No, they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive. But as already discussed, we have different prevailing views on whether or not he’s an asshole. Millions of people disagree. Perhaps you’d like to share your conclusive evidence to support your contention that he is one.
Which of this first group I listed here would qualify as “lefty libs and fundamentalist pubs”? Or is it possible that you really never watch the show or just don’t know what you’re talking about?
That must be one hell of a brilliant “establishment guy” who agreed to come on a major network show that was broadcast live internationally and yet had absolutely no idea what the show was about!
Considering the “informed” opinions you’ve just bestowed, maybe you should watch the show!
For instance, I mentioned at another time about Rick Santorum appearing on Real Time and spouting complete bullshit about climate change. This was a one-on-one and Maher, as a non-scientist, and doing a live show, was in no position to refute the details of the crap that the denialist crowd had stuffed into Santorum’s little brain except to say that he highly doubted the veracity of something that contradicted the basic findings of climate science. I explained in the cited link why it was bullshit. But here’s the zinger: I was really impressed, as I noted here, that Maher and his staff didn’t just let it slide and they did their research, and in the very next show Maher made a point of setting the record straight and exposing Santorum’s mendacity, explaining exactly why Santorum had been wrong and deceptive, pretty much in the exact terms I had just described.
Of course, the vast majority of the time, the debate is on political and not scientific issues, between equally well-informed participants, and so one learns a lot from the conversational exchange. This is really the heart and soul of what Real Time is all about.
So yeah, if you want to be informed, watch the show.
He has a slew of very high quality guests as his initial interview. Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Bob Gates, Sister Helen Prejean (anti-death penalty nun), etc. You can actually learn a lot and be entertained at the same time.
You know, I used to love (and still enjoy) last week tonight. But as soon as I noticed the template they used, the show did seem to lessen for me. They really do just reuse the same style of jokes ad nauseam
I think the show is great, regardless of what I said about Maher’s oddball antics in the other thread. I think too many people expect the show to be serious since it has some true experts and statesmen on the panels, but the discussions often get unserious pretty quickly because Maher usually takes them in directions where they are on less firm ground. But I don’t expect TV shows to be perfectly informative. I just treat Real Time as like the View: regular folks, sometimes famous, sometimes very, very smart and informed, just sitting around and shooting the breeze about the issues of the day.
I don’t have HBO so I’ve rarely seen Bill Maher. Don’t miss him, although I generally agree with him. One show I remember featured Gene Simmons from Kiss & some unfamiliar young Republican. The Vietnam war came up; Maher & Young Republican both lamented that they’d been too young to participate. Simmons explained that he & his bandmates had wanted to fight, but they were in college. Yeah, right. Others managed to fit college & a tour of duty into their lives–more used college to avoid the draft. (And I don’t blame them. Vietnam was Not Our Fathers’ War.) Maher let him get away with it.
A recent episode of Finding Your Roots explored The Irish Factor: Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly & Soledad O’Brien. The host played the Bills a bit. O’Reilly exclaimed how his “Irishness” made his family tough, no complaint folks; Gossett went into the Great Famine & almost had him in tears. Then he showed Maher some family information recorded by a priest; much Irish data was lost during the Civil War when the archives burned. Maher *almost *said one good thing about that priest but stopped.
The show did some genetic testing–finding markers that indicated two guests shared a common ancestor within the last 500 years. Yup, Maher & O’Reilly. (Soledad O’Brien had a link to a former guest–Stephen Colbert.)
I’m along those lines myself. He has a point now and then, but he undercuts himself by not putting enough wit in his humour, so he strikes me as being a jerk. Jon Stewart had the right balance - he could talk about a subject that he found clearly outrageous but in a way that was clever, meaning I could chuckle along with him in what felt like shared intellect rather than the “Fuck yeah, you* said* it, Bill!” chest-beating reaction Maher is trying to cultivate.
Or so is my impression, anyway. I’ll cheerfully admit not having watching Maher enough to have fully gauged his charms.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Bill’s humour only really works if you already agree with him. And when he’s not bitching about Muslims (or other religions) or going on some weird anti vaxxer rant, I usually do agree with him. But when I laugh it’s, like you say, a more “damn straight” than a “ha, that was a good joke” laugh.
Maher loves the president. The reason Obama will not go on real time with bill Maher is because of what Maher has said about muslims. It’s sad really. Bill Maher deserves to have the president on his show.
Bill Maher is pro-science when it comes to climate. He is anti-science when it comes to health and nutrition. Long ago, I recall him being perilously close to what we would now style an HIV-truther. He was skeptical that HIV caused AIDS. He has backed away from that edge, though he continued to repeat his opinion that disease is caused by unhealthiness of the body due to poor nutrition, and not by pathogens. He has not repeated that claim in some years, but he did shift into an occasional polemic against what he sees as a conspiracy to push an ineffective flue vaccine. I don’t recall him ever actually claiming that vaccines cause autism, but he is an enabler of those who do. He occasionally bitches about Western Medicine, extolling the virtues of the unscientific Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is apparently under the care of a naturopath.
He accounts for this duality, claiming that people should listen to the people who know what they’re talking about on climate change, but that he dismisses scientists who know what they’re talking about on health issues because he says climate science is much more certain and medicine has a lot of unknowns. This really grates on me, because his reason for supporting some science is markedly anti-science. That is, scientists do a lot of careful work to define how much they can actually know with certainty precisely because they can’t make sufficiently good claims about what belongs in these areas of uncertainty. It is not therefore a magical fairy land where all your fantasies might be true. If you’re pro-science you accept that scientists have good reasons for not having larded these blind spots with all kinds of claims, however fun it might be to believe in chi-energy or magnetic wristbands or other such flummery.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a frequent guest on Maher’s show, but they never talk about the quackery that Maher supports, so Maher doesn’t get called on this particular bullshit. He brings on guests that will argue with him politically all the time, but I’ve never seen him bring in a guest who will call bullshit on his health and nutrition beliefs.
I would like a cite for these allegations. The only thing I have heard him say, is express scepticism about flu vaccines, and about the amount of healthcare people receive in general.
FWIW I work in healthcare, and it is a widespread opinion that people get too many tests and use too much medicine. Which sounds like Maher is saying.
And Now This: A Rebuttal from Janice in Accounting.
Seriously though, the best part of Oliver’s show is the investigative piece. There are plenty of people riffing on current events; it’s when there’s some serious substance underlying the jokes that they work best.
On Maher: I’m in the “he’s a funny asshole” camp. For a long time I watched because the panel discussions were good and he had the occasional good joke but eventually the assholery outgrew the good parts of the show and I gave up.
Maher is back into HIV/AIDS and cancer quackery, credulously embracing a loon who charges people millions of dollars for “cures” founded on stuff like drinking goat milk.
That is one of my biggest problems with Real Time (I found this was far less pronounced on Politically Incorrect) - the conversation starts getting really interesting, and then Maher decides to do a silly tangent and all of a sudden the conversation moves from interesting to talking about Maher’s silly statement.
In addition to his nuttery on vaccines he’s a PETA supporter and a friend of Ann Coulter.
I think he’s a narcissistic dickhead who lacks the talent or empathy of equally but differently obnoxious Howard Stern. (Stern somehow has a soul even underneath the dickery.) I want to slap his smarmy face when he breaks off a very interesting conversation to go into the usually painfully unfunny New Rules.
That said, I never miss his show and he’s made me research some things. (Too busy this week to look into it but I’m wanting to research Dr. Samir Chachoua- the doctor from last week who claims to have injected himself with Sheen’s blood.)
I far prefer (in order of most to least) John Oliver, Trevor Noah, and Larry Wilmore to him. While I think Noah is charming and intelligent and doing well in a show that is technically but isn’t really * The Daily Show*, Oliver is the only who fills any of the void left by Jon Stewart.
I like Bill Maher and have watched his shows for years. I’m a huge fan of Vice, which he’s a producer for I think.
I think, however, on Real Time, he has shown some misogynist tendencies, although he pays lip service to feminism once in a while. I don’t believe it. I think he’s old-school sexist pig, but tries to be PC on camera.
But, fine, whatever, I can suck it up because often he has really great, intelligent, articulate guests from whom I learn a thing or two.
The biggest problem I have is he’s a shitty discussion moderator. He allows people to talk over each other so that you can’t discern any one person’s point. The loudest shouter gets the most attention. Unfortunately, that’s often the biggest full-of-shit windbag who knows he or she has to shout to get any attention at all. When he allows two or more panelists to just continually talk at the same time during the panel segment, I just turn it off. I can’t hear or understand anything anyone is saying anyway, so I’m getting zero value out of the discussion and wander off to find a movie or something. Anything that doesn’t have that cacophony of assholes screaming over each other. I hate that.
