I wondered what Bill Maher thought about the sketchy Graham Platner and his run as a Democrat for the Senate seat from Maine. Well, see the video below. Maher realizes that Platner is a “broken person,” but we’re “always electing our reflection in the mirror.” And he thinks that Dems should still vote for Platner because they need the Senate and we should just get used to America being “a country full of a lot of “broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted sort of nutty people,” and Platner is simply one of those. Maher points out some of our representatives or candidates who are already plenty weird (e.g., Tom Kean Jr., who’s been missing for over 100 days, Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist who wants to put Zionists in concentration camps, and.Victor Marx, who does exorcisms over the phone).
Maher goes off further on Americans: “Everything people ‘know’ now is from social media and shitposting and whatever some other idiot send them or whatever the Chinese are feeding them on Tik Tok.” This leads to a new breed of voter “who is intensely political but somehow know[s] almost nothing about politics.” True, and also true for “encampers.”
Maher includes Trump as a primo example of brokenness, faulting him for not editing his stream of consciousness (the clips of the Prez are rich), though Maher misses a chance to mention Joyce’s Ulysses (the audience might not know what he meant, though).
This is a pretty good bit, but it’s also somewhat depressing because Maher, though appearing elitist here, does show us how nuts American politics has become.
The guests on Friday’s episode of Real Time were author David Sedaris, political scientist Ian Bremmer, and former National Security Council director Hagar Chemali. The last two appear in this segment.
I am astounded to see Democrats attempt to justify support for Platner. It doesn’t matter if he’s running as a Democrat or a Republican–he’s not a good person and should not be in public office. Just because more and more politicians say and write bizarre things doesn’t mean we voters must lower our expectations. I think the same thing of Trump. It is possible to reach middle age without having done or said something monumentally cretinous in a public setting.
Why Ulysses?? Stram of consciousness?
Did you read Ulysses? Yes, the book is famous for representing the characters’ own stream of consciousness (aka “interior monologues”) as a critical feature—a narrative style that was unique.