S16.E18: Michael Eric Dyson, Fareed Zakaria, John Heilemann, Linda Chavez, and Shermichael Singleton

[formerlyfreedom]

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Fareed Zakaria, John Heilemann, Michael Eric Dyson, Linda Chavez, and Shermichael Singleton

[Caseysgirl]

Heilemann was on fire tonight!  I can imagine if you have to talk about this everyday over & over again, it must get pretty frustrating. I feel that way and I’m just watching them talk about it.

[Victor the Crab]

I always knew that, when right wing asshats started whining about Roseanne Barr getting taken off the air over her dumbass tweet and then them demanding Samantha Bee get taken off as well for her using the c-word on Ivanka, Bill would find a way to blame all this on liberals. This is why Bill is of no fucking help to the left.

[walnutqueen]

26 minutes ago, Victor the Crab said:

I always knew that, when right wing asshats started whining about Roseanne Barr getting taken off the air over her dumbass tweet and then them demanding Samantha Bee get taken off as well for her using the c-word on Ivanka, Bill would find a way to blame all this on liberals. This is why Bill is of no fucking help to the left.

Maher fancies himself as a deep thinker.  As does everyone when they're stoned.  He's just not that clever, and just not that funny. And he stubbornly sticks to a narrative he "formulated" eons ago and shellacked over like a cement boot.

[wknt3]

5 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

I always knew that, when right wing asshats started whining about Roseanne Barr getting taken off the air over her dumbass tweet and then them demanding Samantha Bee get taken off as well for her using the c-word on Ivanka, Bill would find a way to blame all this on liberals. This is why Bill is of no fucking help to the left.

Yeah Bill kind of backslid this week after doing so well last week. Probably should have seen that coming. Actually he seemed to break out a lot of the "old favorites" - it's all the intolerant lefts fault, immigrants need to act more like the "Real Americans" he mocks for a living, complaining about how left wing activists aren't as effective as right wing activists without offering much in the way of either substantive analysis or constructive ideas, etc. I actually found that last one to be the most annoying - he's not wrong in the broad sense and is in some ways ahead of many of his counterparts, but he's not willing to do the hard work and think it through to the end. I would love to see him suggesting that instead of hashtag activism his audience should be running for school board seats or that in addition to marching against gun violence you need to vote in primaries. You know actually examining how the right wing activists achieved substantive victories. Instead he just calls for liberals to fight dirty like the conservatives and then gets his panties in a bunch every time they act like right wingers on anything he doesn't think is a priority (basically everything except the environment and legalizing marijuana) It's a shame that his asshattery kind of overshadowed a pretty good panel and two really good interviews.

[crookedjackson44]

This was a terrific episode with a great cast, especially Zakaria and Heilman, until Bill ruined it with his dreadful rant at the end of New Rules.  I have heard far too many times, so I just turned it off and deleted it.

[iMonrey]

On the other hand, I did enjoy the montage of Trump saying foul things, after Tweeting that Full Frontal should be cancelled because Sam Bee uses foul language. He called some guy a pussy. I guess it's just fine when he does it.

[arachne]

A kids' book called "Uncle Steve Likes Cock"? I know Bill was kidding (he was, right?) but c'mon! This is the network that charmed us with A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Bill and his writers are capable of better! 

[candall]

I didn't get anything fresh or deep from Chavez or Singleton, but I propose Heilemann be given permanent FCC dispensation to curse because his uncensored passion is a beautiful thing.

 

And speaking of cursing, why haven't I seen that particular Trmp compilation before?  MSM has to chew and digest every word he says ad nauseam, even the most obvious distractions, but they're all discreet and diplomatic about the POTUS lobbing F-bombs into crowds?

 

[P.S>Since I keep at least six degrees of separation between me and the nearest kid, I didn't know there was a "cottage industry" in tolerant children's literature.  That makes me so happy.]

[ganesh]

I was getting annoyed when the guy on the right seat next to Bill was like "I disassociate with the racism in my party" and Fareed hit back with "your party is a bunch of racists so you're kind of lame". I enjoyed that. He, the other guy, not Fareed, was also dead wrong about the jobs thing. Those butthurt white dudes don't want those jobs cleaning toilets because they're there and they aren't applying. The woman correctly called him on that. 

[sistermagpie]

10 minutes ago, ganesh said:

I was getting annoyed when the guy on the right seat next to Bill was like "I disassociate with the racism in my party" and Fareed hit back with "your party is a bunch of racists so you're kind of lame". I enjoyed that. He, the other guy, not Fareed, was also dead wrong about the jobs thing. Those butthurt white dudes don't want those jobs cleaning toilets because they're there and they aren't applying. The woman correctly called him on that. 

Yes, that was just silly and I wish they'd gotten more into that. He was creating this totally false choice where people were "helping" immigrants got get jobs first instead of "helping" Americans get jobs, and so the jobs were going to immigrants. When really no, they're two different things. Plus it's still encouraging this fantasy world that you often see on TV where any job, no matter what job, is enough to live on. There are plenty of workers in the US who are citizens and have jobs and still need food stamps. Nobody's fixing the job problem by punishing immigrants.

[Victor the Crab]

45 minutes ago, arachne said:

A kids' book called "Uncle Steve Likes Cock"? I know Bill was kidding (he was, right?) but c'mon! This is the network that charmed us with A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Bill and his writers are capable of better! 

They can do better, when they try. They just don't seem interested in following the path Jon Oliver and Last Week Tonight have taken.

It's one thing to speculate about whether a recession will cause Drumpf supporters to turn on their Dear Leader. But for Bill to actively root for one for that very reason is so much fucking ignorant on his part. He comes across as Susan Sarandon, wanting an economic collapse when they will never ever suffer one bit the way millions of Americans will.

[Caseysgirl]

Why should I be surprised that Bill Maher hopes for a recession ( which no doubt will effect him very little); I hate Trump and what he’s doing to this country as much as anyone, but to wish for the collapse of the economy seems a bit extreme.  I guess we’re all feeling rather hopeless & helpless.

[paigow]

13 minutes ago, Caseysgirl said:

Why should I be surprised that Bill Maher hopes for a recession ( which no doubt will effect him very little.....

Recession means lower pot prices...

[sistermagpie]

9 minutes ago, Caseysgirl said:

Why should I be surprised that Bill Maher hopes for a recession ( which no doubt will effect him very little); I hate Trump and what he’s doing to this country as much as anyone, but to wish for the collapse of the economy seems a bit extreme.  I guess we’re all feeling rather hopeless & helpless.

Also he might be mistaken about how willingly people would even blame that on Trump. God knows Trump himself would have a ready-made excuse for why somebody else did it and they'd buy it. We had this happen before and it took barely any time at all until they re-embraced the same policies that led to collapse before. Or they'd just move onto the next person who claimed the best way to fix the economy is to punish poor non-white people and put women and gay people back in their places.

[attica]

Linda Chavez really wants it both ways. She doesn't want to be what the Rs have become, but she doesn't think she should have to abandon a party that has shifted so far to the reactionary right. (good luck with that!) She's for immigration, but the libs are still awful because something something multicultural strawman. (Hint: no libs think immigrants shouldn't learn English. Libs do recognize that it takes time and effort to learn a new language, and in the meantime, pressing 1 for English is neither a hardship nor an insult.)

[ganesh]

24 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Also he might be mistaken about how willingly people would even blame that on Trump.

This is exactly what will happen. 

[sistermagpie]

8 hours ago, attica said:

Linda Chavez really wants it both ways. She doesn't want to be what the Rs have become, but she doesn't think she should have to abandon a party that has shifted so far to the reactionary right. (good luck with that!) She's for immigration, but the libs are still awful because something something multicultural strawman. (Hint: no libs think immigrants shouldn't learn English. Libs do recognize that it takes time and effort to learn a new language, and in the meantime, pressing 1 for English is neither a hardship nor an insult.)

Yeah, it's a difference that seems giant to her but really isn't. Republicans are so loyal to Trump because he actually is doing all the stuff they want to do without having to say so. I was really annoyed with her when she claimed that the "real bravery" was being shown by the few Republicans who opposed Trump.

[bobbyjoe]

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Linda Chavez really wants it both ways. She doesn't want to be what the Rs have become, but she doesn't think she should have to abandon a party that has shifted so far to the reactionary right.

Yeah, hearing all this from her last night was infuriating.  Chavez spent much of her adult life feeding the rightwing hate machine with bigoted garbage like her many anti-gay actions and columns, and now when that hatred has turned on a minority she cares about, she's like (as she was tonight on Bill's show) "oh, how did this ever happen."  Well, Linda, it happened because of people like you.  Despite what she tried to claim last night, this is exactly the party she helped build; she just doesn't like it that the monster has now turned in her direction. 

Edited June 9, 2018 by bobbyjoe

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

On the other hand, I did enjoy the montage of Trump saying foul things, after Tweeting that Full Frontal should be cancelled because Sam Bee uses foul language. He called some guy a pussy. I guess it's just fine when he does it.

It was Ted Cruz.

Of course Bill was going to backtrack about Roseanne. He tried to get Charlamagne to agree and understand that because Roseanne suffers from a mental illness (multiple personality disorder-Bill’s term(I think it’s DID)) and the latter wouldn’t, that Bill would revisit it again.????

 

26 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Yeah, it's a different that seems giant to her but really isn't. Republicans are so loyal to Trump because he actually is doing all the stuff they want to do without having to say so. I was really annoyed with her when she claimed that the "real bravery" was being shown by the few Republicans who opposed Trump.

WHO are these Republicans? And I don’t mean the ones leaving office because before they said they weren’t going to run again/were retiring, they were more than happy to vote on and support him. And Bill? Nichole Wallace, Steve Schmidt aren’t politicians, and as much as I like them, their calling Drumph out won’t affect his horrible rollbacks. I wish Bill had asked for actual names in the party, who seem to be silent protesters against Drumph.

 

i get what others have said about Chavez wanting immigrants to be allowed in to do the type of work that white Americans refuse to do, but the way she said it made it sound like THAT’S the ONLY job they can do and that’s the only reason they should be allowed to immigrate. And that made me side eye her. 

Edited June 9, 2018 by GHScorpiosRule

[scrb]

Republican politicians are more scared of being primaried from the Trump base than losing in the general.

Republicans who are not officeholders, like Wallace, Schmidt and Chavez, are more free to criticize Trump and the worst instincts of the base.

Chavez has been a Republican pundit for decades.  In the current atmosphere though, her more liberal immigration ideas are going nowhere in Trump's GOP.

I think Rubio supported "comprehensive immigration reform" under Bush, which would have had some kind of formal guest worker program along with some path to being allowed to stay.  He got a lot of push back and he flip-flopped.

Now, Trump not only wants "no amnesty" but to deport people and even cut off legal immigration.

She is right that unskilled Americans will not take low-end jobs like picking crops, busing tables, janitorial and housekeeping work, unpleasant factory work like meat processing plants, etc.

There are definitely cases where they've tried to recruit American workers, especially right after the Financial Crisis when jobs were scarce, of crops left unpicked and spoiled and no takers for working at places like Hormel plants.

[ganesh]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I was really annoyed with her when she claimed that the "real bravery" was being shown by the few Republicans who opposed Trump.

 

1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

And I don’t mean the ones leaving office because before they said they weren’t going to run again/were retiring, they were more than happy to vote on and support him.

Yeah, I was going to say the same. I think either Bill or the bald guy replied that the 'brave republicans' were all leaving office. And, as you point out, they aren't opposing Trump with their votes in congress. 

[formerlyfreedom]

This is for discussion of the episode; bringing in outside sources that you would like Bill to 'have read before the show' will get your posts hidden, and in the future, may result in warnings. Stick to the episode itself. Posts have been removed. Thank you.

[magdalene]

I really like Fareed Zakaria and his common sense.

No, not everybody who needs a job is willing to clean toilets, work in the fields, etc.

[wknt3]

23 hours ago, arachne said:

A kids' book called "Uncle Steve Likes Cock"? I know Bill was kidding (he was, right?) but c'mon! This is the network that charmed us with A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Bill and his writers are capable of better! 

 

22 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

They can do better, when they try. They just don't seem interested in following the path Jon Oliver and Last Week Tonight have taken.

I think you're exactly right. One of my biggest problems with Bill is that he is lazy. Or to put it more kindly he is content to settle for good enough and do just what he has to do instead of sweating every detail and doing everything to deliver the best possible show like so many of his colleagues that he is so jealous of for winning the awards that he thinks are rightfully his. If you are being charitable you could say that it's a carryover from his days on Politically Incorrect when he was doing it daily and there was no time to polish material and no way he could possibly do research on every issue or read every guest's book and watch their shows, but even that suggests a bit of laziness as several hosts (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, etc,) have proven since then that you can be better informed and be intimately involved with the joke writing sausage making process and the rest of the daily grind if you make the effort. And on a weekly show it is now the baseline expectation that you don't settle for good enough and that you make an effort to educate yourself about issues, do your research before interviewing someone, and sweat all the details on every aspect of the show to make it the best you are capable of delivering. I often disagree with other hosts, or feel that they are ignoring some nuances of an issue, but I rarely feel that they simply don't know what they're talking about like I often do with Bill. In many ways Bill is like one of the members of Congress he targets for his jokes. He is a smart guy who is often ahead of the experts at determining how the public will react to something, but would rather spend time getting money from his base around the country, appearing on cable news, and hobnobbing with the elites than doing what is supposed to be his most important job and studying the issues he is debating. It's a shame, but it's never going to change.

Edited June 10, 2018 by wknt3
fixed typos and added accidentally deleted phrases

[iMonrey]

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A kids' book called "Uncle Steve Likes Cock"? I know Bill was kidding (he was, right?) but c'mon! This is the network that charmed us with A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Bill and his writers are capable of better! 

I think you may have missed the point. All these other (real) children's books are couched in these vague, abstract metaphors. "Uncle Steve Likes Cock" is supposed to be the antidote to that. Just straight-up telling it like it is. No bunnies or tulips or butterflies, no clever little cartoon characters. Just come right out and say what it is. He likes dick.

[Eliot]

23 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, that was just silly and I wish they'd gotten more into that. He was creating this totally false choice where people were "helping" immigrants got get jobs first instead of "helping" Americans get jobs, and so the jobs were going to immigrants. When really no, they're two different things. Plus it's still encouraging this fantasy world that you often see on TV where any job, no matter what job, is enough to live on. There are plenty of workers in the US who are citizens and have jobs and still need food stamps. Nobody's fixing the job problem by punishing immigrants.

He was so annoying and so dumb. Let's put aside for a moment the sheer logistical challenges with what he's proposing (how do you get people to all those jobs when they have no transportation and no child care?) Chavez was right: American workers will not take those jobs. Why? Because the pay sucks, the working conditions are horrendous, and there are no benefits.

Singleton and his ilk claim to be all about Capitalism-with-a-capital-C, but when it comes to applying that concept to the labor market, they stutter and stammer and mouth ridiculous platitudes because they don't want to content with the real-world implications of what they're spouting. I guarantee you, if those jobs were paying $100 an hour with full benefits, onsite daycare, and free transportation to and from the worksites, people would be lining up for them in droves. Hell, I'd probably sign up. Of course, that would raise consumer prices to an unsustainable level, but, hey, that's the way the free market is supposed to work, no?

Edited June 10, 2018 by Eliot

[ganesh]

3 minutes ago, Eliot said:

Chavez was right: American workers will not take those jobs. Why? Because the pay sucks, the working conditions are horrendous, and there are no benefits.

I took the conversation from a different pov. I thought the woman was saying that the legal Americans just aren't applying for these available jobs that are basically there for the taking, and she was saying there's a lot of service sector jobs available. She seemed to imply that these people are sitting around waiting to be given jobs that aren't there anymore. I didn't get that the reason they aren't applying for them was because the conditions are bad. Which I'm not arguing. But you know what though? If you need a job, there's jobs. Work at those, and move on to find another. Isn't this the country where you're supposed to pull yourself up by the bootstraps? 

Certainly the guy was grossly incorrect is saying that the jobs are being given to immigrants over citizens, and I think she was correct in saying that new immigrants to the country are highly motivated to work and are taking these kinds of jobs so why wouldn't you want to hire them? 

[Gigi43]

First time posting on this show, long time lurker.

 

Linda Chavez said something that I found so outrageous and even more that no one said anything about her comment. Maybe I'm over sensitive because I was born with a disability and have have family/friends get sick or injured during their working years. Now I found it wrong that we should take in immigrants to do the jobs "nobody wants" because it rubbed me as "we should bring them here because they'll do a job no matter how bad the conditions are" and thats not pro-immigration its pro wanting to get away with not having to make safer conditions or better pay/benefits. But here is where I bugged out at one point she said she'd rather an immigrant than "someone whose been on disability for 15 months."  What?! Why, exactly? Despite what Judge Judy type shows may have some people think there are legit sick or injured people on disability who want to get better and support themselves. If someone is more qualified for the job itself thats one thing, but the fact is that disabled, previously sick or injured people do get discriminated against in finding work, its a real problem and people don't seem to want to deal with that. The fact that she just said outright she would hold being on disability against someone, "she doesn't want them", and not one person called her out or asked her to elaborate is absolutely infuriating to me.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Gigi43

[sistermagpie]

15 minutes ago, Gigi43 said:

But here is where I bugged out at one point she said she'd rather an immigrant than "someone whose been on disability for 15 months."

Yes! OMG, thank you for bringing that up because that was a WTF for me too! Did she mean she just wanted someone it would take longer to work to death? Either way it totally sounded as if she was dismissing anyone who'd been on disability as either a lazy liar or just useless or something. I was shocked she used that as her example of the kind of person you wouldn't want to hire!

[GHScorpiosRule]

42 minutes ago, Gigi43 said:

First time posting on this show, long time lurker.

 

Linda Chavez said something that I found so outrageous and even more that no one said anything about her comment. Maybe I'm over sensitive because I was born with a disability and have have family/friends get sick or injured during their working years. Now I found it wrong that we should take in immigrants to do the jobs "nobody wants" because it rubbed me as "we should bring them here because they'll do a job no matter how bad the conditions are" and thats not pro-immigration its pro wanting to get away with not having to make safer conditions or better pay/benefits. But here is where I bugged out at one point she said she'd rather an immigrant than "someone whose been on disability for 15 months."  What?! Why, exactly? Despite what Judge Judy type shows may have some people think there are legit sick or injured people on disability who want to get better and support themselves. If someone is more qualified for the job itself thats one thing, but the fact that disabled, previously sick or injured people do get discriminated against in finding work is a real problem and people don't seem to want to deal with that. The fact that she just said outright she would out being on disability against someone, "she doesn't want them", and not one person called her out or asked her to elaborate is absolutely infuriating to me.

1000 times this! I was trying to figure out how to say this. I eye-sided her the entire time. 

25 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes! OMG, thank you for bringing that up because that was a WTF for me too! Did she mean she just wanted someone it would take longer to work to death? Either way it totally sounded as if she was dismissing anyone who'd been on disability as either a lazy liar or just useless or something. I was shocked she used that as her example of the kind of person you wouldn't want to hire!

Exactly. And NO ONE  checked her.

[Gigi43]

I'm so glad other people caught it. After Fridays episode I actually started to wonder when I was thinking about it that since no one called her out maybe I misheard. There are a lot of asinine people out there but I guess even though I know of the discrimination  I expect at least one of the rest of the 4 to give a shit about a put down of people on disability on a discussion of political/social issues show. I watched a rerun of it last night just to confirm I heard right and it was just as bad the 2nd time around. 

Edited June 10, 2018 by Gigi43

[scrb]

7 hours ago, ganesh said:

I took the conversation from a different pov. I thought the woman was saying that the legal Americans just aren't applying for these available jobs that are basically there for the taking, and she was saying there's a lot of service sector jobs available. She seemed to imply that these people are sitting around waiting to be given jobs that aren't there anymore. I didn't get that the reason they aren't applying for them was because the conditions are bad. Which I'm not arguing. But you know what though? If you need a job, there's jobs. Work at those, and move on to find another. Isn't this the country where you're supposed to pull yourself up by the bootstraps? 

Certainly the guy was grossly incorrect is saying that the jobs are being given to immigrants over citizens, and I think she was correct in saying that new immigrants to the country are highly motivated to work and are taking these kinds of jobs so why wouldn't you want to hire them? 

I can't remember the last time I saw bus boys, landscaping people and construction laborers who weren't Hispanic.

Now maybe California is way more likely to have Hispanic workers in thee low-skilled positions than say Alabama or the upper Midwest.

[ganesh]

2 hours ago, scrb said:

I can't remember the last time I saw bus boys, landscaping people and construction laborers who weren't Hispanic.

Now maybe California is way more likely to have Hispanic workers in thee low-skilled positions than say Alabama or the upper Midwest.

Within the context of what the woman said on the show about available jobs and who would want to apply for them - I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and I saw the same. Also within that same context, when I visited my very good childhood friend and his wonderful family in Georgia, they also talked about the jobs available picking peaches and peanuts. I do think the woman on the show was correct in pointing out that there's these jobs available. 

[Hanahope]

I thought Chavez was right that many Americans are ignorant, they have no idea who Mueller is, let alone that anyone on trump’s team has been indicted, and they voted for trump because they recognized the guy from tv and he talked tough.

And the other guy was right that others voted for trump because they are the alt right.

 

Chavez was also right that most Americans don’t want many jobs immigrants do, because the jobs don’t pay enough.  It’s more money for the immigrants, but not for many Americans to get up and move for seasonal work.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Hanahope