I’ve pretty much dropped out of this thread because it’s become a merry-go-round that goes round and round repeatedly playing the following tune: “Bill Maher is an asshole, and if you don’t agree, you are one too.” Some haters here have what seems to me to be a cavalier attitude toward facts, where concepts like “the exact same words” apparently mean “not the same words at all”. So I’m just going to pop back in to address this last point.
I wonder how many here actually watched the video that sparked this latest kerfuffle. I posted it up in post #79. Here is the full context of how Maher presented the bit that caused it all.
Maher was supporting the point that “a small contingent” of Democrats were doing stupid shit. He brought up a screen showing a headline from the WSJ reading “San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise”, saying “when normal people read that San Francisco has basically legalized shoplifting, they think Democrats have gone nuts”. Then he cites members of Congress tweeting things like “cancel rent”, “cancel mortgage” (Rep. Ayanna Pressley D-MA) and “no more policing, incarceration or militarization” (Rep. Rashida Tlaib D-MI). Stupid shit. We who support Democrats and lament the lunacy of current Republicans should see extremes of silliness on “our side” as counterproductive.
And, no @Buck_Godot, nothing was “clearly demonstrated to be false” by GIGO’s link. The Snopes refutation was directed at a tweet from someone I’ve never heard of which states that “thanks to Prop 47 thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted”. Maher said no such thing. He was just riffing on the WSJ headline and any reasonable person would understand that. Are some now going condemn Maher because he referred to Liz Cheney as “Darth Vader’s daughter”, yet this is factually untrue?
If he had actually said the same thing as the tweet that Snopes was refuting, that would be grossly irresponsible because it sounds plausible and might be believed. Words matter, and some words are not the same as others. At all.
Ironically, nobody said “the exact same words”.
Buck_godot said the hyperbole exactly matches a right wing talking point, and it does.
Let’s put it this way: do you think the average viewer of that segment would be disabused of the notion that SF has legalized shoplifting? You tell me.
The video didn’t spark the kerfuffle, I was saying about how Maher caricatures and exaggerates the position of those on the Left, and this was your counter-cite.
Except you’ve already conceded other parts of his rant were indeed exaggerated at best, and we pretty much only have this shoplifting thing remaining.
And on that:
In the interview Maher says that "“LIberalism was never ‘shoplifting is progressive,’ and we weren’t interested in legalizing shoplifting, or I should call it ‘justice shopping,'”
But yeah I look forward to you “checking back in” to tell us how we’re all jerks for misconstruing Maher.
Do they still do the thing where they cut to his guests so we can witness how humorous they think Bill is? Colbert does that too, with his bandleader. It’s a little odd because the guy is rarely reacting, except for the requisite grin.
I knew there was a Bill Maher thread around here somewhere.
I made the point earlier (post #25) that I’m not nearly the fan I used to be. But what promoted me to revive this thread was the “New Rules” segment from the October 20 show in which Maher railed about the political culture of college education, particularly that of “elite” Ivy League colleges. In his typical hyperbolic way, he suggested that kids not go to college, or at least, avoid wasting money on the Ivy Leagues.
As someone who greatly values education, this was beginning to really piss me off, and yet, here’s a CNN story exactly backing up his claims. Coincidentally, John Oliver’s show from last Sunday (Oct 22) on the McKinsey consulting firm was not kind to cretinous assholes who graduate from Harvard and move into McKinsey to become prestigious high-priced consultants who are paid outrageous salaries to provide bad advice to major corporations for outrageous fees. The world is a complicated place. Sometimes we need irreverent observers like the late beloved George Carlin and, yes, even Bill Maher, to give us some perspective.
Meh, I’ve long been saying that where you get educated doesn’t matter that much, and it’s far more important that you realize you generally get out of your education what you put into it. Screw even thinking about the Ivy League, just paying out of state tuition to go to a particular college is unlikely to be worth the cost.
Bill’s simply not providing much of an insight here. Carlin is a bit of an apt comparison, because he was funny and intelligent up until about the mid 80s. In the 90s and afterward, he spent a lot of his time just being an angry old man.
Just ran across this Bill Maher gem from early in the pandemic, when he proclaimed that it was “overrreactions” to Covid-19 that were making him “sick”.
Nearly 7 million dead so far. But that’s what happens in life.
Bill Maher is an idiot when it comes to medical science – potentially a dangerous idiot. We know that. But repeating that fact over and over again doesn’t really advance the discussion about the overall value of his show and the discussions with his often very informative guests. When Maher opines about vaccines and how “medical science doesn’t know everything” I just take it as an opportunity to wander off out of earshot and get another drink.
There are quite a few RFK Jr. supporters who tune out his bigoted ravings about vaccines, conspiracy theories about 5G and antidepressants, HIV denialism and extraordinary penchant for lying because they like his anti-corporate statements and history of environmental work (not to mention swooning over the Kennedy image, what there’s left of it).
As with Maher, it all depends on one’s threshold for overlooking and excusing dangerous lunacy. With some folks, that threshold is very low.
You can make big connections from an Ivy League degree. I feel that gets left out a lot. I’d say it’s especially useful if you want you start your career local to that school.
Not saying it’s a great choice for everyone. But I think the value of a powerful social network has to count for something.
I’ve never liked him because since Day 1 I felt he was doing a bit of, “Look at me, I’m so fucking edgy.” Remember how he talked about how courageous the 9/11 terrorists were? Has he gotten worse than that?
No, I don’t. What I remember is Maher objecting to Bush and the politicians of the day calling them “cowards”. “Cowards” is just completely the wrong word, dredged up because in our culture it’s a damning insult, but in this context it’s an empty and meaningless one. It’s just stupid. The 9/11 terrorists were possessed by untold depths of evil and delusion and should have been properly called out for what they were, instead of a thoughtless schoolyard insult.
“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, [it’s] not cowardly.”
He didn’t call the terrorists courageous, he just pointed out (as did @wolfpup) how stupid it was to call them cowardly, which was spot on. OTOH, he referred to America as cowards for firing cruise missiles, which I thought was plenty stupid. Were our soldiers supposed to wander the mountains of Afghanistan with sharp sticks, inquiring with the locals as to the whereabouts of Bin Laden and his associates?
