John Oliver, making good on his promise to not allow Last Week Tonight to become "all Trump" in 2017, sat down with the Dalai Lama on Sunday's episode. After Oliver opened the segment with some catch-up on the history of the Dalai Lama and Tibet, the two enjoyed a laugh-filled discussion on the Chinese government's objections and the healing power of horse milk.
"We'd like to talk about someone you may not have thought about for a while, the Dalai Lama," Oliver said at the top of this week's main Last Week Tonight segment. "A man so enlightened he's basically the original woke bae. According to a Gallup poll, the Dalai Lama is actually the sixth most admired man in America." Oliver, showing a clip of everyday Americans discussing what they admired about the Dalai Lama, then reminded everyone that the Chinese government has the exact opposite feelings.
"Now the Chinese government, however, have a very different view," Oliver said. "Instead of vaguely loving the Dalai Lama, they very specifically hate him." That hate, Oliver said, is due to the dispute over Tibet. "The Chinese government's hatred of the Dalai Lama stems from its desire to maintain control of Tibet, a region in southwest China," Oliver explained, describing the region as the "Willem Dafoe's dick of planet Earth" due to its surprisingly large size.
When asked about the Chinese government's depiction of him as an "evil wolf," the Dalai Lama kept his response reliably enlightened. "They describe me as a demon," the Dalai Lama said, mocking that description by putting his hands up as makeshift horns. "Whatever they want to say, that's their freedom. I have no negative feeling. I just feel love. I practice, you see, taking others' anger, suspicion, distrust and giving them patience, tolerance, and compassion. I practice that."
Peep the full interview, including Oliver's expression of shock at the Dalai Lama's horse milk method of stopping alcoholism in Mongolia, at the top of this page.
