John Oliver devoted part of Sundays Last Week Tonight to the way corporations and public figures observed International Womens Day, which ranged from awkward to full-on appalling.
Several brands tried to honor the holiday last week with female-centric wordplay: McDonalds turned its classic golden arches upside down (I guess the M is for men the rest of the time, Oliver joked). Brawny ran a Whos Your Shero campaign. We consulted with some linguistics experts, and it turns out theres already a word for womens heroes, and its the word heroes,' said Oliver. Its a little like the word sheroes only its not stupid, and it is a word.
Numerous male newscasters marked the occasion with disturbing on-air behavior from inappropriate jokes to flirting with female co-anchors. Oliver highlighted one anchors pervy comments about Salma Hayek, which occurred during a segment on Mattels Inspiring Women doll of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (whom Hayek portrayed on film).
The host closed by mentioning a weird moment from Boris Johnson, [the U.K.s] Foreign Secretary and dumpy Swedish Beatle, who visited school children and told them, unprompted, about Egyptian ruler Cleopatras suicide via asp bite.
What are you doing? Oliver replied. I would happily watch hours of Boris Johnson explaining grim endings to distracted children. So then Sara loses her mind; Harry has his arm amputated; and Marion performs a sex show for drugs. And that was the end of Requiem for a Dream, children.