Negroni to be banned?

Seriously!

Mocking actual harm done by people in power would be a lot more impressive.

Republicans need to be protected, so he’s being a brave warrior and going after the weak and oppressed instead.

The last bit I seen of Bill Maher was when he steered his mocking of Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock to just blame the entire thing on college aged youth.

I laughed, but my laughter was at the how Maher’s sole fixation has just devoured him. Cranky old man yells out his one joke. repeat.

Maher mocks Republicans constantly and mercilessly. These sorts of comments sound like they’re coming from people whose total experience of Maher’s show is a couple of YouTube clips.

No, he did not. First he showed the hypocrisy of Smith laughing at Rock’s joke until the glare from Jada – a woman with a whole host of her own problems – informed him that it wasn’t supposed to be funny. This then led to a wider discussion of cancel culture. Yes, he did in this instance implicate colleges and college kids, because there were ample reasons to do so. As he showed with the comedian literally being taken off stage during a college performance for a joke that he was deemed “not entitled” to make, or another college requiring a comedian to basically sanitize and censor his material, or Maher’s own banning from giving a commencement speech at Berkeley, colleges are a common breeding ground for the political hyper-correctness movement. We just saw it again in the discussion here about Brandeis University trying to sanitize common everyday English.

Maher being canceled at Berkeley, incidentally, has to be regarded as particularly ironic since in the 60s Berkeley was the epicenter of the Free Speech Movement. Today, it’s become, along with many other college campuses, the epicenter of politically correct speech, to such an extent that what is perfectly acceptable on mainstream television is apparently too radical for the Berkeley campus. And somehow that makes Maher a cranky old man?

But I don’t know where you get the impression that this is all Maher ever talks about. His is one of the most eclectic shows on television. The “sole fixation” here is on you. There are reasons to dislike Maher and some reasonable people do – he can come across as smug and has a few peculiar ideas about medicine and about Islam. But your fixation about him is not one of those reasons.

Might I remind you, that you, yourself, was the one to introduce Maher and McWhorter into this thread. You also did it through the anti-youth/SJW culture war lens. Clearly you see the fixation too.

Honestly, take a look at his clips. Real Time with Bill Maher - YouTube how many are nakedly along this culture war vein?

Edit: Also, why can’t he bring some politically minded Zoomers on? Plenty of Republicans, plenty of celebs, plenty of Democrats even… but no progressive Gen Z? Like none that I see. Big fat 0. ha!

Of the Millennials he has on as guests, Bari Wiess (Miss “IDW is the Future and I’ll self martyr myself by resigning from the NYT because of imaginary cancel culture”) seems to be the only one and she is so old that she barely qualifies as a Millennial (but she is also right-wing culture warrior too).

You keep repeating this as though it were accurate. It’s not.

What “fixation”? Maher has no more “fixation” on supposedly hating youth than McWhorter does. They call things as they see them, some of those things being the ones I mentioned which you apparently don’t see fit to defend.

As for “take a look at his clips”, I have a better idea. How about you watch the actual show. I watch it every week without fail. How often do you watch it? Incidentally, Real Time with Bill Maher is now in its 21st season and has garnered 21 Emmy nominations. You don’t get that by being a cranky old man yelling at clouds. As I said, it’s one of the most eclectic shows on television, covering a very broad range of topics.

There are two possibilities re Zoomers. They haven’t been on the show either because (1) most are still too young to have accomplished anything notable, particularly in the political arena, or (2) Maher hates them all. Which do you think is more realistic?

As for millennials, Maher has had lots of young people on who are millennials by most definitions, or very close to it: Ritchie Torres (Democratic Congressman), Brooke Jenkins (San Francisco DA), Kristen Soltis Anderson (pollster and a frequent guest on the show), Catherine Rampell (journalist), Robert Costa (journalist), etc. That’s just from the past year.

It’s not? Among the common everyday English words and terms Brandeis PARC was reportedly trying to cancel: rule of thumb, policeman, victim, survivor, trigger warning, African-American, picnic, lame, and “ladies and gentlemen”.

needscoffee already pointed out in detail in post #95, with several links, that “trying to cancel” is a ridiculous exaggeration of what that list was actually suggesting with regard to the use of various words that some people dislike.

It’s not your phrase “common everyday English” that is being criticized as inaccurate here: it’s your pearl-clutching description of the list as “Brandeis University trying to sanitize”. Saying that some words, even commonly used words, may benefit from a little extra thoughtfulness about how one is using them in particular situations is not “Orwellian”, and it’s not “canceling”, and it’s not “sanitizing”.

Ritchie Torres? looks him up

Alright; while not a college Gen Z (the constant target of Maher’s anger), this man is the closet thing I’ll ever get to seeing a young Progressive on Bill Maher. While I should congrats Maher for having him on, I’m laughing on how SHOCKED Maher is that Torres isn’t one of “the bad progressives” he seems to be an average Dem, very likable, who isn’t a crazed strawman (Maher compliments him on this)…

…and of course Maher needs to have him on the show with… Bari Weiss agian. lol. Oh Maher.

Edit:

There are two possibilities re Zoomers. They haven’t been on the show either because (1) most are still too young to have accomplished anything notable, particularly in the political arena, or (2) Maher hates them all. Which do you think is more realistic?

I just don’t care enough to let Maher slide on this. Get a progressive college Gen Z on. Do it. He could make it happen if he wanted to.

That document didn’t try to cancel anything. It presented a list of words that the authors thought might be offensive to some, and challenged readers to consider their use of language. It said it didn’t expect anyone to adopt all the changes it suggested, they were primarily meant as a suggested starting place to consider our use of language more carefully. That’s not “Orwellian” by any definition, and it’s only “cancelling” by a strained right-wing reactionary definition.

His speech was canceled. He is doing fine and dandy.

That was a perfectly reasonable interview. Your criticism of Maher for congratulating this newly elected young Congressman is only evidence of your continued fixated bias.

In response to both of the above, I’m coming at this from the same perspective as McWhorter. As a linguist, his perspective is the language itself, the ways that some people are trying to change it, and why those changes do or do not have merit. I’m much less interested in the mechanisms by which those changes might be promulgated and what particular label to put on it than I am in examining the actual language changes themselves and commenting on their merit.

I still maintain that “trying to cancel” and “trying to sanitize everyday English” are appropriate descriptions, because even if the mechanism being employed is just the most gentle of suggestions, it is nevertheless passing judgment on certain words as being allegedly “oppressive”, and the intended effect is indeed to make those words disappear from common usage. But this is completely secondary to my point. I mean, the sentence I wrote in post #103 was

“We just saw it again in the discussion here about Brandeis University trying to sanitize common everyday English”.

I could just as well have said, using the words cited and preferred by @needscoffee,

“We just saw it again in the discussion here about Brandeis University students making a list of suggestions for language change”

and my point remains exactly the same, and the initiative being discussed remains just as ridiculous, because the discussion here (from my perspective, anyway, and from McWhorter’s) is about the language change itself, and whether or not it has merit.

The ethicality of canceling someone’s planned speech – particularly at a campus that was once on the forefront of the free speech movement – is not judged on the basis of whether or not the cancellation bankrupted them.

Brandeis is a great example. There are absolutely morons on the left who want to get people to eliminate words from their vocabulary on the flimsiest of reasons.

And nobody would know about them if Republicans would just shut the fuck up about them. They have no power.

Meanwhile, my local university just got informed that they can’t ask prospective staff members about their experience promoting diversity and equity in the workplace, because the board of governors has declared that that’s political. They have power.

Speaking truth to power means going after the Board of Governors, not after the undergrads.

Being a pissant bully means going after the undergrads, not going after the Board of Governors.

Maher and McWhorter appear to have chosen their sides.

My critique is that Maher was so shocked how “reasonable” this mid 30’s progressive Democrat is. Yes. Torres wasn’t the crazed strawman Maher assumed he would be (although Maher said that he still holds off his final judgment because Torres still “could be insufferably woke” however seeming “perfectly sane” for now).

Maher is what he is. Outright shocked that a progressive Dem could be so affable. Now I want to see him invite a politically minded Gen Z on. I would like someone to say to Maher:

You know, we all have our own political priorities. College progressives are focusing on their own struggles, Right-Wing Republican politicians on passing book banning laws/removing womens rights, Democrats on stopping them, and you on stopping us college progressives. We Gen-Z are not the straw/boogeymen you think we are. We are just young and politically minded. If we were they strawmen you paint us as… we still shouldn’t be the target of your ire. You have an international political show. Act your age and learn some respect.

But hey. I think Maher knows what he is doing with his “Those crazy kids” routine. It plays to his target audience.

I’m baffled as to why you’re overreacting so hard to the mere existence of these discussions about language use. ISTM that you’re just setting yourself up for “gotchas” when you remark approvingly on, say, increasing gender-inclusivity in language by using gender-neutral pronouns, and then denounce as “ridiculous” suggestions for using more gender-inclusive substitutes for phrases like “ladies and gentlemen”.

It could not be clearer that the criteria involved are basically ones of individual personal preference, and that your (and Maher’s) main complaint is simply that other people (particularly “woke millennials” and their ilk) have the temerity not to prefer all the same criteria as you do.

Then by what criteria do we judge someone to be “canceled”? What happened to Maher has happened to countless others over countless decades, and yet people have managed to describe what has been done to them quite accurately using words that already existed. “Cancelled” is a very vague term that tells us absolutely nothing as to what actually happened, and this new and unnecessary definition of the word is used to make an event seem more important than it really is.
It is needless puffery used for misdirection.

Yes, of course a board of governors has power. But they’re not trying to change the language, they’re ruling on hiring practices. It sounds like a monumentally stupid ruling, but it’s within the legitimate scope of what university administrations do.

Incidentally, I’m curious whether you used the word “equity” intentionally – in the sense in which it’s defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers – or whether you just intend it to mean the same thing as “equality”. Because “equity” is itself an example of a successfully deployed bit of language engineering – not one that I’m opposed to (though McWhorter is), but a fine example nonetheless of engineered language.

“Cancelled” is a perfectly descriptive term. It means that when the time came for Maher’s speech, Maher wasn’t there.

Is that the definition of “cancelled”? Someone is prevented from speaking at a particular spot at a particular time? I could have sworn it has been used in other situations.
In other words, it is NOT perfectly descriptive. it is term used to rouse the rabble.

I was being a bit facetious as “cancelled” is a valid dictionary word that does describe what happened to Maher’s proposed speech. But it’s also valid in the cultural sense that Maher was “cancelled” by the Berkeley students, who basically shunned him and wanted nothing to do with him because they disagreed with his views on Islam (although I very much doubt he would have had anything to say about it in a university commencement speech). That second use of the term describes circumstances that are stupid and disappointing and reflect a lack of respect for diversity of opinion and the principle of free speech of which that campus was once such a strong proponent. It’s not rousing any rabble – the rabble was already roused, and it’s describing the outcome.