John Oliver blames 24 for America's belief in torture, enlists Helen Mirren to change its mind

John Oliver and Helen Mirren explain why torture is bad, useless

(Image credit: Last Week Tonight)

published 15 June 2015

Mel Gibson is tortured in every movie he makes, but "sadly, torture isn't just something that happens to Mel Gibson," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "It's also been practiced by the United States, as President Obama admitted last summer in a bizarre manner." Obama was casually responding to the U.S. Senate's declassified portion of its report on post-9/11 torture by the CIA.

All 500 pages are available in a book on Amazon, Oliver said, and if that still seems too onerous a hurdle for you — as it was, apparently, for former CIA chief Porter Goss — Last Week Tonight impressively got Dame Helen Mirren to read the report as an audio book (which it will hopefully make available for download soon). Despite the TV series 24 — cited by Justice Antonin Scalia as supporting evidence for torture — and public opinion, Oliver said "torture is one of those things that is advertised as something that works but doesn't," like Ford Trucks and horny goat weed.

Worse, Oliver said, there is no U.S. law against torture, just an executive order signed by Obama that could be immediately reversed by the next president (all four Democratic candidates told Last Week Tonight they would keep the ban; none of the Republicans did). "President Lindsey Graham could undo that on his first day in office," he said, kindly. There's an amendment up for a vote next week that would codify Obama's order in law — the apparent reason Oliver is tackling torture now — and below, you can watch him and Dame Mirren try to convince you it should pass. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.