John Oliver is as funny and clever as Bill Maher thinks Bill Maher is.
When it comes to hating Bill Maher, I was an early adopter. His supercilious, condescending attitude towards women turned me off of his first show, so I’ve only ever seen clips of the current one.
Bill has got a severe case of Old Man Syndrome.
I remember before the strike he was bitching to one of his guests that porn isn’t wholesome enough for him anymore.
Lol wut!?
To follow the local Chess news in Korea and Japan, I read the sports section of the news sites.
I’ve said quite a bit over the years in defense of Bill Maher, but as I recently said in another thread, I no longer want to be in the position of defending him. I don’t know whether I’ve changed or if Maher has indeed degenerated into old-man syndrome, but although I still watch Real Time it’s more for the often-interesting guests than for Maher himself, like David Frum, Sam Harris, Rob Reiner, and many others. But these days I look forward to the John Oliver show a lot more.
Still, in the interest of fairness, I object to some of the labels being put on Maher, like “anti-vaxxer”. In this era of COVID, that tends to mean someone who refuses to get vaccinated and spreads malicious information about the vaccines. That doesn’t describe Maher, who is himself fully vaccinated and has never AFAIK suggested that anyone else do otherwise.
OTOH, one of his biggest and most annoying faults is an ignorant attitude towards medical science in general, which includes “vaccine hesitancy” with respect to some other vaccines. His general position is that since “medical science doesn’t know everything”, one can extrapolate from this truism that medical science doesn’t actually know much of anything, and therefore one should use one’s own judgment and make one’s own decisions. Maher seems blissfully unaware that this is exactly the same logic used by climate change deniers, and that it betrays a speaker who is ignorant of the relevant science but feels entitled to oppose it anyway, unaware of how stupid this makes them look.
It’s ironic because Maher is a strong advocate for the soundness of climate science and the need for mitigation. I once made a lengthy post that I can no longer find, not so much about Maher but about the idiocy of Rick Santorum when he appeared on Maher’s show spouting batshit crazy garbage about climate change, saying that a recent study showed that 57% of climate scientists don’t believe that CO2 is the dominant cause of global warming.
Maher pushed back strongly against Santorum’s blathering, but didn’t have the facts on hand to refute that specific claim, so Maher just said it sounded highly implausible. Which is what I thought, too, so I did some research and found that Santorum had completely misrepresented one particular paper – he completely lied about it. I was impressed that on the next show, Maher and his staff having done the same research and come to the same conclusion, Maher took the time to explain to the audience why Santorum’s claim had been total bullshit.
I mention that because it shows that in many cases (not all cases by any means, unfortunately) Maher does have respect for facts. The problem with Maher is that he’s strongly opinionated and also batshit crazy in a few areas, so his show is unfortunately not a reliable source of factual information, even if the show in general, and many of the knwoledgable guests in particular, are in fact genuinely informative. And yeah, there’s the smugness. I get why many people don’t like him.
He seems to be making his policy positions strictly on stuff that happens to him personally, “him” being a rich white rich single rich old rich guy: his problems with getting permits for solar panels, with getting blowback for taking “out there” positions that rub some people against the grain, with discrimination against older people (except when he can apply it to Biden), etc. He gives me a pain in the balls these days.
And the sucking up to Musk and De Santis? He should be kicking their asses, not kissing them.
ah, see, there’s your problem right there. He’s never been anything more than a self-satisfied contrarian. It worked in 1996 when there were few alternatives between MSM or hate radio. Things have changed since then; his schtick hasn’t. That’s why he’s aged so poorly.
Don’t you agree he’s simply gotten crankier, and less in touch with your living situation and mine?
He’s always been a crank. We just don’t call people cranks when they’re in their 30’s. We see them as contrarians or independents or eccentric. But the thing is that as we age, the things we find stupid or annoying are heavily affected by the filter of age and fear of change. And moreover you’re speaking from a place of relative security and power.
So at age ~67, if your schtick is still “roast everybody because I’m the smartest guy in the dorm”, it simply doesn’t work. You’re not in touch enough to be that insightful. You’re no longer punching up, you’re punching down now. You’re just sort of a dull jerk who’s lucky he can dine on what’s left of his name.
I did enjoy his show once upon a time. I do not anymore. I don’t give him any of my time or attention.
I think he has changed and I have changed. Obviously, I believe I’ve improved and he has not.
I think you’ve nailed my issues with Maher right here.
From what little I’ve seen of Bill, he reminds me of Dennis Miller, if less proud of his own vocabulary. And I didn’t care for Miller either.
If I have an excuse, it’s that when I enjoyed bill Maher I was still a teenager / possibly early twenties. So that level of irreverence and “straight talking” seemed refreshing at the time.
But watching now, yeah, he’s very poorly informed on every topic and smug about it. And probably always has been.
To quote South Park (whose creators also disappeared up their own asses years ago), he loves the smell of his own farts.
You are a bit ignorant then.
Maher conceded that he only got his shot so that he could return to work and shared his personal view that getting multiple injections of the vaccine further increases one’s risk of COVID-19
Both men have a shared history of anti-vaccine sympathies. During a 2015 episode of his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher also praised Kennedy for “championing” the anti-vax cause and spurring a debate on the issue (regardless of its foundation in reality). He also cast doubt in a 2003 segment on his show about the potential for a pandemic.
Just like Trump, Maher has spread fear and doubt about vaccinations, once stating that this so-called “genius medical advancement” is actually a “risky medical procedure.” Both platformed anti-vaxx leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in their own ways. When the pandemic hit, both would eventually get the COVID vaccine, yet neither walked back prior support for the idea that vaccines can cause autism. Trump—to his credit, but also because he wanted to take credit—promoted the vaccine that was developed on his watch, even at the expense of getting booed by his own supporters. Maher, on the other hand, dismissed the vaccine’s effectiveness after catching COVID, and later saidhe didn’t want to get boosted.
When Donald Fucking Trump is compared favorably to you because he spreads less disinformation on a subject, you have a problem.
“It was never that virulent a threat, I thought, to people who were in good health,” he continued.
“Now, some people can’t help that they’re not in good health. We should, of course, protect the vulnerable, but it was mostly a disease of the very old, which every disease is a threat to, and people who have comorbidities, which mostly is due to lifestyle.”
COVID-19 has been known to lead to serious illness and death even in younger and middle-aged adults who are otherwise healthy, and studies have shown — and most public health experts agree — that vaccinations greatly reduce the chances of being hospitalized or dying from the coronavirus.
“I don’t want to live in your paranoid world anymore — your masked, paranoid world,” Maher said. “You go out — it’s silly now. You know you have to have your mask, you have to have a card, you have to have a booster. They scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas,” Maher said to laughs from the audience.
That’s just a relatively small sample. He has been spreading dangerous misinformation for years and has been heavily and justifiably criticized for it. He even defended the “right” for Alex Jones to be on social media even as he harassed Sandy Hook victims” families and endangered their lives.
So his loathsomeness goes beyond his antivax and Covid misinformation but that’s the main issue most people have with him, since AFAIK that’s when he went from being an irritant to being an actual public danger.
Not much to add to Atamasama’s excellent compilation of Maher’s antivax/disinformation stylings, except to add that he’s enabled other notorious antivaxers (like Jay Gordon) and spread the bogus claim that flu shots cause Alzheimer’s disease. Take the following gem of a Maher quote:
I don’t believe in vaccination either. That’s a… well, that’s a… what? That’s another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory, even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own deathbed and said that Beauchamp(s) was right: it’s not the invading germs, it’s the terrain.
(note that the Pasteur reference is a classic made-up bit of nonsense from the antivax playbook.
Wow. OK, I have been out of touch if Maher has been decidedly anti-vax since 2009. I am mildly surprised, I knew he was full of shit, but at no point did I think he was a fucking idiot. Until now.
I saw that one, and he said something along the lines of how arrogant these young people were to think anyone wanted to hear what they had to say. My first thought was, “How is that any different from you when you were a young comedian?” I mean how arrogant was he in his 20s to think a crowd of people would want to watch him talk about anything?
I still think he makes valid points at times but sometimes he’s way off base.
I probably agree with most of the things he says honestly. I’ve just never liked him or found him entertaining, and he says so many things have are horrible and even dangerous that it doesn’t matter how much other stuff I agree with.
Please don’t make me try to defend Bill Maher! Also, curse you for making me register for The Daily Beast just so I could read the articles (I hate signing up for anything). 
I freely admit to being sick and tired of Maher’s disdain for medical science, as much as he stands up strongly for climate science, anti-Trumpism, anti-religious-nuttery, and other worthy causes. I was trying to provide a balanced view of his good and bad points. He still has a biting wit that is mostly pretty funny, and that, combined with the many thoughtful guests he has on Real Time (plus the occasional entertaining crackpot) makes the show worth watching, though it’s no longer the Friday night draw for me that it once was. Now it’s Sunday night with John Oliver.
The first Daily Beast article quite frankly seems a little biased, in that the actual text contradicts the implication of the headline (and note that the term “lightly challenged” here is an unprofessional editorial comment):
Maher then lightly challenged Kennedy over his views on vaccines, on the one hand appearing sympathetic to his views and at the same time questioning how Kennedy can stand by his skepticism even when studies have praised vaccines’ efficacy.
“Why have they done many, many studies—including ones that were not funded by the pharmaceutical industry and including ones from other countries—that all found out, they all came to the inclusion that autism, no connection to vaccines at all?” Maher asked.
And the second article is just downright misleading. I just quoted him as challenging RFK Jr, with Maher citing proven studies of the efficacy of vaccines, over no link to autism, and the fact that Maher has been fully COVID vaccinated himself. How does that make him a “notorioius anti-vaxxer”? Furthermore, it’s not clear what the hell they’re referring to about CNN giving Maher a prime-time slot. All CNN has is the “Overtime” bit which is just a few minutes of informal chat after Real Time is over, and has always been available for free on YouTube. And on top of that, this was still when CNN was being run by Chris Licht.
Again, don’t want to defend Maher, but having once been a fan, what I’m seeing is a fair amount of hyperbole coming from the haters against someone whose positions, as obnoxious or wrong as they sometimes may be, are also often more nuanced than the way they’re being presented.
Bottom line: Real Time with Bill Maher is still worth watching, mostly for the guests who are often interesting and informative, but Maher himself has to be taken with more than a few grains of salt; he’s crazy wrong about some important things, right about many others, and smug about all of them.