New Rule: Quit Laughing At Yourself Addendum to Bill Maher Piece

There’s one more thing that has always bothered me about Bill Maher, and it’s only become more glaringly obvious in the shifts in format that have come since the quarantine hit.

To explain my issue, I always have preferred it when comedians – and late night comics in particular – do not laugh at their own jokes. Seth Meyers was good at that all the years he hosted Weekend Update and he has held strong to that when he does ‘A Closer Look’ on late night. Colin Jost and Michael Che will often try to crack each other up, but most of the time they managed to stay steadfast. John Oliver has always been fairly good at staying straight-faced (as he would put it, he’s English) and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart were always artists at it.

The one outlier to this in the current era has always been Bill Maher. Throughout his entire career as a comic, he would always chuckle at his own jokes, something that I’ve always considered gauche. And I don’t find it particularly amusing that he’s almost always overcome by laughter during many of his routines on Real Time.

When everybody went into quarantine and no one had an audience, it’s been interesting to watch how the comedians have reacted. John Oliver has, if anything, grown harsher, but his jokes still land and a lot of his commentary is almost as funny as its ever been. Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers have both managed to do a good job of staying straight faced during their monologues. The only late night comics who have a great deal of trouble staying straight faced are Desus and Mero, but the two of them are always reacting to often hysterical things, and more frequently are cracking each other up. That’s always been a larger of their appeal, and I can respect that.

Maher however, continues to laugh hysterically at his own jokes, and while I could excuse that when he was performing in front of his studio audience, now it just makes him seem sadder. He seems determined to prove that he’s funny by cracking himself up, which may be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s as if he needs to validate his own humor now that he has no one to prove that he’s still funny.

The sad part is, now that’s he’s laughing at his own stale jokes and mixing with diatribes against political commentators, he now seems exactly like all of the far right talking heads he’s built his entire career railing against – a desperate old, white man trying to prove that he is still relevant in an era that has increasingly found little use for them.

I’ve already explained my problems with Maher, so I won’t go any further. But let me put it in a term he can understand: New Rule: “When the only person who’s laughing at your schtick is yourself, you’re the joke. And it’s time to accept that you’re just not funny any more.”