Over the last three
years I have exercised far too many words trying to argue that Bill Maher was a
cynic, a relic, and a hack because of his act now and how much it has changed.
I imagine quite a few of my readers may have gotten sick of me writing about
how horrible he is. It did not occur to me until fairly recently that part of
the reason I personally do not enjoy Maher’s comedy is not solely because of
his act now or even over the last years.
I’ve made the argument
over the years that much of Maher’s success was due far more to being in the
right place at the right time. But because that’s true of so many success
stories that really has no meaning. What I have been omitting in so many of my
columns is that the reason so many on the left and others are enraged at him is
not the same reason that so many have against almost every other comedian now
has.
Because here’s the
thing about Dave Chapelle and John Cleese and Roseanne and so many of the other
comics we mourn as ‘losing touch’. The reason we do is because they were revolutionaries
who changed how we looked at society. When we consider the work on Chapelle’s
Show and Monty Python and Roseanne, we truly see just how
revolutionary what they were doing at
the time and can justifiably wonder what has changed about them that they don’t
understand today’s reality. Maher is an
outlier among the comics who bare this criticism because his act has never fundamentally
changed from when he started out in the late 1980s. There is very little
difference from having a show called Politically Incorrect in the 1990s
and spending much of your act today raging against the wokeness of today’s
youth.
Maher has not
evolved as a comedian over nearly four decades in the industry and while that
was once enough to keep a comic’s career going for years or decades, by the
time Maher became a celebrity, it was starting to become stale and passe. There
are many demonstrations that by the nineties Maher’s method of comedy was that
of a different era, but I think the best way to do it is, to paraphrase
Truffaut, show how other successful comedians were doing it.
In this sense, I am
qualified because long before I even considered criticism as a field, I spent a
lot of time watching cable TV and was therefore exposed to a lot of standup
comedians over the years. I have seen the specials of the legends such as
George Carlin, Robin Williams and Eddie Izzard. I’ve marveled at the work of such
undervalued gems in the field such as Rita Rudner, Robert Schimmel, Lewis Black
and one of my personal favorites, the late Richard Jeni. Jeni, for the record,
is a particularly good comparison to Maher because I always remember watching
so many of his specials on HBO over the years and being hysterical watching his
material, which in many ways was always more ingenious than Maher’s. One of my
favorite comedy specials of all time was: “A Steaming Pile of Me’ in which I
saw some of the best routines I’ve ever seen any comedian do. Personal
highlights include his portrayal of a terrified man thinking of the threat the
recently incarcerated Martha Stewart might prove (it begins with a paranoid man
worried that she’s ‘out there loading her salad shooter’) how Americans took
the flaky buttery croissant and turned into the disgusting crois-sandwich and a
routine about how he was out to dinner with his wife that’s starts out as
vaguely sexist and then turns into a complete riot about how men will ignored
their brain and listen to their testicles. He was ranked as one of the hundred
greatest comedians of all time and I’ve missed him since he died in 2007.
So while I may not know
stand up the way so many others do, I’ve seen enough comedy specials to know
what makes people laugh and what doesn’t. And to demonstrate why Maher was
never as good as people thought he was, the best way to start is with another
comedian whose career path briefly crossed with Maher: Chris Rock.
Rock, as some of
you may now, originally became known to many as a quasi-regular on Saturday
Night Live from 1990 to 1993. The fact that Rock rarely made an impression
speaks more to the track record SNL has with African-American comics to that
point. (The last one before Rock joined was when Damon Wayans was a
semi-regular in the 1986 season.) To say that Rock never fit in was an
understatement: even then Rock had a gift for making the audience uncomfortable
with his jokes and Michaels could never find a way to make him work within the
context of the series. He ended up on In Living Color not long after his
gig ended and as he only partially joked when he guested during an appearance
of Adam Sandler: “two weeks later, they kicked it off TV.” That was only a
slight exaggeration; it was canceled six months after he began appearing.
Rock did have an
acting career, and even then he could manage to balance drama and comedy well. He
had a searing role in New Jack City at 25, was brilliant in the
undervalued satire CB4 and had a memorable stint as a clueless murderer on
Homicide. But he was still being underutilized when he ended up making
some guest appearance as a ‘commentator’ during the 1996 Republican Primaries
on Politically Incorrect.
I have little doubt
Maher, who was only a year away from bringing his show to ABC, merely
considered this helping a fellow comic: he had done so frequently in the early
years of Politically Incorrect, most notably in regard to fellow SNL
alum Al Franken. What not even he could have known was Rock had already recorded
an HBO stand-up special that served as Rock’s coming out party.
Bring the Pain is
one of the funniest specials I’ve ever seen on TV, and I’m not the only one who
thought that: the 1997 Emmys gave Rock that prize for Best Variety, Comedy or
Music Special and Best Writing for a Variety or Music Program. (This was before
late night and comedy specials would get there own categories in the Emmys.) I
only saw the much edited version on Comedy Central (my family didn’t start getting an HBO until 1998) but even
there you could tell how utterly brilliant he was. From his joke about Marion
Barry showing up at the Million Man March (“Even at our finest hour, we got a
crackhead on stage!”) to his routine about why Colin Powell would never become
President (his statements about America’s inability to accept a black President
were incredibly prescient) as well his discussion to the recent acquittal
of O.J Simpson in terms that he kind of got why it might have happened. Maher
had made similar jokes in another special that same year, but were entirely
about the media circus of it: Rock may have been the only comedian at the time,
who had dared raised even humorously why it was a big deal (“It’s not about
race! It’s about fame. If he’d been Orenthal the bus driver, his ass
would be in jail right now.”)
Rock to be clear
never flinched from making the audience uncomfortable even when Hollywood recognized
him. Presenting an Emmy just before he ended up winning at the 1997 awards, he
mocked the circumstances of his presence, Bryant Gumbel’s hosting and Ellen DeGeneres’
victory. “So far tonight, you’ve seen two blacks and a lesbian. Welcome home, CBS!”
(the networks current slogan) Rock kept doing that all throughout his career particularly
when he was invited to awards show, and I’m not just talking about when he
hosting. On the 1999 Academy Awards when everyone was terrified about what might
happen when Elia Kazan got his lifetime achievement award, Rock made everybody
remember: “I saw Robert DeNiro backstage. And we all know he feels about rats!”
I was frankly stunned that the Oscars invited him to host in 2004, not just
because I thought network standards and practices would cut off any chance Rock
had at being funny but because his gift as a comedian was in making the
audience uncomfortable, something that the Oscars always avoids. This was made
clear in his very first routine where he berated Hollywood’s obsession with
Jude Law (something that Sean Penn admonished him for later) said he had seen Boat
Trip and sent Cuba Gooding Jr. a check for $50 and a routine that he filmed
later in which he asked average film goers if they had seen some of the
nominated movies (they hadn’t) and most acknowledged seeing White Chicks instead.
The fact that Rock was invited back again and again for appearances and hosting
duties says less about the Oscars confidence in Rock and more about their utter
desperation for anyone to do the job; for twenty five years (until Slap-Gate)
he would never make an appearance without taking Hollywood to task about the
kind of institution they were.
Looking at Rock’s
four major comedy specials (Bring the Pain, Bigger and Blacker in 2000, Never
Scared in 2004, and Kill the Messenger in 2008) and the specials
that Maher was making constantly throughout that same period, it’s not a
difficult or close question who the more irreverent, revolutionary, or funnier
comedian was: Rock. Maher has spent his entire career, even in his younger years,
only looking at the surface issues of some of the greatest problems facing America.
Rock looks at these same issues and will always go deeper and reach more
openly. This perhaps was made the most clear on the only time I remember him
decided to deal with the Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton scandal.
To be clear, both
Maher and Rock believed the entire affair was (pun intended) overblown. But
Rock is the only comedian I remember seeing at the time who even seemed
remotely sympathetic to Monica and who definitely called out the hypocrisy of
everybody who was on the side of Hilary.
“This is Hilary’s
fault. That’s right. I said, this is Hilary’s fault. Everyone’s saying Hilary’s
a hero. She’s not a hero! Aquaman’s a hero! He can talk to the fishes; what did
Hilary do? Hilary put the free world in danger!....She’s the First Lady!
She’s the first one who’s supposed on her knees to suck her husband’s d----”
I laughed hysterically
at that joke at the time and it’s still as close an assessment to the hypocrisy
the world took when ‘the world’ took Hilary’s side. Do I think it was as simple
as that? Of course not. But I don’t remember any other late night comedian going
as directly at how the Clinton machine had made Hilary the hero and Monica the
villain.
And it’s just one
of so many examples of how much better and ambitious Rock was as a comedian at
the time. I remember watching Never Scared, which compared to an HBO special
Maher did at the same time (2003’s Victory Begins at Home) is infinitely
superior when it comes to dealing with some of the issues Maher tries to raise.
Perhaps the most obvious is their difference when it came to drugs:
Maher dealt with
the problems with cocaine and comparing it to pharmaceuticals, which was a
valid joke then and now. But because at the end of the day all Maher cared
about was something that mattered to him, he then spent three minutes dealing
with Aaron Sorkin being arrested for doing mushrooms on a plane. (Something, I
should mention, that had happened more than a year and a half earlier.) Rock
dealt with the same issue, but he spent eight minutes dealing with it in a mix
of angry comedy and social commentary. He fundamentally agreed with Maher’s basic
thesis, but he was more direct about it leading up to it: “The government doesn’t
care about keeping you safe! They sell guns at Wal-Mart!” Then after two
minutes laying into all the pharmaceutical commercials, he then spent five
arguing about the two reasons why the government cares so much about drugs
being illegal. His first point, which was a straight commentary, was simple and
accurate: “The government makes t0o much money locking up people in prison”,
something that was impossible to refute then, much less twenty years. The second
point was slightly funnier, but just as on point:
“God forbid some
black and brown people get wealthy. Cause we don’t go no wealthy people. We got
some rich ones; we ain’t got no wealthy ones. What’s the
difference? Here’s the difference: Shaq is rich! The white man who signs Shaq’s
checks is wealthy.”
Considering everything
we know about the distribution of wealth, how it is tied fundamentally to
slavery and racism, it’s hard to argue with him. Rock went further:
“Only the white man
can profit from pain! From every great fortune there is a great sin.”
He went on to use
the example of the Kennedys, but that argument pertains pretty much to any
billionaire family in this country. Considering what we now know about what the
Sackler family was doing right then – and had done before – it’s even more
accurate. Rock also argued about the hypocrisy every time American raises a
certain crisis about any major sin. The most obvious one at the time was guns:
“White man makes
guns, no one does anything. Black rapper says guns; congressional
hearing!”
Sadly, we haven’t
made much progress from that point.
Rock, I should add,
is far more successful than Maher in a way. He had an HBO talk-variety special
from 1997-2002, has had a fairly successful film career, and has participated
in quite a few ways in Peak TV. He produced and narrated the well-done CW
series Everybody Hates Chris!, considered a classic by many among
critics and genre fans and most recently gave a superb dramatic performance as
Loy Cannon on the fourth season of Fargo. He may occasionally make
movies with his friends from SNL that may seem beneath his material and
sometimes we may never get what he’s trying to say (I don’t think I’ll ever get
what he was trying to do with Pootie Tang on his show or the movie he
made.) But few could accuse Rock of not being
unambitious, radical or a game changer. Rock was revolutionary in a way that Bill
Maher just isn’t and never will be. I’m not sure the entertainment world would
be much worse if Maher had spent his life as an average stand-up comedian all
his life; I know it would be if Rock had remained so. Maher may have
given Rock a leg up but I’m pretty sure he would have made it on his own. He
was too great a comic not to be.
Now I imagine those
of you who defend Maher might argue it’s unfair to compare Rock to Maher because
Rock is African American and Maher is white. For those pedants among you, there’s
actually a contemporary comedian of that era who is a white man but whose
career – and perhaps, more importantly, his comedy – is different from Maher’s
but illustrates what a comedian usually does to thrive. I will deal with him in
the next story.
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