Bill Maher lays it all out in the open

[Alben Barkley]

Wow.

This is basically everything I've been saying for years being said by another relatively sane liberal on a major prime time TV show.

It's surreal and satisfying to see it actually happen!

I could have written this myself almost verbatim, holy s--t. It's about damn time someone says it, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised it was Bill. Say what you will about him, he could not care less what people think about him.

[T'Chenka]

A bit of what he says makes sense, but isn't the dunk he thinks it is. Some of it is a misinterpretation of the situation and some of it misses the bigger point. Glad there's people out here expressing this instead of pure unadulterated bigotry, but yeah, overall this is very hit or miss IMO.

[T'Chenka]

Credit to Sirius for this:
Check the graph / stats on the history of left-handed people. Once it becomes socially acceptable, people stop hiding from themselves and others.

[dead0man]

He ain't wrong.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

There's an element of truth to "isn't this something we should have a knowledgeable discussion about", but then he proceeds on a tangent that strikes me as from someone who's not being terribly thoughtful about transgender issues and is merely reacting to whatever news clippings he stumbles upon that annoy him. 

[John Dule]

Bill Maher is an excellent litmus test for whether a person is still sane in the 21st Century.

[Green Line]

Bill isn’t center left anymore but he won’t ever admit it.  Times change.

[Santander]

Thank God for Bill Maher.

[Dr. MB]

Bill Maher is an excellent litmus test for whether a person is still sane in the 21st Century.

I can't say I'm much of a fan. I'd recommend checking out this video because it gets into a lot of the reasons he's out of touch without going on any explicitly political rant.

[Mr. Smith]

Bill Maher is an excellent litmus test for whether a person is still sane in the 21st Century.

Yeah, if you actually found him credible at any point, you weren't sane.

GP!

[James Monroe]

Bill Maher is an excellent litmus test for whether a person is still sane in the 21st Century.

Yeah, if you actually found him credible at any point, you weren't sane.

GP!

Maher is only credible when he does documentaries like Religulous. Everything else, the man has no knowledge. His attacks on vaccines are proof of his ignorance.

[JGibson]

Typical Bill Maher legitimizing right-wing anti-trans nonsense, despite claiming to be a "liberal."

[James Monroe]

Typical Bill Maher legitimizing right-wing anti-trans nonsense, despite claiming to be a "liberal."

Bill Maher is just an old liberal quack who spouts some of the most hateful stuff to other minority groups. The man is useless in 2022 and I can't fathom why we, as a culture, still give him a platform when many better comedians could sat something more provoking.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I liked Maher a lot when 25-30% of my ideology was sort-of activist atheism.  Luckily, I evolved past that.  I have no use for his brand of vapid brunch liberalism, although he's a fellow Jersey guy and I find sometimes we react to certain, less important, types of things similarly.  And credit to him for finding space on his show for conservatives when his irritating studio audience of perpetually-offended SoCal residents would probably prefer an airtight bubble of ideological equals. 

[John Dule]

Bill Maher is an excellent litmus test for whether a person is still sane in the 21st Century.

I can't say I'm much of a fan. I'd recommend checking out this video because it gets into a lot of the reasons he's out of touch without going on any explicitly political rant.

Oh, he's definitely out-of-touch. But that's because he is not an insane person.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I was a fan of George Carlin, but for all of the things that were thought provoking there was a lot of dumb crap that came out of his mouth too.

Carlin endorsed the proto-1619 project claim in one of his HBO specials: "White Men who revolted against Britain so they could keep enslaving...". Which as I have pointed out numerous times makes absolutely no sense in the context of what was going on in Barbados and India, and certainly acts as if there was some looming threat of the British outlawing slavery at the time of the Revolution, as to motivate its occurring when it did.

Bill Maher in a recent skit blamed Wilson for "forgetting malice towards none and charity for all" and while Wilson is worthy of a lot of deserved blame, Maher didn't account for the fact that the French were the primary driver's of going hard on Germany and America's influence was minimized by its late involvement and lower casualty numbers.

Just like Carlin, Maher is a militant atheist and partakes in a number of flawed narratives that could only come from such a biased mindset. The kind of mindset that pushed a narrative that religion was responsible for slavery meanwhile it was all thanks to atheists and secularists that it got abolished finally. For one thing, the church is often cited as being a driver in the decline of slavery in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Europe. Second of all, it was the "Yankee Cultists" who provided the lion's share of votes for Abraham Lincoln. Thirdly, it has been well documented that a number of churches split because of the Civil War (ever heard of the Southern Baptist Convention?), this means there was necessarily a wing that took an alternative view regarding the relationship of slavery and religion. Religion can be abused just like any other human institution.

I don't expect Maher to be right all the time, just like I disagreed with Carlin on a number of issues including guns, abortion, and yes religion.

But right now Maher is the only one who seems to have an original thought, as bad, as out of touch, or as cringe as it sometimes is. Most of the late night hosts now are stale, boring, formulaic, tip toeing around political correctness, while being overly political and heavily one sided at being political.

[Blue3]

Bill Maher only makes the news when he agrees with conservatives... and this is far from the first time.

Don't forget he once whined that the Tea Party made calling himself a libertarian seem less cool.

[vitoNova]

lol. Bill Maher is awesome, and gives me funnies.  Didn't watch the clip, and only briefly skimmed the headlines, because quite frankly "sexual identity" topics don't interest me much.

But he's 1000% wrong. 

No amount of "trendy leftism" will ever change your baseline sexuality, which is hardwired in your brain and genetics at birth. 

[lividnyx]

Gotta love when he spouts the conspiracy theory that children are receiving sex reassignment surgery. And God forbid we let our children do something as dangerous as gasp exploring their gender! This pearl clutching comes entirely flat from someone bitching and moaning about over-protective parents literally seconds earlier.

These people getting hysterical over the "trendiness" have never known the amount of bigotry, disrespect, and harassment thrown queer folks' way, purely for being queer. If Maher actually cared about having a serious discussion, he would have talked to experts and those he claims are being queer for the trend instead of monologuing stale jokes down a camera with flashing laugh signs when he thinks he's made a zinger.

He's a child. The children he's pearl-clutching over are more mature than him.

[afleitch]

I think the commentariat obsessing over the trans more than most people, even more than most trans people do is not the sign of a healthy mind.

Now of course people will say 'oh why can't we talk about it' etc. Not the point. It's increasingly all many previously grounded people talk about, write about and 'joke' about.

Monomania isn't pretty.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I think the commentariat obsessing over the trans more than most people, even more than most trans people do is not the sign of a healthy mind.

Now of course people will say 'oh why can't we talk about it' etc. Not the point. It's increasingly all many previously grounded people talk about, write about and 'joke' about.

Monomania isn't pretty.

This honestly gets to the heart of my annoyance with Alben these days. The trans posters on this site don’t talk about trans issues as much as he does and quite frankly is really weird.

[BlueSwan]

I actually hated this segment despite very often agreeing with Maher when he's not talking nonsense regarding COVID/vaccines. It appeals to anti-trans fearmongering in a pretty awful way.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I think the commentariat obsessing over the trans more than most people, even more than most trans people do is not the sign of a healthy mind.

Now of course people will say 'oh why can't we talk about it' etc. Not the point. It's increasingly all many previously grounded people talk about, write about and 'joke' about.

Monomania isn't pretty.

The more being transgender is normalized, the less that people will notice or care. And when that happens, you can’t generate and monetize culture war outrage about it anymore, and a lot of commentators will have to find a new thing to get mad about.

[Devout Centrist]

So much of this reads as needlessly cruel, but there's something about Maher's performance that I never noticed up until now.

I think there's an element to Maher's comedy that relies on looking past the viewer; his eyes are focused on the teleprompter and his attention is directed towards his line delivery rather than focusing on the audience and by extension, the content he's sharing. It's quite vapid when you break it down and frankly it makes me feel a tad empathetic for him. I see someone dissatisfied with life in front of the camera and that's reflected in his attacking style of commentary. You catch glimpses of it in his overreliance on cynicism and irony. I genuinely feel sorry for the guy, it's not something I ever considered about his professional life before.

[DaleCooper]

I think the commentariat obsessing over the trans more than most people, even more than most trans people do is not the sign of a healthy mind.

Now of course people will say 'oh why can't we talk about it' etc. Not the point. It's increasingly all many previously grounded people talk about, write about and 'joke' about.

Monomania isn't pretty.

The more being transgender is normalized, the less that people will notice or care. And when that happens, you can’t generate and monetize culture war outrage about it anymore, and a lot of commentators will have to find a new thing to get mad about.

The reason that people will not stop caring about trans issues anytime soon is because the left is willing to die on the hill of medical transition for children. As long as there are people in this country that are opposed to castrating children, there is going to be "outrage" over it. The childhood transition component is why transgender issues are so much easier for Republicans than gay issues are. It's not because transgenderism is merely less familiar or less normalized than homosexuality. I don't understand why the left is so obtuse about this distinction.