The host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” can be garrulous, prickly and downright mean.
It’s hard to forget how Maher mocked the Palin family, including her special needs child, as inbred mutants in the “Hills Have Eyes” horror tradition. Or how he cheered on a “recession” in order to get his party back in the White House.
Still, he occasionally shelves liberal talking points for some unabashed truths, much to his own party’s chagrin.
Yes, Maher spends the majority of his screen time echoing the views of Colbert, Kimmel, Bee and the rest of the hard-left late night crew. It’s his ability to break away from the pack, to share independent thoughts, that resonates with more than just his base.
It’s often just Maher trying to warn his fellow Democrats of political icebergs ahead. So be it. We’ll take flickers of late-night sanity however they appear.
The Rioters Don’t Represent MAGA Nation
Maher’s penchant for speaking inconvenient truths got a workout this month. The host, returning to HBO for the first time in 2021, said what’s patently true to any clear-thinking soul.
The thugs who broke into the Capitol Jan. 6 were wrong and not indicative of the standard Trump voter.
“As bad as last week was … let’s not confuse 5,000 people with 74 million,” Maher began his monologue. “Yes, even supporting the insurrection in spirit is, well, deplorable. But there’s a difference between holding illiberal beliefs and acting violently on them. At least that’s what they always told me about Islamic terrorism.”
He didn’t stop there. He swatted down the notion that all Trump voters are racist, a view held by a frightening number of liberals.
“Trump did a lot better with the black vote than he did last time,” Maher said. Nance questioned how well the exit polls reflected reality, given the large amount of mail-in ballots.
“I think he’s a terrible leader, but I don’t think that it’s terrible that there’s diversity in the Black community. Or in any community,” the host said.
Free Speech Warrior.
Maher remains a rock-solid defender of the First Amendment. That hasn’t changed in the Cancel Culture era.
He proved that anew recently, worrying about the consequences of Big Tech deplatforming Trump.
“I’m a free speech person. I mean, f*** Trump. But when someone, anyone, anywhere decides what speech is allowed and what isn’t, I don’t know.”
He added the reasons for Trump’s removal were “vague” and that Big Tech could soon become a “liberal bubble” with little outside thought poking through.
Maher faced an early version of Cancel Culture in 2014 when Berkeley students tried to remove him as a speaker for sharing the wrong thoughts during his career.
He persisted, striking a blow against the woke mob.
Defending Amy Schumer from Fellow Liberals.
The fading starlet’s 2018 film “I Feel Pretty” made little noise at the box office. The social media reception, though, proved loud and ugly.
Schumer stars as a woman who looks like … Amy Schumer … but feels empowered after a blow to the head convinces her she’s suddenly supermodel thin.
That set off the woke mob, who attacked the film for not having a person of color as the lead and reeking of the star’s blonde beauty “privilege.”
Maher wasn’t having it.
“… the professionally offended have decided that even though it’s a film by women filmmakers presenting a pro-woman message, it does it the wrong way!” … Amy helped wrong! Even though she really just remade The Nutty Professor, where someone not thin and not cool magically sees themselves as better looking and gains confidence — except when Eddie Murphy did it, he didn’t have the purity police up his a**.”
He wasn’t finished.
“Can’t we just sit in a movie theater, unclench our a**holes for two hours, and laugh at what it is instead of dissecting it for what it is not?” Maher asked. “Movie reviews, they’re not even reviews anymore. They’re just, ‘How come you made the movie you made and not the movie I would’ve made if I had talent, which I don’t?’”
America Isn’t That Sexist … or They Still Hate Hillary
Maher took a long, hard look at the 2020 election results and came to a conclusion anyone “With Her” might find repugnant.
“Again, we all know the pollsters were wrong. We thought it was going to be a much bigger victory. He won by slightly — in other words, the country looked at Trump for four years and he won by that much more than Hillary. First of all, doesn’t that say maybe we’re not as sexist as we thought? I mean, it really doesn’t seem to be that oh, Hillary was a woman, we wouldn’t vote for her. They voted for Biden by this much more after Trump f***ed up for that long.”
Yes, Hunter Biden Is Sketchy.
The mainstream media and Big Tech successfully squelched the Hunter Biden scandals that could have cost his pappy the election. Yet in 2019 Maher sounded a siren, of sorts, on the son’s dubious behavior tied to Ukraine.
“I don’t think he was doing something terrible in Ukraine, but it’s just so — why can’t politicians tell their f***ing kids get a job? Get a g**damn job. I mean, this kid was paid $600,000 because his name is Biden, by a gas company in Ukraine, this super corrupt country that just had a revolution to get rid of corruption. It just looks bad. And the Republicans are geniuses at muddying the waters. … It’s all going to be about, you did this in Ukraine, well, Joe Biden did this.”
Maher even added a bit about media bias to make the argument stick.
“And if Don Jr. did it, it would be all Rachel Maddow was talking about.”
Maher subsequently backed off the Hunter Biden stories, perhaps following the media’s corrupt suggestion there was nothing “there” in the first place.
Maher on Thanksgiving: Just Eat, Thanks
The newest November tradition finds media outlets sharing how to survive Thanksgiving with your “racist” uncle or how to defeat their Trumpian rants. It’s exhausting and defeats the purpose of the holidays, a time meant to unite, not inflame.
Maher shredded the new Thanksgiving playbook with this glorious, and surprisingly nuanced, attack.
“And never forget the single, shining truth about democracy, it means sharing a country with a**holes you can’t stand. In that way, it’s a lot like Thanksgiving. You don’t get to choose the guests. Because those freaks are your family. Think about that the next time you think you can own somebody politically.”
America is a big country, filled with millions of people who don’t think the way you do and never will, and you can’t own, vanquish, or disappear them. We’re stuck with them, and they’re stuck with us.”
Calling out Democratic Israel Bashers
The mainstream media won’t go near Rep. Rashida Tlaib in any meaningful way, no matter how many outrageous things she says or does. The same is doubly true for late night comics, who ignore her flaws to focus on GOP targets.
Yet Maher singled Tlaib out in 2019 after she called for a “Real Time” boycott.
Why?
Maher dubbed the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) a “bull***t purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class.”
The comedian responded to the Michigan politician in savage fashion days later.
“Some people have one move only: boycott. Cancel. Make-go-away,” Bill Maher said. “But here’s the thing, the house voted 318 to 17 to condemn the #BDS movement, including 93% of Dems. Does Tlaib want to boycott 93% of her own party?”
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.