Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here are two clips from the latest Real Time show: the introductory monologue and the longer comedy bit, which this week is on the interminable campaigning going on.
This 3½-minute intro is about the debate and Trump’s abysmal showing (he doesn’t forget to bring in Haitians and dogs). His imitation of Trump at the end is pretty good:
Here Maher beefs about how long elections are taking these days, suggesting that we start the campaigning on Labor Day at the earliest, for we can learn enough about the candidates within three months, especially given today’s short attention spans. (It’s long enough for debates, too!) Even heterosexual sex, he says, takes on average between three and seven minutes. The long campaigns, he claims, is due entirely to money. “It’s time we admit that the endless campaign exists only to enrich advertisers, political consultants, and what’s left of the news media.” He adds that the only things that last too long these days are campaigns–and streaming series.
The educational part is Maher’s description how much less time it takes other countries to have political campaigns–and the much shorter interval between someone being elected and taking office.
Although Maher is always accused of being a right-winger, that’s not true at all; he’s more or less a left-centrist, like me. Here he defines “ick” with some graphic examples, and says that Trump has a bad case of it, and that’s the best thing Democrats have going for them. But. . . . he then says that the extreme Left aren’t immune to it, using as an example of the extreme Left going after Cheryl Hines, married to RFK Jr., for not divorcing him.
He says this, “You want to know why I have a bug up my ass about the Left more than I used to? It’s shit like this: there’s an ugliness they never used to have. The liberals I grew up respecting–none of them are like this. Going after the wife? Even the Mafia doesn’t do that!” He then shows a clip of Barack Obama at the latest DNC criticizing everyone across the political spectrum for thinking the worst of those on other side, and thinking that “the only way to win this is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side.”
The YouTube notes:
Donald Trump is stained with “the ick,” but liberals who scold and shame those who don’t share their worldview risk being tainted by it, too.
I’m not sure that Bill Maher qualifies as an expert on marriage given that he’s never been married and vowed he never will be. But, as usual, he’s funny, and the message not to fully demonize one’s political opponents is always worth pondering. Maher ends up by criticizing the Republican politicians as “far worse” than the Democratic ones, but adds tjat “the kind of people who are always howling on social media are the ones who give people the ‘ick’ when they hear the word ‘liberal.'”
It was good to hear Obama again: I’d missed his convention speech.
Katie Herzog is still doing the TGIF columns at the Free Press, which, when Nellie Bowles wrote them, was one of the best reasons to subscribe (Bowles is the Bill Maher of print journalism). Since Bowles has taken maternity leave, the column has been written by others, including nepo baby Suzy Weiss and, this week, Katie Herzog again. The replacements have been good, but Nellie is The Queen, and nobody can really replace her. We’re told she’ll be back in two weeks.
Anyway, since I can’t do a proper Hili column when I’m traveling, here at least are three article stolen from Herzog’s latest column, called “TGIF: Foreign Interference.” Click below to read the whole thing:
→ Iranian writer sentenced to prison over dot: Hossein Shanbehzadeh, an Iranian writer and activist, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court after he tweeted a period at the Supreme Leader. Officially, NPR reports, “Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda.” Suspicious. . . this was my exact penalty in college for attending Shabbat services.
Shanbehzadeh’s one-character tweet, which was in response to a photo posted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of himself with the national volleyball team, received more likes than the Ayatollah’s post. He basically got 12 years for ratioing. Which, if that’s a crime, I guess I’ll be going in for twenty to life any day now.
→ Now, maybe you’re telling yourself:This could never happen in the U.S. Thank Allah and the Founding Fathers for the First Amendment! And you’re probably right: Tweeting a period at President Harris and/or Trump is unlikely to get you thrown in jail, and American citizens enjoy more speech protections than probably any other people on Earth. But don’t let your Bill of Rights throw pillow woo you into complacency. I mean, we’re not some tyrannical shit hole like the UK, where people are being charged for mean tweets, but government censorship does exist here. The last few years has seen huge surges in book banning and protest crackdowns, and just last week, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Meta caved to Biden administration pressure to censor content posted by users on Facebook.
This week, Reason reported on the case of a “citizen journalist” who goes by the name Lagordiloca, or “the fat, crazy lady” (catchy), who was arrested by police in Laredo, Texas, after she broke stories obtained by a confidential source from within that same department. And vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz said in a recently resurfaced interview that misinformation and hate speech aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Now, he’s wrong about that, which you’d think a former high school social studies teacher would know (you actually are allowed to be a prick and a liar in America, thank God), but it’s a troubling statement from someone who could soon occupy the little closet down the hall from the Oval Office where they stow the VP.
→ Arrest-Me-Not: The darling of Sweden, Greta Thunberg, was arrested at Copenhagen University while protesting the school’s connection to Israel, namely that they have an exchange program where Israeli students come to study there. Thunberg sent a dispatch via Instagram from the front lines of her battle against. . . climate? Israel? At this point I can’t tell. She wrote: “Students Against the Occupation and I are at the University of Copenhagen’s administration building. Police have been called, violently entered the building with a ram wearing assault rifles. They are evicting everyone as we speak.” I love the new use of eviction where it’s just when someone tells you to leave the place that you aren’t allowed to be in. I swear I’ve been evicted from many pools in my neighborhood by people who don’t know me, and dozens of Denny’s parking lots after closing. . . it’s honestly a travesty. Meanwhile, a bunch of people were arrested outside of Citibank headquarters in New York while protesting fossil fuels, a throwback to a sweet time when environmental activists organized around the environment.
Whatever happened to Greta? Although I’ve always found her somewhat irritating, I also was on her side in the climate-change controversy. But I guess she’s found herself a new cause, BDS:
To end a rough week on a high note, here is “Crazy Opossum Lady” showing you how to massage your marsupial.
Reader Rosemary sent me this video made by M. E. Pearl. It’s hilarious! She does this tongue in cheek, of course, but her devotion to these lovely creatures is genuine, and she has many funny videos on possums, always emphasizing that they are harmless (indeed, helpful) and should not be killed. There are dozens of possum videos on her website.
The Virginia opossum has a maximal lifespan in the wild of only about two years. Even in captivity, opossums live only about four years. The rapid senescence of opossums is thought to reflect the fact that they have few defenses against predators; given that they would have little prospect of living very long regardless, they are not under selective pressure to develop biochemical mechanisms to enable a long lifespan.
Of course, there might be selection to increase the lifespan by evolving antipredator defenses, but given that reproductive senescence may have already evolved, so they lose their ability to reproduce by a certain age (viz,. menopause in human females), those defenses might not include a longer life.
This is one compliant possum. I hope it enjoyed the massage!
Being deplatformed in Amsterdam seems to have induced some kind of malaise in my brain, so that it’s become a lot harder to write on this site. I can’t think of any reason beyond the deplatforming, which hit me hard and even induced me to stay in bed most of the next day, but the day after that I bounced back. I think I’m getting back to normal, but I still have to clean my plate before the site resumes its normal tenor. I was, for example, just writing a post about what kinds of free speech are used (and needed) on private college campuses, and I gave up and said, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” (Ye shall have it then.) So let’s have some comedy instead.
In last week’s monologue segment of Real Time, Bill Maher first reveals that his new book comes out this week. In fact it came out two days ago, and is doing very well (click below to go to the Amazon link). Note that the book deliberately looks like social-media clickbait:
The Amazon summary:
The book was inspired by the “editorial” Bill delivers at the end of each episode of Real Time. These editorials are direct-to-camera sermons about culture, politics, and what’s happening in the world. To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them, and adding new material to speak exactly to the moment we’re in. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers it all. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary about American culture in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H. L. Mencken.
That’s a bit hyperbolic given the competition and the fact that the delivery of Twain and Mencken, the two best, was written rather than verbal, but it is true that for many of us, Maher is not just a comedian but a verbal and humerous deliverer of opinions. I can no longer listen to my old favorite, Jon Stewart, who’s become chronically woke to the extent that his opinions have gone wonky and his humor has gone south.
The Free Press has an excerpt from Maher’s new book called “American kids are way too confident“. It’s okay but seems like a comedy segment simply put into prose, which for some me doesn’t constitute absorbing reading. It’s like a meal consisting solely of desserts.
At any rate, Maher’s theme last week is how crazy historians of the future will see today’s divisive-ridden world. Intriguingly, one of the examples Maher gives of our craziness is the insupportable idea that there are more than two sexes in humans, and that “women” should be replaced with phrases like “bodies with vaginas” (see below). Maher takes the mickey out of both Left and Right, including pro-Palestinian student protesters and Trump’s crazy supporters who wear “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat” tee-shirts. Really? Would they?
It isn’t as funny as Maher’s usual bits, but the humor is still there, but replaced with a more serious message.
Oh, and here’s the famous Lancet cover; it was not a joke:
In his latest Real Time monologue, Bill Maher discusses pedophilia, how it’s exacerbated by the media (including Disney), celebrated by parents who dress up little kids as adults, and even excused by progressives. His take on “Drag Queen Story Hour” is pretty funny.
Money quote: “I’ve said it before wokeness is not an extension of liberalism any more it’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite.”
He then goes on to gender, suggesting that teaching six-year-old kids about gender is a form of “entrapment,” making them do something they otherwise wouldn’t. He’s gonna get in big trouble for that one!
This has its funny bits, but it’s one of Maher’s more serious pieces, bearing on the possible indoctrination of kids into “nonbinary” roles by peers and teachers.
Bill Maher’s latest monologue, “Stuck on stupid,” takes out after what he sees as overreactions to the covid pandemic (including closing schools and denying flatly that the virus came from a Wuhan lab), I remember disinfecting groceries with alcohol and staying a long distance away from people, and, seriously I don’t think that Maher is correct to say that those behaviors were simply stupid. After all, remember that people were dying of a virus that we didn’t understand, and a lot of people hadn’t yet been vaccinated.
So I think here Maher is being snarky with the wisdom of hindsight. He even seems to diss vaccinations!
And yes, we have learned some stuff: how to make RNA vaccines, that those vaccines work, and that, right now, we don’t really need to have our sixth booster unless we’re immunocompromised.
This ain’t one of Maher’s better efforts. I didn’t follow his opinions at the beginning of the pandemic, but I know some reader did, so please weigh in below.
