Looking at some quotes now, there does appear to be LOTS of generational resentment;
Gen Z stupid because Tiktok, millennials stupid because Facebook, boomers stupid because Trump (probably), only my generation is wise and pure.
It’s no secret that I would strongly disagree with her on Hamas, but I don’t really find “they’d kill you for being queer” a compelling argument in favor of the war, and it sounds like just more of his “everyone is stupid except me” routine.
Maybe. He certainly did hit one generation for using what he considers inferior sources of information. (I’m not about to defend getting most of one’s news from TikTok either, by the way).
But your initial guess was 100% ‘kids today!’ stuff, whereas the actual remarks were more ‘you kids are being used and you don’t realize it’—which is a bit different as a political position.
I’ve been looking for transcripts or records of Chappell Roan comments on that part of the world, and not finding much. In characterizing Maher’s piece, I summarized his scorn for Roan and others who take the position ‘Israel is evil and its opponents are universally righteous,’ by saying “championing Hamas.” My meaning was the longer version (bolded here), and the summary was, quite possibly, an over-simplification.
I agree that speaking out against Israeli war crimes is not the same thing as supporting Hamas. It’s possible (and not uncommon) to deplore both Israeli and Hamas actions.
However I think it’s fair to ask questions of those who speak out against Israeli war crimes and don’t also speak out against October 7, 2023 and the subsequent holding of hostages (and the treatment thereof). “Why?” is a completely fair query, in my view.
I didn’t see that in anything Maher said. Maybe he’s said it in some other context?
I also don’t see that on this board. If you have, would you link?
But he sure had a whole lot of “kids today” leading in to it and all around it. Starting with his “playful” self-introduction, and then talking about being old enough to remember phone booths and car ash trays and vaginal sex.
Yes, there’s a hint of “you’re being used by TicTock”, and relying on unreliable media. But he also makes the, as pointed out, assumption that decrying the devastation in Gaza is supporting Hamas. He says Gen Z didn’t have a lot to say when Hamas attacked Israel.
But it’s possible to consider Hamas brutal terrorists that should be eradicated while decrying the indescriminate destruction and death that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian civilians.
And then he went off on some assumed tangent about how some tictick videos must be labeling Israelis as colonizers, and that’s why Chappell Roan and GenZ are anti- Israel.
Which shows how much old man Maher really knows about the Middle East, because while he’s smugly delivering a lecture on how Israel can’t possibly be colonizers because of the Bible, he’s totally ignoring the reality of the millennia that occurred between then and now. How Israel took over lands and is kicking the Islamic residents off to take it over for Jewish settlements.
Okay, I’ll end the hijack on Israel, my point is that Maher acts like he’s preaching truth from on high, which is ironic coming from a noted atheist, but his smug self can’t stop to consider that there’s more to the story than the Bible - again ironic.
I’d love a quote showing someone actually saying that, because right now that’s the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.
It’s embedded in his whole rant, where he accuses all of GenZ of supporting Hamas and ignoring October 7 because they use TicTock. His entire riff about how Chappell Roan killed at Coachella, but it’s different when Hamas kills at a music festival. His talking about how Hamas would throw her off a building for being a lesbian is predicated on the idea she supports Hamas.
Which is quite the thing given Bill’s reaction to 9-11.
My bolding. I didn’t hear that. Can you quote any part of his piece that you believe reasonably equates to that bolded part?
Yes, of course it is.
My bolding, again. Notice that I didn’t use quotation marks, because it was my own summary. What we greatly need to continue this argument is a full transcript of his piece on Roan. I’m not seeing one, yet.
Yes, the man who spoke out against calling the 9-11 bombers as “cowards” can’t distinguish between being against the bombing of children and being for the Oct 7 attack.
I’m not finding one. Everyone seems to just repost the video clip and assume you will watch it.
Your summary keeps equating criticism of Israel as universal uncritical support for anything anti-Israel. That’s why I want a cite to justify your representation.
Where did Roan and others take a position that could fairly be equated with “it’s opponents are universally righteous”?
My best guess is that he’s responding to her saying she won’t vote for either candidate because both parties are abetting “genocide” in Gaza.
I disagree entirely with her conclusion, though I understand the logic behind it. My response, aside from arguing that calling what’s going on in Gaza a “genocide” is hyperbolic and factually wrong, would be that if you care about what happens to the Palestinians you should vote for the party that’s been actively providing humanitarian aid in Gaza and working to try to negotiate a ceasefire, and not the one lead by a white supremacist who would give Netenyahu carte blanche to do as he pleases. Not voting is like trying to solve the trolley problem by breaking the lever - not only are you not preventing the death of innocents, you’re actively refusing to mitigate the severity of the problem you claim to be concerned about. As a wise professor once said, “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice”.
Maher’s response is just generational grievance and technophobia mixed with sexism and casual dismissal of her concerns as not being serious.
I know this is a tangent, but I don’t consider it either hyperbolic or factually wrong. The Israeli government’s actions only make sense if extermination of every Palestinian in Gaza is their ultimate goal.
That said, being a single-issue voter is rarely a good idea.
You know, I had some pithy remarks prepared for this and several other posts in this thread… but we already have a number of very long, very heated threads on this exact subject that 've been boycotting for months, and I don’t want to have to boycott this one as well. How about you guys move this elsewhere and we can get back to discussing Bill Maher?
I saw her position, but again, nothing about that says she supports Hamas or the October 7 attack, it just says that she doesn’t feel the Democrats are doing enough.
I’ll skip the genocide hijack.
Right. He’s taking her reasonable (if IMO incorrect) stance and turning it into an “Oh I guess you think Hamas is just great” strawman so he can launch into yet another rant about how young people are stupid because he doesn’t understand new media. I was visiting with my mother (who, despite my insistence, thinks Maher is funny and insightful) last week and she decided to put on one of Maher’s recent monologues which was more of the same thing - how DARE Gen Z criticize Thomas Jefferson for owning his slaves and raping them because if you criticize the Founding Fathers it means you hate the Constitution and the First Amendment.
I did manage to convince her to turn it off by pointing out how he was just constantly shitting on young people.
Yep, and sorry if I went over-aggressive on this, it’s a general bugbear and you just reminded me of it, but the rant is really aimed at the media
For example, look at how the campus protests have been covered:
https://youtu.be/dVOn7r5iXbI?si=-tI7ZNnwRXG6PlB5&t=162 (go to 2:42 if the time offset doesn’t work)
And note that one of the clips is Maher saying “Keep marching for Hamas, kids”
(This does chop up your post quite a bit, but the full thing is just above.)
Whether or not Maher is basically saying “criticism of how the IDF is conducting this war is …[equal to] support for terrorism” is questionable. The quote you offered (“keep marching for Hamas, kids”) is in the ballpark, but it’s missing the championing of the IDF that you allege he has done. I haven’t seen it.
(Note that you didn’t offer any examples of this being said on this board, either.)
I suspect that people’s usually excellent powers of argumentation are somewhat short-circuited by the imperative to prove Maher 100% Bad and Wrong All the Time. (My own posts have been fairly critical of Maher, but don’t adhere to the 100% rule by any means.)
As for Smapti’s “he’s constantly shitting on young people”—that seems fair to me. But I still believe that his Chappell Roan rant, in particular, was more about his anti-religious-fundamentalism obsession (in particular the Muslim edition of it), than about his sour view of youth. That was present, too, but less so than the anti-organized-Islam part.
Everyone’s mileage is going to vary on this. Characterizing Maher’s rants IS a profoundly subjective activity.
@Sherrerd In my last post I apologized for being over-aggressive and clarified that my rant was really aimed at the media, not you. So I’m surprised the response is something of an ad hominem about “powers of argumentation”; why this tone?
I didn’t claim anyone else did.
I never said that either. I said that any support for Palestine or criticism of the IDF is painted as support for Hamas / terrorists, which this quote is a good example of.
A longer quote of Maher is in the video below, where he explicitly claims the students are in support of the Oct 7th massacre. The Maher bit starts at 0:42, but I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing (it’s only 9 minutes) as it shows how all the protests are simply framed as being pro-Hamas / antisemitic, and even Jessica-freaking-Tarlov cannot imagine there being any other reason for the protests.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Now you are using two different standards for “championing”. YOU said
and
That’s EXACTLY the same kind of “championing” assertion you made against Roan, but for you it doesn’t equal championing for Maher when he says, “Keep marching for Hamas, kids.”
If Maher isn’t championing the IDF when he asserts protests for Palestinians is helping Hamas, then Roan isn’t championing Hamas when she says that the IDF is using genocidal tactics.
As I said:
I was genuinely surprised by this comment:
I don’t see the “tone” that you apparently do. I would feel confident that anyone who reads through this thread would be taken aback by the viciousness of attacks on @wolfpup (who tends to admire Maher), which seem, to me at least, to be way out of proportion.
I do think that participants here, intent on beating down any suggestion that Maher could ever say anything worthwhile, have had their usual posting style (which might be called ‘argumentation’) short-circuited. Obviously opinions on that are going to vary as much as will opinions on Maher himself.
If you want to label that as “tone” then that’s your privilege, of course.
Well, you came as close to claiming that I had done so as you could without actually typing the words ‘you said this’:
(My bolding, for the second instance.) Again I would challenge you to quote any post in which I said anything remotely akin to “support for Palestine and/or speaking out against Israeli war crimes [is] the same thing as support for Hamas” or “criticism …of how the IDF is conducting this war [is the same as] support for terrorism.”
I honestly don’t think you would have made even the most veiled of claims that I had said such things in ANY other thread.
It’s this thread that does it.
I did watch that entire YouTube video. (I never watch FoxNews, so it was painful.) I don’t know if those participants’ remarks are the best support for your arguments about media framing college protests as being pro-Hamas/anti-Semitic; you’d be better off with evidence provided by a more reputable outlet, I think. No one believes that Fox News produces anything other than made-to-order propaganda (basically any narrative the Murdochs want to see pushed).
Sure, your initial post that started this back-and-forth:
Roan has not said anything in favor of Hamas, she’s just criticized Israel’s conduct in this war. How does this make her a “useful idiot” for Hamas? Is it not possible to ever criticize the IDF without being pro-terrorist?
If I were to criticize any part of how the US conducted its wars in Afghanistan or Iraq does that make me pro-taliban / al-qaeda? Would people be telling me about how I wouldn’t be treated well by the taliban? (and this is not to equate this current conflict with those…so-called “collateral damage” is far worse now)