FWIW, after learning about it in this thread, I loaded up his podcast and listened for the first time. I guess I expected comedy? Well, sometimes it’s about comedians and the comedic process, but based on the Judd Apatow compilation episode and the Jamie Lee Curtis episode I am absolutely floored by the level of intimate, heavy shit that famous people are willing to share with this man. This is not a fluff podcast. This is Mike Destafano describing his wife’s last motorcycle ride while she’s dying of AIDS. Maria Bamford talking about her abusive relationship while Marc discusses his own rage issues. Gallagher losing his shit and storming out when called out for his bigoted acts. I don’t even want to say high drama. High depth.
I’m not entirely sure how he does it because there’s nothing in his style that really stands out to me. Chris Hardwick was one of the best at this, on his Nerdist podcast, but I have to say Maron’s show eclipses even that. For some reason, these people just sit down to talk to him and open a vein. It’s exceptional.
(I take it back, something does stand out to me. He is completely non-judgmental and 100% willing to bring out his own shit. So he can have an authentic conversation about drug addiction with Jamie Lee because they’ve both been there, and I think his openness about his own traumas and his own flaws goes a long way to put guests at ease.)
I will just note FTR that that was a really good episode, featuring an interview with Democratic governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear, and former RNC chairman Michael Steele and former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield as panelists. The comment about Mamdani was just Maher going on with his old complaint that the Democratic Party was injuring itself with some of its positions, and that Mamdani would create a negative image on a national level that would hurt them. Both of his guests disagreed with him, to which Maher replied, “well, that’s why this is a debate program”.
IOW, it was a very informative show with intelligent discussion among intelligent people and this is why I watch it. So I have no idea what point you (or HuffPost) are trying to make here. It’s very old news that Maher believes, rightly or wrongly, that the Dems are hurting themselves by being too “woke”.
Attacking someone solely because of what country they came from is unambiguously racist. Anyone who continues to patronize that show should be ashamed.
What makes something a dog whistle is that it’s coded in some way that only certain people (especially those who support that opinion) will get it. It doesn’t apply to just blatantly saying it out loud.
Of course. But that’s not what Maher said. His view, in essence, was that the Democratic Party was injuring itself with some of its positions, and that Mamdani would create a negative image on a national level that would hurt them. He never “attacked” Mamdani, although he did suggest that someone with citizenship from such an odious country might have done well to renounce it. You don’t have to agree with any of this, but let’s at least keep our facts straight.
With all respect, this is uninformed bullshit. Did you see the show? It was a very informative show with, as I said earlier, Democratic governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear, and former RNC chairman Michael Steele and former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield as panelists. It was an hour of intelligent conversation. So Maher blurted out one of his anti-woke opinions again, over a period of about 3 or 4 minutes of a 60-minute show, during which his panelists disagreed with him.
I enjoyed the informative conversation, and I’m not ashamed of watching it. I don’t have to agree with Maher, and I often don’t, but that doesn’t prevent me from appreciating the conversations that he brings to the table.
Honestly, the quote from @Smapti makes me question the journalistic integrity and agenda-driven motivations of HuffPost.
The entire argument that one’s nation of birth determines whether not one should receive votes (aside from Constitutional factors) is pernicious. Anyone from the US could be attacked for ‘coming from a country in which Donald Trump was given power by a minority of eligible voters.’ And some people DO operate on that guilt-by-association basis, fallacious though it is.
Mamdani’s country of birth is irrelevant to Mamdani’s positions and values.
If Maher wanted to list such positions and claim them as his reason for urging viewers to support Mamdani’s opponent, that would be respectable. Claiming that Mamdani is disqualified by virtue of the country his mother was in when she gave birth to him is decidedly NOT respectable.
He’s always been vocally anti-Muslim, though he usually excuses it by saying he’s anti ALL religions. I believe he’s sincere about the latter, but it does appear from comments he’s made over the decades that Islam bothers him a bit more than do other religions.
This is from 2017 (and thus doesn’t mention Mamdani), but details some of Maher’s history of comments on Islam:
Yeah, what’s all the fuss about? It’s like when the news media hypes a jet plane crash where all the passengers were killed, when a thousand other flights the same day landed safely.
A couple of minor comments about last Friday’s show, with Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Bill O’Reilly on the panel. OMG, does O’Reilly ever look old compared to how I remember him! He looks like he’s at death’s door.
There were a couple of interesting exchanges between the two Bills. When O’Reilly said something critical to Maher, Maher instantly responded, “Yeah, but I still have a show, and you don’t!”
There was also a brief discussion of white supremacist, homophobe, misogynist, and anti-semite Nick Fuentes. O’Reilly, knowing that Maher sometimes has controversial figures on the show, asked Maher if he’d ever have Fuentes on his show. Maher’s firm “no” was also immediate. “That’s a bridge too far, even for me”. FWIW.
Well, I guess it’s because it’s a well financed POS show jammed down our throats on both HBO and on CNN as some kind of even keeled political ‘informational show’ when in reality it is an ‘entertainment show’ that tries to tell mainstream America that eating trumps bull shit tastes better if you add Bay Leaf and Salt.
If Bill Maher was dropped from 20,000 feet into the deep South Atlantic, I’d feel badly for the crabs and lobster that would digest his shitty ass.
Maher had the great Patton Oswalt on his podcast, and proceeded to make shit up about California birth certificates:
Discussion is around the 1 hour 14 minute mark. Patton is skeptical, but they don’t fact check in real time, and just move on. But the confidence with which Maher spreads an easily disprovable lie is a quick example of his particular brand of arrogant bullshit.
That doesn’t even make sense, what he’s saying. The terminology used by “woke left” people acknowledges assigning sex at birth; hence why we have the terms “assigned female/male at birth”.
It just shows me that Maher just doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.
First, Maher is not wrong, though he may not have spelled out all the details:
Second, I think these relaxed podcasts can offer really interesting insights into his different guests in ways that the more formal show cannot. Kudos to Maher for originating this format.
Third, this Friday will be Maher’s last show of the season, and it makes me sad. The lucky bastard is off work from before Thanksgiving until mid-January. And John Oliver just signed off his last show of the season last Sunday, and won’t be back until February. To be fair, it’s not that either of these guys are lazy or demanding; they just have a limited number of shows that are funded, and that’s how the schedules work out. Nice job if you can get it, though!
California didn’t make it so that birth certificates don’t have a gender on them when you are born, but California did make it such that you can amend your birth certificate later on to change the sex or make it nonbinary, per a law passed in 2017 and implemented in 2018.
The idea of removing sex from birth certificates isn’t a law in California, but it was proposed a number of times; I remember that specifically because there was a thread on this on the Dope when PA proposed it a few years ago:
That law didn’t pass (although funnily enough when I tried to look it up I saw that articles from 2025 about PA lawmakers with the same proposal). But the idea of removing sex from birth certificates is what Maher was alluding to, and he’s certainly not lying about that being a thing that was getting pushed. Hell, go read the linked thread - plenty of people here defended the idea.
He isn’t? Can you quote where it says that babies don’t have an indicator of sex on their birth certificate? That just says you can change what’s on the certificate, which has nothing to do with what Maher was saying.
That wasn’t his claim though. He said it was law. Not that someone has proposed it at some point.
