Last Week Tonight with John Oliver S03E02

Last week tonight with John Oliver S03E02

After a wonderful tenure at The Daily Show, John Oliver has finally found his unique space with Last Week Tonight on HBO. Following in the steps of The Daily Show's comedic approach to current events, Last Week Tonight lends a very credible and humorous voice to issues that should be of concern to all of us, no matter which part of the globe we reside in, even though they may fly under the radar of mainstream news.

In this weeks episode, John starts out with the Pope VS Donald Trump, the infallible force against the illogical object. Even after the Pope's statement of Trumps non-christian-ness, The logic & common sense defying Donald resoundingly won over South Carolina voters, just as he has been winning the rest of America's republican voters. At this point, it really seems that he could go out and literally shoot someone and still win the republican vote.

He then moves on to the supreme court nomination debacle. Constitutionally, it is completely within president Obama's pervue to nominate a new supreme court justice, even though he is on the last leg of his presidency. Ted Cruz and the republican camp have been campaigning heavily against this with claims of precedents and "facts" (in the republican sense, facts may as well read as - self serving lies to further their agenda's. ) But none of this gets by the Last Week Tonights's amazing research team, as they debunk, rather humorously, each one of the republicans moves to gather public support to prevent Obama's nomination of a new supreme court justice. He disproves their "facts" and lays waste to the republicans ad campaign, which are so disingenuous & lazy in representing the true voters that they had resorted to using stock images and videos to half-ass-edly push their agenda. Bravo Last Week team for cutting through the republican BS.

In a brief interlude, Oliver ( or rather the voice over guy with the awesome voice) takes a stab at the recent "Oscars is so white" issue and the ever enduring Hollywood whitewashing of non-white characters. There is no denying that white privilege exists in Hollywood (or rather the entire United States), and Hollywood takes huge leaps of liberties in portrayals of exotic characters. Giving .multiple examples and succinctly pointing out this glaring fact, Last Week Tonight bring this uncomfortable truth out to the audience in a funnily palatable way.
 Moving on to the main topic for tonight's show - Breast implants.
 No wait... Abortion Laws

 Oliver starts with how the states of  North & South Dakota, Mississippi and Missouri have only one abortion clinic for the entire state thanks to the primary legal case of precedent being "Planned Parenthood Vs Casey , 1991" instead of "Roe V. Wade, 1973", as most would have believed. The caveat of the Planned Parenthood Vs Casey ruling allows for Targeted Regulations for Abortion Providers, which is so vaguely described that it allows Republicans to use almost any form of misleading rhetoric, to serve their Anti-abortion agenda.
The way the republican establishment disguises their oxymoronic agenda under the sentence " safety and well being of women" is quite a disturbing trend and raises more questions than answers. The "TRAP" caveat makes it increasingly difficult for abortion facilities to setup or even operate, which Oliver's delves into, in his own witty, sharp and eye opening manner. The republican establishments strongest excuse to continue on this path of anti abortion has and continues to be " protecting womens health" which both the AMA & American institute of Gynecologist have explained is in no way connected to abortions. Consider this,  Legal abortions have a mortality rate of 0.00073% which is 10 times less than the mortality rate from a routine colonoscopy!(0.007%)

Another issue Oliver points out is the States requirements of a disclaimer from the physician which is completely untrue and non-factual. Dr. Willy Parker, lays it out straight, that even though his state forces him to claim higher risk of breast cancer from abortions, there is ZERO medical & scientific evidence to back it up. The state requires him to actively spread mis-information, which one can find to be quite sinister & insincere of the State and the people running it and their agenda. John Oliver sums it up perfectly when he says, " It must be weird for a women to witness her medical professional playing a game of good doctor bad doctor."
The laws have grown so in-considerate that women are forced to see & hear the fetal heartbeat and image before abortion, and if she chooses not too, she must close her eyes and ears, rather than simply have the monitor turned off. The republicans continue to play on their most un-educated & backward strategy of fear and guilt, to try to get their way. Oliver highlights the plight of an Alabama clinic, Alabama's Women Center ( from the documentary Trapped, 2016) where even after establishing a new clinic, which met all the requirements of the new abortion law,found no respite as the State began proposing new laws to specifically target them - more specifically to treat them commiserate to Sex offenders!

Whats surprising though, is how even the staunchest pro-life supporters still believe that abortion is acceptable in certain situations, yet still allow Anti-abortion laws to grow to such an un-comfortably extreme level.
This episode lays out so much detail about the critical situation of abortion laws and the suffering they have caused women ( including rape victims as young as 13 years old!) in the United States, I highly recommend you check it out and grow a heart, for those who still don't get It and fail to empathize with others.
To end this HEAVY post, I will take a page out of Oliver's book, with some "sloths in a bucket". Till next week.