John Oliver Talked About The Death Penalty For 12 Minutes On 'Last Week Tonight' & You Need To Watch

[LiberalArkie]

[SamKnause]

1. Great show.

I am a big fan of John Oliver !!!!

[Paladin]

2. Whoever came up with the promos for this show needs their ass kicked.

You know---the ads where Oliver repeatedly hammers home the fact that his show is on just once a week, on Sunday nights. Beyond irritating.

That said, I'll try to simmer down and watch the death penalty feature.

[oldandhappy]

3. This show needs to be an hour.

He is excellent. He has content and humor. Just excellent. How can we promote the one hour show?

[tclambert]

4. I made it to the hamster eating a tiny burrito.

I now support the death penalty, but only if we administer it by lowering the condemned into boiling oil . . . slowly, 1/4 inch per minute. If you're gonna do it, then go all out and embrace your inner barbarian.

[iandhr]

11. George Carlin agrees with you.

[tclambert]

12. That was hilarious and disturbing.

Televising the executions--yeah, that sounds good. Lowering the guy head first into boiling oil (sponsored by Crisco)--well, Mark Twain said the crueler way was to lower them feet first, very slowly. That way, the criminal lasted longer and could witness his lower extremities cooking. The H-bomb suppository was funny, but again, too quick. To really rope in the viewers, you need to drag it out, like the American Idol results show. (Hmm, executions hosted by Ryan Seacrest. Ooh, you could let America vote which criminal to save and which to execute. And we'll find out . . . after this commercial.)

[bayareaboy]

5. Do you suppose ...

That Lenny Bruce is smiling, wherever he is, and wondering if the the Comedy Channel is now the bastion of thinking humor.

[tclambert]

13. John Oliver is on HBO now.

[bayareaboy]

19. That is an afirmative...

But the gentleman came from a couple of years working for Comedy Central, working with Jon Stewart.

Somewhat like Lewis Black.

And yes I know that HBO is not Comedy Central.

[rock]

6. Great show! Way over the top.

But let me repeat my main argument against the death penalty: the death penalty gives the government the right to kill its citizens. Now to put this in perspective, do you trust the government to count the votes in a presidential election? What if for each vote missed or mis-categorized we had to execute somebody? These would be randomly picked of course, but I'm sure that you would trust the government to do that too.

[Moonwalk]

7. While not, necessarily, in agreement with the death penalty, that argument is seriously flawed...

We could just as well say: "laws give the government the right to imprison its citizens; do you trust that government to count the votes in a presidential election?" I really doubt that (1) you'd consider all laws, even ones that send people to prison, as being wrong, and (2) that you'd believe that a government that imprisons people who set off bombs in an airport, or steals people's hard earn money from banks, etc. can't be trusted to count votes in a presidential election.

Which is all to say, your argument, as stated above, implies that the death penalty gives the government the right to drag people off the streets and shoot them. That's not accurate. And inaccuracy is not conducive to a discussion on the topic. If you want me to really take your argument seriously, then you have to put in the real facts and not fudge it so that it sounds something it's not (a tactic routinely used by the GOP).

So. To put this in perspective: the death penalty gives state governments, with a majority vote from their citizens (because any state can outlaw the death penalty with a majority vote), the right to kill other citizens who they believe have murdered innocent people. Now, given that, do we trust state governments to count the votes in a presidential election?

And my answer would be...I don't see the connection between the two. Could you explain to me how they're related?

[rock]

9. You totally miss the point

There is no recovery from a wrong execution, all the others can be amended, even election 2000 could have been corrected had we impeached the 5 justices who violated their oath of office. As for imprisoning citizens, we will have mistakes and that is the price for keeping a civilization. My argument does not in the least imply that the death penalty gives the government the right to drag people off the streets and shoot them. Whatever means they use to kill citizens will have mistakes. Your arguments are the ones that are seriously flawed.

[tclambert]

14. Besides scaring the public into submission, the purpose of the Hunger Games is entertainment.

The beauty of executing the occasional innocent person is it takes away the feeling of safety. Didn't murder anybody? You still need to keep your head down and never complain about the 1%, or the men in black uniforms may come for you.

Meanwhile, you can gamble on who will live and who will die. What could be more Roman? I don't think the supporters of capital punishment really care if 4% of the executed are innocent, or if some percentage of them are retarded, as long as they are poor people. If a rich person commits a heinous crime, well, you have consider the "collateral consequences," and either give them a short sentence in a soft minimum security prison, or more likely, just make them pay a token fine.

[Moonwalk]

16. Yes, your argument, AS STATED did imply that. You did not say...

..."states with the death penalty kill innocent people." You said "the death penalty gives the government the right to kill citizens." That's pretty open to interpretation, don't you think? It is, at best, really imprecise if your argument is that any government with a death penalty can't be trusted with elections because innocent as well as guilty people are executed under that death penalty.

And I STILL don't see the correlation. The U.S. has maintained the death penalty since its creation. It's only within the last fifty years that it was even outlawed on some states. And certainly, innocent as well as guilty people must have died because of it. That's a fine argument against it, but would you really say that in the whole of our existence as a country the vote for president couldn't be trusted because that death penalty existed?

You're obviously trying to make a point here that I'm missing, but I'm missing it because you're not getting it across in a way that makes any sense. It's neither obvious nor simple to me. And FYI, I'm not offering any argument, flawed or otherwise. I'm simply pointing out that I can't see how the one (death penalty) leads to the other (not trust government to count presidential votes). Please explain.

[rock]

18. Well yes, it is as you say

It is a pretty complicated problem but let me make some points. It doesn't matter whether you make the assumption about the conditions (which I left open) or not -- it is the government that makes both the laws and the corresponding penalties. There have been many in the past who have been executed for merely expressing certain views. If they have the right to kill citizens (under certain conditions), they will exercise that right. There is one penalty that I cannot brook them being wrong on - death to a citizen. Thus I say don't allow them the death penalty under any circumstances. As to the voting example, I merely mean to have an obvious example to show that the government cannot effectively count to (around) 50 million without some severe errors. The government is really the agency of last resort for any effort because of its many failings. Which incidentally forebodes poorly for climate change.

[tclambert]

15. I think his point was we DON'T trust government to accurately count votes anymore.

Not since Florida 2000. So how can you trust the government to make irremediable decisions like executing convicted criminals? The commenter may not have expressed it clearly enough. Anyway, to misquote Inigo Montoya, "I don't think it means what you think it means."

I've heard of cases where people confessed to crimes they didn't commit just because they were tired of the questioning and wanted a rest. In their weary logic, they assume the police will figure out it was a false confession eventually and everything will turn out OK. This turns out to be very bad logic.

Earl Washington, Jr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Washington,_Jr.), with an IQ of 69, confessed to rape and murder when pressured by police, but was later exonerated by DNA evidence.

Gary Gauger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gauger), lied to by police, began to think maybe he had killed his parents during some kind of blackout. After more than 2 years on Death Row, he was released. Later two motorcycle gang members were convicted of the crime Gauger had sort of confessed to.

Anyway, I suspect the commenter you responded to meant that for false life imprisonment, we can try to rectify the situation, by releasing the exonerated prisoner and paying him damages for false imprisonment. But you can't fix dead.

[Moonwalk]

17. That makes more sense; however, I still think the analogy muddies the waters...

...if our aim is to put an end to the death penalty. Why? Because those who arrest, interrogate, prosecute and judge criminals, sentencing them to the death penalty, aren't involved with voting. If you're faced with someone who absolutely believes in the death penalty and is convinced that no innocent people die, then this comparison won't sway them. Because you can't point to the mistakes of one area of government and say that another, unrelated branch, is going to make similar mistakes. That's not necessarily true.

EITHER you can prove the justice system IS making mistakes with the death penalty, scary ones that should give us pause, or you can't. The analogy suggests you can't. You can only use a not-so-convincing scare tactic (what if the person also believes that the government doesn't make mistakes in voting? Now you've got to prove both sides).

[LittleGirl]

8. Love John Oliver

and miss him on Jon Stewart's show. This is brilliant.

Also, man, I wish I could get HBO without having to get cable. We don't have cable anymore because of those pesky 2 yr contracts but the only way to get HBO is through a cable contract. Damn it.

thanks for posting.

[2banon]

10. Outstanding! The Best John Oliver I've ever seen..