Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: The Supreme Court

September 29, 2020 8:49 AM - Season 7, Episode 24

This week, again in the white void: A grand jury declined to indict the perpetrators over the death of Breonna Taylor, heaping more fuel onto the Black Lives Matter protests. Main story: the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, giving Republicans a third Supreme Court pick during Trump's term, largely and ultimately due to the machinations of "mule piss" Mitch McConnell and the weird anti-democratic games the US system plays to preserve power to the powerful. And Now: An Unexpected Update Regarding Peeps. Finally, the Census, and the importance for US residents to fill it out. 14 million households haven't yet despite its tremendous importance to our systems to have an accurate count of people. You can complete it, probably in just a couple of minutes, at my2020census.gov. To help encouraage viewers to do that, the show played a couple of minutes of the audiobook version of Sean Penn's novel Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff (hoo boy), to drive people away in order to do this essential thing.

F.37 "Notoriousem," RUTH BADER GINSBURG

posted by JHarris (5 comments total)

I forgot to add the YouTube links! Here they are:
Supreme Court
Census Update
posted by JHarris at 1:46 PM on September 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Lord that book excerpt. I'm both registered to vote and did my census months ago, but I hung around just to have a listen. That is some dire writing--and Penn sounds like my uncle before he died for real, after most of a lifetime of alcohol abuse, heart disease and being declared dead briefly after a massive heart attack, and smoking for quite a few years when he got into AA (before quitting prior to open heart surgery).
posted by kitten kaboodle at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2020

The audiobook was released for free, after an interview on The Late Show a year or two ago. I started listening to it as my commute audiobook but spent the rest of it with nothing on.
posted by porpoise at 8:12 PM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is listening to it naked better, porpoise?
posted by Marticus at 4:01 AM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Slowclap, Marticus.

I appreciated that, with all that's going on, the LWT writers took the time to take a swipe at Leonardo DiCaprio, who at the age of nearly 46 has never been known to date a woman over 25.
posted by orange swan at 12:14 PM on October 2, 2020 [1 favorite]