Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e28 Episode Script
Police Chases
1
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Trump went on a tour of Asia,
this guy became "the sex pest
formerly known as Prince",
and in Washington,
the government shutdown continued,
even as the president's interest
seemed to lie elsewhere.
While most of the federal government
remains at a standstill,
President Trump is showing off
his latest construction project
at the White House, a renovation
of the bathroom attached
to the Lincoln Bedroom.
The president posting
two dozen photos of the bathroom
on social media on Friday.
It is now covered with floor-to-ceiling
white and black marble.
Some critics say the president
is tone-deaf for touting
the glitzy remodel during
the costly government shutdown.
Yeah, that is pretty tone-deaf!
And you know what,
I will say to Trump what I said
while watching
David Harbour's
Architectural Digest video:
you are vastly overestimating
how much I care
about where you take a shit.
But it is odd to be posting bathroom
remodel photos when so many
are legitimately concerned about
getting the government open again,
including this guy.
As the stalemate drags on,
the Senate chaplain
with this message to lawmakers:
Lord, remind our lawmakers
that no gold medals are given
for breaking shutdown records.
That is pretty pointed. Normally,
if you want to hear a prayer
that passive-aggressive, you have
to go to any family's Thanksgiving.
Dear Lord, thank you for this food,
even if some of us seem unaware
pecans don't go in the sweet potatoes.
Also, please remind my niece
that crop tops are for whores.
Also, and I know this isn't the point,
but why are the Senate chaplain
and Chuck Grassley both dressed like
they're operating the Polar Express?
They look like dueling concierges.
They look like they're about
to sing a telegram.
Guys, a haunted elevator operator
called, he wants his clothes back.
But it is true, if the shutdown
isn't over by Tuesday,
it'll be the longest ever.
A million government employees
are already going without paychecks.
As I am talking right now, we are
entering into an absolute calamity.
The discontinuation of the nation's
largest food assistance program looms.
I'm at 2.45 dollars right now.
Food bank workers expect
food insecurity to skyrocket.
There've been days that I haven't
gone to sleep because I'm thinking
what's gonna happen to all of us?
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program,
serves nearly 42 million people
every month.
But if the shutdown continues,
SNAP funding stops on November 1st.
In Huntsville, Alabama,
they're preparing like they would
for a natural disaster.
Even though this is kind of man-made,
we're still kind of operating
as if it were an emergency.
Yeah, she's right! This is
a completely man-made emergency.
It's right up there with Chernobyl,
every oil spill,
and this statue of Lucille Ball,
all of them were avoidable,
none of them should've happened.
The government's never let SNAP
go unfunded before,
not even in previous shutdowns.
But for weeks, the White House
has been refusing to tap
emergency funds to sustain SNAP,
even though it's estimated
there are likely between five and
six billion dollars available to do so.
And it does feel like Republicans
are using hunger as a bargaining tactic
which I guess shouldn't be surprising,
given the contempt that some,
like Senator Tommy Tuberville,
seem to feel for SNAP recipients.
Because just listen to him
respond to a question
about how this would impact
people in his state.
I think Democrats are getting
a little bit tight right now.
It's their constituents, a lot of them
that, in some of these inner cities,
that's gonna need SNAP to survive.
Lot of people need to go back to work.
A lot of young men that are on SNAP
that should be working.
Fuck all the way off!
I mean, setting aside the dog whistle
of "the inner cities",
coming from a man named
"Tommy Tuberville",
whose very name sounds like
it came from a racist
18th-century nursery rhyme,
the over 750.000 Alabama residents
who are on SNAP
are still your constituents,
no matter how uninterested
you seem in them.
Also, for the record,
most SNAP recipients are children,
elderly, or disabled, with many
of the rest being full-time caretakers.
Many recipients do work, but
regardless, all of them deserve to eat.
Because it is not greedy to need food.
That's one of the many reasons
why there's never been an
"Ocean's" movie set at a fucking Aldi.
But to the extent Republicans
have engaged with the notion
that withholding food from people
is a bad thing,
they've tried to frame it
as Democratic extremists
holding people's benefits hostage.
The USDA website even hosted
a banner this week reading:
"We are approaching an inflection point
for Senate Democrats.
They can continue to hold out
for healthcare for illegal aliens
and gender mutilation procedures
or reopen the government
so mothers, babies, and
the most vulnerable among us
can receive
critical nutrition assistance."
And JD Vance, Business Chucky,
tried a similar line of attack.
The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing
of the Democratic Party
shut down the government
because they said to us,
we will open the government,
but only if you give
billions of dollars of funding
for healthcare for illegal aliens.
That's a ridiculous proposition.
I'm gonna say this once and then
only 100 more times after that:
shut up, JD Vance,
you rancid pope killer!
Please, never forget:
Pope Francis met JD Vance,
and then literally died the next day.
Was that a coincidence? No way!
Look at the pope's face there!
He is clearly thinking: "You know
what? It's not worth it, I'm out."
There are so many things wrong
with what JD Vance just said,
not least the phrase "Chuck Schumer
AOC wing of the Democratic Party."
What are you talking about?
In what universe
do these two fall on the same part
of the political spectrum?
AOC is a progressive, while
Schumer spends most of his days
talking to imaginary Republicans.
They are not the same!
And it is worth explaining
what this fight is really about,
because it isn't actually over
whether to provide healthcare
to the undocumented,
who are already barred
from Medicaid and the ACA exchanges.
It mainly concerns subsidies
for insurance premiums under the ACA,
which are set to expire
unless Congress extends them,
which will result in dramatic
price spikes for millions.
According to the Oregon Health Plan,
here's how people's health insurance
premiums will be affected
if the enhanced premium tax
credits are allowed to expire.
A single person in Portland earning
35,000 dollars a year
could go from paying just over
1.000 a year to paying 2.600.
And a married couple in Hermiston
earning 95.000 a year
would go from paying 8.000 a year
to more than 33.000.
Holy shit, that is ridiculous!
You don't usually expect
to see prices rise that sharply
on anything,
except for maybe streaming services.
But you know what? I'm told
that in exactly one of those instances,
it's actually totally fine,
it's normal,
and it still
constitutes a real bargain.
The point is, many Americans
may have to pay a lot more
for health insurance
starting January 1st.
And for some, these price increases
could be catastrophic.
Allison Mindel's son, Lei Degroot,
was diagnosed with an aggressive form
of blood and bone marrow cancer
earlier this year.
He's now cancer-free, but Allison says
without their ACA insurance,
the cost of Lei's treatment
would have bankrupted them.
We estimate his course of treatment
cost somewhere in the vicinity
of one and a half to two million dollars
in billed medical expenses.
This is exactly what insurance is for.
With the same deductible
and out-of-pocket maximums,
the same plan that cost us 19.000
last year will cost us 47.000.
A year-on-year increase of 147%.
We don't know how we will afford this,
even though we know
we can't afford to go without
health insurance.
Yeah, that is completely ridiculous
and by the way,
credit to her son there
for having the perfect facial reaction
to hearing those numbers.
And it is no wonder
that people are so worried right now.
Because, for many, they're gonna have
to choose between paying premiums
they can't afford, or risk
going without insurance,
which is an impossible choice.
It's like asking someone
to pick their favorite child
or their least favorite testicle.
Though for me, in both cases,
it's easy, it's the middle one.
And alarming stories like that
may explain why some
in the administration, like Dr. Oz,
have gone out of their way to try
and downplay the looming spikes.
The average plan will increase for
Americans by somewhere around 115%.
Do you believe that Congress
should extend those subsidies
so that most Americans do not receive
increases in their premiums?
Where did you get that 115%
number from?
Kaiser Family Foundation.
They retracted that. That data
was run inappropriately.
They changed the messaging on it.
Go back and look at the website.
Here's the truth. The window
shopping is already revealing
that the average American is gonna pay
about, who's on the ACA,
between 100 and 400% of poverty level,
is gonna pay 50 dollars total next year.
It's gonna be 13 dollars more
than this year.
But here's the thing:
that is not true.
I think you probably already knew that,
because it came out
of the mouth of Dr. Oz,
who looks like, and don't
overthink this, old Waluigi.
Because KFF's analysis
was never retracted.
In fact,
it's on their website right now.
And look, who knows where things
are heading here?
We're taping on Saturday,
and a lot of things are still in flux
including two court rulings holding that
the Trump administration needs to pay
for at least some of the SNAP benefits
using the emergency funds
that it's been withholding.
On Friday, Trump seemed to understand
things weren't going his way,
when he announced, "I have instructed
our lawyers to ask the court
to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP
as soon as possible"
and "If we are given the appropriate
legal direction by the court,"
"it will be my honor"
all caps, "to provide the funding."
Resolving a crisis he helped create
and expecting praise for doing so.
But even then, we still don't know
if SNAP'll be funded fully,
or when benefits will actually
get to recipients.
And none of this addresses the threat
of rising healthcare premiums.
Trump is going to have to own
the consequences here,
and even as he continues to blame
Democrats for this shutdown,
he somehow manages
to make the optics even worse.
All they have to do
is open up the country.
Let them open up the country
and we'll meet.
We'll meet very quickly.
But they have to open up the country.
It's their fault. Everything is
their fault. It's so easily solved.
President Trump made those comments
before heading to a Halloween party
at Mar-a-Lago, his club.
The White House says the theme
was inspired by "The Great Gatsby",
which was, of course,
about rich people partying.
Not only is that pretty insulting,
I'm guessing it's also infuriating
to whatever exhausted high school
freshman just wrote
a 4.000-word essay about
"Great Gatsby" as a grim meditation
on the disillusionment
of the American dream,
only for CNN to tell them,
"You know what, it's really just a book
about rich people partying."
And for what it's worth,
the actual theme of that event
was apparently, and I quote,
"A Little Party Never Killed Nobody."
And I guess that is true.
Although it is also true that,
as we are all finding out right now,
a Grand Old Party is capable
of killing a whole lot of people,
and unfortunately,
they don't seem to give
a single marble and gold-encased
shit about that.
And now, this.
Our Annual Look at the Wonder
That Is Halloween on Local TV.
Happy Halloween,
we have a fun giveaway today.
Plus, we're gonna have healthy snacks
to balance all the sugar from candy.
- Welcome to our Halloween show.
- Can you guess what we are?
- I'm six.
- I'm seven.
- Hi, I'm Dolly Parton.
- I'm Reba McEntire.
Takes a lot of money
to look this cheap.
I'm a flying monkey,
I'm one of the flying monkeys.
I put the least amount of effort in.
We have a face painter coming up.
- I can't wait to see this.
- So, I am a pirate.
I'm Wolf Blitzer,
ladies and gentlemen.
Today, I am Jason.
I love that! Classic, for sure!
I'm embracing my inner Elsa.
You can be Anna.
We've got a little bit
of something going on.
It's a little hard to take you serious.
There's a lot of fairy knuckle
going on right now.
He's the only one who dressed up!
But that's a great costume, Ben.
- Ben, you make a fabulous wiener.
- I am a thunderstorm. Thank you.
And I'm hoping it shows up.
Yeah, it's showing up.
You can see kind of the lights in there.
There's actually lightning in there.
You said you spent
a month working on this.
On and off.
It is Halloween, as you can guess.
What's these costumes?
- The three blind mice!
- That's right.
We talked about that yesterday,
but I slept since then.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns police chases.
They're famously a staple
of action movies and cop shows,
a time-filler on local news,
and also the subject of a series
of late '90s TV specials, VHS tapes,
and a spinoff show hosted
by former Sheriff John Bunnell,
a man with a flair for the dramatic.
Some crooks think a motorcycle
is the ultimate escape vehicle,
but when it comes to winning
pursuits, any cop will tell you,
it's not what you drive,
it's how you drive.
When an angry driver takes his
personal problems on the road,
it's called road rage.
It can turn a normal person
into a violent criminal.
Drunks don't know
when to stop drinking.
And drunk drivers don't know
when to stop driving.
The weather can be the deciding
factor in a pursuit.
When it's good, we take it for granted.
When it's bad, it could mean disaster.
So, buckle up.
In the next hour,
you'll see some of the most terrifying
moments police cameras captured.
So, buckle up,
because the chase is on.
So, buckle up.
This is your first-class ticket
to high-speed action,
and you're in the driver's seat.
But hold on,
you're not even in the driver's seat.
You haven't been the whole time!
Say what you will about John Bunnell,
like that he delivers lines
with the subtlety of a community
theater actor's understudy
while dressed like the star
of a Cialis commercial,
he is right to imply that police
chases can be dangerous.
And for a long time,
we didn't know exactly how dangerous,
because the federal government
doesn't reliably track deaths from them.
But when the San Francisco Chronicle
recently compiled their own database,
they found, over a six-year period,
more than 3.300 people died
nationwide in police pursuits,
that's an average of nearly two a day.
On top of which, a majority of those
killed weren't the fleeing drivers,
with over 500 of the victims
innocent bystanders.
All of which is why a DOJ report
once called high-speed chases
"possibly the most dangerous
of all ordinary police activities",
with a former sheriff
describing them as
"like firing a 4.000-pound
bullet down the street",
a visual that I'm pretty sure
just gave Wayne LaPierre
a life-threatening boner.
And the thing is, even when
chases don't end tragically,
they can still do a ton of damage,
as this man experienced last year.
A car being chased
by West Memphis police
hit this man's home in South Memphis
on Halloween.
Why would y'all come over here
chasing somebody
and then he hits an innocent
bystander's house?
I'm pissed off because I feel like
they did not go through protocol,
and they need to keep
that… over there.
Yeah, he's completely right there!
You expect to see certain things
in a front yard on Halloween:
pumpkins, fake cobwebs,
one of those towering
skeleton decorations
that looks like Jacob Elordi
got electrocuted,
but not a car wreck
caused by a police chase.
While fleeing drivers are depicted
in movies and TV shows
as violent criminals,
in real life, that is rarely the case.
Research has found roughly
"90% of pursuits are initiated
because of traffic violations."
And the reasons people tend to flee
are often relatively mundane
from their license being suspended,
to being on probation,
to simply saying
they feared the police.
And this combination of high-stakes
chases over low-stakes infractions
has resulted in situations like this
preventable tragedy in Georgia.
Larry Turner still can't believe
his best friend of 30 years is gone.
I lost my brother.
60-year-old William Johnson
was killed Sunday just before noon
as he waited on a red light
at McAfee and Candler.
That's when this speeding SUV came
out of nowhere and crashed into him.
Turner was floored when he learned
a Georgia state trooper
was chasing the driver of the SUV
for a seat belt violation.
It's just not worth losing a life
or even being injured.
It's just not worth it.
Over a seat belt?
Exactly, because that is absurd.
The whole point of a seat belt law
was to keep people safe on the road,
so it's more than counterproductive
to then enforce it by turning the road
into a fucking NASCAR track.
And that is not a one-off. Of the
fatal chases the Chronicle reviewed,
over 1.500 people died in pursuits
initiated over traffic infractions,
nonviolent crimes or no crime at all.
In fact, people have died in chases
that started with attempted police stops
for things as petty as having tinted
windows or a broken taillight.
Which is just ridiculous. Because
someone who hasn't gotten around
to fixing their taillight doesn't deserve
to be dangerously chased by the police,
they deserve is an ADHD diagnosis.
If anyone with a broken taillight
is watching this show right now,
I have an important message for you:
you have clothes in the dryer.
They've been in there for days.
Get them out!
So given all of that, tonight,
let's talk about police chases:
why they happen
and why the risks involved
can massively outweigh the benefits.
Let's start with the fact that police
have been chasing cars basically
since they were first invented.
One of the first reported chases
was in St. Louis in 1906,
when a driver was pursued by what were
delightfully known as "Skidoodle Cops".
Chases soon became prevalent
across the country,
but started getting more attention
in the '90s, in part thanks to this…
Pursuits really became a thing
with O.J.
Simpson is in the driver's seat. We've
received a report of a gun in the car.
They predated O.J.,
but that kind of elevated the pursuit
to something much larger.
All I did was love Nicole.
That's all I did was love her.
That was the one that made
everyone realize,
this is like this incredible
spectator sport.
The O.J. chase was one of those jaw
dropping moments in the history of TV,
right up there with the moon landing,
Nixon's resignation,
and when the "Today" show anchors
dressed as characters from "Peanuts"
and ended up looking like something
from your darkest nightmares.
The O.J. chase attracted around
95 million viewers,
ushering in a new era of police
chases becoming entertainment.
For a while, one officer in California
even ran a paid service
that alerted subscribers
when a live pursuit was on TV.
People still love watching them.
In 2023, Pluto TV launched
a 24-hour chase channel.
Which sounds about right, doesn't it?
The sentence, "Pluto TV launched
a 24-hour police chase channel,"
is the exact type of depressingly
accurate nonsense sentence
that just permeates our world
right now. You know, like:
"The hawk tua girl was in the pilot
of 'Chad Powers' on Hulu,"
or "Jimmy Fallon and Malala did
'Beez in the Trap' on TikTok."
If you'd said those words to me
20 years ago,
I'd have thought
I was having a stroke!
Sometimes, even the participants
in a chase seem to realize
that they're part of a media event.
Last year, there was a crazy pursuit.
These guys were doing donuts
on Hollywood Boulevard.
They're trying to have
a good time right now.
And then they ended up
going by restaurants
where people
were watching it in a bar
and people run out on the sidewalk
and cheer them on as they were going.
And a TMZ tour bus tried to stop them
on the freeway.
Are they gonna stop it?
And one of the guys threw a sandwich
at the TMZ bus.
How's this for an only in L.A. moment?
It doesn't get
more Hollywood than that.
First, regarding the donuts, hell yeah.
And two, I would say
that's the most fucked up thing TMZ
has ever done,
but remember, it did publish
the headline:
"Jerry Sandusky Feasting
on Wieners Behind Bars."
So, let's call it a close second.
But obviously, chases don't just
take place in L.A.,
they happen all over the country.
That brings us to an important point,
depending on where you live,
the policies governing them
can vary widely.
There are no mandated national
standards, so in general,
the nearly 18.000 law
enforcement agencies across the U.S.
set their own chase policies.
Now, some only allow officers
to pursue suspects for serious crimes.
One department in Minnesota
even created this helpful acronym.
SHARK helps officers determine
when to pursue.
The acronym details the crimes
where officers can continue chasing
a fleeing car, if they know the person
driving it is wanted for:
sexual assault with a weapon,
homicide,
assault in the first or second degree,
aggravated robbery or kidnapping.
That's a pretty good acronym, isn't it?
And how excited were they,
when they realized they could write
"aggravated robbery" as
"robbery, aggravated only?"
Just hours of people trying
to make "SHAAK" work
before one genius
changed everything.
But other departments give officers
more leeway to chase people
for nonviolent offenses, like
stolen cars and drug-related crime,
while others give
even broader discretion.
The Georgia State Patrol, for instance,
doesn't restrict pursuits at any speed,
under any weather or traffic conditions
or for any charge,
which probably explains
why people died in Georgia
more often as a result of police
pursuits than in any other state.
And in many places, police are allowed
to make chases even riskier
by conducting what's known
as a PIT maneuver,
or "precision
immobilization technique."
It was adapted from a tactic
in stock car racing
known as the "bump and run",
which sounds like
a hazardous sex position
that's essentially just doggy style
on a moving treadmill,
but it is actually
when the police use their vehicle
to intentionally make contact with
the rear side panel of a fleeing car,
causing it to lose traction
and spin out.
It is incredibly dangerous,
especially at higher speeds,
when it can cause vehicles
to roll over,
greatly increasing
the likelihood of injury or death.
Which is what makes it so incredible
that some police departments
have put out videos of their officers
excitedly talking about how fun
it is to train on the procedure.
You hear that?
That's the sound of a good day.
Today, I got the opportunity
to train with some of our patrol deputies
on the emergency vehicle
operations course.
The PIT maneuver,
by far one of my favorite things.
Just getting up next to the bad guy
and making him pull over.
So much fun.
Cool.
And look, to be fair, calling
spinning a car out "so much fun"
does make total sense, if what you
are doing is playing "Mario Kart".
In real life, it is worth remembering,
there's going to be an actual person
in that "bad guy's" car,
and not a cartoon sex criminal.
But while PIT maneuvers
are sometimes presented as a way
to safely bring a pursuit to an end,
reporters have found that since 2017,
at least 87 people across the country
have been killed by them,
including 37 passengers
or bystanders, and seven children.
And that is likely an undercount.
And yet some departments seem to
PIT cars at the slightest provocation.
Take this investigation
into the practice in Arkansas.
In the past four years,
state police attempted to
or PIT-ed drivers at least 306 times.
Almost half of those were last year.
Records show many started
as minor traffic violations.
That's what happened here
when Senior Corporal Rodney Dunn
said he clocked a driver speeding.
His dash cam video shows the SUV
slowed down and flashed hazards.
He followed for three minutes,
then PIT-ed the SUV,
which caused it to spin into
a concrete barrier and flip.
The video kept rolling as the driver,
who was pregnant,
explained why she didn't stop.
I just didn't feel like the shoulder
was big enough with the wall.
This is what happens when
people don't stop for us.
- You wreck us?
- We PIT the vehicle.
It's true, the officer PIT-ed her car
while she was looking for a safe place
to pull over. And how does that
keep anyone safe?
When they were trying to save balloon
boy, they didn't shoot him out
of the sky, did they? Now, did they
consider it? Almost definitely.
No way was it never on the table.
But they didn't.
And in the end, it didn't matter,
the boy was never in the balloon.
History should have ended there.
And look, you should know:
the official Arkansas driver's
license study guide back then
literally said
that when being pulled over,
you should activate your turn
signal or emergency flashers
to indicate that you're seeking
a safe place to stop.
So she seemed to be following
the guidelines perfectly there.
And when you follow the rules,
you generally don't expect your car
to wind up on the side of the highway
doing a fucking headstand.
The dangers you can face
from police chases depend heavily
on where you are. But they can also
depend on who you are.
Because, unsurprisingly,
some are more at risk than others.
While black people account for roughly
one-eighth of the U.S. population,
they make up more than a third of
fatalities caused by police pursuits,
and account for upwards of a quarter
of the bystanders killed as a result.
And this is for many reasons, from
fear of police, to racial profiling,
to the problematic level of traffic
enforcement in Black neighborhoods.
That's something that we discussed
in our episode on traffic stops,
an episode that ended like this,
and you are just gonna have to trust me
that it made sense at the time.
And frustratingly,
we've known about this for a while.
The problems with police chases
have been discussed over the years.
Experts say that, as in so many
areas of policing,
policies around chases
are subject to a pendulum effect,
moving in one direction or the other,
depending on public opinion,
police leadership, or politics.
In Milwaukee, for instance,
after the deaths of four innocent
bystanders from police vehicle pursuits,
they adopted a new policy in 2009,
limiting police to only chasing
in the event of a violent felony.
But, over the years,
for a variety of reasons,
those rules got loosened,
first, to allow officers
"to pursue carjacked vehicles",
then to allow pursuits
in "reckless driving cases, or when
a car was linked to drug dealing."
And, in that time, the city saw
a 20-fold surge of police chases.
And unsurprisingly,
as the number of pursuits increased,
the number of injuries
and deaths did as well.
If you have more of one, you're
going to have more of the other.
It's like how when the number
of Ryan Murphy shows increased,
so did the number
of Sarah Paulson wigs.
It's basic cause and effect.
And while cops often argue
that restricting chases means
more people will flee them,
and that crime will increase,
experts have called that a myth,
saying research suggests that,
"If police did not chase offenders,
there would be no significant increase
in the number of suspects who flee,"
and pointing out that agencies
with more restrictive pursuit policies
do not have higher crime rates.
And it is worth remembering that,
especially when it comes
to minor traffic offenses, cops do have
other tools at their disposal
to bring someone to justice.
Just watch as a reporter
asks a criminal justice professor,
a former cop, by the way,
to explain why it might be okay
to let someone drive away.
There's some who will argue
that it is law enforcement's job
to enforce the law, full stop.
When somebody flees from a traffic
stop, they are violating the law
and it's the duty of that law
enforcement officer to pursue,
and to pursue
until that pursuit is terminated.
- What do you say to those folks?
- I call BS.
We have camera networks
all over the city.
We have license plate readers
all over.
Once you know
the identity of this person,
turn this over to the investigators.
Yeah, you don't always need
to chase someone.
Especially when the police have
a mountain of surveillance tech
at their disposal.
Which is, spoiler alert, a future story
we've got planned for this show.
We've actually got a bunch of fun
stories in the pipeline for you:
Police Surveillance Tech,
Trump vs. The Sun,
and Graves: What They Are,
Why They're Not What You Think,
and What the Government Can Do
to Stop All the Sex on Top of Them.
I do get that police can be
infuriated seeing someone drive away.
It is what's simmering
just beneath the surface
of this indignant
John Bunnell walk-and-talk
in one of his many
police chase specials.
Part of the insanity of any pursuit
is the seeming
contradiction of responsibility.
An officer's expected to be responsible
for himself, his motor vehicle,
innocent motorists, bystanders
and even the suspect.
At the same time, he's expected
to catch up to a maniac on wheels
who's driving like a bat out of hell.
Okay, first,
keeping all those people safe
is literally a police officer's job,
let's not complain about
doing the bare minimum here.
But second, it is so hard to take
anything that man says seriously,
because I'm always expecting him
to motion to his right
and start selling
portable rotisserie cookers.
As this professor who has studied
chases for decades points out,
it's not unreasonable
to expect the police
to be the more responsible party.
Police are trained
and are there to deal with people
who aren't making good decisions,
can't make good decisions.
There's got to be an adult in the room
and it's not the person fleeing.
Yeah. Weird zoom into his face
aside there, that man is right.
When you're a police officer,
being the adult in the room
is kind of your job.
That's honestly true
for anyone whose job
involves dealing with the public.
Calming things down
is basically 50% of
the job of a police officer,
70% of the job of a Target
cashier,
and 100% of the job
of a Waffle House employee.
Listen, we're all here
for the same reasons,
so let's just focus
on what unites us here.
We all love breakfast and none of us
are allowed in an IHOP.
Everybody chill the fuck out!
But too often,
police will give chase
when the threat to public safety
is minimal
and then,
when something goes wrong,
simply blame
the person they were pursuing.
Just watch a sheriff in South Carolina
blow off some basic questions
about the death of a teenage boy in
a chase that began over a traffic stop.
Am I happy that the young man died?
No,
but that was a position
that he put himself in.
He was a passenger in the car.
He still put himself in there
'cause he's in that car
with somebody that's doing this.
Why didn't they tell him,
the driver to stop?
- Why didn't they do that?
- Well, they might have.
We don't know.
Right. We don't know!
It's one of many things
we don't know,
including what the fuck is going on
next to that man.
What is that thing?
Is it a Halloween decoration?
I sure hope so!
Because my second guess
is an American Girl doll
who joined the Klan.
And my third is a voodoo doll
holding a string of anal beads.
And even when a police chase
injures a bystander,
cops can refuse to take any blame.
Take this story from last year,
of a woman who sued
a Michigan police department,
claiming officers engaged in negligence
and reckless conduct during a pursuit
that seriously hurt her.
This is Brittny Turner,
her body shattered
with broken bones and burns
after being slammed into
by a driver who was speeding away
from Warren police who were
in a high-speed pursuit this past June.
This is Warren police video of officers
getting Turner out of her burning car.
Turner is suing Warren police
for 60 million dollars.
The bad guy
strikes an innocent motorist,
yet we're blamed.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
No, I'm not.
I'm not kidding you at all!
Even when I say,
"You look like Lex Luthor
after two days of norovirus",
I'm not kidding.
I'm being deadly serious right now.
And you should know
the "bad guy" in question there
was being pursued after police tried
pulling him over
for driving
without a visible license plate.
Now, to their credit,
that local news station
took that cop's response
to the woman who'd been hurt,
and she was understandably
unimpressed.
They said there's only one person
responsible for you being hit and hurt
and it's the person behind the wheel
that they were pursuing.
What do you think of that?
I can't say the word
that I want to say on camera,
but I believe that that is bull.
Yeah, because it is!
Specifically, it is bullshit!
And it's frankly incredible
that she's exercising more
restraint with her use of profanity
than the cops did
with a 4.000-pound vehicle.
Also, at this point, can we please just
let people say "shit" on the news?
Whose innocence
are we protecting anymore?
I tried to play "Halo" last week
because I'm thinking
about getting into hobbies,
and as soon as I logged on,
a 10-year-old called me a cunt.
The linguistic battle for decency
has been lost.
I am not saying fleeing drivers
are never at fault. Of course they are.
But law enforcement needs
to be focusing
on minimizing
the risks of dangerous situations
instead of exacerbating them.
And unfortunately, "even when
officers flout policy and people die,
they often avoid both criminal
charges and internal discipline."
But that probably
shouldn't be surprising,
given all the barriers
to police accountability.
Many states have legal protections
that make it very difficult
to hold officers and agencies liable
for chase-related injuries.
In fact, that woman you just saw
had her case dismissed
because current Michigan law
requires that,
unless the police car
itself crashed into her,
the police bear no liability,
a decision that she is now appealing.
And that is just the beginning here,
because, as we've discussed before,
cops are protected by what's called
"the qualified immunity doctrine."
Thanks to that,
the Supreme Court hasn't sided
with any victim of a fatal police
chase, even an innocent bystander,
since it created qualified immunity,
while at the same time,
it's been steadily
building up a body of case law
that makes it even harder
for families to sue.
And even in one
incredibly rare instance
where cops were held accountable
for a death resulting from a chase,
when a jury convicted two D.C. cops
for their roles in a deadly chase
of a man on a moped,
and a subsequent cover-up,
Donald Trump pardoned them
as one of his first acts in office.
Which, in a different world,
a better, kinder world,
one worth saving,
might have been a scandal.
And I should say, even some law
enforcement officers will tell you:
chases, as they are currently practiced,
are just a recipe for needless death.
Last year, of our pursuits,
40% ended in a crash.
So, the numbers are just there.
And then, you know, eventually,
if you're just chasing
everyone just to chase everyone,
people are gonna get killed.
Exactly!
And it's honestly refreshing to hear
someone in law enforcement
state the obvious.
Instead of acting
like society will fall apart
if cops in Massapequa
don't get to "Tokyo Drift".
So, what can we do? I would argue
there are simple steps we could take.
First,
there should be national standards
for how and when police
can initiate a chase,
like only allowing officers
to conduct pursuits
when a violent crime
has been committed
and the suspect poses an imminent
threat to commit another one.
As experts have explained,
"If an officer can apprehend
a traffic law violator safely,
then they should do so."
On top of that,
cities and states could pass laws
that let individuals
sue government officials
and prohibit qualified immunity
as a defense in state court.
But something has to be done here.
Because the police's commitment
to public safety
shouldn't effectively end once they
turn their sirens and lights on.
And if a chase truly is
like firing a 4.000-pound bullet,
perhaps cars
should be treated as weapons.
Tools to be handled carefully,
not deployed in every single scenario.
Because despite
what too many cops say,
and what TV and films
have conditioned us to believe,
the idea that high-speed pursuits
are the only way
to ensure public safety is,
to borrow a word this woman
wouldn't alow herself to say:
absolute bullshit.
And now, this.
And Now: More of Sheriff John Bunnell's
Ludicrously Over-the-Top Line Readings.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I spent 27 years
in law enforcement,
and the mission was always
the same: to protect and serve.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
The presence of cameras at crime
scenes is as widespread as crime itself.
Being a cop is the craziest
and toughest job in the world.
Tonight, you're gonna see why.
Because
when you roll onto a crime scene,
you want to go in armed
with knowledge.
Police are accustomed to dealing
with people with guns and knives,
but they face a real challenge when
the weapons are truly bizarre.
It's not always pretty,
but it's always real.
So, hang on.
You're in for the ride of your life.
So, hang on, because you're
going to see what it's really like.
In the next hour,
we're gonna show you close-up
the world of crime and criminals.
So, get ready to get ready.
Moving on. Finally tonight,
a quick word about alcohol.
The easiest way
to improve a night out
for the low price
of the next three days.
Specifically,
I want to talk about wine,
a drink once advertised by Orson Welles
in commercials.
Including this one, where,
as we now know from outtakes,
he was legendarily fucked up.
102 take one.
With overlap, action please!
Action, Orson, please!
- Just do anything?
- No. It's a… Sorry. Cut!
Rolling. 102 take two.
The French champagne
has always been
celebrated for its excellence.
102 take three. Action please.
The French champagne has always
been celebrated for its excellence.
There is a California champagne
by Paul Masson,
inspired
by that same French excellence.
It's fermented in the bottle,
and like the best French
champagnes, it's vintage-dated, so…
Cut!
It's absolutely incredible.
It's one of the greatest
works ever put on film.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say,
it's Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane".
But amazingly, that's not even close
to the weirdest clip I could show you
involving celebrities and wine,
because that would be
the 1990 VHS tape
"The Celebrity Guide to Wine."
Featuring tips from Whoopi Goldberg,
Robert Loggia, and Dudley Moore,
as well as an amazing scene
with Steven Seagal
and his then-wife Kelly LeBrock
about how to open a bottle.
- This better be good.
- Honey, with me, it's always good.
You've done well.
I hope that was as good for you
as it was for me.
I have a feeling
it may have even been better.
If you need your bottles opened,
you know who to call.
Maybe I'll whistle.
You do know how to whistle,
don't you?
What the fuck was that?!
Put aside that "mm-hmm"
is not how you whistle,
it's also so nauseatingly horny
it almost distracts you
from what a perfect '90s
period piece that is.
Slicked-back hair, French tips,
Chanel hoops,
the looming omnipresence
of Steven Seagal,
and a living room décor
so aggressively '90s
you can't help but wonder
if O.J. Simpson killed anyone in it.
That is the Desert Storm of celebrity
instructional videos.
A surprising number of celebrities
are now in the wine business,
everyone from Fergie,
to Post Malone,
to Dwayne Wade, to Idris Elba,
to Kyle MacLachlan,
who promotes his Pursued by Bear
winery on TikTok with immense charm.
He's happier than
I've ever been about anything!
And to be honest,
the promotional materials for his wine
are uniformly excellent,
including this photoshoot of him
and a bear at a table
that includes this shot
that really looks
like the bear is telling Kyle,
"Stop, you have a drinking problem!"
And at this point, I'd say there's no
celebrity name I'd be surprised to see
on a bottle of wine,
but that's not actually true,
given that last year, we discovered
there is a wine from British Columbia
with my name on it.
I know that calling me a celebrity
is a bit like calling Jimmy Buffett
a restauranteur.
It's technically not false.
But it's certainly not what
the word is supposed to call to mind.
A winery in Canada called Road 13
has a John Oliver selection of wines.
While Road 13 sound like the address
of the underfunded English orphanage
where I was presumably raised,
this winery and I
are actually unaffiliated.
And, at first glance, I was both
flattered and a little confused.
They advertised the wine
on their Instagram
by putting the bottle
right next to a horse's ass,
which sure seems to be a reference
to my general interests.
But when you read their website,
they say…
John Oliver's is a story of success
won by sheer grit
and unshakable determination.
Never shy to don his overalls
to get things done.
This collection is made for those
who appreciate some dirt on the hands
and fortitude in the spirit.
Which should be your first,
second, and third clue
they're talking about somebody else.
Because it turns out, this wine
is actually named after a Canadian guy
who was the premier
of British Columbia,
basically, the governor there,
back in the early 20th century.
And he was apparently very popular.
He earned the nickname "Honest John".
And to answer your next question:
yes, he was hotter than me.
Smash, pass,
the choice has never been clearer.
And he did some
impressive-sounding things,
as this representative from
the Road 13 winery once explained.
Honest John Oliver was the man
who, back in the '20s,
championed the building
of our irrigation canal
down here on the golden mile.
That literally transformed our desert
into arguably Canada's best farmland.
- I love it. Okay.
- Very important story.
I'm sorry, but saying a bunch
of boring shit about irrigation canals
and finishing
with "very important story?"
That is copyright infringement!
That man stole my entire flow,
word for word, bar for bar!
But it wasn't just irrigation canals,
John Oliver also helped introduce laws
that improved working conditions,
established mothers' pensions,
passed legislation
to regulate public utilities,
and even the Old-age Pension Act.
He also has a school named after him,
a park,
and there's even a town called Oliver,
which has a life-sized statue
of Honest John in the town square.
And apparently John Oliver's wines
try to do justice to his legacy,
with the label calling him
the "Pioneer of the Okanagan",
the valley where the wine is produced,
as well as "The people's champion".
The bottle even includes this quote
from his 1907 address to parliament:
"I have dug ditches, when every morsel
of food I carried to my mouth"
"bore the imprint
of my fingers in the dirt,"
"and I was just as good
a man then as I am now"
"and in the opinion of some members
of this house a better man."
I know that he died before I was born,
but talking shit about himself
while making farming techniques sound
erotic feels close to home to me,
as does the fact that his wine
has his signature at the top,
which weirdly
looks exactly like mine!
Incidentally, if you are considering
using it for forgery, think again,
'cause I have a different signature
for official documents,
and it looks like this. So, nice try,
but you'll literally never be me.
And I should say,
this wine is apparently quite good!
One review called the Syrah
"muscular yet vibrant."
So, if you needed a final piece of
proof that it's a different John Oliver,
there it is.
But if you want to try some of it
in this country, I have bad news.
It turns out, it's nearly impossible
to get Canadian wine in the U.S.
Which is a little strange, isn't it,
because it's incredibly easy to get wine
from places like New Zealand,
which is, and this is true,
further than Canada.
To try and get a bottle, we had to go
to some pretty serious lengths.
Our accountant Hannah's mom
actually lives in Canada,
so she ordered some,
and then Hannah drove up to get it,
but was only able to bring in
two cases. And here it is, right here!
And I have to say: it's pretty good.
It really is pretty good!
Now, would this satisfy these two?
Nothing on Earth ever could.
But it is still pretty tasty.
But all this meant that when
it came to the American market,
there seemed to be
a John Oliver-sized gap.
So, we thought, why not provide
this country with a wine,
if not named for a better John Oliver,
at least, a slightly more living one?
Because it's not like I don't have great
stuff named after me, too,
from a sewer plant in Connecticut
to a koala chlamydia ward in Australia.
But I don't have a wine or, you know
what, to be strictly accurate,
I didn't have one.
Until now. So, please, come with me.
Because we are proud to announce,
and this is real,
the launch of a brand-new wine,
Cabernet Sauvignjohn.
It's a wine named for a man who
doesn't wear overalls
and is probably allergic to dirt
but who does have an outsized interest
in canal infrastructure
and making flowery speeches.
This California cabernet is a great way
to kick back, relax
and wind down after a long week.
It's essentially
the exact opposite of this show.
We've made
a limited run of bottles of this
that are available for purchase
right now at this address.
Again, this is real.
We've made a bottle of wine with
a label that features me as a horse.
And the great news is,
absolutely zero proceeds
will be going to my employer,
because not only are we selling this,
and this is true,
at a financial loss,
but from the sales,
we are also donating a total of 50.000
dollars to 16 food banks in California.
So, I guess all that's really
left for me to do now
is to promote this wine in what I'm led
to believe is the standard fashion.
That is our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night!
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver, thank you for
joining us. It has been a busy week.
Trump went on a tour of Asia,
this guy became "the sex pest
formerly known as Prince",
and in Washington,
the government shutdown continued,
even as the president's interest
seemed to lie elsewhere.
While most of the federal government
remains at a standstill,
President Trump is showing off
his latest construction project
at the White House, a renovation
of the bathroom attached
to the Lincoln Bedroom.
The president posting
two dozen photos of the bathroom
on social media on Friday.
It is now covered with floor-to-ceiling
white and black marble.
Some critics say the president
is tone-deaf for touting
the glitzy remodel during
the costly government shutdown.
Yeah, that is pretty tone-deaf!
And you know what,
I will say to Trump what I said
while watching
David Harbour's
Architectural Digest video:
you are vastly overestimating
how much I care
about where you take a shit.
But it is odd to be posting bathroom
remodel photos when so many
are legitimately concerned about
getting the government open again,
including this guy.
As the stalemate drags on,
the Senate chaplain
with this message to lawmakers:
Lord, remind our lawmakers
that no gold medals are given
for breaking shutdown records.
That is pretty pointed. Normally,
if you want to hear a prayer
that passive-aggressive, you have
to go to any family's Thanksgiving.
Dear Lord, thank you for this food,
even if some of us seem unaware
pecans don't go in the sweet potatoes.
Also, please remind my niece
that crop tops are for whores.
Also, and I know this isn't the point,
but why are the Senate chaplain
and Chuck Grassley both dressed like
they're operating the Polar Express?
They look like dueling concierges.
They look like they're about
to sing a telegram.
Guys, a haunted elevator operator
called, he wants his clothes back.
But it is true, if the shutdown
isn't over by Tuesday,
it'll be the longest ever.
A million government employees
are already going without paychecks.
As I am talking right now, we are
entering into an absolute calamity.
The discontinuation of the nation's
largest food assistance program looms.
I'm at 2.45 dollars right now.
Food bank workers expect
food insecurity to skyrocket.
There've been days that I haven't
gone to sleep because I'm thinking
what's gonna happen to all of us?
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program,
serves nearly 42 million people
every month.
But if the shutdown continues,
SNAP funding stops on November 1st.
In Huntsville, Alabama,
they're preparing like they would
for a natural disaster.
Even though this is kind of man-made,
we're still kind of operating
as if it were an emergency.
Yeah, she's right! This is
a completely man-made emergency.
It's right up there with Chernobyl,
every oil spill,
and this statue of Lucille Ball,
all of them were avoidable,
none of them should've happened.
The government's never let SNAP
go unfunded before,
not even in previous shutdowns.
But for weeks, the White House
has been refusing to tap
emergency funds to sustain SNAP,
even though it's estimated
there are likely between five and
six billion dollars available to do so.
And it does feel like Republicans
are using hunger as a bargaining tactic
which I guess shouldn't be surprising,
given the contempt that some,
like Senator Tommy Tuberville,
seem to feel for SNAP recipients.
Because just listen to him
respond to a question
about how this would impact
people in his state.
I think Democrats are getting
a little bit tight right now.
It's their constituents, a lot of them
that, in some of these inner cities,
that's gonna need SNAP to survive.
Lot of people need to go back to work.
A lot of young men that are on SNAP
that should be working.
Fuck all the way off!
I mean, setting aside the dog whistle
of "the inner cities",
coming from a man named
"Tommy Tuberville",
whose very name sounds like
it came from a racist
18th-century nursery rhyme,
the over 750.000 Alabama residents
who are on SNAP
are still your constituents,
no matter how uninterested
you seem in them.
Also, for the record,
most SNAP recipients are children,
elderly, or disabled, with many
of the rest being full-time caretakers.
Many recipients do work, but
regardless, all of them deserve to eat.
Because it is not greedy to need food.
That's one of the many reasons
why there's never been an
"Ocean's" movie set at a fucking Aldi.
But to the extent Republicans
have engaged with the notion
that withholding food from people
is a bad thing,
they've tried to frame it
as Democratic extremists
holding people's benefits hostage.
The USDA website even hosted
a banner this week reading:
"We are approaching an inflection point
for Senate Democrats.
They can continue to hold out
for healthcare for illegal aliens
and gender mutilation procedures
or reopen the government
so mothers, babies, and
the most vulnerable among us
can receive
critical nutrition assistance."
And JD Vance, Business Chucky,
tried a similar line of attack.
The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing
of the Democratic Party
shut down the government
because they said to us,
we will open the government,
but only if you give
billions of dollars of funding
for healthcare for illegal aliens.
That's a ridiculous proposition.
I'm gonna say this once and then
only 100 more times after that:
shut up, JD Vance,
you rancid pope killer!
Please, never forget:
Pope Francis met JD Vance,
and then literally died the next day.
Was that a coincidence? No way!
Look at the pope's face there!
He is clearly thinking: "You know
what? It's not worth it, I'm out."
There are so many things wrong
with what JD Vance just said,
not least the phrase "Chuck Schumer
AOC wing of the Democratic Party."
What are you talking about?
In what universe
do these two fall on the same part
of the political spectrum?
AOC is a progressive, while
Schumer spends most of his days
talking to imaginary Republicans.
They are not the same!
And it is worth explaining
what this fight is really about,
because it isn't actually over
whether to provide healthcare
to the undocumented,
who are already barred
from Medicaid and the ACA exchanges.
It mainly concerns subsidies
for insurance premiums under the ACA,
which are set to expire
unless Congress extends them,
which will result in dramatic
price spikes for millions.
According to the Oregon Health Plan,
here's how people's health insurance
premiums will be affected
if the enhanced premium tax
credits are allowed to expire.
A single person in Portland earning
35,000 dollars a year
could go from paying just over
1.000 a year to paying 2.600.
And a married couple in Hermiston
earning 95.000 a year
would go from paying 8.000 a year
to more than 33.000.
Holy shit, that is ridiculous!
You don't usually expect
to see prices rise that sharply
on anything,
except for maybe streaming services.
But you know what? I'm told
that in exactly one of those instances,
it's actually totally fine,
it's normal,
and it still
constitutes a real bargain.
The point is, many Americans
may have to pay a lot more
for health insurance
starting January 1st.
And for some, these price increases
could be catastrophic.
Allison Mindel's son, Lei Degroot,
was diagnosed with an aggressive form
of blood and bone marrow cancer
earlier this year.
He's now cancer-free, but Allison says
without their ACA insurance,
the cost of Lei's treatment
would have bankrupted them.
We estimate his course of treatment
cost somewhere in the vicinity
of one and a half to two million dollars
in billed medical expenses.
This is exactly what insurance is for.
With the same deductible
and out-of-pocket maximums,
the same plan that cost us 19.000
last year will cost us 47.000.
A year-on-year increase of 147%.
We don't know how we will afford this,
even though we know
we can't afford to go without
health insurance.
Yeah, that is completely ridiculous
and by the way,
credit to her son there
for having the perfect facial reaction
to hearing those numbers.
And it is no wonder
that people are so worried right now.
Because, for many, they're gonna have
to choose between paying premiums
they can't afford, or risk
going without insurance,
which is an impossible choice.
It's like asking someone
to pick their favorite child
or their least favorite testicle.
Though for me, in both cases,
it's easy, it's the middle one.
And alarming stories like that
may explain why some
in the administration, like Dr. Oz,
have gone out of their way to try
and downplay the looming spikes.
The average plan will increase for
Americans by somewhere around 115%.
Do you believe that Congress
should extend those subsidies
so that most Americans do not receive
increases in their premiums?
Where did you get that 115%
number from?
Kaiser Family Foundation.
They retracted that. That data
was run inappropriately.
They changed the messaging on it.
Go back and look at the website.
Here's the truth. The window
shopping is already revealing
that the average American is gonna pay
about, who's on the ACA,
between 100 and 400% of poverty level,
is gonna pay 50 dollars total next year.
It's gonna be 13 dollars more
than this year.
But here's the thing:
that is not true.
I think you probably already knew that,
because it came out
of the mouth of Dr. Oz,
who looks like, and don't
overthink this, old Waluigi.
Because KFF's analysis
was never retracted.
In fact,
it's on their website right now.
And look, who knows where things
are heading here?
We're taping on Saturday,
and a lot of things are still in flux
including two court rulings holding that
the Trump administration needs to pay
for at least some of the SNAP benefits
using the emergency funds
that it's been withholding.
On Friday, Trump seemed to understand
things weren't going his way,
when he announced, "I have instructed
our lawyers to ask the court
to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP
as soon as possible"
and "If we are given the appropriate
legal direction by the court,"
"it will be my honor"
all caps, "to provide the funding."
Resolving a crisis he helped create
and expecting praise for doing so.
But even then, we still don't know
if SNAP'll be funded fully,
or when benefits will actually
get to recipients.
And none of this addresses the threat
of rising healthcare premiums.
Trump is going to have to own
the consequences here,
and even as he continues to blame
Democrats for this shutdown,
he somehow manages
to make the optics even worse.
All they have to do
is open up the country.
Let them open up the country
and we'll meet.
We'll meet very quickly.
But they have to open up the country.
It's their fault. Everything is
their fault. It's so easily solved.
President Trump made those comments
before heading to a Halloween party
at Mar-a-Lago, his club.
The White House says the theme
was inspired by "The Great Gatsby",
which was, of course,
about rich people partying.
Not only is that pretty insulting,
I'm guessing it's also infuriating
to whatever exhausted high school
freshman just wrote
a 4.000-word essay about
"Great Gatsby" as a grim meditation
on the disillusionment
of the American dream,
only for CNN to tell them,
"You know what, it's really just a book
about rich people partying."
And for what it's worth,
the actual theme of that event
was apparently, and I quote,
"A Little Party Never Killed Nobody."
And I guess that is true.
Although it is also true that,
as we are all finding out right now,
a Grand Old Party is capable
of killing a whole lot of people,
and unfortunately,
they don't seem to give
a single marble and gold-encased
shit about that.
And now, this.
Our Annual Look at the Wonder
That Is Halloween on Local TV.
Happy Halloween,
we have a fun giveaway today.
Plus, we're gonna have healthy snacks
to balance all the sugar from candy.
- Welcome to our Halloween show.
- Can you guess what we are?
- I'm six.
- I'm seven.
- Hi, I'm Dolly Parton.
- I'm Reba McEntire.
Takes a lot of money
to look this cheap.
I'm a flying monkey,
I'm one of the flying monkeys.
I put the least amount of effort in.
We have a face painter coming up.
- I can't wait to see this.
- So, I am a pirate.
I'm Wolf Blitzer,
ladies and gentlemen.
Today, I am Jason.
I love that! Classic, for sure!
I'm embracing my inner Elsa.
You can be Anna.
We've got a little bit
of something going on.
It's a little hard to take you serious.
There's a lot of fairy knuckle
going on right now.
He's the only one who dressed up!
But that's a great costume, Ben.
- Ben, you make a fabulous wiener.
- I am a thunderstorm. Thank you.
And I'm hoping it shows up.
Yeah, it's showing up.
You can see kind of the lights in there.
There's actually lightning in there.
You said you spent
a month working on this.
On and off.
It is Halloween, as you can guess.
What's these costumes?
- The three blind mice!
- That's right.
We talked about that yesterday,
but I slept since then.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns police chases.
They're famously a staple
of action movies and cop shows,
a time-filler on local news,
and also the subject of a series
of late '90s TV specials, VHS tapes,
and a spinoff show hosted
by former Sheriff John Bunnell,
a man with a flair for the dramatic.
Some crooks think a motorcycle
is the ultimate escape vehicle,
but when it comes to winning
pursuits, any cop will tell you,
it's not what you drive,
it's how you drive.
When an angry driver takes his
personal problems on the road,
it's called road rage.
It can turn a normal person
into a violent criminal.
Drunks don't know
when to stop drinking.
And drunk drivers don't know
when to stop driving.
The weather can be the deciding
factor in a pursuit.
When it's good, we take it for granted.
When it's bad, it could mean disaster.
So, buckle up.
In the next hour,
you'll see some of the most terrifying
moments police cameras captured.
So, buckle up,
because the chase is on.
So, buckle up.
This is your first-class ticket
to high-speed action,
and you're in the driver's seat.
But hold on,
you're not even in the driver's seat.
You haven't been the whole time!
Say what you will about John Bunnell,
like that he delivers lines
with the subtlety of a community
theater actor's understudy
while dressed like the star
of a Cialis commercial,
he is right to imply that police
chases can be dangerous.
And for a long time,
we didn't know exactly how dangerous,
because the federal government
doesn't reliably track deaths from them.
But when the San Francisco Chronicle
recently compiled their own database,
they found, over a six-year period,
more than 3.300 people died
nationwide in police pursuits,
that's an average of nearly two a day.
On top of which, a majority of those
killed weren't the fleeing drivers,
with over 500 of the victims
innocent bystanders.
All of which is why a DOJ report
once called high-speed chases
"possibly the most dangerous
of all ordinary police activities",
with a former sheriff
describing them as
"like firing a 4.000-pound
bullet down the street",
a visual that I'm pretty sure
just gave Wayne LaPierre
a life-threatening boner.
And the thing is, even when
chases don't end tragically,
they can still do a ton of damage,
as this man experienced last year.
A car being chased
by West Memphis police
hit this man's home in South Memphis
on Halloween.
Why would y'all come over here
chasing somebody
and then he hits an innocent
bystander's house?
I'm pissed off because I feel like
they did not go through protocol,
and they need to keep
that… over there.
Yeah, he's completely right there!
You expect to see certain things
in a front yard on Halloween:
pumpkins, fake cobwebs,
one of those towering
skeleton decorations
that looks like Jacob Elordi
got electrocuted,
but not a car wreck
caused by a police chase.
While fleeing drivers are depicted
in movies and TV shows
as violent criminals,
in real life, that is rarely the case.
Research has found roughly
"90% of pursuits are initiated
because of traffic violations."
And the reasons people tend to flee
are often relatively mundane
from their license being suspended,
to being on probation,
to simply saying
they feared the police.
And this combination of high-stakes
chases over low-stakes infractions
has resulted in situations like this
preventable tragedy in Georgia.
Larry Turner still can't believe
his best friend of 30 years is gone.
I lost my brother.
60-year-old William Johnson
was killed Sunday just before noon
as he waited on a red light
at McAfee and Candler.
That's when this speeding SUV came
out of nowhere and crashed into him.
Turner was floored when he learned
a Georgia state trooper
was chasing the driver of the SUV
for a seat belt violation.
It's just not worth losing a life
or even being injured.
It's just not worth it.
Over a seat belt?
Exactly, because that is absurd.
The whole point of a seat belt law
was to keep people safe on the road,
so it's more than counterproductive
to then enforce it by turning the road
into a fucking NASCAR track.
And that is not a one-off. Of the
fatal chases the Chronicle reviewed,
over 1.500 people died in pursuits
initiated over traffic infractions,
nonviolent crimes or no crime at all.
In fact, people have died in chases
that started with attempted police stops
for things as petty as having tinted
windows or a broken taillight.
Which is just ridiculous. Because
someone who hasn't gotten around
to fixing their taillight doesn't deserve
to be dangerously chased by the police,
they deserve is an ADHD diagnosis.
If anyone with a broken taillight
is watching this show right now,
I have an important message for you:
you have clothes in the dryer.
They've been in there for days.
Get them out!
So given all of that, tonight,
let's talk about police chases:
why they happen
and why the risks involved
can massively outweigh the benefits.
Let's start with the fact that police
have been chasing cars basically
since they were first invented.
One of the first reported chases
was in St. Louis in 1906,
when a driver was pursued by what were
delightfully known as "Skidoodle Cops".
Chases soon became prevalent
across the country,
but started getting more attention
in the '90s, in part thanks to this…
Pursuits really became a thing
with O.J.
Simpson is in the driver's seat. We've
received a report of a gun in the car.
They predated O.J.,
but that kind of elevated the pursuit
to something much larger.
All I did was love Nicole.
That's all I did was love her.
That was the one that made
everyone realize,
this is like this incredible
spectator sport.
The O.J. chase was one of those jaw
dropping moments in the history of TV,
right up there with the moon landing,
Nixon's resignation,
and when the "Today" show anchors
dressed as characters from "Peanuts"
and ended up looking like something
from your darkest nightmares.
The O.J. chase attracted around
95 million viewers,
ushering in a new era of police
chases becoming entertainment.
For a while, one officer in California
even ran a paid service
that alerted subscribers
when a live pursuit was on TV.
People still love watching them.
In 2023, Pluto TV launched
a 24-hour chase channel.
Which sounds about right, doesn't it?
The sentence, "Pluto TV launched
a 24-hour police chase channel,"
is the exact type of depressingly
accurate nonsense sentence
that just permeates our world
right now. You know, like:
"The hawk tua girl was in the pilot
of 'Chad Powers' on Hulu,"
or "Jimmy Fallon and Malala did
'Beez in the Trap' on TikTok."
If you'd said those words to me
20 years ago,
I'd have thought
I was having a stroke!
Sometimes, even the participants
in a chase seem to realize
that they're part of a media event.
Last year, there was a crazy pursuit.
These guys were doing donuts
on Hollywood Boulevard.
They're trying to have
a good time right now.
And then they ended up
going by restaurants
where people
were watching it in a bar
and people run out on the sidewalk
and cheer them on as they were going.
And a TMZ tour bus tried to stop them
on the freeway.
Are they gonna stop it?
And one of the guys threw a sandwich
at the TMZ bus.
How's this for an only in L.A. moment?
It doesn't get
more Hollywood than that.
First, regarding the donuts, hell yeah.
And two, I would say
that's the most fucked up thing TMZ
has ever done,
but remember, it did publish
the headline:
"Jerry Sandusky Feasting
on Wieners Behind Bars."
So, let's call it a close second.
But obviously, chases don't just
take place in L.A.,
they happen all over the country.
That brings us to an important point,
depending on where you live,
the policies governing them
can vary widely.
There are no mandated national
standards, so in general,
the nearly 18.000 law
enforcement agencies across the U.S.
set their own chase policies.
Now, some only allow officers
to pursue suspects for serious crimes.
One department in Minnesota
even created this helpful acronym.
SHARK helps officers determine
when to pursue.
The acronym details the crimes
where officers can continue chasing
a fleeing car, if they know the person
driving it is wanted for:
sexual assault with a weapon,
homicide,
assault in the first or second degree,
aggravated robbery or kidnapping.
That's a pretty good acronym, isn't it?
And how excited were they,
when they realized they could write
"aggravated robbery" as
"robbery, aggravated only?"
Just hours of people trying
to make "SHAAK" work
before one genius
changed everything.
But other departments give officers
more leeway to chase people
for nonviolent offenses, like
stolen cars and drug-related crime,
while others give
even broader discretion.
The Georgia State Patrol, for instance,
doesn't restrict pursuits at any speed,
under any weather or traffic conditions
or for any charge,
which probably explains
why people died in Georgia
more often as a result of police
pursuits than in any other state.
And in many places, police are allowed
to make chases even riskier
by conducting what's known
as a PIT maneuver,
or "precision
immobilization technique."
It was adapted from a tactic
in stock car racing
known as the "bump and run",
which sounds like
a hazardous sex position
that's essentially just doggy style
on a moving treadmill,
but it is actually
when the police use their vehicle
to intentionally make contact with
the rear side panel of a fleeing car,
causing it to lose traction
and spin out.
It is incredibly dangerous,
especially at higher speeds,
when it can cause vehicles
to roll over,
greatly increasing
the likelihood of injury or death.
Which is what makes it so incredible
that some police departments
have put out videos of their officers
excitedly talking about how fun
it is to train on the procedure.
You hear that?
That's the sound of a good day.
Today, I got the opportunity
to train with some of our patrol deputies
on the emergency vehicle
operations course.
The PIT maneuver,
by far one of my favorite things.
Just getting up next to the bad guy
and making him pull over.
So much fun.
Cool.
And look, to be fair, calling
spinning a car out "so much fun"
does make total sense, if what you
are doing is playing "Mario Kart".
In real life, it is worth remembering,
there's going to be an actual person
in that "bad guy's" car,
and not a cartoon sex criminal.
But while PIT maneuvers
are sometimes presented as a way
to safely bring a pursuit to an end,
reporters have found that since 2017,
at least 87 people across the country
have been killed by them,
including 37 passengers
or bystanders, and seven children.
And that is likely an undercount.
And yet some departments seem to
PIT cars at the slightest provocation.
Take this investigation
into the practice in Arkansas.
In the past four years,
state police attempted to
or PIT-ed drivers at least 306 times.
Almost half of those were last year.
Records show many started
as minor traffic violations.
That's what happened here
when Senior Corporal Rodney Dunn
said he clocked a driver speeding.
His dash cam video shows the SUV
slowed down and flashed hazards.
He followed for three minutes,
then PIT-ed the SUV,
which caused it to spin into
a concrete barrier and flip.
The video kept rolling as the driver,
who was pregnant,
explained why she didn't stop.
I just didn't feel like the shoulder
was big enough with the wall.
This is what happens when
people don't stop for us.
- You wreck us?
- We PIT the vehicle.
It's true, the officer PIT-ed her car
while she was looking for a safe place
to pull over. And how does that
keep anyone safe?
When they were trying to save balloon
boy, they didn't shoot him out
of the sky, did they? Now, did they
consider it? Almost definitely.
No way was it never on the table.
But they didn't.
And in the end, it didn't matter,
the boy was never in the balloon.
History should have ended there.
And look, you should know:
the official Arkansas driver's
license study guide back then
literally said
that when being pulled over,
you should activate your turn
signal or emergency flashers
to indicate that you're seeking
a safe place to stop.
So she seemed to be following
the guidelines perfectly there.
And when you follow the rules,
you generally don't expect your car
to wind up on the side of the highway
doing a fucking headstand.
The dangers you can face
from police chases depend heavily
on where you are. But they can also
depend on who you are.
Because, unsurprisingly,
some are more at risk than others.
While black people account for roughly
one-eighth of the U.S. population,
they make up more than a third of
fatalities caused by police pursuits,
and account for upwards of a quarter
of the bystanders killed as a result.
And this is for many reasons, from
fear of police, to racial profiling,
to the problematic level of traffic
enforcement in Black neighborhoods.
That's something that we discussed
in our episode on traffic stops,
an episode that ended like this,
and you are just gonna have to trust me
that it made sense at the time.
And frustratingly,
we've known about this for a while.
The problems with police chases
have been discussed over the years.
Experts say that, as in so many
areas of policing,
policies around chases
are subject to a pendulum effect,
moving in one direction or the other,
depending on public opinion,
police leadership, or politics.
In Milwaukee, for instance,
after the deaths of four innocent
bystanders from police vehicle pursuits,
they adopted a new policy in 2009,
limiting police to only chasing
in the event of a violent felony.
But, over the years,
for a variety of reasons,
those rules got loosened,
first, to allow officers
"to pursue carjacked vehicles",
then to allow pursuits
in "reckless driving cases, or when
a car was linked to drug dealing."
And, in that time, the city saw
a 20-fold surge of police chases.
And unsurprisingly,
as the number of pursuits increased,
the number of injuries
and deaths did as well.
If you have more of one, you're
going to have more of the other.
It's like how when the number
of Ryan Murphy shows increased,
so did the number
of Sarah Paulson wigs.
It's basic cause and effect.
And while cops often argue
that restricting chases means
more people will flee them,
and that crime will increase,
experts have called that a myth,
saying research suggests that,
"If police did not chase offenders,
there would be no significant increase
in the number of suspects who flee,"
and pointing out that agencies
with more restrictive pursuit policies
do not have higher crime rates.
And it is worth remembering that,
especially when it comes
to minor traffic offenses, cops do have
other tools at their disposal
to bring someone to justice.
Just watch as a reporter
asks a criminal justice professor,
a former cop, by the way,
to explain why it might be okay
to let someone drive away.
There's some who will argue
that it is law enforcement's job
to enforce the law, full stop.
When somebody flees from a traffic
stop, they are violating the law
and it's the duty of that law
enforcement officer to pursue,
and to pursue
until that pursuit is terminated.
- What do you say to those folks?
- I call BS.
We have camera networks
all over the city.
We have license plate readers
all over.
Once you know
the identity of this person,
turn this over to the investigators.
Yeah, you don't always need
to chase someone.
Especially when the police have
a mountain of surveillance tech
at their disposal.
Which is, spoiler alert, a future story
we've got planned for this show.
We've actually got a bunch of fun
stories in the pipeline for you:
Police Surveillance Tech,
Trump vs. The Sun,
and Graves: What They Are,
Why They're Not What You Think,
and What the Government Can Do
to Stop All the Sex on Top of Them.
I do get that police can be
infuriated seeing someone drive away.
It is what's simmering
just beneath the surface
of this indignant
John Bunnell walk-and-talk
in one of his many
police chase specials.
Part of the insanity of any pursuit
is the seeming
contradiction of responsibility.
An officer's expected to be responsible
for himself, his motor vehicle,
innocent motorists, bystanders
and even the suspect.
At the same time, he's expected
to catch up to a maniac on wheels
who's driving like a bat out of hell.
Okay, first,
keeping all those people safe
is literally a police officer's job,
let's not complain about
doing the bare minimum here.
But second, it is so hard to take
anything that man says seriously,
because I'm always expecting him
to motion to his right
and start selling
portable rotisserie cookers.
As this professor who has studied
chases for decades points out,
it's not unreasonable
to expect the police
to be the more responsible party.
Police are trained
and are there to deal with people
who aren't making good decisions,
can't make good decisions.
There's got to be an adult in the room
and it's not the person fleeing.
Yeah. Weird zoom into his face
aside there, that man is right.
When you're a police officer,
being the adult in the room
is kind of your job.
That's honestly true
for anyone whose job
involves dealing with the public.
Calming things down
is basically 50% of
the job of a police officer,
70% of the job of a Target
cashier,
and 100% of the job
of a Waffle House employee.
Listen, we're all here
for the same reasons,
so let's just focus
on what unites us here.
We all love breakfast and none of us
are allowed in an IHOP.
Everybody chill the fuck out!
But too often,
police will give chase
when the threat to public safety
is minimal
and then,
when something goes wrong,
simply blame
the person they were pursuing.
Just watch a sheriff in South Carolina
blow off some basic questions
about the death of a teenage boy in
a chase that began over a traffic stop.
Am I happy that the young man died?
No,
but that was a position
that he put himself in.
He was a passenger in the car.
He still put himself in there
'cause he's in that car
with somebody that's doing this.
Why didn't they tell him,
the driver to stop?
- Why didn't they do that?
- Well, they might have.
We don't know.
Right. We don't know!
It's one of many things
we don't know,
including what the fuck is going on
next to that man.
What is that thing?
Is it a Halloween decoration?
I sure hope so!
Because my second guess
is an American Girl doll
who joined the Klan.
And my third is a voodoo doll
holding a string of anal beads.
And even when a police chase
injures a bystander,
cops can refuse to take any blame.
Take this story from last year,
of a woman who sued
a Michigan police department,
claiming officers engaged in negligence
and reckless conduct during a pursuit
that seriously hurt her.
This is Brittny Turner,
her body shattered
with broken bones and burns
after being slammed into
by a driver who was speeding away
from Warren police who were
in a high-speed pursuit this past June.
This is Warren police video of officers
getting Turner out of her burning car.
Turner is suing Warren police
for 60 million dollars.
The bad guy
strikes an innocent motorist,
yet we're blamed.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
No, I'm not.
I'm not kidding you at all!
Even when I say,
"You look like Lex Luthor
after two days of norovirus",
I'm not kidding.
I'm being deadly serious right now.
And you should know
the "bad guy" in question there
was being pursued after police tried
pulling him over
for driving
without a visible license plate.
Now, to their credit,
that local news station
took that cop's response
to the woman who'd been hurt,
and she was understandably
unimpressed.
They said there's only one person
responsible for you being hit and hurt
and it's the person behind the wheel
that they were pursuing.
What do you think of that?
I can't say the word
that I want to say on camera,
but I believe that that is bull.
Yeah, because it is!
Specifically, it is bullshit!
And it's frankly incredible
that she's exercising more
restraint with her use of profanity
than the cops did
with a 4.000-pound vehicle.
Also, at this point, can we please just
let people say "shit" on the news?
Whose innocence
are we protecting anymore?
I tried to play "Halo" last week
because I'm thinking
about getting into hobbies,
and as soon as I logged on,
a 10-year-old called me a cunt.
The linguistic battle for decency
has been lost.
I am not saying fleeing drivers
are never at fault. Of course they are.
But law enforcement needs
to be focusing
on minimizing
the risks of dangerous situations
instead of exacerbating them.
And unfortunately, "even when
officers flout policy and people die,
they often avoid both criminal
charges and internal discipline."
But that probably
shouldn't be surprising,
given all the barriers
to police accountability.
Many states have legal protections
that make it very difficult
to hold officers and agencies liable
for chase-related injuries.
In fact, that woman you just saw
had her case dismissed
because current Michigan law
requires that,
unless the police car
itself crashed into her,
the police bear no liability,
a decision that she is now appealing.
And that is just the beginning here,
because, as we've discussed before,
cops are protected by what's called
"the qualified immunity doctrine."
Thanks to that,
the Supreme Court hasn't sided
with any victim of a fatal police
chase, even an innocent bystander,
since it created qualified immunity,
while at the same time,
it's been steadily
building up a body of case law
that makes it even harder
for families to sue.
And even in one
incredibly rare instance
where cops were held accountable
for a death resulting from a chase,
when a jury convicted two D.C. cops
for their roles in a deadly chase
of a man on a moped,
and a subsequent cover-up,
Donald Trump pardoned them
as one of his first acts in office.
Which, in a different world,
a better, kinder world,
one worth saving,
might have been a scandal.
And I should say, even some law
enforcement officers will tell you:
chases, as they are currently practiced,
are just a recipe for needless death.
Last year, of our pursuits,
40% ended in a crash.
So, the numbers are just there.
And then, you know, eventually,
if you're just chasing
everyone just to chase everyone,
people are gonna get killed.
Exactly!
And it's honestly refreshing to hear
someone in law enforcement
state the obvious.
Instead of acting
like society will fall apart
if cops in Massapequa
don't get to "Tokyo Drift".
So, what can we do? I would argue
there are simple steps we could take.
First,
there should be national standards
for how and when police
can initiate a chase,
like only allowing officers
to conduct pursuits
when a violent crime
has been committed
and the suspect poses an imminent
threat to commit another one.
As experts have explained,
"If an officer can apprehend
a traffic law violator safely,
then they should do so."
On top of that,
cities and states could pass laws
that let individuals
sue government officials
and prohibit qualified immunity
as a defense in state court.
But something has to be done here.
Because the police's commitment
to public safety
shouldn't effectively end once they
turn their sirens and lights on.
And if a chase truly is
like firing a 4.000-pound bullet,
perhaps cars
should be treated as weapons.
Tools to be handled carefully,
not deployed in every single scenario.
Because despite
what too many cops say,
and what TV and films
have conditioned us to believe,
the idea that high-speed pursuits
are the only way
to ensure public safety is,
to borrow a word this woman
wouldn't alow herself to say:
absolute bullshit.
And now, this.
And Now: More of Sheriff John Bunnell's
Ludicrously Over-the-Top Line Readings.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I spent 27 years
in law enforcement,
and the mission was always
the same: to protect and serve.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell.
The presence of cameras at crime
scenes is as widespread as crime itself.
Being a cop is the craziest
and toughest job in the world.
Tonight, you're gonna see why.
Because
when you roll onto a crime scene,
you want to go in armed
with knowledge.
Police are accustomed to dealing
with people with guns and knives,
but they face a real challenge when
the weapons are truly bizarre.
It's not always pretty,
but it's always real.
So, hang on.
You're in for the ride of your life.
So, hang on, because you're
going to see what it's really like.
In the next hour,
we're gonna show you close-up
the world of crime and criminals.
So, get ready to get ready.
Moving on. Finally tonight,
a quick word about alcohol.
The easiest way
to improve a night out
for the low price
of the next three days.
Specifically,
I want to talk about wine,
a drink once advertised by Orson Welles
in commercials.
Including this one, where,
as we now know from outtakes,
he was legendarily fucked up.
102 take one.
With overlap, action please!
Action, Orson, please!
- Just do anything?
- No. It's a… Sorry. Cut!
Rolling. 102 take two.
The French champagne
has always been
celebrated for its excellence.
102 take three. Action please.
The French champagne has always
been celebrated for its excellence.
There is a California champagne
by Paul Masson,
inspired
by that same French excellence.
It's fermented in the bottle,
and like the best French
champagnes, it's vintage-dated, so…
Cut!
It's absolutely incredible.
It's one of the greatest
works ever put on film.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say,
it's Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane".
But amazingly, that's not even close
to the weirdest clip I could show you
involving celebrities and wine,
because that would be
the 1990 VHS tape
"The Celebrity Guide to Wine."
Featuring tips from Whoopi Goldberg,
Robert Loggia, and Dudley Moore,
as well as an amazing scene
with Steven Seagal
and his then-wife Kelly LeBrock
about how to open a bottle.
- This better be good.
- Honey, with me, it's always good.
You've done well.
I hope that was as good for you
as it was for me.
I have a feeling
it may have even been better.
If you need your bottles opened,
you know who to call.
Maybe I'll whistle.
You do know how to whistle,
don't you?
What the fuck was that?!
Put aside that "mm-hmm"
is not how you whistle,
it's also so nauseatingly horny
it almost distracts you
from what a perfect '90s
period piece that is.
Slicked-back hair, French tips,
Chanel hoops,
the looming omnipresence
of Steven Seagal,
and a living room décor
so aggressively '90s
you can't help but wonder
if O.J. Simpson killed anyone in it.
That is the Desert Storm of celebrity
instructional videos.
A surprising number of celebrities
are now in the wine business,
everyone from Fergie,
to Post Malone,
to Dwayne Wade, to Idris Elba,
to Kyle MacLachlan,
who promotes his Pursued by Bear
winery on TikTok with immense charm.
He's happier than
I've ever been about anything!
And to be honest,
the promotional materials for his wine
are uniformly excellent,
including this photoshoot of him
and a bear at a table
that includes this shot
that really looks
like the bear is telling Kyle,
"Stop, you have a drinking problem!"
And at this point, I'd say there's no
celebrity name I'd be surprised to see
on a bottle of wine,
but that's not actually true,
given that last year, we discovered
there is a wine from British Columbia
with my name on it.
I know that calling me a celebrity
is a bit like calling Jimmy Buffett
a restauranteur.
It's technically not false.
But it's certainly not what
the word is supposed to call to mind.
A winery in Canada called Road 13
has a John Oliver selection of wines.
While Road 13 sound like the address
of the underfunded English orphanage
where I was presumably raised,
this winery and I
are actually unaffiliated.
And, at first glance, I was both
flattered and a little confused.
They advertised the wine
on their Instagram
by putting the bottle
right next to a horse's ass,
which sure seems to be a reference
to my general interests.
But when you read their website,
they say…
John Oliver's is a story of success
won by sheer grit
and unshakable determination.
Never shy to don his overalls
to get things done.
This collection is made for those
who appreciate some dirt on the hands
and fortitude in the spirit.
Which should be your first,
second, and third clue
they're talking about somebody else.
Because it turns out, this wine
is actually named after a Canadian guy
who was the premier
of British Columbia,
basically, the governor there,
back in the early 20th century.
And he was apparently very popular.
He earned the nickname "Honest John".
And to answer your next question:
yes, he was hotter than me.
Smash, pass,
the choice has never been clearer.
And he did some
impressive-sounding things,
as this representative from
the Road 13 winery once explained.
Honest John Oliver was the man
who, back in the '20s,
championed the building
of our irrigation canal
down here on the golden mile.
That literally transformed our desert
into arguably Canada's best farmland.
- I love it. Okay.
- Very important story.
I'm sorry, but saying a bunch
of boring shit about irrigation canals
and finishing
with "very important story?"
That is copyright infringement!
That man stole my entire flow,
word for word, bar for bar!
But it wasn't just irrigation canals,
John Oliver also helped introduce laws
that improved working conditions,
established mothers' pensions,
passed legislation
to regulate public utilities,
and even the Old-age Pension Act.
He also has a school named after him,
a park,
and there's even a town called Oliver,
which has a life-sized statue
of Honest John in the town square.
And apparently John Oliver's wines
try to do justice to his legacy,
with the label calling him
the "Pioneer of the Okanagan",
the valley where the wine is produced,
as well as "The people's champion".
The bottle even includes this quote
from his 1907 address to parliament:
"I have dug ditches, when every morsel
of food I carried to my mouth"
"bore the imprint
of my fingers in the dirt,"
"and I was just as good
a man then as I am now"
"and in the opinion of some members
of this house a better man."
I know that he died before I was born,
but talking shit about himself
while making farming techniques sound
erotic feels close to home to me,
as does the fact that his wine
has his signature at the top,
which weirdly
looks exactly like mine!
Incidentally, if you are considering
using it for forgery, think again,
'cause I have a different signature
for official documents,
and it looks like this. So, nice try,
but you'll literally never be me.
And I should say,
this wine is apparently quite good!
One review called the Syrah
"muscular yet vibrant."
So, if you needed a final piece of
proof that it's a different John Oliver,
there it is.
But if you want to try some of it
in this country, I have bad news.
It turns out, it's nearly impossible
to get Canadian wine in the U.S.
Which is a little strange, isn't it,
because it's incredibly easy to get wine
from places like New Zealand,
which is, and this is true,
further than Canada.
To try and get a bottle, we had to go
to some pretty serious lengths.
Our accountant Hannah's mom
actually lives in Canada,
so she ordered some,
and then Hannah drove up to get it,
but was only able to bring in
two cases. And here it is, right here!
And I have to say: it's pretty good.
It really is pretty good!
Now, would this satisfy these two?
Nothing on Earth ever could.
But it is still pretty tasty.
But all this meant that when
it came to the American market,
there seemed to be
a John Oliver-sized gap.
So, we thought, why not provide
this country with a wine,
if not named for a better John Oliver,
at least, a slightly more living one?
Because it's not like I don't have great
stuff named after me, too,
from a sewer plant in Connecticut
to a koala chlamydia ward in Australia.
But I don't have a wine or, you know
what, to be strictly accurate,
I didn't have one.
Until now. So, please, come with me.
Because we are proud to announce,
and this is real,
the launch of a brand-new wine,
Cabernet Sauvignjohn.
It's a wine named for a man who
doesn't wear overalls
and is probably allergic to dirt
but who does have an outsized interest
in canal infrastructure
and making flowery speeches.
This California cabernet is a great way
to kick back, relax
and wind down after a long week.
It's essentially
the exact opposite of this show.
We've made
a limited run of bottles of this
that are available for purchase
right now at this address.
Again, this is real.
We've made a bottle of wine with
a label that features me as a horse.
And the great news is,
absolutely zero proceeds
will be going to my employer,
because not only are we selling this,
and this is true,
at a financial loss,
but from the sales,
we are also donating a total of 50.000
dollars to 16 food banks in California.
So, I guess all that's really
left for me to do now
is to promote this wine in what I'm led
to believe is the standard fashion.
That is our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We'll see you next week,
good night!