Rocks: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Web Exclusive)

[Music] hi there internet i'm john oliver uh we are off this week but i wanted to quickly check back in to talk to you about a subject that is near and dear to my heart and that is rocks that's right rocks so congratulations whoever just completed their last week tonight topic bingo cards but but i'm not going to be talking to you about just any rocks i'm going to be talking about specific rocks although not straight away because for reasons that will become clear i'm going to need to lay some significant groundwork we really have to ramp up to this one so before i talk to you about specific rocks i'm first going to talk to you about furries and before i talk about furries i need to talk to you about the georgia republican gubernatorial primary remember the rest of my staff is on vacation right now my family went to an island i think and i'm here so we are all where we're supposed to be now if you know anything about the georgia primary it's probably the front runners involved incumbent brian kemp and challenger david perdue but this piece isn't about them to be honest i don't even have time to point out which is which they're both old white republican men who look a lot like that meme of two spider-men pointing at each other instead i want to talk about a third candidate in the election candice taylor she was also running in the republican primary although polling far behind kemp and perdue at around just four percent so she had a real uphill battle on her hands which may be why she came out swinging in this debate appearance donald trump won he won we have a fraudulent pedophile in the white house i'm going to put the constitution first and i'm going to put jesus first every single time and we're going to fix our schools we're going to get rid of this anti-white racism and we're going to get rid of kindergarten teachers men with beards and lipstick and high heels teaching our children we're going to get back to being moral in georgia now obviously there is a lot of offensive on display there from the baseless accusations of voter fraud to naked racial grievances to anti-trans panic too and this is the big one how she spells candice because that is simply incorrect that looks like how a cartoon snake would pronounce the word candies but was that fiery debate performance enough to win her the primary probably not since it was this past tuesday and she lost it um at least i'm assuming that she lost it we take these ahead of time so there is a small possibility that she won but honestly if she did we'll have deleted this video anyway and pretended it never happened so if you're watching this right now that means candice taylor definitely lost and one of these two guys who shared many of her terrible views but in a more media savvy package they won instead and if you're thinking john if you're thinking john why on earth john are you devoting one of your precious few web exclusives which many consider to be a far superior product to the dreck you put on television why are you wasting this yammering on about a barely scene also ran in a primary that just ended i would respond hey hey you don't have to be here why are you watching this to which you might respond because you promised me rocks goddammit where are my rocks and we will get there we will get there i promise but first a little more about candice taylor this was her campaign bus and look you can put whatever you want on a bus like jungkook from bts or this big snake or this although ideally never that but my point is candace's bus made some weird choices i don't know whether it's the i'm the one you've been waiting for with one emphasise for no clear reason or the mixture of cursive and stencil fonts usually reserved for epsy signs like together is my favorite place to be or home is where the wine is waiting or the fact she listed her three campaign priorities as jesus guns babies it is the sort of brain dead knee-jerk culture war buzzword platform that you would expect to appeal solely to mike lindell and guess what you'd be absolutely right because she once tweeted mike lindell understands our movement for jesus guns and babies but for whatever reason the handshake of a deranged pillow baron didn't do much for her numbers and candice seemingly spent the final months of her campaign how any republican who desperately wants attention would and that is by frantically seeking out culture war issues that would give her campaign traction and people do like to see a fighter don't they which is presumably why she posted this campaign video the governor's race in georgia has four establishment politicians and then there's candace taylor and i'm one of you that's the whole clip we didn't edit that down that is the complete video that she posted along with a tweet that said that's it that's the tweet and yeah candice i guess i guess i guess agree to agree on that one i suppose also not for nothing that is the least convincing portrayal of a boxer that i have ever seen and i have seen ed sheeran's shape of you video he looks like ron weasley failing a zumba class now for a while for a while it seemed like candace's chosen enemy would be the manufactured panic the public schools have been formally accommodating the needs of furries which brings me as promised to furries if you are not aware earlier this year a bunch of conservatives fell for some very weird online rumors about what was happening in schools and i will let nebraska state senator bruce bostelman explain i'm a little shocked i guess is what i would put it it's called something called furries we don't know what furries are it's where school children dress up as animals cats or dogs during the school day meow and they bark and now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use how is this sanitary [Applause] i mean none of that happened bruce [Applause] first and this is the least of the problems here dogs don't in litter boxes but also neither do furries that is not what furries do what they do do is they use regular toilets where elaborate fursuits and many offer art commissions where you can get yourself done up as a sexy river otter at very reasonable prices they are harmless but candice taylor an adult seeking office remember actually ran on this anti-furry issue issuing 10 proposed executive orders one of which instructed no fury related items will be worn in schools also tweeting the furry days are over when i'm governor which is just an all-time thing to tweet honestly it's an all-time thing to say just try it walk into any room and announce the furry days are over when i'm governor do it right now and see if you don't feel an electric rush of power don't explain yourself why should you after all you're the governor and furry days are over and the replies to that tweet are exactly the sort of response that you would hope for and expect from the furry community one person said if schools are for academics not fairy tales then how come people still teach supply side economics to which i say roasted well several others simply posted furry cartoon asses and if you absolutely had to reduce the furry presence online right down to his bones critiques of conservative economic theory and fuzzy butt shots really are the guiding principles of the whole movement anyway i mentioned candice taylor's ten executive orders she initially only released nine of them and made it clear that number 10 was going to be a major drop even spending days hyping it up online saying evil cannot be negotiated with and must be crushed eo number 10 is going to shake the nation stay tuned which yeah you're right it does sound pretty major doesn't it and you know what when number 10 finally dropped it turned out candice was right the new world order is here and they told us it was coming it's a battle far greater than what we see in the natural it is a war between good and evil [Music] yeah candice isn't around she tweeted that alongside i am the only candidate willing to stand up to the satanic cabal the georgia guidestones must be demolished that was the closing argument of her campaign raising the obvious question hey candace taylor what the are you talking about and at this point it is finally time to talk about rocks and not just rocks remember specific rocks and specifically the georgia guide stones because it turns out they are a roadside attraction in alberts county georgia and taylor is actually not the only one with a sense of animosity towards them the guidestones are the centerpiece of a lot of online conspiracy theories which kind of makes sense they were erected centuries ago by ancient druids except they weren't they were put up in 1980 and the man who commissioned them did so under a pseudonym there are also a functioning astronomical calendar and some think they have paranormal properties like this guy when you take pictures of it [Applause] when you put your head down in there like this and look through it the ball of energy comes through that sucker man i try to get up here three to five times a week you know what i for one believe him not about the blue orb that is ridiculous what i believe about is the scheduling i fully believe that some days that man thinks to himself oh no i've only been up to see the ball of energy twice this week i'm gonna have to move some stuff around the stones also feature massive engravings that have been the subject of a lot of investigation as you can see on this episode of the history channels decoded looks like there's a bunch of different languages i just googled this and we've got english spanish swahili hindi hebrew arabic chinese and russian it seems like to me it seems like a weird new 10 commandments is it 10 [Music] 10 that's weird yeah good catch is it is it a good catch is that the weirdest thing about the 20-foot stonehenge outside of atlanta the number 10 also to television editors everywhere next time you're sitting in the edit bay watching footage of a middle-aged man slowly count to ten don't put it to dramatic music you can just edit it out people will honestly thank you in fact here are 10 reasons why you should do that what but they are right in that the stones feature weird aspirational instructions mostly vague catch-all edicts like protect people and nations with fair laws and balance personal rights with social duties and guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity you know some broad feel good precepts mixed in with some light to medium eugenics but but the line that the controversy focuses on reads maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature and i will say at this point you could see how anyone who believes in say a satanist new world order cabal might see that as a bit of a red flag and as long as these stones have been around which is again since 1980 people have been scared shitless by them some believed they were a satanic altar while in 2014 conspiracy theorists cited the guidestones as proof that the ebola outbreak would kill off much of humanity and in 2018 marjorie taylor green oh yeah she is involved here too i mean how would she not be she endorsed the idea that the guidestones revealed a world genocide plot and after hearing a bunch of theories that dumb instinctively i am tempted to defend the guidestones and point out that a far more common interpretation is that they are directions for rebuilding civilization after an apocalypse which would make some sense given that they were built at the height of the cold war and the client who went by the alias robert christian by the way had told the builder he wanted it to be capable of withstanding the most catastrophic events i could also point out the ridiculousness of thinking that some sort of global illuminati wrote down their plot for killing off 95 percent of humanity on a giant granite post-it note and left their secret plan somewhere no conservative would ever find it rural georgia i am tempted to say all of that but here is where this piece gets a little weird that's right at this point not with the snake boss not with that thing that you had to look at earlier and are having to look at again now this right here is the weird part because while researching this piece as far as we knew no one had ever definitively uncovered who was responsible for the guide stones none of the reporting that we looked at ever dug that deep and it was only after we wrote everything that you've seen up to this point right now that we discovered this kind of shitty 2015 documentary from a born-again christian filmmaker who decided to investigate the guide stones in it the producers tricked the one man who knows robert christian's real identity and who had promised never to reveal it into allowing them to open this case containing their correspondence on camera and in doing so seemingly revealed that the guidestones were ordered by a man named a man named dr herbert kirsten and if that documentary is right and kirsten is the man behind the guide stones that is pretty troubling because he was a doctor from fort dodge iowa with multiple interests conservation certainly population control absolutely but he also wrote at least two letters in newspapers praising david duke yeah that's david duke the clan leader and neo-nazi arguing among other things that duke voices many beliefs held by reasonable americans it is unfortunate that more acceptable public figures are not pushing similar views which is the sort of thing that makes a line like guide reproduction wisely hit a little bit different now doesn't it so unfortunately this web extra which was supposed to be a light piece about this silly southern fried stonehenge suddenly got much less fun which is very disappointing i mean what other roadside attractions are harboring dark past how many mini golf dinosaurs are secretly race zealots who rolled up this giant ball of twine hitler it doesn't bear thinking about and i know that you like me may be blindsided by this revelation although i'm also willing to bet that others saw this coming the very moment i said a monument in georgia i mean this is a state that carved confederate generals into the side of a mountain it's not like white supremacist stonework is light on the ground there but in the end i guess what this really means is that reluctantly i do have to hand it to candice taylor in a way not to her policies which are terrible or her platform which is incoherent or her campaign ads as which are ridiculous or her bus which is very bad or her position on furries which is extremely funny or her ability to spell her own name which again is just objectively wrong that's not how you spell that but i will admit that when it comes to the georgia guidestones she may have been partially right albeit for completely wrong reasons when she suggested that they were a problem which is totally heartbreaking because if there's one thing that should bring our country together is a good mysterious roadside attraction so if you live in georgia or anywhere and you have a few hundred tons of granite lying about why not build your own functioning astronomical clock one that doesn't reference eugenics put your own mysterious rules on it like i don't know the furry days are over when i'm governor that's a good one i promise you if you build it they will come i know at least one guy who will come three to five times a week thank you so much for watching this we're back on june 5th goodbye you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 6,279,194

Keywords:

Id: AEa3sK1iZxc

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/wormhole222]

Just wanna say I unironically find these more enjoyable than the actual show. I know you were joking John, but these are hilarious. The Airbud one had me cackling.

[u/violue]

Honestly I was pretty disappointed that this wasn't just 17 minutes of John talking about his favorite kinds of rocks.

[u/MySockHurts]

More proof that John Oliver is a furry, or at least a close ally of the furry community

[u/Negligent__discharge]

So, a politician has vowed to get rid of school mascots...by force?

[u/bakerzdosen]

I didn’t exactly see that twist coming…

[u/thebetabruh]

this video rocked. I should have watched it stoned.

[u/Theinternationalist]

Jesus guns babies is a terrible way to list your priorities, it sounds like a disturbing sentence.

Also funny how they got deep into the conspiracy Angle here

[u/poopyheadthrowaway]

Relevant Arrested Development

[u/bobbyOrrMan]

Its nice when intelligent people find a clever way to make their point. Even better when its funny.