I guess I underestimated the potential for mental defect, seeing the “unhinged public pronouncements” detailed in the following review.
*(Wolf’s) first, career-making book, “The Beauty Myth,” is well-known for exaggerating the number of women who died of anorexia (Wolf stated that anorexia kills 150,000 women annually; the actual figure at the time, in the mid-1990s, was said to be closer to 50 or 60). One academic paper found that fully 18 of the 23 statistics about anorexia in the book were inaccurate and coined a term — “WOLF” (Wolf’s Overdo and Lie Factor) — to determine the degree to which Wolf was wrong…
Reviews of her book on fascism argued, as one put it, that she “consistently mutilated the truth with selective and ultimately deceptive use of her sources.” And “Vagina” so profoundly misrepresented the working of the brain, I’m not sure science writers have recovered…
This is to say nothing of Wolf’s unhinged public pronouncements. She has alleged the American military is importing Ebola from Africa with an intention of spreading it at home, that Edward Snowden might be a government plant and that she has seen the figure of Jesus while she was (inexplicably) in the form of a 13-year-old boy. She appeared on Alex Jones’s show, and accused the government of intercepting and reading her daughter’s mail."*
Too bad I never said she was “like Bill Maher”, nor did I hold Bill Maher up as an icon of anything related to vaccines or GMOs. I was quoting a motto on his coffee cup, for fuck’s sake, but that was apparently enough to set you off like a rabid pit bull and shove your oar in on your favorite topic to rant about.
Not to digress further on this nonsense, but while I’m not going to defend Wolf here I think Maher does deserve a defense. I strongly suspect that your entire opinion of Maher is based on highly biased crap that you read, like that stuff you just cited, without actually knowing anything at all about the man or the show. As Wikipedia notes, “[Real Time with Bill Maher] has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Series every year from 2005 through 2014 and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Talk Series in 2016 & 2017”. The venerable Larry King called it “one of the best shows on televison”. HBO has a reputation for production excellence, and this is no exception. With very rare exceptions the show is a thoughtful and informative discussion forum that is also often very funny, and features some of the most interesting and influential people in politics and the arts in the world today. Of course you wouldn’t know that since I have to assume you’ve never seen it, apparently finding it preferable to have your head up your ass whenever it’s on.
If you actually watched the show, you’d know that the vaccine stuff is hardly ever mentioned and you’d also know that Maher has backed off considerably from his earlier views. As for the alleged dangers of GMOs, I don’t recall ever hearing him say anything like that and I’ve been watching the show every week for years. He does occasionally have controversial guests for the one-on-one interview spot at the beginning of the show, and bringing on the anti-vaccine nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr one time a couple of years ago was in the same spirit as bringing on the all-around nutjob Rick Santorum on another occasion, but again, if you actually watch the show, you’d know that most of the time he has thoughtful and intelligent guests for this interview spot (as well as for the panel that makes up most of the show) – for instance, a number of Obama administration cabinet secretaries have been on, who incidentally impressed the hell out of me with their intellectual depth. One time, indeed, after a bit of prodding, Obama himself agreed to come on, back while he was still president.
I should also mention that when Santorum came on and made idiotic statements basically denying climate change, which Maher was unable to factually respond to at the time because he just didn’t have the facts at hand, Maher had his staff research the claims and the next week he totally decimated Santorum’s claims with well-researched information. It was wonderful, and I wrote a couple of lengthy posts about that a few years ago.
I agree that Maher’s anti-vax position was stupid, but it’s absurd to use that single item as the basis for discrediting absolutely everything the man has ever said. And there are certainly people that just don’t like Maher or his style of humor, but you’re really doing yourself and Maher a disservice with your ill-informed ranting about a single issue that he barely cares about and has hardly even mentioned in recent years. May I suggest that this Friday, if you have HBO, you should pour yourself a glass of wine, take a Valium, and watch Real Time with Bill Maher for the first time.
I agree. As to the sloppiness of her research and journalism, she could have just Googled it and found it in Wikipedia. This took me literally about two seconds to find – and it’s a truly strange legal oddity:
In British courts, beginning in 1823, a sentence of death recorded meant that the judge was abstaining from voicing a sentence of capital punishment in cases where the judge foresaw that a royal pardon would be forthcoming if a proper death sentence were to be issued. It was, in other words, a death sentence in name only, with no actual effect in law.
Royal pardons for capital punishment had become routine at the time for most common crimes. Under the Judgment of Death Act 1823, a “death recorded” sentence allowed the judge to meet common law sentencing precedent while avoiding mocking by the sentenced or the public who realised an actual death penalty sentence was likely to be overridden …
That appears to be the case, but there was no shortage of online and traditional paper sources that Wolf could have checked with, such as the first reference given (the “Digital Panopticon” site), or the various legal references cited, or this Google book (see “sentence of death recorded”). But yeah, given that the article only goes back to May, and three of the references are about Wolf and her new book, the article appears to have been written in response to the kerfuffle around it.
I don’t know how I feel about right-wing media like Breitbart castigating her for this. It’s certainly ironic, given Breitbart’s own history of intentional deceit, which is much worse than an honest mistake. Wolf was inexcusably sloppy in her research, no doubt about it. If her central thesis is that there were many executions for homosexuality later than 1835 (the Victorian period is formally considered to have started in 1837) then she’s very much mistaken, and her mistake was based on an egregiously incorrect reading of a strange phrase in English law. But if the point is that severe legal consequences for gays continued through the Victorian era and indeed well into the 1960s in England (and until 1980 and 1982 in Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively) then that would certainly be correct. The Alan Turing story alone is pretty shocking. There is much that could be said here by a competent journalist, which it doesn’t appear that Wolf is.
Yeah, but The Apprentice was nominated mostly in technical categories like cinematography and sound editing, and the two nominations for the show itself were in the “reality show” category where the only competition was other crappy reality shows. The Television Academy was simply recognizing reality shows as a popular if crappy genre. Whereas Maher’s show was nominated year after year for Outstanding Variety Series or Outstanding Variety Talk Series, which is a huge field. Hardly the same thing at all.
For those not familiar with the show, this gives a pretty good sense of it, written near the end of the show’s 11th season.
Yeah I don’t get the sentiment that winning or being nominated for an Emmy(or an Oscar for that matter) adds any value onto how credible a person’s views are.
That’s a bit of a non sequitur, since Emmys are not awards for credibility, at least not directly. They’re a form of recognition, and what they recognize depends on what they’re being awarded for and what kind of show is being honored. If it’s a talk show that’s supposed to be funny, informative, and entertaining, an Emmy nomination is at least an indication that a significant body of television professionals believes it’s achieved those objectives.
Thus, an unfunny lying moron who, to use Jackmannii’s delusional description, “spews and repeats absolute bullshit and doubles down on idiocy when called on it” who hosts a talk show with those purported objectives is not going to be nominated for an Emmy in the “outstanding variety or talk show” category. Maher was. Many times. Nor, might I add, would a network like HBO renew the show for 17 consecutive years if it wasn’t meeting those objectives. HBO looks at viewership numbers, of course, but they’ve built an enviable reputation for the quality of their in-house productions that they’re not going to jeopardize to make a quick buck. They’re not Fox News and they’re not talk radio.
So, the Television Academy thinks Real Time is a great show. HBO executives think Real Time is a great show. I think it’s great because I’ve learned a lot from some very interesting people over the years while being immensely entertained. Jackmannii thinks it’s bullshit because of something that Maher said once that pushed one of his favorite rant-inducing hot buttons. Consider the evidence and pick your side, preferably after watching a few episodes. There are certainly reasonable people who don’t like Maher, but they typically don’t like him because he’s crass and edgy, or because he uses that crassness very effectively to attack Republican nutjobs.
This comes off as a weird variation on the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Argumentum ad award nomination?
Maher didn’t just spew antivax nonsense one time. He’s done it repeatedly (and never retracted his bullshit to my knowledge). He’s gone on record as a germ theory denialist, citing the false claim that Pasteur admitted on his deathbed that he was wrong about microbes. Maher’s facilited cancer quackery and helped exploit HIV patients (i.e. when he hosted Charlie Sheen’s goat’s-milk-prevents-AIDS doctor).
At first I was surprised, vaguely remembering that Naomi Wolf was well-regarded for her rigorous analysis and insight. Then I realized that I was confusing her with Naomi Klein.
On further consideration I remember Wolf from The Beauty Myth, but that’s probably the last I’d given her any thought.
A consistent string of Emmy nominations really has little to do with popularity, even less so when the show in question is on a limited-audience pay-TV network.
I think in general there are two major issues with this kind of tirade. One is that his actual positions are generally a lot more nuanced than some of the hysterical online internet media make them out to be. You can find dozens of sites calling him an “anti-vaxer” in blaring headlines, yet he’s been clear that no link has ever been established between vaccines and autism, that vaccines are generally safe, but he questions whether there can be “too much of a good thing” that if used to excess may also undermine our immune systems in the same way that living in an excessively germ-free environment is known to do. Maybe he’s wrong, but this is not the kind of anti-vax hysteria that some media are making it out to be.
I do vaguely remember him having Samir Chachoua (the goat-milk guy) in for the one-on-one at the beginning of the show, though I don’t remember how much pushback Maher gave him. He does have controversial guests from time to time, and I already said that, but it’s actually pretty rare. Reading some of the criticisms of Maher one might think that’s pretty much what the show is about. It isn’t. Most of the guests and panelists are respected writers, politicians, commentators, and other public figures. And therein is my central point about Maher. In just the same way, most of his views are just vanilla mainstream liberal, and there are occasional controversial blips.
He certainly doesn’t trust major corporations like Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industry, and here I agree with him. You, OTOH, seem to have an inordinate amount of love and faith in these fuckers. Did you see this new thread on drug prices? Guess whose interests the drug companies are really looking after. Drug prices are often an order of magnitude lower in other countries where these fuckers are properly regulated.
Yeah, well, he’s certainly anti-religion, and particularly singles out Muslims, for reasons that are understandable if not politically correct. And I think he was unfairly targeted for some casual remarks that were taken to be racist and clearly were not.
Bite me.
She said stuff that was untrue. This is undisputed. Several have said (paraphrasing) that isn’t lying because she didn’t *know *it was untrue. That makes her incompetent, not dishonest.
But she is a college educated, published author and journalist. She would have known it was untrue if she had done the basic research that posters here have done. The basic stuff that she was supposed to do as part of her job.
Lets look again at the NY Times quote that Jackmanni posted earlier:
She didn’t just exaggerate a number of victims. she exponentially exaggerated a number of victims. The book didn’t contain a few stats that were inaccurate. The *majority *of the stats she used were inaccurate.
Now, I sincerely ask…how exactly does this differ from lying?
That’s missing the whole point. No one denies that there had been executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. But Wolf’s claim was that she had discovered several dozen executions for sodomy after 1835, thus disproving the standard view that none occurred after that date. Which, if true, would have been an extremely important discovery, worthy of all the stress she placed on it. But it turns out that what every other historian had previously thought was the case remains so. No, she wasn’t lying, but she was being extremely careless.
She has also now trapped herself in a blatant contradiction. Previously she was claiming that her discovery was one of the major elements in her book’s argument. However now that it’s been disproved, she’s been claiming that it wasn’t. She really can’t have it both ways.
And not a Historian. I first heard about this in reference to “this is why you need Historians, people!” Cokie Roberts was also called out in the article for a similar mistake where as a non-historian, she assumed something that was not intuitive, that a historian who studied the era in question would have known was wrong.
In a rush to keep cost down, we aren’t keeping fact checkers around - and when you publish books by journalists and writers who are not experts in the history they are covering, you need fact checkers. You need a read through of the early thesis by someone with subject matter expertise - because “death recorded” is not used intuitively by 21st century standards in these documents.
You just admitted he’s an anti-religious and Islamophobic bigot. But then, for some reason, you’re still defending him.
You even try the right wing canard about “political correctness,” as if liberals only pretend to be against religious bigotry for appearance sake. No, we genuinely believe it is wrong. If someone is okay with it, they are not a typical liberal by any means.
All of us lived through 9/11, and maybe for a little while we became somewhat anti-Muslim in the emotionalism. But even Bush himself righted that very quickly, citing most Muslims as good people, and being sure to only be against Al Qaeda. Since then, we also have ISIS, another actual bad group. But we don’t hate the religion of Islam itself.
And using mental illness as an attack is a horrible thing. But that’s what he calls people who are religious. They have a mental disorder. Does he try to cure that disorder? No, it’s just to mock them.
Even if this were his only problem, that would be enough for him to be an illiberal bigot. But, as you can see on his RationalWiki page, he has a lot of other problems.
At best, he’s a guy who can be funny but has a lot of problematic views. It’s okay to enjoy someone’s show while realizing they’re not so great of a person. Or, at the very least, that they aren’t a “typical liberal.”
