It's Friday Night and I Just Realized How Much I Haven't Missed "Real Time With Bill Maher"

The shows from home have been awful.

Why it took so long for him to even get a two person panel is baffling, all the other shows figured out how to do a panel but what his people couldn't?

I don't want to see Jay Leno again - ever.

I do want the show to come back, sometimes the guests or panel do bring about good discussion. I don't watch for Bill.

The Leno segments were so, so bad. I cringed. It was like a hack dinner theater comedian’s set from the 60s.

He's back tonight 7/31 with:

Virtual Interviews:

Kerry Washington

Jim Carrey

Virtual Panel:

Bari Weiss; Journalist and author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism

Thomas Chatterton Williams, Columnist and author of Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race

I stopped watching years ago. Not interested in his godless ass.

I still like him even though some parts of the show are tired (yes, fat people will die young.... got it.... ). But in our Trumpian world, he offers an hour of sanity and hope each week.

I was about to make a joke about how it's been five minutes, so I assume Bari Weiss is due to be on...and there it is at R3.

God, he doesn't even pretend to have an agenda when she's on all of the fucking time. Do some of you not get how ridiculous it is how often she's on and the two of them go off about the left being easily triggered...without the actual guts to have guests on to challenge the two of them because those two are cowards? It's actually embarrassingly obvious what a joke he has become.

Smarmy asshole. Not really relevant anymore.

Cancel culture doesn't exist, so your framing is off OP.

R3: Surprise, surprise. The 2 twats that initiated that stupid letter and then kept people from signing it that they didn't like are gonna go on and victim signal. How original. And that book title? Is Bari.....CANCELLING people for their views? Funny that....

R8, I'm part-Palestinian. So she feels the way to fight anti-Semitism is for me to say I don't exist, my family never existed and we never had anything stolen from us.

That's her definition of solving it.

I'm overall fine with Bill Maher, he's bright and often has bright guests. But he has been a total coward when it comes to actual Muslims lately. He ONLY allows Muslims who hate Muslims on his show. He is generally fine debating conservatives and other people, but he has become a coward when it comes to anyone who might disagree with him about Islam or Israel.

Tuned into his first 2020 show. Had it on for about 30 seconds, then switched to another channel and haven't watched Maher since. He's an asshole and a deeply closeted Trump supporter/white supremacist.

R10, that's the thing I don't understand about the people who watch him. I couldn't give less of a shit if he hates Muslims or blindly defends Israel, but you go off about them or about the "far left" being easily triggered or pc or snowflakes and you don't have the guts to directly challenge the very people you've been bashing for years, yet you give a platform to right-wingers who you will challenge - and they happen to agree with you on your targets. How do people not see how hypocritical he is, esp., when Bari Weiss is a fucking co-host at this point?

Give me a break. It's ridiculous for anyone to admire this asshole. He's exactly what he rails against.

R9: Her definition of antisemitism is anyone farting in Israel's direction. That's why I do not take that bitch seriously. And Thomas Chatterton Williams is also a weird ass, about how he triumphed over his blackness and now lives in France. So I guess the lesson for black empowerment is don't BE black, get a few million bucks from writing some books, then move to France and.....BLACK LIBERATION!!

Strange Ass People.

Maher has got to be one of the most repellent creeps ever. I mean, he's just so unlikeable. And he thinks he's smarter than everybody but he's said a lot of really stupid things. And he's UGLY.

LOL @ this idiot commending Bari Weiss and Bill Maher. Is the irony lost on him, particularly with Weiss who uses her own identity as a cudgel against others and uses their identity as a cudgel against them?

Kevin Brown @KevinKay500bee Replying to @bariweiss Only two people from the liberal side who reject identity politics and political correctness. You should be commended

Really, you do have to be a bit dim to not see the glaring hypocrisy with these two.

R15: The politics of identity are forced on people. Like us being called faggots. We say that is a slur and should not be used. We get accused of being "politically correct" and told to lighten up. We say we're gonna vote for people who don't call us that and respect us. They say we're engaging in identity politics and being terrible and we shouldn't do that. It's a stupid vicious cycle to keep minorities down by criticizing the way we all fight back.

If these anti-identity politics people want it to go away, then stop attacking us and politicizing us based on who we are. It's not hard.

here's an idea. stop focusing on identity politics and start focusing on the fact that the rich are only people happy in this country. ignore "cultural marxism" and start focusing on actual marxism. We need a real revolution in this country. Not a fake "identity" revolution.

R16, and I've actually said that myself about Trump. Trump's entire campaign was based on identity politics. Isolating, demonizing and vilifying people based on who/what they were; treating them as "other." And he continues to do that as president. Yet it seems people like Weiss or Maher whine about the left using ID politics and have nothing to say when people like Trump use it to attack people - in some cases, agreeing with Trump on the target of the attack.

Bari Weiss uses her "Jewishness" and "Israel" ad infinitum. She attempts to conflate any human rights struggle with those two things; that immediately renders any mention of liberal ID politics as an attack by her or Maher or any other enabling "moderate," hypocritical.

everyone just focus on the big picture. and in the US, it ain't homophobia. It really is the worship of wealth and the wealthy. We should all stop that shit.

R19: Shut up. Paelo-Marxism cannot solve the issue of over-policing black communities or using religious belief to discriminate against LGBT people. Both economic and social issues need to be addressed. There's a reason you class reductionists have not been very successful at the ballot box.

I tape the show on Friday night and then watch it on Saturday so I can just fast forward to the people I’m interested in which I will do tomorrow and judging from that lineup the only person I’m interested in is Jim Carrey.

Was he ever relevant??

He was good with a live panel, as irritating as he was, but the shows at home are horrible. He seems to have lost his fire or is bored or too old or something but whatever he had that made people tune in is gone.

Has-been.

everyone is sleepy. Guess I'm right, and I win.

Cancel him!

no, don't cancel anyone, but just mark and remember. I hate cancel. I like remembering that sometimes the gatekeepers are being goobers.

The laugh track on tonight's episode is stupid

8/7/20

Virtual one-on-one interviews:

Lawrence Wilkerson, Professor, College of William & Mary and former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell

Chris Evans, actor, producer, director and founder of the civic engagement platform A Starting Point

Virtual Panel:

Paul Begala, CNN political contributor and author of You're Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump

Meghan Daum, host of the podcast The Unspeakable and author of The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars

STFU and canceling

This is all bill talks about. Just like trump can't get over anything, bill can't get over being canceled (fired) by ABC

"He's an asshole and a deeply closeted Trump supporter/'

Boy, do you have that wrong.

"white supremacist."

Not exactly, but not far from the truth. He has a dim understanding of how much privilege is responsible for his success which is why he gets so panicked about "cancel culture."

The people who are so freaked over cancel culture don't realize that everyday schmucks like the rest of us get cancelled on a daily basis because we aren't rich, powerful, white, male and/or straight.

It's funny how many people like Maher complained about the banks being too big to fail (and rightly so), but apparently they have no problem with celebrities being too big to fail.

Guess what celebrities? You can definitely fail.