As someone who really hates Bill Maher, I spend too much time writing about him. But he’s not going anywhere for at least another three years, so it’s pretty clear he still has a loyal base. So I’m going to use this column to modify something I said in a column I wrote last year.
I wrote in an earlier article that those who accuse Bill Maher of being a misogynist get him wrong – that he is a misanthrope who believes strongly in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, but doesn’t primarily hate women. Well, I’ve had some time to look back at some of Maher’s earlier comedy, and the more you look at his material over more than thirty years, you see that he actually has a lower opinion of women then so many of the conservatives he derives so much of his act berating.
There are two critical benchmarks of Maher’s act. The first is the utter repudiation of everything the conservative mindset stands for. Primary among this is the 1950s sitcom model of America they tend to believe in, with no minorities or gay people and all the women are barefoot and pregnant. I’ve already dealt with how Maher doesn’t really have much use for minorities or gay people in a sense, so I’ll focus on his views on women. Maher will constantly vilify religions across the world as to how they reduce women as people and he includes Christians among them. He’s often used that as an argument against fundamentalism in all its forms.
The thing is, he really doesn’t have much use for women in any other example and in fact, has spent almost his entire act on how the feminization of America – his term – has ruined society. He may say women being barefoot and pregnant is bad, but I think that’s more because he loathes children overall. That’s actually been a recurring theme for decades in his act – saying things like he’d rather sit next to a smoker than a child and coming up with the truly inane sentence ‘Children are more important than people’. Only someone fundamentally as self-centered as Maher on being a life-long bachelor could say something like that. He will argue as much as he can about the world being destroyed, but he doesn’t care about the next generation who it will be left too. I have a feeling he’s only in favor of abortion so he doesn’t get paternity suits.
Maher has spent his entire act arguing that everybody is too sensitive and would have no problem making fun of something making a joke about ‘emotional rape’ I’ve been watching him for decades and one of the few constants in his act is that powerful men who are accused of sexual harassment are really the victims. He defended Al Franken and no problem casting aspersion on Joe Biden’s accuser, and we all know his long track record defending Bill Clinton over the years. This pretty much goes back to the first time I saw his act when it was making jokes about the ‘Clarence Thomas show’. He had no sympathy for Anita Hill at all: at one point he actually said: “Who did you believe? They were both such good actors!” and the only reason he seemed to think Thomas was lying was because he was angry about a statement Hill made about his genitalia. He’ll say things like ‘Take accusations seriously’ instead of ‘believe women’ which is ironic considering his attitude towards either statement
And he really doesn’t seem to think much for women in the workplace either, even if that place is politics. He’ll go through the motions of defending Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton, even accuse white male of being hypocritical for being scared of them but every other element of his act – including Real Time – has been to talk over them and often say that they are deflecting from the ‘real issues’. He’ll say things about wanting women to be in the workplace and having equal pay and all the right liberal things, but I don’t think he really likes that they’re there. Part of this may be his genuine dislike for people in general, but…
Maher spends a lot of his act deriding the level of internet porn these days, saying that women are too sexual for his taste. (“What can a whore wear anymore?” he asked in one act.) We all know Maher doesn’t believe in long-term commitments or having children (he was involved in a civil suit with an ex-lover because of it) but there’s something way too puritanical about a man who has no problem dating Playboy bunnies but thinks women online are too underdressed. The key difference is that some of these women are doing this of their own free will, where the women of Penthouse and Hustler were given no choice for some of the degrading things they had to do to get paid. And we all know how big a fan of Hugh Hefner he was over his life. I have no doubt he looks at all the discussion that’s coming from all the women who used to work there and saying: “Why did they only come forward now?”
For a man who spends so much of his act deriding the nostalgia so many Republicans seem to feel for the past, Maher spends just as much time deriding the cultural failings of the present. He hates all of the blockbuster movies, but he has no use for the serious ones either. (Last year, he said all the Oscar nominees made him want to slit his wrists. Did Promising Young Women cut too close to home for him?) He constantly berates the foul language in so many of today’s songs, the same way that the Republicans – and you know, Tipper Gore – held hearings before Congress to rant were destroying the youth of America in the 1980s and 1990s. He barely talks about television, except to say how ‘politically correct’ the writers are.
In retrospect, it’s obvious where Maher would be most comfortable if he had his choice of time and place – working at Sterling Cooper on Mad Men. Think about – he’d be able to smoke all he wanted, have three martinis at lunch, do LSD with the boss, and screwing as many inferiors as he wanted without fear of repercussion. He could regard the most turbulent decade in the 20th Century the same way most of the cast did – and the way he regards society now – in a completely abstract fashion. He would have no risk of fighting in Vietnam, so he could make all the comments he wanted about an endless war. He could view the civil rights movement and say all the right things, all the while knowing the only African-Americans he’ll ever have to work with are the ones who serve him lunch. And he’d be fine with the feminist movement in an era where no one knew the term ‘sexual harassment’. Hell, he might very well have no problem shadow campaigning for Richard Nixon’s initial run for the Presidency – the only reason Maher idolizes Kennedy is because of such a womanizer he was, and that only came out decades after the fact.
Sure he’d be working almost entirely among Republicans at his job, but they were 1960s New York Republicans; by his standards that practically makes them bleeding heart liberals. He’d have no problem voting for Rockefeller for Governor and Lindsay for mayor, and he’d probably be willing to vote for them in a presidential primary or two. He’d deal with the assassinations that permeated the decade a little more seriously then Don or Peggy might, but knowing Maher, I think he’d use it as an occasion to tell one of his secretaries the 1960s equivalent of: “I don’t want to be alone tonight.” I can see him doing it with a different one every night of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Now here’s a man who would do dances of joy the day The Pill came into mass use.)
As for the upwardly mobile women at Sterling Cooper, he’d probably treat them with less regard than Don Draper and some of the other members of the staff, even as the decade went on. Would he go so far to whore Joan out to get the account for Jaguar? I don’t think so. But he sure as hell wouldn’t be happy with her ascent up the company ladder. He’d probably make snide jokes in the men’s restroom that she only got as high as she did because she used to bang the boss. He might have some admiration for Peggy as she slowly but surely moved up the ladder over the decade, he might even have some interesting debate with her over the years about so much of the conflict that was going on. But like everything else in his act, he’d turn it off when he went home. And I have no doubt he’d be one of the workers who during Season 1, would openly chide her about her ‘weight gain’.
This is the America Maher would fundamentally want to live in, where there’s all the sex, drugs and rock and roll that you can hope for and no consequences. Of course, there will be consequences for society and the world in the future, but it’s not going to make a difference how he lives and that’s all that matters. Hell, 1960s New York was basically the hotbed of standup at the time. He could spend his nights watching Lenny Bruce and Joan Rivers and Richard Pryor perfect their craft. He’d probably admire their passion and their craftsmanship. But, just like now, he’d never understand why they are great and he is not. That’s the other thing Maher would have in common with so many people that inhabited the America of Mad Men: he was a legacy hire rather than someone whose success was purely on his own merit.
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