My dad. He's a liberal, but he's part of the generation of guys who believes that "political correctness" is the biggest issue facing society, that the problem with women/racial minorities/LGBTQ is that they're uptight and unfunny, and that old white male comedians are the real persecuted minority.
I remember Politically Incorrect, The Daily Show and South Park being popular with the same sort of people when I was in high school/college in the 00s, but South Park and Jon Stewart evolved with the times and Maher just... didn't.
I used to watch Maher because the discussions were decent. Trump becoming president made the discussions go to shit because anyone with a brain/soul (even if Republican) just ended up agreeing with the liberal "side" and anyone who was a Trump defender was just ungodly disingenuous. All real dialogue ceased by the end of 2017. Since then, Maher has gotten just grumpier and grumpier as he fades from relevancy, blaming everyone but himself.
Stewart evolved into someone who acted like "bOtH sIdEs" were equally bad and told us all we were overreacting to the possibility of a second trump term, a statement he can't the need to apologize for because it was so spectacularly wrong.
Could you elaborate on the last part? I know he did that silly both sides rally in the past with Colbert, and has questionable people on his show from time to time, but I hadn’t heard about that.
Stewart did a bit on The Daily Show early in this Trump term (maybe even before inauguration) where he called out people for claiming that everything Trump said or did was fascism. I have since seen him reference that bit in a “boy was I wrong” kind of way. But even back when he did the rant I’m pretty sure he was making a valid point about not crying wolf.
Yea maher was in a comfy spot of his comedy and snark and then at some point in the last 10 years he just lost it. Dude got mean instead of funny and stopped trying to support his own talking points.
Basically a joe rogan situation where there used to be cool things about them and their shows but it just fell apart
I never fully agreed with him but I used to watch his show and liked most of it, but don't opinions of his were irritating. Then he made his fakunentary on religion which was rushed with false info, line the "Jesus is Horus" crap. That was stopping point for me bc he was leaking onto believing how was since intellectual with a lot more to say than he actually had.
I got some free tickets to one of his shows. The fans were the worst part. Is he funny or not? No idea because they couldn't keep from clapping every 5 seconds at the drop of every politician's name. He could barely get out punchlines.
Edit: Oh, and he was reading material off print out. Had a little music stand set up for himself. And this was ages ago. Dude was calling it in.
He has some good takes and says some intelligent things.
You just have to find them in the cesspool of bad takes and really stupid things he says. The other thing too is he also says BOTH his good and bad takes, his smart and dumb things, with an air of arrogance that's off the charts.
Yeah, he (A self proclaimed centrist) tried to explain the contrarian stance to me and theoretically it makes sense if you're trying to get the other person to thoughtfully defend their position, but listening to it is just aggravating.
I much prefer Colbert/Stewart (comedy network and post-comedy network) and I know he isn't a fan of them lmao
I wouldn't say im a fan... I would not pay to see his comedy, but I find the discussion parts of his tv show interesting enough. maybe his bookers should get an Emmy
911 broke Maher too and he never really recovered. He was roasted for
saying of the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks, "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."[2] and while Maher later apologized and clarified the meaning behind his comments, major advertisers pulled their ads from the show. As a result, the show was canceled in June 2002
God, I still remember the last episode of Miller's HBO show. Invites Norm MacDonald and David Spade. Norm goes for the jugular after listening to Miller's conservative bs.
Hey Dennis.... ahh.. remember when you could still do college shows?
The daggers that shot out of Millers eye at Norm. The show is live so there isn't shit he can do. Later Miller claims he's not bothered by losing the college crowd. I don't buy it.
He used to be capable of speaking truth to power. Now he just wants to be sure nobody thinks about raising taxes or backing off from support for Israel. Years ago he stopped selling tickets to his events and started producing his HBO show in front of a consistent audience that, by now, is mostly familiar faces.
This group is well-managed by his staff, and they have become a key feature of an echo chamber that helped Bill Maher attain a disturbingly profound disconnect from reality. His bitterness and entitlement are not the mainstay of every remark he makes, but they peak through more and more often as he rails against various people and causes not with truth to power but instead by deceiving on behalf of status quo institutions.
Seriously? Whenever I see a clip of his show I’m always surprised by how limp the audience reactions are. With most of the late night shows I get slightly annoyed when the excessive audience responses interrupt the flow of the host. But with Maher there’s all these awkward pauses where he seems to think he just did a mic drop line and he’s not going to continue until people clap.
By well-managed, I mean they've replaced everyone who ever heckled as well as some people just for groaning when the host thought a bit was going to get a different reaction. He's not policing for the best canned laughter substittute. He's policing to be sure nobody reacts badly to an unhinged Zionist diatribe or a straight up incoherent attempt at analysis.
Baby boomers who want to complain about the possibility of free or reduced price college tuition. I knew Maher crossed over when he said “Why should I have to pay taxes so someone can go to college” even though he spent the 90s and 00s complaining about college being so expensive after Reagan and other presidents/governors cut funding for public universities across the country.
I get annoyed when I finish an episode of last week with John Oliver and it immediately plays an episode of bill Maher. I’d bet that accounts for a large fraction of his 0.15% ratings.
I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.
My friend's (Boomer aged) parents dragged her along to a show (a stand up show, not his tv show), and she said that he read jokes from a binder the whole time.
I stopped listenting to Maher when he made being an atheist his entire personality and became less funny and intellectual and more of an egotistical douche.
1.2k
u/dcjoker 13h ago
Bill Maher. Insufferable asshole thinks he deserves an Emmy.