S15.E33: Jack Jacobs, Graeme Wood, Christina Bellantoni, Jeffery Lord, and Rob Reiner

[saoirse]

Quote

Military analyst Jack Jacobs is the top-of-show interview guest. Graeme Wood is the mid-show interview guest. The roundtable guests are editor Christina Bellantoni, political commentator Jeffrey Lord and director Rob Reiner.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Why? Why?Why?Why? did Bill have that asswipe Lord in the show? He’s insufferable.

Again with Islam.???

Crappy, crappy show.

[navelgazer]

Jeffrey Lord was a lot less obnoxious than I expected him to be, a pleasant surprise.  Early on Lord tried the tried-and-true RWNJ tactic of false equivalency, but he seemed almost chagrined when Bill came right back at him with "going to that a little early, aren't we?" 

I enjoyed the interview with the general, a reasonable man unlike General(s) Flynn and Kelly.  His inside information/expertise was very welcome, even though he did say something to the effect that if the Dotard decided to launch the nukes, there's nothing from the military that could stop him. 

He seems to be going to New Rules sooner and sooner.  I wonder what's up with that. 

Off to see if OT is up on YT yet. 

[Victor the Crab]

What @GHScorpiosRule said!

Bill, not only do you look like the kind of butterfaced asshole that would jack off into a potted plant, like the men you described in your New Rules sermon, but given your sexist and misogynistic attitude in the past, it wouldn't surprise anyone in the least if you acted out in that same behavior towards women.

I see Bill's guests next week are a plethora of assholes. Ugh!

[Mystery Author]

Quote

Again with Islam.???

Again with rape=sex rather than POWER.

[TVcritic]

Bill McKibben: yah!!!

Jeffery Lord: nay!!!

Why can't he have BMK for a roundtable? The drugs seem to cloud Bill's judgement ...

[wknt3]

11 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Why? Why?Why?Why? did Bill have that asswipe Lord in the show? He’s insufferable.

Again with Islam.???

Crappy, crappy show.

Co-signed. Not only did he go back to the well with Islam and show he hasn't learned anything, we also got more of his whining about how finding anything offensive or wrong is being a PC snowflake, and more of his feeling compelled to comment on sexual harassment/assault without remotely understanding the topic. And speaking of insufferable guests who Bill feels compelled to have on again and again - Rob Reiner. Plus the scripted material was weak. The only things I found redeeming were the opening interview (kind of by the numbers but we're grading on a curve here and it was interesting enough), a guest finally telling Bill that when he speaks of a need for an Islamic Reformation he betrays his vast ignorance of the topic at hand as anyone with even a rudimentary understanding or religious history can see that is pretty much what is happening right now, and Overtime. Overtime was much better than the show itself and this week is a perfect example of why I think it's such a bad idea to skip it to earn a few bucks in Vegas. Yes it's an "extra", but it's often the best part of the show and can fully or partially redeem bad shows. You would think Bill would have learned his lesson after the Milo fiasco. How much worse would it have been without the viral video of Larry Wilmore and Malcolm Nance telling Milo to go fuck himself? But I guess that would require a capacity for self reflection and a willingness to work hard no matter what that he simply doesn't possess.

[Pixel]

I hate it when he gets people like Jeffrey Lord on. It makes them seem reasonable, and it’s so frustrating when you see him get them to drop the facade, knowing they’re going to go right back to spewing shit even they barely believe. 

[iMonrey]

It's safe to watch Overtime - Bill didn't ask Jeffery Lord a single question. Honestly, how desperate do you have to be to keep raising the specter of Hillary Clinton? That just speaks to how horrible the president is, when all you can do is basically say "Don't look at what Trump is doing, look over here at this thing Hillary Clinton allegedly did." That's just so pathetic it's almost laughable, except for the fact that Fox News and just about everyone who voted for Trump is more than willing to jump on that bandwagon. They're trying to turn this whole Russian thing around and make it look like it was actually Hillary Clinton who colluded with the Russians and not the Trump campaign. Which, again, is only scary because some people are dumb enough to fall for it.

Who was the mid-show guest? It wasn't McKibben. 

So, the only thing that really bugged me about the Islam discussion was this idea that there's no real equivalent in Christianity to radical Islam. That's not exactly true. Granted, it's not as severe or as prevalent, but we certainly have fundamentalists in this country who want to turn the clock back on social progress and put gays back in the closet and women back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. And every single one of them voted for Trump. 

[ganesh]

14 hours ago, navelgazer said:

Early on Lord tried the tried-and-true RWNJ tactic of false equivalency, but he seemed almost chagrined when Bill came right back at him with "going to that a little early, aren't we?" 

Reiner killed me: Look at the spin! He's spinning himself into a hole! I actually think it's good to immediately call these people on their deal because they are a huge problem of why we're in this mess. 

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

"Don't look at what Trump is doing, look over here at this thing Hillary Clinton allegedly did." That's just so pathetic it's almost laughable, except for the fact that Fox News and just about everyone who voted for Trump is more than willing to jump on that bandwagon.

But yet then they will follow with "Clinton lost the election." We know. Why are you the one that keeps going back to that? 

I didn't have a problem with the mid show guest. I think Bill is his own worst enemy when it comes to criticizing religions sometimes so bringing on a new pov is good. And the guy fairly pointed out that there's sects of other religions just as bad and people know this an condemn it too. Starting with the premise that "IS doesn't have anything to with islam" being false, I can roll with it. 

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

So, the only thing that really bugged me about the Islam discussion was this idea that there's no real equivalent in Christianity to radical Islam. That's not exactly true. Granted, it's not as severe or as prevalent, but we certainly have fundamentalists in this country who want to turn the clock back on social progress and put gays back in the closet and women back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. And every single one of them voted for Trump. 

That's absolutely true, which is why Bill is at his strongest in condemning religion as a whole. Didn't he guy say that Westboro was sort of an equivalent though? So he was making an effort to be comparative. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

13 hours ago, Mystery Author said:

Again with rape=sex rather than POWER.

Sorry, I hadn’t even gotten to New Rules when I posted last night. Even after being told that rape and sexual harassment has to do with POWER and NOT sex in the previous two shows, there he goes again with ‘if only Weinstein lost weight, shaved, was more attractive’ BULLSHIT, his victims would have acquiesced.??????

I’m so sick and tired of the ‘What about Hillaryisms!’ She lost. She’s not the President; she’s already been under investigation.

Edited November 4, 2017 by GHScorpiosRule

[Rancide]

I turned it off when we got to Islam again.  I don't agree with Bill on Islam, but I didn't originally mind his having and expressing an opinion on it, but it's well past sell-by now.  

[ganesh]

Actually, the entire discussion was tempered at best and didn't contain much of the usual Bill deal. In fact, I think he was deliberately trying to sound more reasonable saying several times, "I know it isn't all muslims and this is just a small fraction of them," and the entire panel participated in the discussion. The parallel to the reformation and western extremism was well said by the guest. 

[Victor the Crab]

Doesn't matter. Bill sounding off about Islam and the people who worship under it is always cause to not take him seriously. His biases towards it are too well entrenched at this point.

[ganesh]

That's just not a fair assessment of this particular discussion. 

[Gemma Violet]

22 hours ago, wknt3 said:

And speaking of insufferable guests who Bill feels compelled to have on again and again - Rob Reiner. 

I disagree.  I'll always make a special effort to tune in to any show that has Rob Reiner as a guest.

[wknt3]

On 11/4/2017 at 0:38 PM, iMonrey said:

So, the only thing that really bugged me about the Islam discussion was this idea that there's no real equivalent in Christianity to radical Islam. That's not exactly true. Granted, it's not as severe or as prevalent, but we certainly have fundamentalists in this country who want to turn the clock back on social progress and put gays back in the closet and women back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. And every single one of them voted for Trump. 

Yeah when Bill talks about Islam it's like he forgets everything he knows about Christianity and American politics even though it's been his bread an butter for so long. I mean it's not like he doesn't know about Roy Moore. Or all of the various nutcases trying to enforce religious ideology as law in state and local government. Or all of the Mike Pence types out there. I can totally believe that he's ignorant of Jewish, Hindu, etc. extremists and their influence in other countries or Christian extremists in Africa which might be the most direct parallel. But not that he doesn't know enough about Christianity and American politics to realize that what holds back this particular kind of religious stupidity in America and the western world is more about stronger institutions and the separation of church and state than inherent differences in the two religions if he could just get past the whole Ben Affleck thing. And it's especially annoying as there is some really good material there for Bill to work with if he could just get past this obsession with Islam being uniquely bad in and of itself.

[ganesh]

But they did acknowledge those issues in this discussion this time around. 

[iMonrey]

Quote

But they did acknowledge those issues in this discussion this time around. 

Yes, to a degree, I thought it was a marginally better discussion than Bill usually has on this topic. I still saw hints of "but Islam is worse" sprinkled in there though and that's annoying. He's just gotten really careful about qualifying his criticism with "I know it's not all of them or even most of them." He needs to drop equivalences altogether and stick to his strongest suit, which is criticism of religion itself regardless of flavor. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

The one point I will give Bill is how he told everyone, that yes, 45 is accomplishing things! He's managed to undo a good number of policies that Obama put in place. While distracting with his twitter rants, and all the other stuff, while all this is being done. 

But he still needs to stop with this delusion that rape=Sex and not about POWER, and that there are "attractive" men who harass, abuse and rape. But this is the man who doesn't believe the rape/molestation allegations against his good friend, Woody Allen.

[ganesh]

9 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Yes, to a degree, I thought it was a marginally better discussion than Bill usually has on this topic. He needs to drop equivalences altogether and stick to his strongest suit, which is criticism of religion itself regardless of flavor. 

I'll give him credit for trying. He cut out a lot of his usual rhetoric. No one snapped the usual canards back at him because he got in front of the argument.