I’m not well today: a combination of a lingering cold and severe insomnia last night has laid me low (if I have to give up wine to sleep, I’ll conclude that life isn’t worth living). But I did finish my essay about our Amsterdam deplatforming, written with Maarten Boudry, that we’ll publish in another place when the video of our discussion goes up. (It was filmed in an almost-empty room in a secret location in downtown Amsterdam, and turned out well.)
In the meantime, exhausted from writing, I’m going home and have little to offer today. Below are two items. First, a ten-minute discussion of Bill Maher with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria about Maher’ss new book. This is a very different discussion from the one Maher had with the women on “The View”, and shows that he’s deft on his feet as well as thoughtful. Among the topics: why the protests of the Sixties differ from the pro-Palestinian protestors of today, why he makes fun of the Left so often, sex and gender, “healthy at any weight”, incels, the difficulties of dating these days (men are losing their ability to communicate), growing tribalism, why the Right has become so crazy, and Maher’s prediction that, even if Trump loses this fall, he won’t concede the election.
Maureen Dowd has a long piece in the NYT about Maher and his book (mostly about Maher), and it’s a good read. Click the headline below for an archived version:
An excerpt:
He seems to make more news than all of the other night-owl comedians combined, no doubt because he breaks free of comedy’s congealed partisan worldview. Unlike most other political commentators, he does not pander to the left or the right.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. “The only thing that the two parties really have in common is that they’re both hoping their candidates die.”
Sometimes Fox (which he says he rarely watches) loves him and MSNBC is mad at him, and sometimes it’s the reverse. In a world awash in disinformation, Maher gives blunt, practical opinions, not filtered through ideology or likability, on everything from “Barbie” to Bibi to babies — and why he never had them.
“Why can’t everybody live in my world, in the middle, where we’re not nuts?” he wondered, ordering a shot of tequila to go with his margherita pizza. The dedicated health freak, opponent of treating obesity as body positivity, and Ozempic skeptic has a small bottle with a dropper, dripping into his sparkling water a product called Jing, a bubbly water enhancer with no aspartame, gluten or carbs.
Maher is constantly asked why he makes fun of the left more than he used to.
“Yes, I do, because they’re goofier and more obnoxious than they used to be,” he told his guests, Frank Bruni and Douglas Murray, on his show recently. “They also just became weirder.”
“I’m a comedian,” he told me. “I’m going to go where the ridiculous is.”
. . . At dinner, we talked about the eruption of antisemitism.
“It’s hard to get your head around the thought of people yelling ‘Death to America’ on American soil,” he said.
He is disgusted with progressive students who, as he writes, cheer on Hamas to preside over a country with few constraints against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia and child marriage.
He calls elite universities “the mouth of the river” from which nonsense flows, producing “American-hating hysterics devoid of knowledge. If they had any knowledge about the Middle East or what apartheid really means or genocide, would they be on the side of Hamas, really?”
In ancient courts, the jester could speak the truth to the king with impunity, like Shakespeare’s fools. But, given safe spaces and trigger warnings, being a jester isn’t what it used to be.
“He survived his first cancellation,” said Tina Brown, the media duchess, “and now has become a warrior for the rest of us, absolutely refusing to be careful.”
Sorry that you are still under the weather. Maybe a quiet afternoon back at your crib will lead to dozing off and a few hours of good, restful sleep. After all, today IS a holiday.
Does he have that word in his dictionary?
Actually … does he have a dictionary, let alone the inclination to use it?
If memory serves me, Trump announced several months before the 2020 election that if he was not elected, it would be due to fraud. Typical third-rate human primate Philistine bloviation. I’m waiting to hear him make that claim before the 2024 election (if he has not already made it).
The real question is why so many centrist Democrats are terrified of their Progressive wing. It is eventually going to cost them dearly.
I believe the fear is that if they are not specifically inspired to vote, they do not vote. That results in Republican wins. Higher voter turnout is how Democrats win.
Maher is perceptive about a lot of political issues, and I agree with him more often than not. I like that he’s an outspoken atheist and critic of organized religion. His movie Religiosity was very good. What I don’t much like about him is that he tends toward a certain arrogance and unwarranted certainty that he’s always right, even when he’s wrong about some topics, such as his vaccine skepticism and his admiration of Musk.
+1
You like him except when you disagree with him. I’m like that, too.
In what sense is his admiration of Musk wrong? Isn’t that a bit subjective? He can admire Musk, or Luce Irigaray, or Joseph Goebbels; but is it wrong?
I’ll watch the video later today, but I did read the Dowd piece, which was good! Maher is an interesting guy, that’s for sure, and an excellent cultural critic.
Hope you feel better!
Dowd: “He is not universally beloved. Some people find him smug . . . .”
Dowd has a similar notable gift.
Although there’s too much god talk for my taste, Ken Burns drops his longstanding political neutrality at the 13-minute mark and warns about Trump during his keynote address to the 2024 undergraduate class during the 73rd Commencement Exercises at Brandeis University. 22 minutes total. (There’s also a link to a transcript.)
I’ve found that sleep gummies really do help–subtle and effective. The wine, too, of course.
Wine apparently interferes with sleep. I don’t know why.
A little wine helps me sleep, a lot of wine hinders it.
All drugs (alcohol included) have a half life. Sleep will come in its own time.
“(if I have to give up wine to sleep, I’ll conclude that life isn’t worth living)”… maybe wine at breakfast or brunch instead of in the evening?
Woke up Tuesday morning and clicked on Google News and there was WEIT in its news feed! Wasn’t expecting that.
The thing about Maher is that he is an original thinker and indeed is not afraid to challenge liberal or conservative tropes. His deepest flaw as I see it is he succumbs to what he criticizes, a slavery to dogma and refusal to reassess when there is new data. Prime example is his pervasive antivax views which predated Covid. He couldn’t wrap his head around why a flu vaccine that was <50% effective would still be a good thing to take for himself and for the vulnerable around him. Of course that magnified during Covid and I watched monologue after monologue making fun of the over-reaction to the pandemic after I came home from the hospital watching my patients die. The fringe non scientist idiots he brought on as guests to pontificate about antivax views finally took his program off my record list. Of course now he sees the control of the pandemic as a complete vindication of his views, like the person who knocks all the pieces off a chess board and proclaims themselves the winner.
Maher accuses the USA of overreacting to COVID, which may be true, but I think he forgets what we overreacted to: hospital ERs full of sick and dying people and no way to stop it, life saving surgeries being postponed, and so on. It was a very bad situation.