I really don’t like have to write about the same subjects over and over. And I’ve made a noble effort over the past decade writing about television to do my level best to keep politics out of this column. That being said, considering that this subject refers to a political comedian whom both sides really don’t seem to understand, I feel I have a certain obligation to revisit this.
Over and over you see members of the conservative media try to hang on to the idea that Bill Maher should be listened to because he’s a voice on the left and he’s on their side. And the liberal media thinks Maher is an old white man who doesn’t understand how America works any more. In the classic way of punditry both sides are completely right and utterly mistaken.
I have been watching Bill Maher perform in some format or other over the past thirty years and while the world has changed dramatically, Maher’s act never has. He has always believed that democracy has never worked. He has always believed that women and the euphemisms we use for the world to try and define things have made the world worse. He doesn’t believe in religion or therapy. He doesn’t believe in families. He believes alcohol and drugs are more important the danger they cause (As he once put It ‘fun costs you”) He thinks that pornography leaves too little to the imagination these days. And he’s never been an ally for anybody. He thought that Kennedy was a great president not for his policy, but for whom he had sex with. He felt that Clinton was pilloried, but had no sympathy for Monica. He thinks Republicans are hypocrites and Democrats are too weak. The only thing he really believes in is the legalization of marijuana. Anything else is too much.
Maher’s cynicism is not unusual for a stand-up comedian – honestly the greatest of them all have been cynics. But it’s hardly the best formula for a late-night talk-show host. When Maher was beginning his career, with few exceptions most comedians believed in making the audience their friend and gently poked at the world. In that sense, Maher paved the way for great late night hosts like Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers. But the world of comedy and politics has changed immensely since Maher started out. These days, the best late night comedians are still very cynical, but they have never forgotten to try and let the audience in on the joke. James Corden and Jimmy Fallon rely on it far less and when they do, they put in sugar to make the medicine go down. Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and John Oliver acknowledge that a lot of what they do is very depressing, but they are aware enough to do so and try to offer hope with their medicine. Maher has never done that. He doesn’t even pretend that what’s he selling is medicine. It’s pure hydrochloric acid. And his audience has been drinking it for so long; they have noticed how badly it has rotted them from the inside out.
There are many on the left who consider Maher a racist or a misogynist. I don’t think he’s either. He’s a reactionary and a misanthrope. I think that may be the reason he may have so much appeal among the Fox news types and has invited so many of them on his show. They disagree completely with how the country should be handled, but Maher agrees completely with them on what’s making it bad.
And if you’ve followed his act all these years, you shouldn’t be surprised. He thought the Clarence Thomas confirmation was an act – but not because he believed Anita Hill. That didn’t change twenty-five years later; he’s fine with sexual harassment charges being taken more seriously – as long as it doesn’t affect an old friend. (He advocated for Al Franken to run for President in 2018 and when one of his female guests suggested he was mistaken, he talked over her.) He thinks that the Hollywood blockbuster is destroying America – and that the Oscars are too depressing. He’s all for the LGBTQ community having rights – as long as they don’t ask for political power, because he doesn’t fit the rest of America is ever going to accept them. He preferred smokers to children – until recently when he thought we should shame the obese the same way we shame the smokers out of existence. And you should never apologize, because that’s a sign of weakness. Of course Maher hates the idea of cancel culture; he was a victim of it before we ever knew the term.
Ultimately Maher’s politics are as cynical as any on the right. He doesn’t want Republicans to have power. If you are black, Latino, LGBTQ+ or a woman, your demands shouldn’t be too loud because that will scare away the blue-collar, Middle America ‘swing voter’ who he still thinks will vote Democrat. The fact that he thinks Democrats are too weak to make change and wouldn’t have the power to do so if they could is irrelevant. There’s an old saying: “It’s not enough that I win. My enemies must also lose.” Maher only believes in the latter.
Bill Maher is an old, white man. He’s been an old, white man in his routine since he was in his twenties. He thinks politics are failures, the people who follow politics are failures and that America is the biggest failure of all – except, of course, for his audience. This is the exact definition of the kind of broadcasting conservatism specializes in. Maher has been arguing for decades that everything that has been oppressing America for decades is what’s wrong with this generation – they’re just too soft. As anyone who’s been following the internet for a long time, that’s been a subtle tactic of the right. I’m actually surprised he has been so anti-Trump – as he actually admitted in a standup special a few years back, Trump is not only authentic in the way most politicians aren’t (as Maher sees it, of course) He has the exact aggressive, ‘plain speaking’ ways that Maher has been advocating for in his entire career. Maybe the only reason Maher couldn’t advocate for Trump was because of his party affiliation; if Trump had run as a Democrat, he might’ve campaigned for him. Hell, every comedian and his brother wanted him to run as a joke.
In his spirit, Maher is no different from Rush Limbaugh or so many others of the Fox News types. He’s an angry white man who complains to everybody that certain people are ruining America. The difference is, he doesn’t really believe that any politician can fix it or even that America’s worth fixing. When the Republicans are in power, he calls them hypocrites and liars destroying America and the Democrats aren’t doing enough to stop them. When the Democrats are in power, he says that they’re too weak and that they’ve embraced too many characteristics of the Republicans. (He even once said: ‘Democrats are the new Republicans.’) He thinks the people trying to make social changes are helping Republicans win. He never sees the contradiction.
Maher doesn’t deserve to be quoted by the right or excoriated by the progressives. He doesn’t care about either of you enough to be worth it. I actually feel sorry for him sometimes. I’ve never seen him associated with a wife or girlfriend and we know very well he has no interest in having a family. He doesn’t seem to care much about television or movies. Even his fellow late-night show hosts have no use for him (he’s been treating a lot of them disdainfully) All he does is perform. That’s all he has. But I can’t feel any more empathy for him then I could for Christopher Hitchens and his like. He doesn’t think there’s anything waiting for him after death, so why should he give a damn about making the world a better place or even trying to be a nice person? The world’s screwed, there’s nothing waiting for me, why should I bother to change? And if that’s his point of view, there’s no point in trying to change it. Maher long ago once said that the nature of God is just that he’s a prick. And honestly, that’s a better summary of the man than I could ever hope to write.
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