
There is a great bit in one of your old books
where you point out about Indian elections
"Indian elections are not really national elections at all.
"They are rather simultaneous regional and local elections
that have no common theme."
But this changed this time, didn't it?
He has a huge mandate, Modi.
This changed, and in a fascinating way.
So rather than regional elections,
what you ended up with was one big national issue.
And the Congress party, the old ruling party,
ran on really the default message
that every third world ruling party runs on,
which is, we are going to give you subsidies.
We are--It's a kind of socialism in action.
And we're gonna give you subsidies because you're poor.
You are entitled to them.
This guy said,
"I'm gonna run on growth and good governance.
"I'm not gonna give you anything for free.
"I'm gonna try to get good roads, good electricity."
And he what he banked on, what he bet on,
was that in India now, which is still a very poor country,
there is an aspirational middle class that doesn't
want to be handed government subsidies, but wants
the infrastructure and the good governance
that just produces economic growth.
Right. That's interesting you say that, because
"The Times" of India had a really interesting
editorial yesterday where they referred to him
selling the Indian dream,
packaging the Indian Dream to people.
The American dream is clear.
It's catching something from a t-shirt cannon.
But what--what-- what exactly is the Indian dream?
Is it just the concept of upward mobility?
You know, the truth is that when you hear about this,
whether it is the Indian dream or the Chinese dream,
they are all really just the American dream.
The American dream was the idea that you would do better than your parents.
We franchised it.
Exactly. That's it.
But it's like a supernova.
Just as it's catching on everywhere else,
it's imploding here at home.
Right?
[Laughter]
Why does every analogy you use
have to be so appallingly negative?
This is HBO.
That's true. That's true.
We're testing the limits.
That's right. It's not TV.
It's appallingly negative.
That's basically... Do you--
Can you stick around to talk online?
Because this is a much bigger discussion
we have time to get into here.
As long as there are a couple of more photographs
you are going to post.
The worst thing is
I actually have one worse than that,
and I chickened out.
But, uh...
If you want to watch an extended version
of this interview online, go here.
Fareed Zakaria, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you so much for joining us.
[Cheering and applause]
We are off next week,
but we will return the following Sunday.
Have a fantastic two weeks. Good night.
[Cheering and applause]