Bill Maher went off on the media Friday night during his show “Real Time” on HBO, saying that they need to cut back on their “panic porn” reporting on the coronavirus or else they will end up helping President Donald Trump get re-elected.
“And finally, new rule, now that we’re starting to see some hope in all this, don’t hope shame me, you know the problem with non-stop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist and optimists tend to win American elections,” Maher began. “FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. You know, as full of shit as he is, I could see Trump riding that into a second term and then there will be no hope left for you to shame.”
Maher continued by highlighting numerous headlines from The Washington Post and The New York Times that were as negative as possible about the situation.
“So look, if this insanity happens again, news sources have to rein it in,” Maher said. “Enough with ‘the life will never be the same’ headlines, and stop showing us this, you know everything looks scary when you magnified it a thousand times. Here’s a pubic hair, boo!”
“We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults,” Maher concluded. “Trump calls you fake news, don’t make him be right.”
WATCH:
We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults. Trump calls you #fakenews. Don't make him right. #Coronapocalypse #PanicPorn pic.twitter.com/PcJA8ccliM
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) April 18, 2020
TRANSCRIPT:
And finally, new rule, now that we’re starting to see some hope in all this, don’t hope shame me, you know the problem with non-stop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist and optimists tend to win American elections.
FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. You know, as full of shit as he is, I could see Trump riding that into a second term and then there will be no hope left for you to shame.
So look, if this insanity happens again, news sources have to rein it in. Everyone knows corona is no walk in the park, because you literally can’t walk in the park, but at some point, the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn. Enough with ‘the life will never be the same’ headlines, and stop showing us this, you know everything looks scary when you magnified it a thousand times. Here’s a pubic hair, boo!
Last month, The Washington Post ran the headline ‘It Feels Like A War Zone’ with this picture. This is not a war zone, this is a man with a box of eggs and I’ve never seen a war zone with this much bacon.
Or how about this one: horrifying simulation reveals the dangers of jogging during the coronavirus pandemic. Look, this virus is easy to catch, but if you can’t avoid it jogging, you can’t outrun much.
Two weeks ago, Inside Edition said 76,000 in the world had died so some are making comparisons to the apocalypse. The apocalypse? Really? Because most of us are sitting at home smoking delivery weed and binge watching a show about a gay zookeeper.
Unless you’re a frontline health care worker, for whom the phrase, ‘above and beyond the call of duty,’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, this is not the apocalypse and I know, I know, you expect Inside Edition to be over the top, but the New York Times, they used the same word last week: ‘Braced for apocalyptic surge, New York avoids worst so far.’ And this was an article about how much better the city was doing than expected, projections had them needing 58,000 hospital beds, and it turned out they needed a quarter of that. Still bad, but you don’t have to put hot sauce on a jalapeno.
Geez, you sound like Lindsey Graham talking about ISIS when Obama was president.
Another recent Times headline was: “‘It’s Terrifying: millions more out of work,” what the f**k is “it’s terrifying” doing in a headline? Granted it’s a quote, but who are they quoting? Trump? Fauci? Stephen King? No, they’re quoting an event planner in North Hollywood. No offense to the event planners of the world, it’s amazing what you people can do with pinecones and silver spray paint, but why are you in my headline?
How about this: just tell me millions are out of work without the flashlight under the chin and I’ll decide how I feel about it. There was never headlines like this before, there was no ‘it’s terrifying, planes hit World Trade Center,’ there was no ‘it’s sad, Titanic sinks after hitting iceberg,’ or ‘first atomic bomb dropped, ouch.’
The media also seems obsessed with finding young people who’ve died of COVID-19. The Washington Post says their 759 under 50 years old. Horrible, of course. Then I looked up how many under 50 died of the flu last year, almost 3,000. So, all this misery from distancing did some good, can I be happy about that?
Death is terrible, of course, no matter how it comes. I’m against it and I don’t care who knows it but giving a proper perspective isn’t a cover-up of the truth, it is the truth.
Sudden, dramatic deaths, like plane crashes, shark attacks, tornadoes, mass shootings, terrorism, awful as they are, kill far less than seasonal flu or even hospital-acquired infections may very well kill more than coronavirus, 99,000 of them last year.
50,000 died of nephritis every year and I don’t even know what that is. 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment and many will lose their health insurance. Studies show, lacking health insurance kills people, but it doesn’t lead to pictures like this, and it doesn’t happen all at once.
We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults.
Trump calls you fake news, don’t make him be right.