S16.E13: Ronan Farrow, Ross Douthat, Ian Bremmer, Ana Marie Cox, and John Podhoretz

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

 

TOP-OF-SHOW: Ronan Farrow

MID-SHOW INTERVIEW: Ross Douthat

THE PANEL: Ian Bremmer, Ana Marie Cox & John Podhoretz

 

[SHD]

What a weird thing for Bill to say to Ronan,  (paraphrasing)...I admire the steely determination you got from your Dad...whoever that may be. Was that really the place for an "I don't believe Woody Allen is your father" jab?

[navelgazer]

Ana-Marie Cox wasn't wearing a bomber jacket or showing off her arm art, which was good, but that bed head hair was distracting. 

Did Bill make a "Frank Sinatra's your dad joke" to Ronan Farrow?  Maybe it was my wishful thinking considering how much I loathe Woody Allen. 

Podhoretz was less annoying than I thought he would be.  He's the token RWer on MSNBC sometimes and I've wanted to break my TeeVee listening to him, but not tonight. 

New Rules was awesome.  Bill considers Roseanne a friend and so as a friend he did a Twitler-supporter-related intervention and it was great.  (I have not been able to make myself watch her new show.  Maybe I'll binge it when the season is over.) 

ETA:  Overtime was everybody selling their books, kind of a waste. 

Edited April 28, 2018 by navelgazer

[GoldenGirl90]

I don’t have much to add tonight but I will say I love how late-night comics have been making fun of that Trump interview...uh, rant... whatever the hell it was...?! Most of it has been funny.

Bill Maher: This is where we are in the country- the three hosts of Fox & Friends looked very worried. Really! They were like, “This is too stupid for us - and we’re the hosts of Fox & Friends!” ?

[CaliCheeseSucks]

Wow, Bill's butthurt over a seven-month-old column about Hefner was unreal. With everything going on in the world right now, he whined for how long because of a negative opinion published last September about a sleaze seller? Whatever, Bill. 

[Caseysgirl]

I'm still not over the remark Bill made to Ronan Farrow about who his father could be.  Is that any way to talk with a respected author and journalist?

[b2H]

4 hours ago, CaliCheeseSucks said:

Wow, Bill's butthurt over a seven-month-old column about Hefner was unreal. With everything going on in the world right now, he whined for how long because of a negative opinion published last September about a sleaze seller? Whatever, Bill. 

I'll be surprised if Douthat makes any further appearances on RT.  I wouldn't.  It was a fracking opinion piece, for Pete's sake.  You don't invite a guest on a show like this and pummel him with arguments against his opinion.  

It's the first show I've watched live this season.  I really have to be convinced to do any more.   He's been awful all season.

[DrivingSideways]

Yeah I think I'm done with Bill.  I'm a conservative (non Trump fan) who enjoys the perspectives I see on Real Time, but Bill's becoming more bitter and shrill as the year goes on.  I think Trump has finally broken Bill's brain.  It was extremely hypocritical for Bill to rail his GUEST for an opinion piece about Hugh Hefner.  I don't agree with the guest but it was a perspective that I think was valid, and you can certainly draw a straight line between Hef's sexual revolution and today's violent pornography.  Just because Bill happened to hook up with some hot chicks at the Playboy Mansion doesn't mean Hugh Hefner was beyond reproach.  I was grateful Ann Marie was there, because Douthat was powerless against Bill's screed until he had some backup.  

[iMonrey]

Neither Ross Douthat nor Bill came off very well in that exchange. I can understand Bill wanting to stand up for his friend but Hugh Hefner was kind of a sleaze ball. I do agree that Playboy is not pornography though - whether it paved the way for actual pornography is another matter. Douthat was extremely disingenuous when they moved onto the topic of evangelicals supporting Trump.

I also tend to agree that more people should be filing lawsuits against Trump for slander, and that the left got bullied into saying Trump supporters aren't racists.

I absolutely LOVED the open letter to Roseanne. Look - I understand that Roseanne thinks she is the champion of blue collar middle America and wants to speak for them. But Bill is right - if she wants to do them a solid, next season she will play the role of a blue collar American who realizes they've been duped. 

[meowmommy]

6 hours ago, Caseysgirl said:

I'm still not over the remark Bill made to Ronan Farrow about who his father could be.  Is that any way to talk with a respected author and journalist?

Agreed.  It was so inappropriate.  You're having a serious interview with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and you make a nasty personal crack at the end?  And watching Ronan's face...he was softened up when Bill complimented Mia, and and then visibly stunned when Bill threw in the snark at the end.

3 hours ago, b2H said:

I'll be surprised if Douthat makes any further appearances on RT.  I wouldn't.  It was a fracking opinion piece, for Pete's sake.  You don't invite a guest on a show like this and pummel him with arguments against his opinion. 

Pretty nasty thing to ambush your guest as soon as he walks onto the set.  And defending Hefner is, to me, indefensible.  Bill is claiming Playboy was somehow a feminist choice???  

Edited April 28, 2018 by meowmommy

[littlecatsfeet]

I know I'm jaded, but I was actually expecting Bill to make some kind of reference to Ronan's father and was bracing myself for it. That's what he (Bill) does. He's completely tactless to the point of being rude, but don't dare try to point out that he's crossed a line, or he'll start whining about how "snowflakes" are "too PC" and picking on him for free speech. He doesn't seem to understand that "PC" to a lot of people just means common human decency. He just can't resist making what HE thinks to be a cute joke, when it's actually gross and completely inappropriate.

[Caseysgirl]

It's getting really hard for me to listen to Bill, even the times I agree with him, because he is so appallingly tone deaf to how sexist and out of sync he is. Spending a whole segment on defending that old coot Hugh Hefner, when EVERYONE knows how horrible he was to the women whose paths he crossed and Bill knew it, too, he just reaped the rewards. Sorry, Bill, maybe not for long, but for right now, old misogynists like you are out of vogue.

[meowmommy]

3 minutes ago, Caseysgirl said:

Spending a whole segment on defending that old coot Hugh Hefner, when EVERYONE knows how horrible he was to the women whose paths he crossed and Bill knew it, too, he just reaped the rewards.

And the irony of two MEN debating the merits of Hefner and Playboy vis a vis women was just rich...thank you, Ana Marie, for jumping in.  I read the Douthat piece at the time and I appreciated that someone would publicly stake that position, yes, when the body was barely cold.

[UYI]

12 hours ago, navelgazer said:

 

Overtime was everybody selling their books, kind of a waste. 

I can't completely agree with that, the first half was pretty solid to me. It was only the last five minutes or so that went that route. 

[ganesh]

Bill should be allowed to say whatever he wants on his show, and I don't know that guy, but I would have shook Bill's hand, said "I stand by what I said," got up and left. He don't RT to sell books. I'm sure he's hit other appearances. 

This isn't Ronan Farrow investigating Weinstein - where multiple sources are verified and nothing is published that isn't thoroughly fact checked. It's an op ed, in the New York Times. 

Yeah Bill, Hef got you laid. Great. But it's not like the guy is just making up complete fabrications. His legacy comes with some good and bad. Just state your objection and move on. Picking it line by line just makes you look butthurt. Have you not been able to get laid since Hef passed? That's on you. 

I wouldn't consider PB to be porn either. Actually, I don't know that I would draw a straight line from PB to porn, though clearly there is an influence, and I have no problem with porn overall. I would dispute the "all porn is inherently bad" model. They were of course indirectly referring to the one narrow genre of porn and not the literal multitudes of everything else that would refute that premise. 

I would draw a more direct line from PB to the "pick up artist" bs to this so called "incel" garbage, which is truly detrimental and recently in the news. But don't bring the up. 

I think deconstructing Hef is fair. Bill kept saying "why do you hate people who don't live like you" to the point where he's clearly taking it personally. Sorry dude, just because you're not informed enough to know anything about the Meese commission doesn't mean it didn't happen and underscores that you just aren't informed enough to discuss the topic. Which is typically true for many issues on the show. 

Edited April 28, 2018 by ganesh

[arachne]

1 hour ago, ganesh said:

Bill kept saying "why do you hate people who don't live like you" to the point where he's clearly taking it personally.

When I heard that, I immediately thought: Right, Bill. You mean, like you do? So much of Bill's criticism of religion, culture, etc. boils down to "Why can't everyone be like me?"

[ruby24]

I saw the New Rule about Roseanne. That was really good. IF those are the reasons Roseanne really does support Trump maybe she'll see it and maybe it could get through to her somehow (if she hasn't gone completely insane, which is a question mark). It doesn't surprise me that he runs into people all over the country who ask him about her because they're so confused. It still boggles my mind how someone like her could have turned into this.

[ganesh]

I do think he's had some legitimate arguments against religion, but he's been getting away from that too much. He was being especially egregious here. If he wants to go out and have consensual sex, go ahead. No one cares. That didn't have anything to do with the point of the op-ed though. The guy wasn't repudiating Bill, he was deconstructing Hef from a certain point of view.

10 hours ago, UYI said:

I can't completely agree with that, the first half was pretty solid to me. It was only the last five minutes or so that went that route. 

Yeah, they covered a bunch of stuff.

Farrow is correct in pointing out how the lack of talent at State is really what's eroding USA leadership abroad. 

[Medicine Crow]

I think Bill's comment to Ronan about his father was ULTRA-rude & if Ronan hadn't been so well-raised (by his Mom), he'd probably told bill to F-off & walked out.  Bill is really losing it in every way, shape & form!!!  I'm at the point that I'm not sure I'll watch his show ...

[sistermagpie]

I wasn't that bothered by that comment. A classy journalist should of course have only mentioned his mother, but Bill's a comedian so I could see how his mind immediately went from mother to father and Mia Farrow herself made the whole thing public for no reason. Plus it's just as public that RF hates his presumptive father.

I was glad to see him push back on Bill trying to push the idea that all these innocent people were just being slammed by #MeToo and they were the real victims. Though I was bugged when Bill announced that Asiz Ansari had lost his show as if this was a fact and he was mistreated. Farrow was right that that story was taken for what it was and people used it to work through grey areas, but afaik Ansari still has his show. It's on Netflix so it comes out whenever he feels like it. There was no announcement about it coming back for a third season yet when the whole thing happened so nothing was taken away. I think he'd totally be able to still do it. It hasn't been so tainted by that one article that it would be cancelled, especially with all the good will towards that other writer/actress on the show who did the Thanksgiving episode.

[Milburn Stone]

I forgot that Mia herself "went there" in 2013. And that Ronan commented on the matter in good humor that same year. (According to an article I found in The Independent dated that year.)

This (for me) changes how awful Bill's remark was (or wasn't). I was shocked he said it. But now that I've caught up on the history, I'm less shocked. If Mia went there, it opens the door for him to go there. And if Ronan handled the speculation in good humor then, I have a feeling he wasn't grievously offended last night.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Milburn Stone

[ganesh]

It just sucks that the guy won a Pulitzer and is covering a really important topic now, but still can't get away from that joke. 

[Paws]

I really can’t stand the sexism on this show anymore. Does he EVER have more than one woman? Has he EVER had a panel that was all women other than him? It’s so often one woman like Ana Marie Cox this episode or Nyerra Haq or Maya Wiley or Heather McGhee in recent episodes.

[Medicine Crow]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I forgot that Mia herself "went there" in 2013. And that Ronan commented on the matter in good humor that same year. (According to an article I found in The Independent dated that year.)

This (for me) changes how awful Bill's remark was (or wasn't). I was shocked he said it. But now that I've caught up on the history, I'm less shocked. If Mia went there, it opens the door for him to go there. And if Ronan handled the speculation in good humor then, I have a feeling he wasn't grievously offended last night.

Thanks for the history lesson!!  Now I won't be offended on Ronan's behalf.

[meowmommy]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

If Mia went there, it opens the door for him to go there.

I think it's all about timing.  Ronan was finishing up what felt like a fairly mainstream interview, and then he got cold-cocked by Bill first complimenting his mother and then slamming him with his father.  Perhaps if the joke had come at the beginning, when they're first kidding around, but not then.  It just felt like a way of de-legitimizing a serious journalist by bringing up a sort of tabloid topic on the way out the door.

[ganesh]

The interview was actually decent. Bill seemed interested in the topic and was complimentary of Farrow's work so far. I don't expect serious interviews on a comedy show, and I would expect Bill to be jokey most of the time because that's his profession. "De-legitimizing" is apt. The joke was forced. Even referencing his mother takes away from him being a journalist and a person on his own.  

[attica]

Random thoughts:

• Podhoretz was reaaaaally trying to make equivalences between left and right so hard, I think he might have hurt himself.  Plus, his pearl clutching over Bill's calling The Globe a conservative outlet was R-I-C-H rich. Because we know 'real' conservatism is pure and good and gorgeous, and this trumpism stuff sullies our good name! Sorry, dude. this is your bed. You don't get to crawl out in the middle of the night because your bedfellows have features- not-bugs.
• I'm well past annoyed that these white dudes think they should be the first word, the last word, and the deciding word on whose careers get ended because of sexual misconduct. Howzabout all the womens' careers that derailed?
• Bill apparently doesn't know how Netflix works, for crying out loud. His insistence that Aziz Ansari's show has 'gone off' is just stupid. Both seasons of Master of None are available whenever anybody wants to watch them (provided they have a Netflix account), and AA himself had said he intended to take a significant break before making another, way before the 'bad date' piece appeared. So, in fact, he's suffered no career reversals (yet). Farrow tried to thread the needle, but Bill had his whole loom, um, wefting. (Yeah, that metaphor got away from me.)
• And again with the 'I don't get the MO' about men exposing themselves to subordinates! Holy kraken, these (clap) aren't (clap) courtship (clap) rituals (clap, really loud)! These are dominance displays, power moves. Ugh. And it's not like Bill hasn't had plenty of education on the subject. It's almost as if he refuses to learn!
• I found Farrow's discussion of the State Department's travails so sad. Back in the day when DOS was funded, my job sometimes required me to liaise with various US embassy personnel in various countries. Every single time I was left completely floored by how capable, how dedicated, how curious, and how courteous these people were. Once, I was working with a PAO in Egypt, who took a few days longer than expected to return my call. Turns out, they were in the middle of the Arab Spring uprisings, and the embassy staff had been evacuated, and it was still pretty touch and go on a moment to moment basis, but she wanted to not leave me hanging.  Riots outside the office window, and she was concerned about my little project.  These people have all my admiration, and it's miserable that they're just another thing that I guess we don't deserve.
• I ff'd through Douthat. Self-care.

[UYI]

2 hours ago, Paws said:

I really can’t stand the sexism on this show anymore. Does he EVER have more than one woman? Has he EVER had a panel that was all women other than him? It’s so often one woman like Ana Marie Cox this episode or Nyerra Haq or Maya Wiley or Heather McGhee in recent episodes.

He has, actually, but the one example I can think of offhand is the season premiere in 2009, so...yeah, I think it's been awhile. (The only woman I can remember from that panel right now is Chrystia Freeland.)

[b2H]

14 hours ago, ganesh said:

It just sucks that the guy won a Pulitzer and is covering a really important topic now, but still can't get away from that joke. 

Bill will never win a Pulitzer and i am not sure when the last time was that Bill won a legitimate award for anything he has ever done.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, b2H said:

Bill will never win a Pulitzer and i am not sure when the last time was that Bill won a legitimate award for anything he has ever done.

I think @ganesh was referring to Ronan being the Pulitzer Prize winner, who can’t seem to get way from the joke about who is father is; not Bill.

[iMonrey]

Quote

I forgot that Mia herself "went there" in 2013. And that Ronan commented on the matter in good humor that same year. (According to an article I found in The Independent dated that year.)

This (for me) changes how awful Bill's remark was (or wasn't). I was shocked he said it. But now that I've caught up on the history, I'm less shocked. If Mia went there, it opens the door for him to go there. And if Ronan handled the speculation in good humor then, I have a feeling he wasn't grievously offended last night.

Yes. A polite person wouldn't have mentioned it, but let's remember what show we're watching. Ronan Farrow's paternity has been speculated about ever since he became a somewhat public face (I mean . . . just look at him). Everyone has talked about it. People have asked him about it in interviews. He can't really get away from it. I'm sure he was more or less expecting Bill to say something about it, if he knows anything about Bill. I still wish Bill hadn't said anything because it was so obvious and expected, but I'm not surprised, nor do I believe Ronan was. 

[Tanichka]

The thing about Ronan is that I just can’t warm up to this guy.  I don’t care how many Pulitzer’s, I find him very creepy.

[CaliCheeseSucks]

18 hours ago, Paws said:

I really can’t stand the sexism on this show anymore. Does he EVER have more than one woman? Has he EVER had a panel that was all women other than him? It’s so often one woman like Ana Marie Cox this episode or Nyerra Haq or Maya Wiley or Heather McGhee in recent episodes.

This probably isn't much help - it's a list of all Real Time episodes and guests for each. It's hard to parse the divide between interview/panel - especially in those early seasons. I'd assume from the later listings, the first name was the interview (since I recognize many of them as such). It would probably take someone who was watching seasons 1-8 to break down everyone's part on the show. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Real_Time_with_Bill_Maher_episodes

So much Ann Coulter, Dana Rohrabacher, Jack Kingston. 

[b2H]

9 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I think @ganesh was referring to Ronan being the Pulitzer Prize winner, who can’t seem to get way from the joke about who is father is; not Bill.

Oh, I know Ronan has.  I think Bill will never do so, as Ronan has done.

[Victor the Crab]

Bill: "Why can't these women stop picking on, and ruining, these poor men just because they wanted to have sex with them. BOOOO!"

Roseanne Barr is, to say the least, a very confused person. How can she talk about the struggles of the lower middle class in America when she supports a loathsome individual, in Drumpf, who only sees the lower middle class as rubes to be suckered for his own benefit. How can she actually bring up gender identity - through Darlene's young son - when her hero is trying to kick out trans people from the military. Jimmy Kimmel asked her all that and she just curst him and told him that Mike Pence, the guy who would replace him, is far worse. Roseanne is not just confused. She is, to say the most, a very stupid person.

Of course, if she was a huge Hillary Clinton supporter I still wouldn't give a shit what she has to say because... she's Roseanne.

[Robert Lynch]

12 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

Bill: "Why can't these women stop picking on, and ruining, these poor men just because they wanted to have sex with them. BOOOO!"

Roseanne Barr is, to say the least, a very confused person. How can she talk about the struggles of the lower middle class in America when she supports a loathsome individual, in Drumpf, who only sees the lower middle class as rubes to be suckered for his own benefit. How can she actually bring up gender identity - through Darlene's young son - when her hero is trying to kick out trans people from the military. Jimmy Kimmel asked her all that and she just curst him and told him that Mike Pence, the guy who would replace him, is far worse. Roseanne is not just confused. She is, to say the most, a very stupid person.

Of course, if she was a huge Hillary Clinton supporter I still wouldn't give a shit what she has to say because... she's Roseanne.

That clip with Kimmel shows what Roseanne is: a very naive person. You can't back stupid when you have another stupid person running the country. John Goodman's look on Kimmel says it all. When Barr called on Kimmel during the interview, John had that "oh, crap...are you mental, Roseanne?" look.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

34 minutes ago, Robert Lynch said:

That clip with Kimmel shows what Roseanne is: a very naive person.

Roseanne? Naive? More like ignorant.

[Paws]

By my count only 19 out of 68 guests this year have been women. That’s 28%. 

Edited April 30, 2018 by Paws
Double post trying to delete but can’t!

[Paws]

21 hours ago, CaliCheeseSucks said:

This probably isn't much help - it's a list of all Real Time episodes and guests for each. It's hard to parse the divide between interview/panel - especially in those early seasons. I'd assume from the later listings, the first name was the interview (since I recognize many of them as such). It would probably take someone who was watching seasons 1-8 to break down everyone's part on the show. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Real_Time_with_Bill_Maher_episodes

So much Ann Coulter, Dana Rohrabacher, Jack Kingston. 

By my count there were 19 women out of 68 total guests, whether or not they were panelists. That is absurd. He can’t be talking about #MeToo and whatnot without having adequate female representation. This is grossly inadequate. 

[Medicine Crow]

2 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Roseanne? Naive? More like ignorant.

I like the "other" way you spell it!!!  LOL.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 minute ago, Medicine Crow said:

I like the "other" way you spell it!!!  LOL.

Oh? You mean nimrodic ignoranamus maroon?

[Medicine Crow]

58 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Oh? You mean nimrodic ignoranamus maroon?

No, the abbreviated way.  (I think ign'r't???)  I love it!!

[The Mighty Peanut]

Is Roseanne ignorant/naive, or is she smarter than we give her credit for? What I see is a formerly washed up tv star who is at best most consistently described as “kooky” has become very suddenly relevant again by taking advantage of the false narrative that white middle class hardworking people of faith are the most frequently abused American citizens. She’s cashing in on Trumpeteers as much as she cashed in on breaking the “perfect family” sitcom mold.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Roseanne Barr is, to say the least, a very confused person. How can she talk about the struggles of the lower middle class in America when she supports a loathsome individual, in Drumpf, who only sees the lower middle class as rubes to be suckered for his own benefit

I don't think she supports Trump so much as she supports - or rather, defends - Trump voters. She steadfastly believes that blue collar middle America put her on the map because those are the people who made her show Number 1 in the ratings back in the day (and again, today). I think she identifies with them to the point where she feels like she's the only one representing them. 

Which is fine - I'm all for anyone who wants to highlight the struggles of ordinary, hard working blue collar families. But, as Bill says, now it's time for her to show how Trump has failed those voters. We're 2 years in . . . things haven't gotten any better for them. Is the Conner family suddenly thriving because of the tax cuts? No. Did Trump bring a boatload of jobs back to Lanford? No. Fine, Roseanne, defend those people all you want but you're not doing them any favors at this point if you don't acknowledge any of this.

Quote

By my count there were 19 women out of 68 total guests, whether or not they were panelists. That is absurd. He can’t be talking about #MeToo and whatnot without having adequate female representation. This is grossly inadequate.

Yes but the reality is that male political pundits vastly outnumber female political pundits. (And now he's probably going to have to knock Joy Reid out of his stable of regulars.) That goes double for male vs. female politicians. And on top of all that you have to find people who are willing to appear on the show in the first place. Bill's show isn't unique in that respect, you can turn on any Sunday roundtable show or any 24/7 cable news show and the male to female ratio of talking heads is going to be the same.

Edited April 30, 2018 by iMonrey

[ganesh]

30 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

And on top of all that you have to find people who are willing to appear on the show in the first place.

That's the main problem there. You see how Bill treated that guy about the Hef article and the dumb joke about Farrow just this week, and the overall tone of the show recently of Bill just bitching and moaning about whatever crawled up his ass that week, I'm not so sure I'd want to be a panelist either. 

To be fair to some of the Sunday shows, the roundtables on Face the Nation and Meet the Press have a higher % of women than this show. But it is true that there aren't as many female pundits than male. 

[Maherjunkie]

Hef was Bill's friend, it figures he would defend him.Unless he tied women up and forced them to be in Playboy I don't see the problem here.  Ross Douchat is hardly a progressive when it comes to gender.

The joke may have been crude but Mia is the one who made her son's paternity an issue-with the widow still alive.

[ganesh]

Without rehashing the entire discussion we had previously here, there's way way more to the issue, and that's not how the conversation about Hef went down on the show at all. Similarly, the point about Ronan Farrow wasn't about the mother making it an issue, and I don't think anyone rejects that it's 'fair game'.

Edited April 30, 2018 by ganesh

[Hooper]

Quote

Yes but the reality is that male political pundits vastly outnumber female political pundits

From Wikipedia

Quote

A pundit is a person who offers to mass media his or her opinion or commentary on a particular subject area (most typically political analysis, the social sciences, technology or sport) on which he or she is knowledgeable (or can at least appear to be knowledgeable), or considered a scholar in said area.

I dunno.   It seems to me that declaring that the reason that there are more male than female  pundits on mass media outlets like RT is because the reality is that there are more male persons than female persons who offer their opinions to mass media kinda begs the question.   Invite more female experts to offer their opinion on RT and other such mass media outlets, and Poof! there will be more female pundits.

[ganesh]

Bill doesn't need to stick to 'pundits' per se anyway. If anything, Bill isn't constrained to just having pundits on, like a show on a typical news outlet like CNN, CBS, etc. He can have on whomever he wants. 

[Paws]

6 hours ago, Hooper said:

From Wikipedia

I dunno.   It seems to me that declaring that the reason that there are more male than female  pundits on mass media outlets like RT is because the reality is that there are more male persons than female persons who offer their opinions to mass media kinda begs the question.   Invite more female experts to offer their opinion on RT and other such mass media outlets, and Poof! there will be more female pundits.

EXACTLY!   The people Bill has on are from diverse groups. An expert in humanities or social sciences is likely to be a woman as it is a man. A female actor as oppose to a male one. Female campaign operatives besides Donna Brazile. Where is Jennifer Palmierie? She’s selling a book about the campaign. So many  women just aren’t even being considered, it seems.  I dont even care about those other shows; THIS is the show I watch and I get so bothered by the disparity that  I cant enjoy the show.

Edited May 1, 2018 by Paws