Real Time with Bill Maher

The BBQ Pit
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You are almost getting it, but you and Maher miss important factors that would had caused Maher to said then something like ‘well, it is complicated’, but I guess just “blaming liberal governance” was punchier.

Funny that you allow yourself to use irrelevant examples while declaring invalid what is valid criticism to what the right is peddling against San Francisco and other cites. This ignores that it in San Francisco, one big factor was the issue of technology companies sending workers home and then diminishing a lot of traffic (fewer people to pressure wanna be shoplifters to behave) leading also to less private security. Then many struggling retailers blamed shoplifters when it was not as bad as it was claimed, with studies that included Oakland numbers to the San Francisco ones.

The point remains, this issue has so many items missing from Maher talking points that to continue to push them is causing others to fall for a right wing narrative that is leading many lawmakers to dismantle sensible criminal reforms. A reason why the right managed to convince Maher and other middle of the road guys to fall for this was thanks to exaggerating the problem into a crisis and then demanding simple solutions that are often wrong. That has happened so many times before that it is worrisome to see many falling once again for the framing devices from the right.

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What are the sensible criminal reforms that Maher’s monologues are opposing?

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As noted before, dog whistles have the quality of being re-used by middle of the road guys by not noticing the frequency that unhinged conservatives are using. It gets missed by middle of the road lawmakers too. That the target of the dog whistle are law reforms that help a lot the poor and minorities is a feature. BTW this was in a link on my next to last post:

Three lengthy state hearings on California retail theft since mid-November have so far established that policymakers don’t understand why shoplifting and smash-and-grab robberies have increased since 2020. Or even whether they really have increased.

The retail industry recently admitted that it had been playing fast and loose with claims of monumental assaults on stores by crime rings. The National Retail Federation previously said that of the $94.5 billion of merchandise that went missing from stores in 2021, half the losses were due to organized retail theft. Actually, the federation said in an updated report this month, it was probably only about 5%.

Walgreens previously reported that it was closing five stores in San Francisco because of retail theft losses. But it, too, sheepishly updated its statement to acknowledge that the stores were closing for other reasons based on corporate decisions made well before the alleged retail theft spike.

In both cases, the industry admissions confirmed reporting in 2021 in The Times and elsewhere that the original numbers were inflated.

Petty theft with a prior was eliminated by Proposition 47, the 2014 criminal justice reform ballot measure that police tend to blame for all of society’s ills. Soon after its passage, critics targeted its removal of felony charges for simple drug possession. But polling showed that the easing of drug crimes was Proposition 47’s most popular reform, so the rollback pressure shifted to the $950 line that divides petty theft, a misdemeanor, from grand theft. Surely it was that change from the previous $400 that ramped up crime in California?

But California’s threshold is lower than in most other states, so it can’t possibly account for higher theft increases here. Besides, the threshold had already been raised by legislation signed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, so it couldn’t account for increases in crime after the passage of Proposition 47 four years later.

Would stiffer terms stop repeat offenses? They could easily do the opposite, by filling more jail cells and erasing the savings that currently fund the state’s most effective recidivism reduction programs.

The reason for the savings that fund those anti-recidivism programs?

Proposition 47.

An opinion, but it is posted because of the cites, and more educated than Maher’s.

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According to this article, California is one of ten states with the lowest dollar thresholds for making theft a felony.

So the controversial line between petty theft and grand theft in California doubtfully is a major driver of property crimes in the state.

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I just want to point out that two different issues are being muddied here, and it’s important to keep them straight.

Various Republican wingnuts are suggesting that the solution to the epidemic of shoplifting is tougher penalties. This isn’t the position that Maher is endorsing and is certainly not what I believe. What he said – and I thoroughly agree with him – is that there’s a huge problem with lack of enforcement.

The right-wing solution to the shoplifting problem – and indeed to all problems of crime – is “throw 'em all in jail (and throw away the key)”. The only thing that’s produced so far is the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the civilized world, and one of the highest recidivism rates, too. That’s not what Maher is advocating.

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It’s good to know that Republican wingnuts and Bill Maher don’t deny the existence of every epidemic.
That the ones they think exist actually don’t is a puzzle.

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The point stands, Maher is blowing the whistle and cheerfully misses how he is manipulated to justify the the ‘throwing all in jail and throw away the key’

Just saying.

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I suppose if it’s repeated enough, it’s bound to catch on. I believe that theft has been a problem for as long as selling was a thing.
Once an epidemic, always an epidemic, yar!

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You seem unhappy with my use of the word “epidemic”. I hate to see anyone unhappy, so please feel free to substitute some other word of your choice. I would suggest “plague”, but you probably won’t like that one either.

Or maybe you believe that years of media reports and statistics and anecdotal accounts about SF’s crime and shoplifting problems are just fake news manufactured in a smoke-filled back room by Bill Maher in conspiratorial collaboration with Republican propagandists.

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Perhaps, like MAGA, you could point me to a time when shoplifting was not an epidemic as you claim it is today.
I am less than impressed with your casual right wing talking point.

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Get it right, the bit about others claiming that there was not an issue is a straw man. The point was that the conservative propagandists have found a nice wedge issue and an effective dog whistle, because it is who what is to blame the issue (not much governance), not that there was a problem. (And not as bad as they wanted it to be)

Speaking of which, I will have to add that Elon Musk is in part the issue here, by removing a lot of the tweeter workers (a good chunk of the missing traffic in San Francisco).

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This is just snark, not argument.

Terms like “shoplifting epidemic” are clearly emotionally loaded. It evokes the idea of large scale severe damage that is growing out of control. This promotes fear and the need for some massive reaction—including the “lock 'em all up” idea that you admitted is bad.

The data we have suggests (from the link above) that San Francisco is not remotely the worst city for shoplifting in the country. Yes, the data is about reported shoplifting, but there’s no reason to believe that SF is 2 or 3 times worse at reporting shoplifting. And it seems that shoplifting is actually down from where it was in 2019, which suggests we’re already dealing with the issue.

And it doesn’t take any sort of conspiracy for newspapers to sensationalize things, nor for the right wing sources to play them up when it fits their narrative and run with it. And all Maher has to do is read either of those to buy into it.

If Maher has a point at all, it’s that Democrats need to do a better job combatting these talking points. But Maher could also help with that by clarifying them.

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Footnote for the haters. Last Friday’s Real Time was better than average, featuring a spirited dialog with panelists Adam Schiff and Seth MacFarlane (yeah, why does Maher always bring on far-right loons? :roll_eyes:). I must admit, in all honesty, that I could see little glimmers of why his personality grates on some people, but that’s not my point here. I invite the haters to check out last Friday’s New Rules segment, linked below.

For those who can’t be bothered, it draws an instructive lesson from the parallels between the populist asshole Bolsonaro in Brazil and the populist asshole Trump in America. Both were voted out of office, and both staged a coup to try to remain in power. In Brazil, all parties united in solidarity to condemn Bolsonaro, and he’s now a pariah in that country. In America, well … it’s a little different, ain’t it? The video is worth a watch.

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Careful now, that straw man is just a tad wobbly.

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I was thinking of posting something similar. I haven’t watched him in quite a while, but happened to catch this show. Yeah: glimmers of what I used to like about Maher.

I also detected a note of realpolitik in one of his “wokeism” comments (should sports (continue to) be divvied up by gender or should men and women compete in major sports side by side?).

It felt to me as though he was chastening Democrats and the left-most wing of the party because this is what jeopardizes their ability to best Trump in the General Election.

The other consistent thread I noticed is that Maher takes a back seat to nobody in terms of loathing of Trump (he truly was an early adopter), but that “Orange Man BAD” just isn’t a winning election strategy.

And I definitely agreed about the last “New Rule:” incisive, cogent, and passionate.

Plus, I got some laughs over the course of the episode.

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That’s why we should add everybody knows that it’s a sin to vote for a Republican to the mix.*

*I know it’s a lie, since “sin” isn’t actually a thing (in the sense that sin is doing stuff that makes the Creator of the Universe mad at you), but if people are going to keep believing that the Universe has a Creator, we might as well get some small amount of mileage out of the Big Lie Principle of politics.

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That just sounds like he’s doing exactly what I gave up on him for. That’s not an issue that Democrats are even talking about. It’s one of the things that the right wing pretends they’re talking about, as part of their culture war nonsense. It’s also an obvious allusion to the trans sports issue, which is again something that the right wing uses to rile up their base against trans people.

Not a single Democrat is running on this issue. It’s not a part of the platform. So using that as something Democrats need to stop doing in order to win elections makes no sense. His stated reasons don’t add up.

What does make sense, and fits with his usual style of humor, is that he’s saying things he knows his audience already agrees with. This isn’t inherently bad on its own—I’d say the same thing about what John Oliver or Jon Stewart do. The relevance is what he expects his audience to agree with. He’s playing to a right wing base.

And, if he was not a political “truth telling” comedian, I wouldn’t care. But what he does actually helps spread those ideas, same as the other “alt light” people. It’s the same underlying issue. He’s making right wing talking points seem more legitimate to people who are more in the middle—people who still like him from before.

It doesn’t matter what else he does if he’s also spreading right wing talking points. It’s exactly the issue I had before with him. Spreading this crap makes things worse. It is not legitimate criticism, but blowing real things out of proportion to make it seem a far bigger deal.

It’s exactly like the anti-SJW, anti-woke anger bait articles that I hate.

tl;dr Maher: “Democrats need to stop doing this thing they’re not actually doing!”

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If you’re looking for the clip, it is on Youtube and it is the Overtime segment. Hilarious for also featuring Seth MacFarlane who forgets that this portion of the show is broadcast on CNN and swears like a sailor at one point.

Maher’s comments on the sports thing are weird as a criticism of Democrats. He says “The Atlantic put out an article last year…” He does not mention when articles in The Atlantic became official Democratic Party policy. He does not name any places where this apparently offensive de-gendering of sports is actually taking place (although as I recall from my school days, P.E. class was not large enough to split teams by gender so it’s not like this is a weird idea to me anyhow). He just puts it out there as if every Democrat is campaigning on getting rid of teams for boys and teams for girls and making one big, happy gender-neutral team regardless of the unspecified consequences.

He does this a lot. Finds some example of “wokeness gone mad”, ascribes it to the party as a whole and wipes his ass with it on TV. Is this really the problem you are making it out to be, Bill? Are Conservatives reading old issues of The Atlantic, foreseeing the coming tidal wave of wokeness wiping out their hard-coded notions of gender and flocking to Trump as the only means of preventing the imminent demise of their masculinity? Or are you perhaps going a little too hard in the paint on behalf of issues that aren’t actually issues?

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Oh, FFS! Maher did not “ascribe to the [Democratic] party as a whole” the article in the Atlantic. He’s describing how swing voters – the voters that make all the difference – are influenced by negative perceptions of liberal ideologies as portrayed by the media. It relates to things like that article about de-gendering sports, pro-Hamas demonstrations on liberal college campuses, or the perception of high crime in Democratic strongholds. It doesn’t have to be official Democratic Party policy. It doesn’t even have to be true, as Trump and Fox News know very well. It just has to be believed, and associated with liberalism, and hence with Democrats. This is precisely how – uniquely in America – “socialism” and “liberalism” came to have such negative connotations.

The burning question here is how an utterly corrupt, self-serving imbecile like Trump could possibly be a viable candidate for president of the USA, even after multiple criminal indictments. If someone had written a novel about such a scenario 20 years ago, it would have been rejected by all mainstream publishers as too comically ridiculous to be taken as a serious work of fiction. And yet here we are.

I bumped this thread to post that insightful “New Rules” piece about how Bolsonaro, following almost exactly the Trump insurrectionist playbook, became a pariah in his own country and was banned from ever running for office, whereas in the US Trump is more popular than ever. Maher is offering at least a partial explanation, even if incomplete and grossly oversimplified. You’re entitled to disagree with him, but not to misrepresent what he’s actually saying.

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I’m sorry, but the combination of my health and my shocking lack of investment in Bill Fucking Maher means I won’t argue this point too far.

Just this:

I like the phrase, “Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?”

It’s my sense that Maher is trying to suggest how the Democrats might be happy (ie, win elections and have the chance to govern).

Most of the “SJW” stuff that he thinks is counter-productive is not coming solely from crazy Aunt Freda with her dreadlocks and her Seroquel.

It matters not that it isn’t legislation being proposed by Democratic Congressional Representatives or that the “anti-Woke” legislation is yelling at clouds and fending off bogeymen.

It’s not party platform, but it’s not made up from whole cloth. It’s in the middle. It’s nuanced.

And the people Trump dredged up … aren’t. They aren’t nuanced. They’re irrational, easily demagogued, and credulous. They’re simple people, people of the land, the common clay of the New West.

They are cognitively rigid, very binary people in a decidedly non-binary world.

And you hear lots of them on social media saying … in effect … exactly Maher’s take on this: I won’t vote for Democrats because of … this kind of thing.

They constantly say that “You don’t even know what a woman is!” and “You’re for mutilating children!” (ie, gender affirming procedures).

These people are wholly incapable of understanding that the Roman Catholic Church, the NRA, and the Boy Scouts have harmed more children than drag queen story hour ever has or ever will.

These elections are usually about swing states and slim margins.

And it seems like the GOP understands this better than the Democrats do.

On this … I think Maher has an important point.