Bill Maher - classic!

He's willing to change his mind and take criticism. He tries to play fair; shushes the audience when they are not being fair to a guest. He gets great guests, like the former PM of Canada.

I love Bill Maher! I used to think he was annoying, but I've come 'round.

hurray for those who don't fall neatly into one camp -- it shows they think for themselves.

the HELL?

OTM. I don't agree with Maher on a lot of things and he is often obnoxious as hell (I think it comes with the job description), but non-prepackaged sets of opinions are k-classic.

nobody loves no one

Get thee behind me, Satan.

Well, that's one way of looking at it.

Of course, I like John Maher; and also Fred Maher's drumming on Lloyd Cole's early solo work - magnificent.

I used to think that he was unbearable -- but get past his smirk and he has some intelligent things to say.

http://www.thezreview.co.uk/posters/posterimages/d/dccab.jpg

Since no one has really responded to Maria D's question, I'll go ahead and agree- it was exciting to see Michael Moore butt heads with protofascist David Dreier, and to Maher there representing Common Sense, backing up more, and shutting up Dreier.

Also exciting was proving how ridiculous Nader's stance is, though the former PM of Canada made the point stronger than the comedians (they are comedians, both Moore and Maher, remember).

hurray for those who don't fall neatly into one camp -- it shows they think for themselves.

-- Maria D. (maria...), July 31st, 2004 4:15 PM. (later)

Thinking for yourself = classic; Pro death penalty = unthinking acceptance of american cultural values (but that's my opinion)

huh? i thought the hipoisie CW on maher was that he was a crypto-fascist hack, ie his whole schtick is making a very average american political position sound angry and 'edgy' and somehow under attack.
-- g--ff (gffcnn...), July 31st, 2004 8:41 PM

If only the average american political position was an eagerness to legalize marijuana, and acknowledgement that the terrorists are 'courageous' if nothing else. Crypto-fascist? That's Brit Hume, not Bill Maher.

xpost Ann Coulter - I had a theory that he was sleeping with her- why else would he even listen to her babble?

thanks google

-- oops (don'temailmenicelad...), July 28th, 2004.

I think that's probably why he seems so smug and off-putting to me. That and the skeeviness.

Impending fatherhood is starting to play havoc with his MIND!

democrats are crazy, republicans are crazy. why oh why isn't there a politics for NORMAL ASSHOLES like u & me?" BEWARE PPL WHO SAY THIS KIND OF THING.

like Nader? heh.

Kim Campbell, whom I believe was a Conservative PM, made a very parliamentocentric argument to Nader who quite obviously understood none of it. It was funny to see Maher and Moore on a stage together and the most narcissistic person there was still Nader.

I think it's unfair to refer to David Dreier as a crypto-fascist. He's just an old fashioned conservative asshat. Watching Moore and Dreier argue made me realise how screwed we are in this country. Both had valid points surrounded by irrational and illogical nuttiness. Moore is just an amalgam of (mostly)incoherent resentments against the Bush regime and Dreier just a relatively incoherent Bush loyalist. Twenty years from now, when the emotion has been switched to other subjects, historians will look back at all this and wince at both sides'self importance and inability to appeal to anything except their uncritical bases.

Of course, 'libertarian' had a meaning long before the 'Libertarian Party' came along, so who knows what he means.

You don't really hear this kind of stance on televison. Thinking back on this moment, and the way the news cut away from Sharpton's convention speech, because he went away from the script, political comedians like Maher seem sadly neccesary.

but back to fresh air, after Maher, she had colin quinn on and he just sounded like the biggest fucking idiot you have ever heard in your life.

xp some of his shows can be worthwhile.

still, better, more substantive debate is had on ep of Crossballs...

I haven't seen the recent shows but I agree that segment is totally annoying.

Calling out negative media reaction to Sharpton would only be too obvious if the media made an issue of it themselves. More than calling it out, Maher/Stewart are being critical and asking questions about it. People aren't skeptical enough toward the news media's dangerous bias for this to be a cliche.

x-post

He literally incited to riot!

carlson is/was better on his pbs show. i caught it once and i was kinda surprised, i did not want to kill him.

Classic ramosi post on bill maher:

I hope none of you saw Bill Maher on Leno last night.....what a stacked card, let me tell you....the biggest pseud on TV with the most unfunny cunt on earth.....Bill said some shit so ignorant it somehow eclipses his "overweight people are just lazy and why should I pay health taxes because they're pigs?!" P.I. show and rap music comments....he says something like "I don't watch the Winter games....they're not sports...they're GRAVITY!!! You sit on a sled.." All the while with that huge triangular nose and those smirky incredulous "I mean COME ON!" facial gestures that must mean this guy actually thinks he's being cleverfresh...... everyday I cry a 40oz of tears trying to understand how people can think this man is exceptionally intelligent or witty....my theory is that Bill is the mascot for midbrow pseuds all over the USA that aren't outright morons but have just the right amount of totally cursory knowledge about shit in general to think they can stop right the fuck there.

-- Ramosi (olafsonski...), February 22nd, 2002.

This comment doesn't make sense. It assumes Maher is an all out libertarian, which Maria's 3rd post made quite clear HE IS NOT. Many of his beliefs affect him -- he supports public schools; meaning he pays taxes for them and wishes more funds were allocated in the right places.

And it's crescent fresh. Get it right.

One Rep. Spencer Bachus sez Maher's a traitor.

Maher has some things to say in response.

Soooo true. you win thread. OTM, etc

Neither are strictly liberal or conservative but both play up certain aspects of the ideologies too much. O'Reilly plays up "God-and-Country-first" and "Who's looking out for the little guy?" populism. Maher does a great job of playing the intellectual and articulate "thinking-man" who is frustrated from having the burden of spreading reason and awareness to the unwashed masses who never seem to pay enough attention to him or his ideas. He's libertarian in the same way Godwin was. Both are best taken in small doses.

Maher just referred to the bible as "that old book of Jewish fairy tales".

He aslo called Mormons shape-shifters.

(on Larry King)

I guess this is old, from the 4th.

Waiting for Obama "to actually do something":

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/06/not_what_i_vote.php

Dr Morbius - classic!

Bill Maher is a self-righteous, pompous idiot. Just like Michael Moore. The fact that I actually agree with them on a lot of issues doesn't change that very simple fact. Obama is not, and was never a left-wing ideologue. His entire shtick is based on moderate pragmatism, inclusion and consensus. I can't believe that the same people who complained so loudly for 8 years about the way Bush just forced his policies down everyone's throats, now want Obama to do the same thing because they voted for him. One of my favourite lines from Obama's victory speech in Grant Park was when he said: "And, to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too." It's completely counter-productive to treat the next 4 to 8 years as some type of opportunity to get revenge for the Bush years. America is a large and diverse country, which is still quite conservative in many ways. No good will come from trying to ram through a radically liberal domestic agenda.

Maher is a fucking idiot

No, sorry, Maher OTM.

It's not that's he seems like a centrist. It's that he seems like... a Democrat.

No, sorry, Shakey Mo Collier OTM.

Well at least we're all sorry.

even when Maher's right he's a fucking idiot (stopped clock etc) - his analysis is about as deep as a kiddie pool

And what is your analysis of his analysis? Do you want a sticker?

I don't particularly like defending Maher but sometimes shallow analysis has its place. One potential problem with deep analysis is the paralysis that can come with not knowing all of the twists and turns of a situation; the ability to accurately summarize a situation and take action is arguably more important than the ability to unravel the intricacies of a situation and present a fully-baked argument.

Note that I didn't follow the link so I have no idea if he's talking sense or not.

ILXor Dems = Peewee Herman "i can't hear you la la la la"

I have no idea if he's talking sense or not.

Oh you should watch it. It gets good right around the 2 minute mark.

I hate hate hate Maher, even when I agree with what he may be saying. He just seems so slimy and full of himself. I cannot stand the way he smirks at his own "clever" jokes before he even finishes the punchline. Or how he looks out at the audience as if to say "oh yeah, I went THERE! aren't I terribly clever?".

I have my own problems with him, as expressed on several other threads I'm sure, but this is a pretty classic rant.

I dislike him pretty intensely, but the view that Obama's sizzle is burning the steak is one I'm pleased to see penetrate HBO.

really, is there anyone else on television saying this?

"It made some liberals very angry, my phone rang off the hook, my email filled up and Nancy Pelosi got so mad her face moved. Look, folks, I like Obama too, I'm just saying let's not make it a religion. And as far as you folks on the right who think that we're now somehow in league, we're not in league. I was criticising Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douchebags you live to defend. I don't want to be on your team, pick another kid."

"Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters? ...What we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats, because bottom line: Democrats are the new Republicans."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/21/bill-maher-democrats-have_n_218593.html

did you see harper's magazine cover story this month:

Barack Hoover Obama:
The best and the brightest blow it again

no, but I think Jon Stewart interviewed the author last week.

his analysis is about as deep as a kiddie pool

He's a comedian. Still classic.

I'm enjoying watching this schmuck go off the deep end.

I haven't been paying attention. do tell!

anti-vaccine nonsense?

here's a starter:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/the_2009_recipient_of_the_richard_dawkin_1.php

such ignorant drivel, and the same shit spouted by Beck and Limbaugh.

OMG, watching Chris Mathews and Alex Baldwin totally made a fool of Maher.

http://vodpod.com/watch/2363121-video-chris-matthews-gettin-real

it doesn't get much healthier than young men between the ages of 18-22 in the military.

actually, I think it does.

when he's good, he's pretty otm:

If an election between Obama and Sarah Palin were held today, and only white men could vote, Sarah Palin would be president. Did you know that in 1788, when there were four million people in America, only 39,000 of them -- the richest white men -- got to vote? That doesn't sound good to you? Well, what if I threw in a picture of my cock?

a Jewish cock.

when he's bad, he's really bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_U3TYloQ_c

And who's that woman who thinks sharia law is all over the UK?

So depressed that he just read the Daily Mail and repeated it as if it were news and/or true and, seemingly, didn't take one minute to check with anyone else whether there was more to the story than that.

women is a Fox News Anchor.

He infuriated me in that episode.

Really swayed back and forth during the O'Reilly interview. Then again, I appreciate O'Reilly.

tell it

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/real-time-bill-maher-explains-how-america-is-like-a-dog/

oh man Kennedy is a libertarian nutjob.

Which one, the chick from MTV? Yeah, she has an elephant tattoo for a reason

aye, MTV one. Unions are a cult, atheism is a religion and you can trust her because she majored in philosophy, and every intelligent libertarian economist she talked to assured her that the bailout was wrong.

and no taxes on anything etc etc etc

how long did it take Maher to explain who Kennedy is?

nah it was more wtf is this rep calif dude spouting; kennedy is like the last thing that needs explanation on bill maher

I had honestly forgotten about her existence until last night. Also, between her and that republican blowhard, I think Martin Bashir got about one sentence in.

atheism is a religion

oh, you're one of *those* kinds of 'libertarians' pls foad

probably the 4 brightest words she's ever said

sorry had no idea she'd done anything since '98

really

w/ ppl like Maher, atheism is a mania

point taken, but what's the saying -- 'atheism is a religion' like not collecting baseball cards is a hobby etc

He was super obnoxious during the first interview on last night's show. He was interviewing someone about the psychology and motivations of terrorists and every time religion was brought up as a possible justification he would sit back and smirk and say "There's that word again". Then he would go into something about how Islam is a worse religion than Christianity, and then kind of fake out when he got accused of inciting Islamaphobia on his show. You can really tell he was getting on the interviewer's nerves by the end.

Watching last night's ep. He's blaming the internet for radical Islamists now. He's sort of arguing that something needs to be done about the internet, and uses drone-killing robot assassinations as a precedent for going that extra mile to snuff out the terrorists. Hello, idiot! Could it be that flying robot assassins have a little more to do with radicalizing people than some guy talking on youtube?

kimmel seemed kinda nervous on this

havent gotten there yet. seeming nervous is his thing, right?

oh wait i confused him w Jimmy Fallon

hah i just realized i have been confusing the two for the past few weeks now

The way to enjoy Kimmel is to pretend he's Edgar G. Robinson's deadbeat grandson and he was handed all this through that one connection.

Greenwald rips fuckface a new one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB-itn_LJuM

I'm no maher defender but I don't think that was such a great take-down. Maher wanted to complain about Muslims rioting over any public opposition to their religion. He wasn't saying anything about irresponsible military activity of any country.

hmmm, I think it's all part of his general hedonist our-shit-doesn't-stink worldview

Yes!!!

Maher trots out religion all the time and the context when he does is often inconsequential. He is happy to smugly declare that religion is bad and always at the root of extremism and that more specifically this one religion is the worst. GG brings some much needed perspective (which is pretty much ignored by Maher but whateves).

How exactly do you pinpoint which riots are about purely religious matters when Muslim countries are being and have been occupied by Western military for decades? Yes fundamentalism is a part of the picture, but blaming that entirely and ignoring that we are invading their countries with our army or at the very least killing them with automated death robots (for instance) seems pretty misleading. Also very tribalist

we have different kinds of Christian riots p often in this country, which is why a modicum of sanity is a no-go in our federal legislature.

Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau) OTM. Maher is a hypocritical shit, big up Greenwald.

He is probably giving the theocracy angle too much credit (all of the credit maybe) but he isn't wrong about the fact that they do threaten as soon as any public criticism of the religion or image of Mohammad goes public. Objectively, I don't know that other religions get as hostile as quickly in present times. However, there certainly are a lot of variables at play given the context of certain situations. Maher is definitely quick to ignore those factors in favor of a "fuck religion" focus.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-matthews-get-in-epic-brawl-with-gop-guest-over-obamacare-gop-sabotaging-a-law/

Is everything he does like Religulous?

https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/489930991956262913

congratulations on writing the worst tweet ever, i suppose?

couldn't be a worse week for this slug's show to come back, eh

Rushdie will be on so i expect some viral clips

Rushdie's "they're a little old for me" crack re: Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren was way ickier than anything that was said about Muslims tonight.

Feel like every episode of this needs to have a section where Bill blanket accuses all Muslims of FUTURE THOUGHT CRIME.

He was really getting warmed up to the big reveal with that "Bad ideas" bit, he just needs to bring it home.

Billy Crystal was really funny last night.

^ words I never expected to read again

did he do his classic jazz man character

So he has opinion on Ahmed Mohammed

Maher, however, does not deny that the fact that Ahmed is Muslim played a role in escalating the incident. “It’s not the color of his skin,” he said. “For the last 30 years, it’s been one culture that has been blowing shit up over and over again.”

It was a great day when the US turned pacifist in 1985

Yeah his reaction made me wonder if he actually read the story at all.

Or is aware of anything when his anti-religion blinders come on.

so... the Koch brothers were raised by a Nazi nanny? and their family fortune is partly from selling oil refineries to Hitler and Stalin? for real?

It would probably be difficult to find US multinationals that didn't profit from Nazi Germany.

You'll say its my own damn fault for watching Bill Maher in the first place, and you'll probably be right, but this week's was especially annoying: like, you have an actual LGBT guest on in the wake of Orlando in Josh Barro (coincidental, of course; this week's guests were listed at the end of last week's show) and every time he opens his mouth to say anything (including, at one point, on the specific topic of religion and homophobia) he's cut off by the military guy or the gun nut. Ugh.

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/810938580747091968

http://www.avclub.com/article/bill-maher-and-milo-yiannopoulos-shout-each-other--250386
http://www.avclub.com/article/bill-maher-defends-his-liberal-credentials-after-b-250453

Bound to be a shit show.

My comments on Islam have never veered into vitriol.

Pretty sure he meant to say "have only veered into vitriol." Otherwise, utter horseshit.

i'll watch - bound to be entertaining

Two un-nuanced jackasses lobbing predictable barbs at each other. That was boring.

Didn't bother because who cares.

I thought Bill Maher was cool when I was a dickhead kid. The less of a dickhead I become, the less I find I like him.

I got to the point where I would put up with him because he'd have some really good guests, but I haven't been able to handle it (other than a few clips linked here and there) in about 4 years.

i've enjoyed watching some of his shows over the years but the man himself is p much a dud, always annoying and off-puttingly smug even when he's saying something i agree with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWv42U1l4A

Oh man, Republicans are nihilstic hypocrites. Blowing my mind.

I watched a ton of Politically Incorrect in the '90s because aside from Usenet that was pretty much the extent of political content I could get my hands but browsing episodes on Youtube is embarrassing. Owning 5 Mighty Mighty Bosstones albums is less embarrassing.

http://www.avclub.com/article/god-bless-larry-wilmore-not-buying-real-times-budd-250596

i'll watch - bound to be entertaining

lol I've watched menu screens that were more entertaining than this was

Link?

The whole-lotta-nothing interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lImHh7fqrQo

The far better post-show discussion, thanks to Larry Wilmore's brilliant telling off of Milo (and by extension, Bill) re: some transphobic bullshit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDLflyQ8TA

Maher compared him to a "young, gay Christopher Hitchens."

bye

proof of Hitchens atheism that his ghost didn't appear onstage and slap the shit out of Maher for that

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/larry-wilmore-tells-milo-yiannopoulos-f-k-article-1.2975977

I had never heard anything from the Milo guy before, but I was impressed by this exchange:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-segment---the-annoying-man/n9827?snl=1

Never got Bill Maher. He's just another loudmouth dick who doesn't listen to or engage with anyone. Way too many of those around.

His show was fun to watch on Comedy Central before you flipped over to see the end of Letterman and Conan started

i watched that milo thing and he shouldn't be on t.v. because he's dumb and embarrassing not because he's a nazi. it's just kind of excruciating to watch someone that old act like such a stupid little kid and be that unfunny. i dunno, maybe it was a public service. i don't fear that guy leading a nazi army or anything. i can't imagine him appealing to people outside of the shock the olds 4chan doofus camp. and i really don't fear them. not saying they can't do damage, but they are perpetual children.

scott otm. i couldn't make it more than 2 minutes in - milo is unwatchable and it has nothing to do w/ anything he believes unless u think that believing in heinous things has a permanently deleterious effect on your personality.

That Jack Kingston guy could hardly keep a straight face when expressing "concerns" about voter fraud.

"i don't fear that guy leading a nazi army or anything."

That's... pretty close to what he did online?

The "i don't fear that guy leading a nazi army or anything" is pure homophobia (albeit an admittedly strange version of it). Not saying that Milo isn't a twerp, but between Bill's likening him to Bruno (and even referring to him as a "fag") and the security guy (I believe it was) who made the aforementioned comment, the assumption that he's harmless because he looks and acts like a circa 2000 gay club kid neuters him in a way that I should feel worse about...and might, were he not such a piece of shit.

seriously scott crypto is right. this is a guy who incites a massive crew online to harass, stalk, and terrorize people. he's not some harmless caricature -- that's his feint. he's an aggressive, heartless piece of shit.

i said that they could do damage.

i mean i know they do. and its not a gay thing. there are just people who are good at getting into power who i fear more. like bannon. people with tons of scary money behind them. i mean i fear david duke in 2017 A LOT more.

i just think he's a PR machine who is in it to make a buck basically. and that he probably doesn't care about 95% of the things he says. and he's bad at it. that's all. and he'll probably fade away when everyone gets tired of him. but maybe that's wishful thinking. people like sarah palin scare me more. as far as the banality of evil thing goes.

neither milo nor palin are really banal but then again neither was eichmann; he was just a prodigious liar.

Sarah palin is powerless

but that's it. i'm never talking about him again! he is amateur hour. he's sooooo unfunny and cringey. it was pretty mean to those other people on that show to have him there. you can't have a conversation with someone like that. not a real conversation.

people still listen to sarah palin! i know its hard to believe.

Thing with Milo and his ilk is they will immediately make the conversation about "free speech vs political correctness" and if you don't shut down that bullshit straight away you have done nothing but given them an advert. Bill Maher has no ability to challenge this narrative, none at all, he's one of the "anti PC" people himself, he hosted Politically Incorrect FFS. Of course nobody here is going to be swayed by Milo, but sure there are a lot of people out there who thought he was cuddly, harmless and "told it like it is."

i've never heard this creature but

it's just kind of excruciating to watch someone that old act like such a stupid little kid and be that unfunny.

so the gays object only to his ideology, sounds like. that's half the ppl on the cover of OUT.

He's more dangerous than the OUT twinks.

if he was just some vacuous twink trying to be funny it would be one thing but he's supposed to be some sort of spokesman or something? for some sort of movement? and he's completely dumb and its hard to listen to him. and so not funny or cute and jesus does he ever try hard to be funny and cute.

wait, i was never talking about him again....

I stopped even finding him interesting after I learned that he's just a devout and chauvinistic Catholic whose pov comes from believing that "Catholics are right about everything" (the literal title of one of his speeches).

Sort of like learning that Moldbug just wants corporate CEOs to run everything.

Lapsed Catholics are right about everything but lack the requisite certainty to act

https://twitter.com/DennisThePerrin/status/832958612985229312

(Perrin used to write for Maher)

seriously scott crypto is right. this is a guy who incites a massive crew online to harass, stalk, and terrorize people. he's not some harmless caricature -- that's his feint. he's an aggressive, heartless piece of shit

This is correct.

It should be clear to all at this point that the shittiest, dumbest celebrities can be the most dangerous.

Treeship, you're like this board's Bill Maher

What i meant by that is your constantly smoking weed, dating strippers, and hosting a weekly politics show on HBO. I hope I didn't overstep my bounds there

Well well well

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/19/cpac-2017-milo-yiannopoulos-invited-to-speak-at-major-conservative-conference

https://mobile.twitter.com/puns_n_roses/status/832967653438451712

Roblematic‏ @puns_n_roses

Milo Yiannopoulos looks like someone's Dad who just discovered My Chemical Romance

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C49Lp-TWQAAIP6d.jpg

6:58 AM · Feb 18, 2017

1,703 RETWEETS
6,074 LIKES

Milo Yiannopoulos looks like someone's Dad who just discovered My Chemical Romance

this is a savage dig and would really get under his skin

can't believe a childish and unfunny person is on bill mayers show

this is still the best Milo Yiannopoulos lookalike imo: https://twitter.com/Crass_Effect/status/688066745261764608

This burn thread is delightful:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Mobute/status/671390539070242816

Fuck Bill Maher for providing a platform to and furthering the normalization of this piece of shit. That shit coming from ostensible 'allies' (which I know, in this case, is a pretty heady perversion of the word 'ally') is so much more pernicious than the promotion of people like this from the expected quarters. And there's no take backs once the damage is done. Like, sorry Lorne, you can get Baldwin to buffoon it up every Saturday night until NBC comes under the control of the state but that doesn't supersede your willingness to let the Beast himself host your show.

people should say this kinda thing every day though. to anyone who will listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWv42U1l4A

https://mobile.twitter.com/veryimportant/status/833371252970635266

Pretty good

I like the interview where Bill Burr rips Maher a new one about political correctness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYuKkw6L2bE

this was completely awful

utter trash basically

What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left’s propensity for outrage. And by the end of the weekend, by dinnertime Monday, he’s dropped as a speaker at CPAC. Then he’s dropped by Breitbart, and his book deal falls through. As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. You’re welcome.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/arts/television/bill-maher-milo-yiannopoulos-interview.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

oh fuck off

oh and "emotionally needy" reads as thinly veiled homophobia to me but I don't really feel like shielding milo at all so uhh idk

“it was never going to be enough for that slice of liberalism that would much rather judge a friend than engage an enemy, because it’s easier.”

didn't seem like you engaged him too much tbh

LOL maher is so horribly predictable

the alt-right

https://twitter.com/wyatt_privilege/status/834399728519426048

something else for bill and milo to bond over

https://twitter.com/2dammuslim/status/834411710966403073

(2 pics)

something else for bill and milo to bond over

no but see when old women have sex w boys it's HOT, when old men have sex w boys it's GROSS AND WRONG

makes perfect sense

also Rollins response there is otm

http://ind5.ccio.co/5C/i2/m1/acf62c853db5590dff8da776813fa0ec.jpg

so hot

I remember watching that. Can't believe I'm gonna do this, but

That's pretty much the host's job: stake out one of the more extreme positions, get everyone het up and arguing, make them define their position as best they can. Rollins does well.

Haven't watched PI in literally 15 years until Milo but I think Maher's not wrong to take credit for his (probably) temporary setback. The hangman doesn't need to shout and protest, he just needs to provide the rope.

i've heard from at least 2 places that the maher appearance was the impetus to leak the pedophilia comments and destroy milo's career. whether he should take credit for that as though that were his intent is maybe a different question but i think he's probably right on the principle of sunlight + disinfectants, esp if it turned out to be true that this particular sunlight (again, whether or not Mahler was planning on playing the role of Mr. Clean) did help disinfect.

how do you leak something that's public

nothing he said on Maher torpedoe'd him - it was the CPAC Reagan Brigade or whatever they're called. Now, maybe they were so pissed about his Maher appearance that that motivated them to action, but I'm not clear what he did on the show that would have provided that motivation. He was p much his usual assholish self, it's not like he staked out any new positions beyond the pale or anything.

maybe they were just appalled at how very GAY he came across, he was basically Stefan from SNL

maher had him on because they are both whiners about political correctness, both transphobes (maher dropped a "trans people are weirdos" line during the interview), and - probably their biggest similarity - huge islamophobes.

nothing he said on Maher torpedoe'd him - it was the CPAC Reagan Brigade or whatever they're called. Now, maybe they were so pissed about his Maher appearance that that motivated them to action, but I'm not clear what he did on the show that would have provided that motivation. He was p much his usual assholish self, it's not like he staked out any new positions beyond the pale or anything.

Seems p OTM to me.

CPAc got S&S to renege on a six figure book deal? I think there's a couple things going on here, with objections landing from both far right and mainstream media.

he was bad on tv.

othing he said on Maher torpedoe'd him - it was the CPAC Reagan Brigade or whatever they're called. Now, maybe they were so pissed about his Maher appearance that that motivated them to action, but I'm not clear what he did on the show that would have provided that motivation.

The right doesn't mind anti-semitism and hate of Muslims so long as you're not a pedophile or named Mark Foley.

they were cool w Denny Hastert though, cuz he didn't brag about it

or proselytize about it or whatever Milo thought he was doing

that was the largest general tv audience milo's had yet, no? testing ground for whether he can step outside his niche. it didn't go so well.

you guys are acting like randos who watch late night tv keep up with the guests' public statements prior to the show.

since when is CPAC concerned about mainstream appeal

also feel like a lot of his "power" or influence or whatever is/was illusory. he was never considered a real major figure among the alt-righters who always seemed to just tolerate him or at best consider him an outsider bringing good attention to their movement, but he was an outsider there too. getting thrown out of breitbart surprised me a little but i guess their hardcore audience probably has a lot of homophobia among them so it wasn't such a big deal to jettison him.

xp

...he lost a book deal with Simon & schuster

CPAC and the Breitbart "deep state" (sorry sorry) already probably hated him for obv reasons but he was good business for awhile within their still-evolving platforms

a lot of the power of the alt-right brigade comes from Twitter, they get out of their internet persona cocoon and they wilt imo. i have no idea what most of these guys are like in person, but i doubt they've got anywhere near the confidence or charisma of, god help me, an ann coulter or rush limbaugh.

it's telling imo that a lot of these guys are still hiding behind anonymous avatars in their chosen venue. when ppl start proudly associating this shit w/ their rl identities is my personal mark for when i'm going to start really worrying.

Forgot to finish this thought

he was bad on tv.... which has ruined a lot of nascent careers, regardless of other circumstances

Maher's not wrong to take credit for his (probably) temporary setback. The hangman doesn't need to shout and protest, he just needs to provide the rope.

This argument works in theory, but anyone who actually saw the broadcast (and the post-show segment, in particular) saw Maher encouraging, normalizing and even defending him. I get allowing an extreme idea to be floated for the purposes of generating discussion, but that's not what Maher--with his calling trans people "weirdos" and calling Milo's position on bathroom laws (that they could lead to sexual abuse of women and young girls) "not unreasonable"--was doing. All he really called Milo out on during the show was his support of Trump.

http://i.makeagif.com/media/6-26-2015/X2b_Cj.gif

xxp yea that was what surprised me about his appearance. I get that Maher's trying to have extreme and provocative people on the show, but Milo just doesn't have anything to say. He's just the dude spray painting the N-word on the side of the school.

The timeline goes: Goes on Maher, gets invited to CPAC, shit gets leaked, loses book + Breitbart. Unless Milo going on Maher had something to do with either him getting invited to CPAC, or the Reagan site turning on him and circulating his comments, Maher didn't have shit to do with anything.

and crypto's right, there are so many viewers of this stuff who always think "truth is somewhere in the middle" so when you got liberals squaring off with literal Nazis or people like David Duke then yeah, there are some not-so-good undertones there. Maher was incredibly soft on him, even calling him out on his Trump support is dumb since it's apparent he only cares about Trump insomuch as it riles up liberals.

what was Milo's book going to be titled?

The Kids are Alt-Right?

shit gets leaked

from what i understand the appearance on maher has to do w/ this ^

How?

that video was in the public domain before the appearance

maybe called it to their attention? or inspired them to post it? tbph i don't really remember what causal links i saw and i could be misremembering them

Hm. Even the NYT story where Maher claimed shit got leaked due to him had no mentions of any link.

jindal otm, thats def what this felt like. not ready for the bright lights

why maher stayed out of his way I dunno, it seems in keeping with the way he used to run his show, regardless it was effective here because it neutralized the UNFAIR UNFAIR victimhood these guys crave

i think the old school GOPers have always despised the alt right types but were more tolerant of them until recently. MY going on Maher was some kind of symbolic moment, where he was being presented perhaps inadvertently as the new face of the GOP, and i can see that as having been a tipping point where they said ok enough, we've got to get him outta there. i think it was a combo of them being fearful of his ascendency and sensing it was the right time to strike, because more people were witness to his repugnance.

so is Maher taking credit for Milo simultaneously getting booked by CPAC *and* subsequently immediately getting dropped from CPAC? that doesn't make sense. If CPAC hadn't booked him (and it's entirely likely they were already planning prior to the Maher appearance) then obviously they weren't offended by anything he did on the show. It wasn't until CPAC booked him that the backlash happened.

xp

if anyone involved w CPAC has commented on MY's Maher appearance, seems like that would be relevant. But I haven't seen anything like that.

maybe Maher's argument is that CPAC wouldn't have booked MY in the first place if he hadn't just been catapulted to worldwide fame by virtue of appearing on his shitty-ass show, that does seem like the kind of thing Maher is inclined to believe about himself.

Yeah, if someone were annoyed at Milo taking over the GOP, wouldn't him being at CPAC be much more dangerous than him going on Maher?

wasn't the announcement that milo would be at CPAC a surprise to the other attendees and presenters? ie finagled through unusual channels, so already precarious? maybe I'm making that up

regardless this all happened so fast amongst so many interested factions that trying to fix a specific sequence of cause and effect is probably misguided. the maher appearance went badly and a bunch of people pounced. maher took credit cuz that's what he does. imo treating milo with kid gloves took away one of the alt right's favorite victimization strategies, so maher's justified to that extent, whether it was purposeful or just kismet between two dumbass bigots.

MY going on Maher was some kind of symbolic moment, where he was being presented perhaps inadvertently as the new face of the GOP, and i can see that as having been a tipping point where they said ok enough, we've got to get him outta there

otm

did not remotely think the shitbag's comments on sex were "endorsing pedophilia"

do many of you have any close gay male friends? ask em

I can't think of a single one of my friends who would say something besides "thank god that asshole is finally going down" or "who?"

did not remotely think the shitbag's comments on sex were "endorsing pedophilia"

do many of you have any close gay male friends? ask em

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 22, 2017 6:56 PM (thirty-three seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seriously? Have you seen the whole video? The bit where he talks about Hollywood parties?

"whole video," no -- life is short.

I read this, which seemed thorough:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/02/what-well-tolerate-and-what-we-wont

btw having the thing for teenagers is "ephebophilia"

I knew this would come in handy:

https://youtu.be/TB9fwJDweaU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJhHwspZGcg

it's worth watching, five minutes in he describes parties with Hollywood types and young boys but doesn't want to name names because "discretion"

"An Open Secret" documentary goes into that territory ^

I hadn't seen the interview or read exactly what he said until now and I can't believe THAT is what got him in hot water.

From the article Morbs linked to:

It’s not, on the face of it, an unreasonable explanation. Yiannopoulos may not have made his point very well. But there’s something nuanced and defensible here. First, he’s saying that the relationships between gay men and teenage boys (according to their own accounts) have historically been messier than simple categories allow for. And second, it’s absurd to say that he can’t make dark or crass jokes about his priest if it’s his way of dealing with what happened to him.

Yiannopoulos has quickly found out which ideas will actually get you booted from the public square, and they’re left-wing ones rather than right-wing ones. It turned out the real people you can’t offend are the conservatives whose latent homophobia make them instantly pounce on a gay man as a defender of pedophilia when he tries to explain his world to them. How fitting that Yiannopoulos should end up subjected to the very kind of vicious misrepresentation of LGBT people that he has spent his time encouraging. How appropriate for him to discover that his friends on the right only supported him so long as he nurtured their prejudices; they loved their campy gay mascot until the moment he challenged them. Then he was a pervert.

xp... I didn't read about the "Hollywood parties" stuff, but I also hadn't seen it in pieces critical of him

(also didn't know he was English until just now)

he's also made of cockroaches

Milo (like Trump) could get away with saying a lot more if he wasn't such an asshole. Like, it's hard to convey a nuanced message when shock and awwww-shit! is your claim to fame.

Sean O'Neal with a pretty good summary:

http://www.avclub.com/article/milo-yiannopoulos-enabler-bill-maher-says-youre-we-250820

Yiannopoulos’ swift fall from bubbling-under cultural force to future guest at The Gathering of the Juggalos

this is an odd thing to say

yeah it's well known by now that Juggalos are total SJWs

https://twitter.com/wyatt_privilege/status/834399728519426048

Bill Maher is trash

Yiannopoulos’ swift fall from bubbling-under cultural force to future guest at The Gathering of the Juggalos

I think is referring to Tula Tequila's booking at the event previously. And Charlie Sheen, probably.

Tila got pelted w bottles!

And feces. Juggalos hated her so much they raided the portapotties for missiles.

shining light on fascist idiots worked so well with kellyanne conway

so on last night's show he was joking about how prison rape turns people gay and the whole panel of liberal talking heads was laughing and even adding their own jokes to it

but yes back to how normalizing Trump is so terrible

Trying to figure out if that or him abruptly cutting off the woman while she was attempting to speak back against his rampant Islamophobia was the grosser moment on last night's show.

rampant!

show of hands. how many of you know that "rampant" derives from heraldic imagery?

I do now

also Maher sucks

yep

wasn't Louise Mensch on? he's going all-nutz all the time perhaps

@adamjohnsonNYC
Max Brooks calls Trump "America's Hamas" that's the great liberal content i love

Bill and Rick Santorum mansplaining to the only woman on the panel why racism and sexism is nbd might be a new low.

I SEE WHY THEY CALL HIM POLITICALLY INCORRECT!!!!

Yeah no kidding

bill maher is human garbage

to repeat my own phrase, I've been hoping he trips into traffic for quite some time now. this will have to do

I'm sure Kathy Griffin is somewhere muttering to herself "thank god"

y'all are some complex thinkers eh

talk me through the complexity of using the n-word in that context no actually don't bother

it was dumb to say it. but saying it doesn't make him racist. or human garbage. it's exactly this type of reflexive outrage that turns off people to liberalism that would otherwise be sympathetic.

That's not the thing that makes him human garbage, everything else about him makes him human garbage. This is just the weird foam on top of the pile of shit.

fair

This definitely has quite a lot with why he is human garbage, though.

i can vaguely guess what happened from the last 11 posts, but the ILX thing of discussing some recent news w/out mentioning the thing itself is supremely annoying. but hey i'm the one who doesnt CHECK HIS DEVICES every 5 minutes.

He referred to himself as a "house n****r":

http://www.theroot.com/white-habitual-line-stepper-bill-maher-calls-himself-a-1795778745

oh god he's going to get such a boner from being called a "line stepper"

i really don't see how this is defensible in any way

It's not. Has anyone seen Michael Richards lately?

Btw yes bill maher is racist. Also human garbage. Both well established prior to this ill-advised self-righteous self-pity party.

He started attacking islam later in the show. I didn't really hear the full extent cos i had it on in the background.
Could just about see what the slavery quip was about but thought it pretty tasteless.

He and Ann Coulter are essentially the same person, with the same approach, just playing to opposing crowds. How people don't see right through that shit is beyond me.

His drunk womanizing/rapey behavior is worse than the other stuff imo

He and Ann Coulter are essentially the same person, with the same approach, just playing to opposing crowds. How people don't see right through that shit is beyond me.

a good chunk of his show is devoted towards airing/saying hateful shit but having a picture up of some bad guy from The Other Side you are supposed to imagine saying it instead of the person actually saying it who is obviously getting a kick from being able to get away w saying it

Maher and Kathy Griffin will be sharing a cover story somewhere--maybe not Time, but some high-profile publication--and the accompanying article will make "the age of Trump" partly or largely culpable.

Just so I don't end up with a firing squad around me:

1) This is a dispassionate prediction;
2) It in no way reflects my personal feelings about Bill Maher, Kathy Griffin, Donald Trump, god, truth, or the American Way;
3) I'm old, and often don't know what I'm posting.

I'm sure Kathy Griffin is somewhere muttering to herself "thank god"

― frogbs

i'm kind of muttering to myself "thank god". i hope this will make bill maher go away from the "media ecosystem" forever. please god.

a good chunk of his show is devoted towards airing/saying hateful shit but having a picture up of some bad guy from The Other Side you are supposed to imagine saying it instead of the person actually saying it who is obviously getting a kick from being able to get away w saying it

Lol dude this is the pretty standard set-up for any political satire show. Kinda misreading the intent though, even for Maher.

(this is not a defense of Maher or his comment, just sayin)

Official bill maher apology pic.twitter.com/uQ8IT37PtE

— Adam Friedland (@AdamFriedland) June 3, 2017

pretty on the nose

I feel like the Kathy Griffin thing is more in line with Lena Dunham's comments about wishing she had had an abortion: tone-deaf attempts at liberalism that do our side zero favours. I'd include Maher in with this except I have no idea what he was trying to achieve with his gag.

Because I missed the gag (either my husband or I was saying something to the other while it happened, and we only heard the audience laugh-gasp afterwards), I thought the ickiest moment of last night's show was him shouting down Rebecca Traister as she was making a solid point about religion as a potential outlet for masculinist violence, rather than its cause, so that he could be all "NO! ISLAM IS THE WORST!" But that basic scene happens every week on the show.

Not sure what the republican guest was trying to achieve by suggesting that Bill go and work in the fields with him. Not heard it said as a phrase before. Can see how the comment fit in response but think it wasn't well judged. Shouldn't be something that is being said off the cuff in front of a recording audience though. Some people probably think of that as being overly PC for a humorist but just seems to have been a stupid thing to have said.

i think he gets more curdled the older he gets. just keeps repeating himself all the time like an old man. i didn't mind him years ago. liked his rants. he just seems like a big baby now. comedians shouldn't get so comfortable. he's so comfy/smug in his bubble. i mean he was always smug but i seem to remember him listening more. and it seemed like he took more care to have a good mix of guests. now its just lunatic right wing people and kinda befuddled other people i've never heard of. and some random celebrity.

Nobody intelligent wants to waste time on his show

He's the worst kind of pot head too - he's bereft of original thought and checked out mentally. Not good qualities for running a show imo

I don't understand how he could possibly think it would be cool to say the n word.

Tarantino syndrome

he was playing his Eminem records?

i was gonna bring T****t**o into this but that will lead nowhere productive

Louis CK gets away with it too.

every generation gets the frank zappa they deserve

Haha ouch

Maher def in that lineage of unholy fools and (doyou)seers

i still love george carlin. not everything he did obviously. and he loved his 50's-era jive talk. but i still appreciate him as a writer. bill hicks i can live without. i see maher and hicks in that post-carlin light.

I was too young, or at least too unhip, to be into Hicks at the time, so when I finally caught up with him, I was a bit appalled by this supposedly "revolutionary" comedian just being another sexist, homophobic asshole.

Right

bill hicks is all the worst parts of the "dudes who think they're really smart" brand of comedy

haven't listened to any hicks stuff in years but i suspect his fondness for conspiracy theories and "they're all puppets of the system, man!" attitude toward politics would prob sound a lot grosser in the current climate than it did in the early '90s

yeah, we don't really need more antisocial, conspiratorial types of any political persuasion rn

i can see how this happened in bill maher's mind

1. senator makes a bizarre comment about inviting maher to work "in the fields"
2. maher thinks it's a putdown, calling maher a slave, a member of the bottom class
3. maher tries to think up a joke, maybe a slightly higher class?, what about a slave in the house, what are they called again?

and then he doesn't have the filter to know that the n-word is a bad idea in any context.

Conspiracy theories were just good times fun before 9/11 Truthers and Alex Jones.

Is the phrase 'work in the fields' odd or just regional or what.
I hadn't heard it used non literally before as far as I can remember.
But can see why the response might be what it was if done live.
Odd that I'm watching Dear White People at around the same time where several people are saying 'you can't use that word'. Should be understood though especially between 2 white people especially when they're being recorded. Would be nice if they weren't using it at all but can't control that. Don't want it normalising anyway though may be too late for that since it's used in rap etc. & Patti Smith. Did she get much shit for that? Or Yoko?

Louis CK gets a pass for this all the time

i can see how this happened in bill maher's mind

1. senator makes a bizarre comment about inviting maher to work "in the fields"
2. maher thinks it's a putdown, calling maher a slave, a member of the bottom class
3. maher tries to think up a joke, maybe a slightly higher class?, what about a slave in the house, what are they called again?

and then he doesn't have the filter to know that the n-word is a bad idea in any context.

This is literally not what this joke is

the sen said "IN THE FIELD," a common phrase for doing political legwork

Maher's brain went "WHERE"S THE JOKE" bcz that's what comedians do

Louis CK gets a pass for this all the time

― sexualing healing (crüt), Monday, June 5, 2017 5:27 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like the 4th time someone has made this point in about 30 posts so i guess i'll finally take the bait: not really the same thing imo. tho obv his use of it makes me uncomfortable (which is probably the point)

the idea that certain artists can NEVER use a certain word: nope

That Senator's book is about how young people needing to take more responsibility yadda yadda, so he goes into how back in Nebraska he get's his sons to go out and work in the corn/wheat fields as having to do a hot nasty job is a good thing to build character. Then after that he said to Maher, you should come out and work in the fields (to build some character ha ha) then Maher dropped the line in response referring to himself.

ok so he actually said "fields," my bad. Some of the early news stories had this wrong or incomplete.

That Senator's book is about how young people needing to take more responsibility yadda yadda, so he goes into how back in Nebraska he get's his sons to go out and work in the corn/wheat fields as having to do a hot nasty job is a good thing to build character.

so i assume ben sasse is a firm supporter of immigrant labourers, who must have built up incredible reserves of character through years of toiling in the fields...?

this is like the 4th time someone has made this point in about 30 posts so i guess i'll finally take the bait: not really the same thing imo. tho obv his use of it makes me uncomfortable (which is probably the point)

Someone refresh my memory but has he actually used it recently?

Anyway the fact that it took this for liberals to be sick of Maher (the ones that aren't still defending him, that is) is really fucking stupid. The rampant Islamophobia, transphobia etc was all fine and dandy, I guess?

I got the impression that most of the ppl attacking Maher now are ppl who already disliked him for all the reasons you mentioned above (and more!), and this new incident has just given them some momentum + a clearly understood clearly indefensible Maher transgression to rally around? Were there really large numbers of liberals who were pro-Maher before this who've now turned on him?

(I guess there are ppl who haven't really paid much attention to him for years until just now?)

Wesley Morris:

Mr. Maher has views, but what he said on Friday night isn’t among them. For one thing, it’s not even a view, per se. It was an attempt to mock Mr. Sasse’s unfortunate choice of words. (I think I knew what he meant, too: Nebraska grows too much corn for grown people to fret over who to be for Halloween.) But intention is tricky in comedy. Mr. Sasse said something that was, on its face, unsavory. You don’t need much of an imagination to envision Chris Rock, Larry Wilmore or Wanda Sykes taking a whack at that line. ABC’s sitcom “black-ish” exists, partly, to satirize these sorts of conversational bloopers.

But Bill Maher isn’t Chris Rock. He’s not on “black-ish.” He’s a 61-year-old white man who would never get a pass for jesting about slavery or the N-word. (His track record inspires too much doubt to give any benefit.) That’s a license reserved, arguably, for Louis C.K., or Sarah Silverman in her performance-art prime — white comedians who have really grappled with what it means to flirt with racially inflammatory language and ideas, what it means for the flirtation to fail. Mr. Maher’s approach to television doesn’t necessitate that kind of rehearsed rumination. The appeal of “Real Time” is its on-the-spot discourse, its anti-rehearsal. That looseness can tip easily into blurting, flatulence and worse.

The insult to injury here involves the conflation of Mr. Maher’s transgression and the umbrage he feigned at being asked to work in the fields. As my sister might say: Oh, he fancy now. For a long time, black people have deployed slavery-derived hierarchies as a social and psycho-political sorting mechanism. A house assignment might have won a slave less arduous work but more suspicion and contempt from her counterparts in the fields. No one self-identifies as a house Negro — unless that person is making a joke. And even then that person probably shouldn’t be Bill Maher....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/arts/television/what-was-bill-mahers-big-mistake.html

for better or worse, I don't think Louie would be able to get away with that n-word bit in 2017. iirc that was on Chewed Up, probably 7-8 years ago? there was a lot more nuance and self-awareness to it than what Maher did, a big part of it was Louie being pissed at newscasters for saying "the n-word" rather than the actual n-word because it put the latter into his head without the newscaster having to bear the weight of saying it. but still, if he did that bit for the first time today, there would be outrage and thinkpieces galore.

Mr. Sasse said something that was, on its face, unsavory.

I don't really get this. If Sasse had said this to a black host I could see it being tone deaf but he's talking to Bill fucking Maher.

Hadn't taken in that Sasse was literally advocating physically working in the fields as part of his program so thought it was an oddly worded metaphor which might lead to the response. Though that response was at best tactless.

yah he was saying "Ever think about working in the fields with us in Nebraska?" in reference to a real program he runs where people literally work in fields. Maher heard "work in the fields" and his mind went somewhere else.

Of all the things for Sasse to get blowback on in this situation, referencing his program is perplexing.

OTOH, the "I'll just go along with this and hope no one noticed" chuckle should get him primaried, even with his post-appearance apology

It won't because he's in Nebraska but it should

Ice Cube telling him "Sometimes you sound like a redneck trucker" otm. it's pretty clear he doesn't think he did anything wrong tho.

"Smug liberal who's casually racist" doesn't really ring as "redneck trucker" tbh, but I'll have to watch this. Or maybe I don't. Eh.

thanks for giving us your uninformed opinion at any rate

Responding to a quote you posted, so moderately informed. But no problem!

did you ever watch his show during the Obama years? he is very fond of making a racist joke with the frame of "this is what republicans say"

also the weekly stating that Islam is a danger to the world with dangerous ideas, pretty redneck trucker that stance

it was interesting to learn that when he grew up in the 50s/60s "racism wasn't really a thing"

he must have enough money to retire on, right?

He said Race wasn't a thing, as in we were all white and no one talked about race. He's a piece of shit but you dont have to make shit up to attack him with.

Maher isn't even a liberal, he's a libertarian who voted for Dole in '96.

Does Trump have to actually blow Putin? Is that what it wld take?Flagrant D, balls gargling the leader of the Russian Federation? Jus asking

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) July 19, 2017

comedy genius

ok he's definitely trying to get Trump to respond to him, good luck

This week, Bill called out Molly Ringwald's NYT piece and praised The Simpsons' "fuck you snowflakes" move.

Next week's guests include Jordan Peterson.

A bit of McLusky stage banter comes to mind there - "One grenade....all the miserable, useless atoms..."

i quit watching this show a while back, my weekends have been so much nicer ever since

I quit too but it's hard sometimes when I'm st a party or if ii drink to much the urge is strong

Cancelling HBO tomorrow.

Maher is typically insufferable but I saw that bit in response to the Ringwald/Hughes thing and it didn’t seem ridiculous. I also didn’t read the article so if he’s totally switching the argument around never mind.

Tonight saw hm and Jordan Peterson, two white heterosexual men, griping about “safe spaces” and Maher not once bothering to bring up Peterson’s controversial transphobia, never mind challenge him on it.

Fuck Maher

“stop being surprised every time you watch an old movie or TV show and find some of the ideas in it are old.”

In isolation, i don't find anything to disagree with there.

But to say people didn't find Long Duk Dong offensive in 1984 is ludicrous.

I generally like Maher's willingness to challenge leftist doxa on certain issues but I'm sadly not surprised by his coddling of Jordan Peterson aka Canada's worst cultural export at the moment.

But to say people didn't find Long Duk Dong offensive in 1984 is ludicrous.

I kinda meant that re Ringwald too... it didn't bother you at the time, Molly, cuz you were a 15-year-old white actress.

Just to clarify: it isn't the Ringwald thing that was the final nail for me (it was annoying but expected), but the convo with Jordan Peterson.

You suck. https://t.co/USK38fFe1N

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) May 24, 2019

Not getting any classic-er: https://decider.com/2022/04/13/bill-maher-vs-bella-thorne/amp/

BTW: has anyone else noticed that Carlson has mellowed considerably now that he's not doing Crossfire? I still don't like a lot of his politics, but I'm finding myself thinking of him as an enormous prick less and less. If he loses the bowtie, I think he might have a future as a watchable talk show host.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:44 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bill Maher is Still A Prick

Whoops, that story was already posted.

Oughta post this here too, just to make sure!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ha6D1LQGD4

yea not sure where we should talk about this but it's so funny and spot-on. iirc Tim's been doing a Bill Maher impression for a while

never fails to delight me that the first thing you see when you open this thread is my wife saying: i love bill maher! hahaha! different times.

geez because of this FB is showing me ACTUAL Bill Maher clips and Tim actually nails it better than I thought

love this

“I’m on the side of the kids.”

Bill Burr supports pro-Palestine protests on college campuses. He compares Bill Maher's geopolitical analysis to a "guy that has a fantasy football team."

"This is not your thing. Why am I listening to you? What have you done? Nothing!" pic.twitter.com/S1gIjGwiP8

— 🍄Psychedelic Socialist (@Acid_Communist) May 13, 2024

Lol

Shd really change the title of this thred

Maher gets closer and closer to being Leisure Suit Larry every time I see an image of him.

Omg lol

looool milo

but yeah he's looking not old but elderly lately

Bill Maher deserves his own thread (besides that old thread after he got in trouble for calling the 9/11 terrorists courageous).
Last night, he was brilliant.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Saturday, July 31, 2004 10:09 AM (nineteen years ago)

Line graph mapping out his stock in this thread is essentially a ski slope.

Real Time is still a great show, but I'm liking less and less of what Bill says. It feels more rote now than before, for some reason. Tucker Carlson came off better than Maher did the other night, and that's a baaaad sign.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:32 AM (nineteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

BTW: has anyone else noticed that Carlson has mellowed considerably now that he's not doing Crossfire? I still don't like a lot of his politics, but I'm finding myself thinking of him as an enormous prick less and less. If he loses the bowtie, I think he might have a future as a watchable talk show host.
― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:44 AM (nineteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

on that note

i would've lumped burr into maher's camp but that was a delightfully surgical take he did to bill.

Burr inhabits a weird space of getting lumped into “COMEDIAN DESTROYS FEMINISM” YouTube playlists but doesn’t seem to be a reactionary shithead himself.

Maher is such a bad advert for smoking weed

Lmao

I could honestly watch this 500 times pic.twitter.com/Yxzn8d2Al8

— america's lounge singer (@KrangTNelson) May 14, 2024

I like that Burr didn’t come on with a political agenda or even a specific criticism. He’s just like “You’re dumb and full of shit.”

Watched this whole thing and decided I don't really like Burr either, but Bill Maher is really the smuggest most insufferable prick.

over the past week or so, i watched or at least skipped across most of the episodes of politically incorrect that are preserved on the internet archive. i suppose i expected, despite having watched it at the time, to be surprised by its level of discourse, to get sad pleasure out of its contrast with the stupidity of the present, but it feels more contemporary in its way than most things of its time. the bookers leaned on entrepreneurial conservative commentators whose business models proved successful (some individuals disappeared, of course, like debbie schlussel). authors promoting books, fringe pundits, celebrity academics, usually a source of some depth on chat programs, are underrepresented. discussion is derailed by grandstanding, then a retreat behind jibes to stimulate the audience whooping. bill maher comes across as uninformed and cruel. the unexpected list of guests on a night—dmx and larry hagman, kellyanne conway and scott thompson, picabo street and david duke, naomi wolf and bob backlund...—was part of the appeal, but there's not much payoff. the show was bad. there's no need to say that. it's been off the air for more than two decades.

i watched so many episodes because i had a memory of the show that i would like to confirm is genuine. i will describe it here, as i remember it, in case you know what i mean, in case obsessive politically incorrect archivers are reading this: a woman seated to bill maher's right interrupts the show to talk about madame bovary. the woman says with painful earnestness how much we can learn from great literature. there is respectful silence as she speaks. bill maher offers polite agreement, dropping any cruelty. she was an east asian woman with short hair, i want to say, speaking in her second language, but she might also have been eastern european. this might be a false memory.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c/bafkreigoxzbmmxh3ewxmihyzwnavhvdhn6xllzs4s6puakmu6insbyq4di@jpeg

"We Saw You From Across the Bar and Really Dig Your Vibe..."

AOC was on the other day.

Bill Maher is really the smuggest most insufferable prick

co-sign to infinity, his only remote competition in the smug/insufferable sweepstakes is "billionaire entrepreneur" Vivek Ramaswamy

i swear he has ringers in the audience of his show. i KNOW he does. nobody laughs like some of the people in his crowd. its so phony. someone investigate that. he tells his new rules non-jokes and it sounds like people are going to have to go to the hospital they are laughing so loud!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dskdjJJ7bnQ

I watched an episode recently for the first time in many years and that struck me too, it felt like Morton Downey Jr vibes, just massive hooting and cheering at every tepid zinger

maybe he makes his writing staff go out there and do it and they all say "oh he wants fake laughter does he..."

he must have a small army of disgruntled writers. he just seems like a boss from hell. or maybe he pays them a ton and they love him what do i know?

Paul F Tompkins has worked for Maher in the past and while he's not said anything explicit, he's made it pretty clear he didn't consider him a great boss.

oh wait -- I confused Maher with Jon Stewart. I confused one smug doofus with another slightly less smug doofus.

was gonna say I'd be surprised if AOC gave Maher the time of day, Jon Stewart on the other hand I think is fine

i can't watch john stewart on his monday daily show thing. i think he must be deaf he just screams for 10 minutes. way way way over the top.

and just tired. the act. as tired as bill maher in a different way.

I've never seen one of these recorded, but a friend of mine saw Letterman in his heyday and he was shocked that even with a funny host and funny jokes and writing, there were still hype men in the crowd getting people to hoot and holler louder at every bit and punchline.

I was going n the audience for the first season of saved by the bell

I've always wondered that when it comes to shows like Seinfeld, a lot of times you're seeing the 3rd or 4th take, how are they still laughing like it's the first time they heard it?

Need to change that thread title.

well, he is a classic...asshole.

i can't believe my nearest and dearest started this thread. she'll never live it down. i blame ralph nader. AGAIN. that was the reason she started this thread. when he had ralph nader on his show and begged him not to run for president.

This should be one of those threads like the Morrissey one where it only gets bumped when the subject is dead

he was always a smarm king but now he's just a broken record on woke and the youngs...its so embarrassing. and he's like trump. he'll never back off of it. just become more embarrassing. he is instructive though. what not to do as i age.

still find it hard to get over the Steve-O story. if you don't know apparently he wanted him on as a guest and Steve-O accepted under one condition, that Maher wouldn't smoke weed during the interview. seems pretty obvious, given the substance abuse issues he's had in the past. should be easy to comply with, right? if you wanna be high just smoke beforehand or take an edible. but he just flat out refused, like nah if I can't smoke weed during the interview I won't do it. so the pompous asshole routine ain't just for TV

the world missed out on a really good story about someone hurting their balls. of that i am sure.

Does Maher regularly smoke weed on the show, or is this just more of his libertarian fuck-your-feelings shit?

He apparently smokes all the way through his podcast. Not the HBO show.

he basically spends an hour fumbling with a lighter and trying to put ice into a glass. its maddening to watch. like when dave chappelle ALMOST lights a cigarette or vapes on one of his netflix specials. makes me want to jump off a bridge.

Only bits I've seen of his podcast (on YouTube) are of Richard Dreyfuss having some sorta breakdown, and Bill telling Cameron Crowe why Billy Joel is his favourite artist (I can kinda respect the latter).

Most of what I know about Bill Maher's podcast comes from Tim Heidecker's parody of it.

I saw an episode with Daryl Hall a couple years ago just for the sake of Hall and he was smoking the entire time. Hall stuck with bourbon.

parents could show their kids that podcast and say "see, see what happens...". that oughta scare them.

or just show them steve-o's podcast.

i am watching a lot of comedian podcasts on youtube at work now cuz they are easy to watch/listen to while i do my discogs and i really wish they believed in editing more. i don't need to see david cross and his guest take off their coats and figure out what chair to sit in and get good subway route talk for 5 minutes. i love when guests on these say "wait, have we started...?" a half hour into the podcast. its like watching a band tune up.

Maher did a really creepy bit a few months ago where he interviewed a few little kids and made a bunch of sex jokes and asked them how many times they'd transitioned genders.

He also did a slimy drunken interview with the Hawk Tuah girl that sounded like how I imagine a lot of Harvey Weinstein's assaults began.

Don't think I've ever seen a person who has benefitted less from smoking weed than Maher. It just makes him even less funny, charming, and relaxed.

I went to a taping of Politically Incorrect near the end of it's run. We tried to get into the Price is Right and were turned away so it was either that or the Craig Kilborn show. A difficult choice of smugness, but we went with Maher, who I had enjoyed earlier in the PI run. Yes, the hype man did gin up the crowd a whole bunch to hoot and holler and overlaugh at everything and, in that spirit, when Bill said something about it sadly being one of the last shows, I yelled "WOOOO YEAH!!!" at the top of my lungs over an otherwise silent crowd. Bill seemed genuinely annoyed and squinted to try to see where I was and said "Well, I guess it's not a sad thing for everybody." David Crosby was on stage and grinned like a madman. This was over 20 years ago and he's gotten much worse since then so I remain proud that I hurt Bill Maher's feelings a little bit once.

thank you for your service

David Crosby was on stage and grinned like a madman.

lol

it turns out they don't really look that much alike but my mental image of Maher is forever Leisure Suit Larry

He’s got such dopey Uncle vibes

_David Crosby was on stage and grinned like a madman.

Bill Maher is the jester

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/_nGQuVK0j4t8ZBUUAI.r8Q--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU0MDtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/thedailybeast.com/76649645985fb067664123c803339f8f