HBO host Bill Maher warned late last week that the recent push in society for equity instead of equality will lead the world that is not desirable to live in.
Maher made the remarks during a segment that mostly focused on an article in Rolling Stone magazine from last year that was about equity in the music industry. The segment comes against the backdrop of the Democratic Party and left-wing activists pushing for racial equity in seemingly every aspect of life in the U.S. During a separate segment on his show, Maher warned that the U.S. was “entering an era of re-segregation” which he said was “coming from the left.”
“And finally, new rule: If you believe in the philosophy of equality of outcomes, then you really shouldn’t have watched the Grammys last Sunday,” Maher said. “Because the Grammys, aside from the usual award show virtue signaling, are still largely about the idea that certain people do music better than others. And it’s okay to reward them for it. That’s called meritocracy. And it’s the opposite of guaranteed outcomes, equality of outcomes, as opposed to equality of opportunity. We used to call that by another name, trophy syndrome, a world that was created back in the 90s, where everybody, every kid gets a trophy, no matter how good or bad they are at something. Well, the result of that kind of thinking is that American kids now have a totally diluted and unearned belief in their charm, brains, and talent.”
“It’s not only that the entire generation wants to be famous, it’s that they think not being famous isn’t fair. If you think I’m exaggerating, let me quote from this article in Rolling Stone magazine last year, lamenting how streaming has not given us equality of outcomes in the music industry,” Maher continued. “The Grammys would look quite different if we followed this template. The article tells us that more than 1.6 million, million, ‘artists’ release songs between January 2019 and July 2020, 40,000 tracks a day on Spotify. And yet Rolling Stone complains, ‘today’s streaming landscape looks a lot like the music industry used to… a small class of artists… see not just the majority of activity, but damn near all of it.’ Yes, these are called the good ones.”
“I mean, yes, of course an occasional big talent can fall through the cracks. But in general, it’s simply a case that most people who try their hand at music write the songs that don’t make the whole world sing. Rolling Stone complains that, ‘Nearly all the streams went to artists in the top 10 percent with the bottom 90 percent pulling in just point 0.6 percent of streams,'” Maher added. “Whoa, let me get this straight, talented artists people like are listened to more than untalented ones they don’t? Stop the presses. Yes, that’s meritocracy! If people don’t like your song, your mommy can’t make them listen to it.”
“You know why 99 percent of artists aren’t getting heard? Because music is hard and most people suck at it,” Maher concluded on the subject. “For more details Google ‘reality.’ Rolling Stone actually writes the sentence, ‘In a perfect world, the bottom one percent of artists would get one percent of activity.’ No, they wouldn’t. That’s a stupid world I don’t want to live in. Who taught you this nonsense? And when you whine that ‘streaming hasn’t just upheld the gap between music’s haves and have nots; it’s widened it,’ you’re making my case for me, because streaming allows the public to sample everybody. There’s no more gatekeepers. You can’t complain no one heard your song because no label would sign you, we tore that wall down and the result was the same. So musicians are have nots because yes, they may have a voice, but we have ears.”
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