Here’s Friday’s eight-minute comedy shtick by Bill Maher, but there’s as much seriousness as comedy. The topic: the connection between recent demonstrations about the war and the fulminating narcissism of the protestors.
His comments on gender apartheid in the Middle East and Africa is on the money, as is his characterization of many protestors as using “the cause” to highlight themselves and the idiocy of accusing Israel of “genocide.”
Maher is more serious than usual in this bit, perhaps because he realizes the seriousness of the widespread protests, which could throw the election to the Man Who We Don’t Want Elected.
h/t: Divy
Right on – note that there’s a train of thought – a creationist religion – that positions man as god, creating society as god, creating man as god.
Narcissism is entirely expected in that…. because hey, you’re god!
I’ll try to think of how to work Trump’s peculiar gestures into that…
Thanks for the link! Just when I get so pissed at something Maher says or does that I swear that I will never watch him again, he does an excellent routine like this one. Very good!
Brilliant!
The monologue was good. But before I watched the show, I cringed when I learned that Maher would be presenting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an anti-vaxxer who says he’s not an anti-vaxxer. Maher agrees with much of what RFK says, though Maher suggests that RFK goes “too far.” But Maher, apparently, also seems comfortable with RFK being a president candidate this year.
Why should anyone be uncomfortable with anyone as a presidential candidate, Jon? That implies someone has to pass some test of comfortableness before he can put himself in front of the voters. The election is the only test a democracy needs, no? And elections are meant to create discomfort in incumbents that they might lose power.
It has to do with the inherent flaw in our electoral college system. It is expected that Kennedy will draw more votes away from Biden than from Trump, making Trump’s win likely.
If we had a ranked choice system, it wouldn’t be an issue, but we don’t and it is.
As Phil notes. Plus, RFK keeps saying things that are factually wrong. Anyone who spouts factually wrong things makes me uncomfortable because of its corrosive effects on democracy.
Respectfully, what are you talking about Leslie? We citizens don’t have a right to demand that our elected representatives and government officials have competence? Shouldn’t they be qualified not just to do the job but to do it well? If you had a child with a serious health condition who needed a surgeon or you needed a lawyer to defend you in court, would you want a 3rd stringer hack in the bottom quartile of their profession or someone who is exemplary and formidable and effective at doing their job? Why should the criteria for becoming a politician be any less rigorous than a doctor or lawyer or plumber or electrician? In fact, the qualifications for becoming a politician might warrant even higher standards because their work stands to affect so many millions of other members of society.
I’m uncomfortable about seeing someone like Kennedy elected because he has demonstrated time and again a proclivity for conspiratorial thinking. That is a dangerous attribute for a politician to have and antithetical to sound logic, good judgment, good decision-making, and good leadership, no? Example: I am convinced that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a know-nothing, petulant imbecile and political troll who is among the least of us and she should not be a politician.
I’ve never understood this rationale that a politician can be just anyone. Perhaps in principle but that’s a rather romantic notion of competent leadership of a democracy. We never say that for leaders of the military or a company’s CEO or the head of the NIH.
An election is not just a popularity contest. The whole primary and debate process is supposed to prove to the electorate the abilities and myriad skills of a candidate. Surely conspiracy theories should be worrying and effectively disqualifying. At least when democracies are working properly.
Fine, Jimbo. Tell me how you would vet candidates for comfortableness. What powers would such a vetting body have? Would there be right of appeal? What if the vetting body became totally captured by one side?, as each side would surely strive to do, to trammel the opposition’s candidates and find none suitably comfortable to be allowed to run. What criteria would be determinative? How would you decide them? A crane operator who’d built a successful business building oil pipelines, or an academic with an advanced degree in climate studies who wanted to fill pipelines with carbon dioxide?
Personally, I think only property owners should be able to run for office (and only property owners should be allowed to vote in elections) —no renters likely to vote for silly things like rent controls and squatters’ rights. That’s the kind of candidates you’d get if you ever allowed me to get on a vetting panel. Comfortable with that?
Elections just are popularity contests. What else can they be? If you want unpopular candidates to be somehow elected because they are somehow “better”, then you have an aristocracy. And then who decides who gets to be an aristocrat? The King.
Wow. Conspiracy theorists it is then. Which one of those do you prefer? I’m not saying there is or should be a qualifications test for office led by some committee, just that I hope the electorate is wise enough not to back politicians with batty ideas. It’s a zeitgeist thing and one hopes the electorate will take note of bad ideas in a candidate and not support them in the ballot box. There is a vetting process and Jon rightly points outs that Kennedy has some wacky ideas that should be scrutinized. Maybe you dislike the idiom “uncomfortable with” which I took to mean “reasons not to elect” regardless of party.
You’re making perverse arguments here. Re-read what you wrote in response to Jon and then defend why Trump, for example, is absolutely a great candidate for reelection. Nevermind his distorted notions a peaceful transition of power or Jan 6th or Constitutional norms or his insistence on blanket immunity from the Supreme Court including the murder of political rivals, all of which should make us very uncomfortable. He’s POPULAR and therefore qualified, right? Who are we to suggest otherwise?
The people are allowed to elect anyone they choose, subject to the statutes. I’m not American so I try not to mention names of American politicians in theoretical discussions, but there are no circumstances (other than the Constitutional limits) where I would regard any candidate as unfit to run…or somehow ineligible or illegitimate if he wins.
Jon said he was uncomfortable with a particular politician being a candidate. Not being elected. Being a candidate. And you, like most people here, seem to be uncomfortable with one of the other candidates being a candidate also. So that means that most people here seem to be comfortable with only their candidate being allowed to run. This comes down to saying I wouldn’t vote for your candidate and I don’t think you should be allowed to either. The other side says the same thing about your candidate. So how do you settle it? With an election! That’s your only protection against batty ideas, vetted in an election campaign.
Disclaimer: This is dorm-room level poli-sci 101, for entertainment value, not Election 2024.
Leslie, it remains for me to say again that I’m uncomfortable with RFK as a presidential candidate, for the obvious reasons. Why are you uncomfortable with that very simple comment?
Honestly, you really just seem supportive of RFK rather than of any democratic principle involving U.S. elections, which was not my focus.
Are you being disingenuous?
If you knew nothing of the pro Palestinian pov this would probably go over as a Maher rant.
It only holds when you have a good grounding in the conflict, why it happened, etc. You get to chuckle at how pathetic the behaviour is.
The “target” will never follow up as it departs from the official line which is why we get to have a laugh hehe!
Trump jerking off 2 guys at once… was slightly off topic but funny. I digress laughing… but still, fucking WHY? DEI, optics, rebels without a cause, are they all numbnuts with rings in their noses?
Why do these students NOT see the giant contradiction in their support for Hamas.
If those guys (hamas) lived ‘down the road’ they’d be peeing their pants, or worse.
He was ON this week. RIGHT on.
One of Maher’s best – powerful stuff.