Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Rory Stewart, Equal Rights Amendment

Even before Sunday’s Last Week Tonight episode came on the air, we had a feeling that we’d get a lot of talk about Britain. Why? Well, Donald Trump was just in the United Kingdom, and we know that there’s nothing that Oliver loves more than the intersection between the United States and Britain.

First, Oliver spoke about Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan and him trying on a Winston Churchhill hat. Following that, he then went into a discussion of the search for the next successor to Theresa May. He went at in particular Boris Johnson, who he described as an adult version of Kevin McAllister from Home Alone in the event that his parents never came home. Oliver’s real point here, though, is that there aren’t any favorable contenders to be the next Prime Minister. Most of them have unfavorable policies, and perhaps the most tolerable one in Rory Stewart is with a weird platform. Basically, Rory’s been traveling around much of the UK, recording messages and apparently talking to people.

What happened from here may be one of the greatest things in the history of John Oliver’s show — him discounting a long-discussed story of how he “tackled” a young member of the Royal Family when he was much younger. We then spent a good five minutes studying video footage of Rory Stewart. Which Rory was the right Rory in the footage? We didn’t really learn a lot about Rory in any of this, but it was still fantastic — even better than the montage of how Gordon Ramsay wants to do inappropriate things to his food.

The main segment – Women. Or, to be specific, the Equal Rights Amendment. Here’s the crazy thing — women still aren’t guaranteed equal rights under the United States Constitution. How hasn’t that changed? It’s something that is assumed because it should be assumed.

If you’re wondering why the Equal Rights Amendment hasn’t been ratified, it’s because there are a number of states that are still holding out on it — including Florida. (Yep, insert some Florida jokes here.) We know that we are living in a world where politics drag and we don’t often get what we want, it does feel like the ERA is something that could eventually come to pass. The difficulty remains getting awareness out there for it. The importance of the ERA is making sure that things can’t be rolled about, and rules cannot be changed. Congress cannot alter something like an amendment.

There has been talk among some states when it comes to passing the ERA and, at the end of the episode, he made a plea to a number of States to ratify it. He singled out Virginia and Arizona as two strong candidates — and then also made it very clear that it isn’t going to be Mississippi just because of the way that their flag looks.

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