As with most people forced to exist in the same world as it, our general policy in recent years has been to try to avoid looking too directly at HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. Maher—despite his once considerable comedy chops—has, after all, long embraced his status as a political gadfly, a devoted follower of the “I speak truth (and the occasional racial slur) to power” set, in a way that defies “leftist” and “rightist” dogma in favor of landing firmly in the realm of Comfortably Smug. Still, there are times when his bookers do the devil’s work of actually forcing us to pay attention to his HBO series, by bringing on guests with actual impact on our day-to-day lives—guests like Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi, who’s set to appear on the show’s 18th season premiere next Friday night.
Credit where it’s due: It’s a big get, especially since that same week is expected to see the California rep. deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate in the national case against Donald Trump. Which is exactly the sort of complicated political situation that Maher’s show makes a specialty of processing down into a slurry of bickering and memes, as is the house style, and which will likely regurgitate up some tepid clips on Saturday morning of Pelosi smiling boredly while Maher cracks the appearance of a joke. Similarly feeding himself into the blender next Friday night: Democratic hopeful Andrew Yang, who will presumably field a series of perfectly basic questions about his political platform, presented in the voice of someone deeply annoyed that everyone else hasn’t already solved the Rubik’s Cube of political ideology like he has, c’mon, people, why don’t you just think?!
Real Time premieres its 18th-season premiere next Friday night; Donald Trump’s subsequent tweets about the appearance will presumably premiere shortly after, i.e., whenever his morning bathroom urges force him to awaken, phone already in hand, the following day.
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I wouldn’t want to say something too brave or controversial, but Bill Maher sucks ass.
Ricky Gervais too!
Good comparison. Between the two Gervais annoys me more but I’m not sire why. I can handle Maher’s condescension and smug little smile better than Uncle Ricky’s shit-eating grin and ‘gotcha’ delivery but they’re both pretty bad.
Both are atheists in the same sort of “only stupid people believe in space fairies and I don’t so I must be very very smart” Hawkins vein, but Maher has especial hatred of Islam that Gervais doesn’t (that I’m aware of). Gervais, on the other hand, has a bunch of transphobia that I’m not sure Maher has. They both have misogyny issues, so it’s honestly a toss up.
Looking at the anti-vax thing for a tiebreaker might eek Gervais ahead of Maher
I’d also add we need to hear both sides! So lets bring in Dennis fucking Prager. Yeah that will make us all understand…
Yeah, the vocal atheists I’ve encountered seemed to be split between those who were raised religious and, rightfully or not, hold a grudge and those who latch onto it as a way to congratulate themselves, as you say. My father raised me as an atheist, but also to respect other people’s beliefs if they’re not hurting anyone.I can kind of understand some comedians’ problems with the concept of ‘punching down’ because there isn’t really a clear hierarchy or authority to make it easy to figure out. Like I’m nobody and have nothing, but I am a white male. If a female black celebrity were to have a bunch of tax problems and I tweeted a joke about it am I having a laugh at the expense of someone far wealthier than me or perpetuating stereotypes about black people and women being bad with money? I imagine it would depend on the wording but I’m sure reasonable people could disagree about the effect if not the intent.But clearly neither of these two is even putting in that amount of thought into their material. I still don’t get how Maher got away with using the n-word on air.
It’s mostly the laugh. Mostly
Attacking big tech CEOs and Hollywood superstars is just not fair!
Attacking big tech CEOS and Hollywood superstars while hosting a night to honor Hollywood superstars as a means to promote your Netflix comedy special.
Which he didn’t mention was his. I had to Google the title to even know it was a plug.
Gervais is a smug cunt to plenty of people, not just them.
I used to absolutely love Maher but he has completely lost it in the wake of Trump. He constantly regurgitates corporate democrat talking points and believes that moderates are the counter to Trump. I can’t even bother to watch him.
Pretty crazy how Bill Maher’s been a huge Islamophobe since quite some time before the Trump presidency.
He’s not an Islamophobe. Get a grip. He criticizes all religions especially when it is radical/violent.
And note when someone criticizes the doctrine, not the people. Let’s learn from Ben Affleck’s unfortunate example.
Nope.He’s on the record, repeatedly, saying that the civil rights of Muslims should be curtailed as “common sense”.It is what he stands for.edit – and he has maintained that position since 9/11, so it isn’t a one off comment. it is an idea he has backed for decades.
Poor Bill Maher has succumbed to cranky old white man get off my lawn Centrist Democrat disease that’s afflicting so many these days. I miss the Bill Maher who used to have Bernie Sanders on all the time, before the presidency was even a twinkle in his eye.
The only reason he’s even a Democrat is because he eats to smoke weed.
He might support Democrats, especially while Trump is in the White House, but he really isn’t one of them. He’s closer to being a Libertarian.
My contention has always been that politics is a loop, not a spectrum, and libertarians are where the right wraps around and meets the left.
I like it. I also believe there’s a loop that’s far from libertarian and encapsulates the religious right’s thought police with the hyper-PCer’s version.
I’m with you there, the motivations/means are different, but the end results can be the same for certain things.
Bill Maher or Bernie Sanders?
He’s a Democrat. He agrees with Libertarians on drugs and homosexuality. There might be a few other issues like vaccinations. He’s clearly not a Libertarian on the big issues: taxes, climate change, health care, military intervention, etc. And he’s vocally not a Libertarian on the topic of eating meat.
And fuck!
He also worked hard to normalize Ann Coulter. I’m not sure if Bill has changed as much a lot of other people have changed and just don’t have the enthusiasm for his jeering anymore.
He’s NOT white! He’s a Jew. They just exploit looking white, like they do everything.
in a way that defies “leftist” and “rightist” dogma in favor of landing firmly in the realm of Comfortably SmugI used to like his show, but that was before he started yelling at the audience for not clapping at his jokes.
He needs to rename his show to just “Bill!” if he’s going full-on Jeb Bush
Yeah, that’s some weird shit that’s escalated the last several years. He regularly misreads the audience’s reaction (or lack of reaction) and eagerly pivots to yell at them about slights no one else can hear.
“…a slurry of bickering and memes, as is the house style, and which will likely regurgitate up some tepid clips on Saturday morning (…) crack[ing] the appearance of a joke.”*The AV Club*
i like bill maher.
Bill lost what little credibility I gave him when he sided with Anti-Vaxxers under the double-headed guises of “do you really trust the government when they tell you you NEED to do something” and “science has been wrong before.” … and then softening his (wrong) view by saying he’s been vaccinated and it’s the smart thing to do… (but shouldn’t be forced, of course.). I’m all for his calling bullshit on the extremists, snowflakes and the Orangutan…. but dude, vaccines are a blessing and a safety net for society – and they really only work when everyone’s on board.
My favourite Pink Floyd song is Comfortably Smug.
I think The Condescending Nile Song is way better than Comfortably Smug.
“Nancy, with everything going on in the world, what I really want to talk about is why you won’t come out stronger for pot?!” Ugh. Smoke on your own time, Bill.
I increasingly doubt that Maher actually smokes weed. A joint or a bowl generally mellows me the fuck out and stops me from being a jerk – alternatively, it makes me quiet. Bill Maher is not chill, is an asshole and doesn’t shut the fuck up.
A joint or a bowl generally mellows me the fuck out and stops me from being a jerkOh, an observation, huh? Well, who the hell are you, man? Isaac fucking Newton?
If you need drugs to stop you from being a jerk, then you actually are one.
Weed affects people differently. Watching various comedians on Getting Doug with High you see it, and I even remember one guest (i think Sarah Silverman?) talked about being on a plane with Jeff Ross when he was high and she said he literally could not stop trying to roast everyone on the plane. Some people get quiet, some people get loud, some people get motor-mouthed, some clam up, some can’t stop trying to make jokes at everyone around them’s expense, and in Maher’s case I’m guessing when he gets high he just gets even more smug, thinking he is even smarter and funnier than he usually does.
Oh I know, I’ve had differing states of pot high myself – I was extremely wired at least a couple of times, in the same way you can get after acid where your body has to be forced to sleep.I just couldn’t resist to take a shit on Maher.
Haven’t we all met someone who doesn’t mellow out after smoking and instead gets more obnoxious? Or is that not as universal as I thought?
That’s a legitimate question, though. From a tax perspective, from a criminal justice perspective, from a perspective of “this is something the voters are passionate about and overwhelmingly agree with us on”. How many stoners do you think would be motivated to vote if this was on the ballot?
Please re-read “With everything going on in the world…” It’s about his silly priorities and they way he calls people out to get them on the record for things that really are side issues. Don’t get me wrong — I DO hear you on the merits you speak of. He just makes it soooo front and center it can be annoying.
Almost 700,000 people were arrested in 2018 on charges connected to cannabis. WaPo says 55 million Americans use it, although who knows how accurate that figure is. It’s an important issue, and it’s strange that the Democrats don’t run on it.
It’s really a question of how big an issue it is in MI, PA, and WI (not for me… I’m just saying that’s probably why?)
If it affects this many people nationally it’s probably proportionally as big an issue there.
Fifteen, maybe twenty?
Hey Headline Writer – fix your spelling of “jeez/geez”.
A lone voice meekly offers support of Maher:I get everybody’s argument, and I get how off-putting he can be. However, he does have a decent streak of cutting thru a lot of poli-speak in order to ask direct questions of his guests. Yes, he harps on weed and atheism and so on too much, but if you cut thru some of that, he does have some decent interviews in there.
he does have some decent interviews in there.Like when he brings on alt-right lunatics like Milo and does almost nothing to challenge them? Is that the kind of “decent interviews” you like?
Relax, Paul. I didn’t endorse everything he said or did, just that amid all the criticism of him and his style, he does manage from time to time to feature a good interview.
Bill Maher is best when he remembers to let his guests speak.
He gets a monologue, an interlude and an epilogue all of his own. The rest of the time he should just be interviewing or keeping the debate going, because his guests typically know more than he does.
his guests typically know more than he does.This is true, but he absolutely does not know that.
Had no idea the A.V. Club really really hates Bill Maher until now… thanks. -Libtard
Makes perfect sense. Pelosi embodies the “status quo with a few tweaks” approach of the corporate wing of the party, while Andrew Yang is like a libertarian with a generous dollop of left-wing policy on one specific front, both would be at home there.
I defended Maher for a long time. Those extended little editorial monologues he does after New Rules could be really be movingly righteous from time to time and I kind of appreciated that he’d move away from predictable orthodoxies on certain issues. But man, the dude really is an islamaphobe. I was willing to go along with it at first because he used to be more generally anti-religious and radical Islam felt like a perfect example of what can happen when any religion goes unchecked but something really shifted at some point where he would really start to talk about Islam as uniquely objectionable, possibly because the traditional “moral majority” crowd have been less of a co-target of his wrath.
I’m not defending Bill Maher, but I understand where this comes from. We have a potential issue in this country with certain people not assimilating. They can be Jews, Christians, Muslims, whatever. And it’s not the majority, but it is some. If someone points it out about Muslims, then they get branded an Islamaphobe. There are a large number of religious people in this country who are homophobic and they defend it as a religious belief. It’s ok to point it out in Jews and Christians, but pointing it out for Muslims gets you labeled Islamaphobic. Maybe it’ll never be an issue, but there’s definitely a double standard.
you’re right, it’s not islamophobia, what you’re describing is xenophobia, still sucks
why do you need to incorporate their religious beliefs into your criticism when you know that others in that same religion don’t agree with them? ignore their reasoning. the argument you’re looking for is “all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.” if they can’t get with that, their religion doesn’t matter.
It’s not, though. You could totally get away with “religious beliefs, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or anything else, against homosexuality shouldn’t justify discrimination in service industries.”
But if someone is laying into American Muslims as some huge political obstacle to equality, you’re basically just full of shit. The president ran and won a platform of banning them from the country. They’re not a big enough voting block to be collectively infringing on anyone’s rights, and in the U.S., they’re far more likely to be the victims of systemic discrimination than the instigators. Their anti-gay beliefs among those that hold them aren’t any more defensible, but if you’re singling them out for special condemnation in that context, some skepticism of your motives is justifiable.
I guess I wasn’t clear. I don’t think anyone is saying that Muslims are disenfranchising anyone. What I’m saying is that I can point out that Hasidic Jews have reprehensible views on womens’ rights or homosexuality and I won’t get labeled anti-Semitic. I can say that Fundamentalist Christians are (Mike Pence and his ilk) homophobes and I won’t get labeled anti-Christian. I can say anything negative about Scientology or Mormons. But if I point out that Muslims are homophobic or that the burka is straight up misogyny, I will get labeled Islamaphobic. My point about assimilation is because there was a poll about three years ago that showed second generation Muslims were 600 times more likely than other second generation immigrants to believe that homosexuality (not gay marriage) should be illegal. Just being homosexual should be illegal?
You’ll never win these people over no matter how much you point out their hypocrisy. They don’t want to listen to reason no matter how many examples you point out that shows how bias and unreasonable they’re being. Bill Maher hates all religion but he especially hates the Muslim religion. It’s the most oppressive religion of them all and we can’t move forward and evolve as a species when we hold certain groups (e.g. their women) back and don’t treat them as equals.
No.Maher believes Muslims should be under extra government scrutiny because of their religon.That is bigotry.Case closed./and your comment about “not assimilating”?//it tells us what kind of many your father was
1. That’s disappointing and offensive. I’ve seen his show about a half dozen times in the last few years. I didn’t see him express anything like that nor did I hear about it in the news (pop culture or mainstream). I just googled it and couldn’t find it. Where and when did he say that?2. I don’t know what “it tells us what kind of many your father was” means, but it sounds like you’re inferring his (and my) race/religion? I’m curious as to what you think?
We have a potential issue in this country with certain people not assimilating.No we don’t. You’re falling for racist propaganda. Immigrants today assimilate just as quickly as previous generations.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2010/09/01/8385/assimilation-today/
Not to mention assuming assimilation == good in and of itself. Maybe it’s because I’m coming from the LGBT community which has dealt with whether we should assimilate with heteronormative culture (monogamy, children, picket fences), but the idea that “they need to be just like us” is a stinker. That being said, assimilation to me doesn’t mean “they no longer hold intolerant beliefs”. You can both preach tolerance and not assimilate culturally at the same time.
Or you can be completely assimilated and still intolerant. There’s plenty of people who were born and raised here who are bigots in one or more ways.
Agree. I don’t have some catalog of everything he’s said about Muslims, but I think his general point—Islam, at this moment in time, is a singularly destructive force on the world—is frankly well-taken. To paraphrase one point he makes pretty frequently, for all of the handwringing about “normalization” when it comes to, like, a talk-show host joking around with Trump on his show, what do we call it when hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world (a minority, and yet) are sympathetic to those who commit extremist violence? Same goes for pretty much every Muslim-majority country’s rankings on various human rights indicators. The “everything’s the same” offshoot of political correctness can be ridiculous sometimes.
You should read the shit he’s actually said. He’s repeatedly insisted that Islam is a unique and special threat to the West: https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-bill-maher/It’s not a double standard, he’s not saying the same things about Christian and Jews.
I’m not a fan of atheists like Maher who are all about being so “religion is stupid and I’m so smart” stuff but at least he is more consistent about his belief that a lot of people in the left who are all against christian and their religion (and rightly so) but then excuse Islam and muslims because reasons. After all Islam is a religion.
Looking forward to those hot takes with Bill trying to get Nancy to tell us why the youth today are so lazy and terrible and awful…in-between praising her for her bravery in coming on his show.
I used to quite enjoy Real Time, and there are a handful of people that I follow on social media that I first saw on there, but now if they go back on the show I feel embarrassment for them.
Regardless of what you think of Maher, Real Time is a great show.
Why does Bill Maher increasingly look like a substandard Madame Toussad’s of himself?
Why does Nancy Pelosi in that pic?
Bill Maher looks like he combs his hair with a slice of pizza.
The use of a ‘crazed’ looking Pelosi picture is gender-charged and honestly something I would expect to see on Drudge or the Daily Mail. This is cheap, lazy, and offensive.
This shitty article isn’t fit to smell Maher’s shoes. He’s controversial sometimes but I like his show. You don’t have to like all of his politics to like his show.
How many of his politics do we have to like to bit for shoe-smelling?
This article perfectly sums up what’s wrong with the far left. There’s a segment of progressives that want to lock themselves away in the mirror equivalent of the right-wing echo chamber where dissent is not tolerated and crazy is celebrated.
I do like a lot of his politics; I don’t like him. He’s a prick. He’s a smug bully. He’s a stuck-up douchebag. He’s a snooty, edgelording a-hole who embodies every piece of slander the right throws at their opponents.
Fucking Jews again.
Yeah, used to catch his show in podcast form for years.He slowly ramped up his racial and xenophobic comments to the point where his guests who specialized in theologyIslamophobia called him out to his face and his response was to call them unqualified. Bill Maher moved into “racist old man not worth listening to” territory a while back, and everyone is catching up to that realization at different points.
Yeah this is disappointing, have hated Maher since his Politically Incorrect days on Comedy Central
Why does she always look super surprised and afraid at the same time?Nancy is the type of “ally” that spins around to locate her purse, when she see a black person in the supermarket. (she doesn’t fool me)She and Maher will make a good couple.
When I see the worst republicans behaving the worst, and then other republicans ignoring or even defending that behavior, I wonder how they can put up with terrible people representing them so terribly. Then I remember people like Maher exist (see also: Dawkins). I view those defending him about the same as republicans who say they aren’t racist yet support those who clearly are.
I avoid shows hosted by anti vaxxers.Also, I avoid shows hosted by assholes.Turns out he’s both!
Ppretty sure just straight-up drinking a bottle of bleach would be quicker and less painful, for largely the same results.