And yet Maher has also promoted the autism-vaccine link, as I posted, and only got the vaccine when he needed to for work. He’s anti-vax.
Then stop for fucks’ sake.
Well, they’re sleeping on the floor in police stations here. If good old Bill feels so strongly about open borders, he can donate some of his wealth to housing these people.
In fairness to Maher, I think he’s 100% right on this. Some folks age well and some don’t. Biden is one of the ones who’s didn’t. I’m not saying he’s senile or anything, but he doesn’t come across as being formidable enough for the job. I’m worried it’ll be a real liability for him in 2024.
Being POTUS requires you to be “formidable”? When the fuck has the POTUS ever been “formidable”? Sounds like a bullshit argument to me.
Biden sometimes says dumb things but he’s been doing that for more than 50 years, it has nothing to do with age. He has aged pretty damn well to me.
That was almost 50 years ago. This article has more dumb things from that time:
He can’t help himself. He doesn’t do well as a public speaker. But that isn’t a sign of cognitive decline, it’s just a personality trait he has always had.
Used to be a fan, even sat in the audience plenty of times for PI back when I lived in L.A. He also brought rough footage from Religulous to the Toronto Film Festival one year (a year before the movie got released) and did a great Q&A.
Haven’t watched his show because for years I didn’t have HBO, but I’d catch up with bits on YouTube, and I think maybe there was a podcast of the audio(?). At any rate, every season he seemed to piss me off more and more…his anti-Muslim bigotry got increasingly strident, then militant vegetarianism, then there was the anti-vax stuff. As others have said, he’s right about some stuff (I’m glad there’s at least one vocal outspoken atheist besides the equally assholish Ricky Gervais working in Hollywood), but he’s gone too far off the end for me to even watch him in passing.
Mostly agreed. From 2009-2021, we had presidents who, like 'em or hate 'em, had formidable oratorical skills. Biden doesn’t have that. He’s not inspirational, he doesn’t look good on camera, he doesn’t draw enormous crowds to rallies.
But he’s negotiating the fuck out of everything. “The Art of the Deal” should be the title of his book. As someone who voted for him with a sigh and a clothespinned nose, I’ve been very impressed by what he accomplishes, quietly and without fuss, and have taken some real schadenfreude in the shocked dismay Republicans experience when they repeatedly realize just how outmaneuvered they’ve been.
Formidable oratory, or formidable negotiating? I know which one I’ll take.
If “formidable” means “being a good public speaker” then sure, I’ve just never heard the term used that way. But admittedly that is absolutely one of his weaknesses, and always has been.
But as you point out, the other side of that coin is that he’s pretty affable and that has let him reach across the aisle many times. With Republicans being so obstructionist, that doesn’t seem to be as helpful now as it might have been at one time, but at some point we’re going to need someone who can work with them to get things done like a new budget, and that’s where he shines. He didn’t get his “good old Joe” reputation out of nowhere.
I don’t think it’s consciously used that way, but I think unconsciously, people confuse strong oratorical skills/public charisma with being formidable.
Generally, formidable means “inspiring fear” absent other context, and the only POTUS that I can remember who tried to govern that way was Trump. (And he’s too much of a clown for that to work.)
But “formidable speaker” makes sense.
I didn’t mean to imply that being POTUS requires one to be formidable, per se. If it did, The Rock would be President. But the fact is that being POTUS is both mentally and physically demanding, and Biden doesn’t seem formidable enough to meet those physical demands. He looks frail, in other words. At least, he does to me.
Trump, on the other hand, has the energy of a man twenty years his junior. A side by side physical comparison doesn’t flatter Biden, IMO. This sort of thing shouldn’t matter, but unfortunately it matters a lot. I’m worried it’ll end up mattering more than the fact that Trump was a terrible President. People have short memories and vote with their guts, not their heads.
That is pretty much me and I can guaran-fucking-tee I have more energy than that overfilled bag of hamberders. I’d like to see Trump get on a bike and try to keep up with me. Or WALK 18 holes of golf. Fuck, he needs two hands to lift a bottle of water to his piehole and he can barely walk down a ramp. What energy? You mean energy behind a podium spewing bullshit? Yeah, I couldn’t do that so I guess he has that over me.
I’d like to associate myself with each and every criticism made here about Maher.
I used to like him, too.
Writ large, I think it’s a combination of a couple things:
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He’s been too well-off for far too long to understand where the line between edgy satirist and entitled asshole is. Folks used to wonder aloud whether Springsteen could still write the “working man’s anthems” after achieving major success, or whether U2 could keep their Edge [NPI] when they’d come so far from their war-ravaged roots. I think that’s a Major Maher Problem;
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What used to be constructive criticism of the – in his view – risks of political correctness taken too far has aligned itself, now, with the “anti-wokeism” of the rabid RW. And, ISTM, he feels like he struck a resonant chord, and – either the performer in him or the capitalist in him – finds fortune in reaching this audience, heretofore profoundly predisposed to hating him.
I think (anti-)PC morphed into something far more corrosive these days, and Maher may be failing to understand that he shouldn’t have tagged blithely along for that change.
One thing that I will add about Maher in this discussion is his seeming inability to take any criticism. If a joke doesn’t get the laughs he feels it deserves, he openly castigates his own audience on the air. That’s the mark of a hack, not a good comedian.
Are you fucking kidding? When was the last time you saw Trump physically exert himself? Remember in 2017 during the G7 Summit in Italy when Trump rode in a golf cart while other world leaders walked? That walking tub of hamberders has the energy of a man twenty years his junior? Don’t tell me you also thought he looked good and he looked hard in his mugshot photo too.
The Trump who baby stepped his way down that ramp had the energy of someone who was 20 years younger, had he been 105 years old.
I’d slot Teddy Roosevelt under “formidable” as well.
We never see Trump doing anything athletic, so we don’t get videos of him falling off his bike the same way we do Biden.
I think you’re confusing personal charisma with energy. Trump has a lot more personal presence, but I’m far from convinced he’s got more of the energy that the job of presidenting actually needs.
They both seem like old men to me. I wish some younger people would get a chance at the role. The issue isn’t old people being capable - plenty are - it’s that older people have dominated politics to the exclusion of other age groups.
Biden is borderline in many ways: I didn’t think late 70s was an issue, but early 80s? I’d rather vote for Obama’s VP if he were to Obama’s left, but to Obama’s right? I’d prefer a cringe-inducing hipster to a cringe-inducing grampa. I think a sitting POTUS by tradition can depend on getting his party’s nomination for a second term, absent criminality or economic disaster both of which he stands accused of, but by ludicrous partisans. Biden’s just barely on the wrong side of many issues for me, but running against Trump (or any of the GOP hopefuls)? An easy call.
If it was age, the Dem nominee would be accused of youth and inexperience, and you can depend on the GOP making the Dem nominee out to be a crook, even if he ran out of a career in a monastery.
I believe we may all be just in a situation of flailing about for what word to use to describe it, some fighting their own impulse to reject any allusion to Trump that is not derisory.
But before the target audience, Trump will come across as a lot more animated when onstage getting feedback from the crowd. Which, sure, is not a fair comparative because Biden OTOH is, was, not a showman nor is he expected to become one by those who supported him. But it’s a matter playing a game of perceptions not for all but for enough people.