The Last Week Tonight host grilled the Oscar-winner during a Tribeca Institute 20th anniversary panel and screening of 1997 film Wag the Dog during which Hoffman vehemently defended his behaviour and accused Oliver of "making a very quick judgement."
"This is something we're going to have to talk about because... it's hanging in the air," Oliver said, in reference to the allegations that he sexually harassed Anna Graham-Hunter as a 17-year-old production assistant on the set of his 1985 TV film Death of a Salesman.
Audience members - including The Washington Post journalist Steve Zeitchik - were said to be "visibly shocked" by the interaction in which Oliver expressed disappointment in Hoffman's original apology in which he claimed the behaviour is not reflective of who he is.
"It's that part of the response to this stuff that pisses me off," Oliver stated. "It is reflective of who you were. You've given no evidence to show that it didn't happen. There was a period of time when you were a creeper around women. It feels like a cop-out to say, 'Well, this isn't me.' Do you understand how that feels like a dismissal?"
"Do you believe this stuff you read?" Hoffman asked to which Oliver replied he did "...because there's no point in [an accuser] lying."
Comment: And right there, Oliver reveals his true colors. Fact: many accusers do lie. That's why we have a justice system that presumes innocence until guilt is proven. Maybe Oliver would prefer a Soviet-type justice system?
"Well, there's a point in her not bringing it up for 40 years," Hoffman said.
Hoffman spent the remainder of the Q&A attempting to contextualise his behaviour, words which were continually combatted by Oliver who later expressed why he couldn't stay silent.
"I can't leave certain things unaddressed," he reportedly told the audience. "That leads to me at home later tonight hating myself, asking, "Why the f*** didn't I say something? No one stands up to powerful men.'"
A second allegation of sexual harassment was made against Hoffman by producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis who alleges that, as a playwright in 1991, a meeting with the actor and Tootsie screenwriter Murray Schisgal turned unprofessional following inappropriate remarks.
One problem is that celebrities are basically taught to think that they can do whatever kind of rude shit they want and everyone's OK with it because they're famous. So of course this kind of harassment happens in the show-business all the time, to various extents with various individuals. It's part of the "culture".
The second problem is America's current tendency to wallow in victim mentality and feel offended at literally everything, which then goes so far that people complain about sexual "assault" whenever somebody touches them, says a "bad" word, or just gives them a creepy look. Everybody is encouraged to complain about any "offence" to their ego, real or imagined, and to accuse others of whatever they feel like.
The third problem arises from the second. As everyone is complaining about all kinds of bullshit, it trivialises the whole matter and real victims have a hard time getting the attention they deserve. The fact that the mainstream media have zero ability to take anything seriously or have an intelligent discussion about anything, and just make a sensation out of things, certainly doesn't help.
So we get accusations being thrown left and right, the media making a show out of it with no ability or intention to get the facts straight or be helpful in any way (and in fact, they often make things worse), and people then can't tell what's really going on, what really happened or didn't, what's appropriate or isn't, and who's a real victim and who's just a whiny... "snowflake", I guess?
With the clip above, people will try to decide whose side to take. Well, about that...
Dustin Hoffman sucks. John Oliver sucks. It's a funny thing about America. Often both sides are bad.