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Real Time with Bill Maher in the Media


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8 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Bill continues to hold the record for most Emmy nominations without a win, per Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Real_Time_with_Bill_Maher

I guess that makes 23 in total now.

 

He really should be "just happy to be nominated" this year, but I bet we get some petulant "joke" or snide remark about this proves he isn't really part of the club. Even though being nominated this year proves he is. I've praised him for having the sharpest, most insightful take on the the election of any of the late night hosts from the beginning and for having some good shows, but overall this was not a good season and he was certainly not better than Sam Bee, Seth Meyers, or Stephen Colbert much less his friend Jerry Seinfeld or John Oliver.

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I have to believe this year might hurt a little more than previous years because of the new guy on HBO winning.  I love John Oliver and I love the way he covers things no one else does, but overall, even with all of his faults, I still prefer Bill.  Minus a few of his obstinately held beliefs, I think he gives the most insightful analysis about politics.  Most of the people nominated rely more on one liners than on really thoughtful opinions. 

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Bill is on Fareed Zakaria right now (CNN) .  What a refreshing, grownup discussion.  Bill at his best.  I always think his comments are very thoughtful and insightful when he's being interviewed by others. 

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I saw this too. He was really good, and I agreed with everything he said. This Trump thing is so scary, not so much because of him but because of what it revealed about the people who live in this country and the alternative reality on the right. That makes it impossible to govern with the other side. I don't know how to fix that.

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4 hours ago, SierraMist said:

Bill is on Fareed Zakaria right now (CNN) .  What a refreshing, grownup discussion.  Bill at his best.  I always think his comments are very thoughtful and insightful when he's being interviewed by others. 

 

1 hour ago, ruby24 said:

I saw this too. He was really good, and I agreed with everything he said. This Trump thing is so scary, not so much because of him but because of what it revealed about the people who live in this country and the alternative reality on the right. That makes it impossible to govern with the other side. I don't know how to fix that.

I've said before that he had the sharpest and most insightful take on this election of all the late night hosts, figuring out what was important and what was going on before everyone else (realizing that Trump was a real threat, that Hillary and Bernie were more similar than their supporters might care to admit except on foreign policy, etc.) and he is a smart guy. And when he is being interviewed by someone smart who is asking questions about topics he is actually knowledgeable rather than what he is passionate about at the moment and forcing him to explain himself and acknowledge nuance it really comes out. I'm sure if he was being interviewed on medicine by Dr. Oz on the other hand he would come off as a smug dilettante.

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On 10/16/2016 at 0:30 PM, SierraMist said:

Bill is on Fareed Zakaria right now (CNN) .  What a refreshing, grownup discussion.  Bill at his best.  I always think his comments are very thoughtful and insightful when he's being interviewed by others. 

For anyone who wants to watch the interview:

 

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On 12/19/2016 at 2:59 PM, ganesh said:

Bill did a 8+" piece on attn:. Nothing too new. 

Thanks for posting this.  I miss Bill.  And I always love him when he's being interviewed by someone else.  I've never heard of attn: but I thought the interviewer was really good, too, asking Bill just the right questions to get him going.  

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Nice to see Bill again. I was honestly unsure if I'd be back to the show in January, because I'm just so depressed and I can't stand hearing about this shit every single day as it is. But I think I'm probably going to need him and the show after all to get through this. 

I do wonder though- there was literally less than a handful of Republicans on the show this last season who were actually behind Trump. Most of the conservatives who came on hated him. Does that change now? Are we going to get a bunch of lying, despicable Trump defenders on the panel? God, I don't know if I can stand that.

I agree with Bill on Gavin Newsom. I've liked him a lot every time I've seen him on the show all these years, and if we've got to go back to white men who "look" like presidents, well then, yeah let's pick a good one. He has charisma and I now think that's the only thing that will energize Democrats to get out and vote (as long as we're stuck with this ridiculous electoral college that goes against the will of the voters- this is madness and it HAS to stop somehow). If/when he wins the governor's race in CA in 2018, I do think he should jump in for 2020. Forget the experience factor- he'll be running against the host of Celebrity Apprentice who got in with nothing. And hey, if Trump does get impeached and doesn't last the full term, I also believe just about anybody will defeat Mike Pence.

Edited by ruby24
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27 minutes ago, scrb said:

Gavin Newsome has been divorced.  I think the divorce may have derailed or slowed down his rise?

Have we had a divorced POTUS before?

"Saint Ronnie"

And the less said about Twitler, the better.

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4 hours ago, scrb said:

Gavin Newsome has been divorced.  I think the divorce may have derailed or slowed down his rise?

Have we had a divorced POTUS before?

We're going to have a twice divorced, three times married president in one month. No one seemed to care. Sigh.

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I just remember when Newsome was mayor of SF, which must have been over 10 years ago, he and his wife at the time were seen as the "it" couple in Democratic politics, who could be like the Clintons were.  At the time, the Clintons, especially Bill, were very popular.

Then all of a sudden they divorced.

A few years ago, I was on a plane going to Paris and I think I saw Newsome and I presume his new wife or girlfriend go to business class.  This was an Air France flight from San Francisco.  She was very tall (maybe 6 foot) blond and spent a lot of the flight sitting on the floor between business and coach class, talking to someone who was sitting in coach.  Gavin didn't sit on the floor, presumably enjoying his business class comforts.

I got the sense that he would have risen to Governor of CA much sooner if the divorce didn't happen and he seemed to be out of the public light for a few years.  I think also maybe Gray Davis being recalled and Arnold becoming governor may have also caused the delay in his rise, because Jerry Brown ran to replace Arnold.

Only other skeletons there could be in Gavin's closet may be that he got rich as a real estate guy, either developing or just doing real well in the real estate market.  He may have grown up in a well to do family too.  Not saying being rich is a problem, just that if he runs for high-profile office, they will look at him very closely, from his business dealings to his personal life.

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2 hours ago, ruby24 said:

I feel like none of that stuff matters anymore. Business dealings to personal life? Look who just got elected. If people like him, he'll be fine.

But he's a Democrat, so his past WILL come back to haunt him and people will hate him. After all, IOKIYAR! >:P

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Yeah it doesn't matter to the Republican base and more moderate Republicans who decided to vote for him at all costs, regardless of all the things that repelled them enough when his poll numbers were at their lowest after the pussy-grabbing video.

The evangelicals didn't care about his personal life but they also voted for Mormon Romney too.

A lot of Trump voters said he had bad temperament and did some bad things but they didn't care, they were going to vote for him.

Washington Post or NY Times ran a story about voters in WV, specifically towns hurt by the decline in coal.  Many of these voters lost loved ones to coal mine disasters or just hazards of working in coal mines.  They believe that coal became uncompetitive due to regulations, both environmental and safety-related ones.  The truth is, natural gas and renewable energy like wind and solar have become way more competitive, so market forces have caused the decline in coal.

Yet these WV voters in some of these coal mining towns voted like 80% for Trump, believing he will bring coal back and also bring back young people who left these dead-end towns for other job opportunities.  A lot of them are in their 70s and 80s.  So they will excuse the coal mining companies and Trump's faults but they won't do the same for other candidates necessarily

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I was reading an article that said that Trump voters got one thing that they wanted: a giant fuck you to the establishment. Then it said the problem with that is it's the ONLY thing Trump will deliver. 

So, I'm looking forward to the new season, too--I want to see if anyone has buyer's remorse, and is like to hear some talks on DTs random tweets about nuclear proliferation.

Edited by The Mighty Peanut
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Did anyone see the comments from Anthony Bourdain?  He doesn't seem to be a fan of Mr. Maher...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/12/31/anthony-bourdain-bashes-fellow-privileged-eastern-liberals-for-making-trump-win-possible/?utm_term=.24c98c802b77

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Bourdain went on to criticize HBO political talk show host Bill Maher as “the worst of the smug, self-congratulatory left” after being asked about an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” a few years ago.

“Not a show I plan to do again. He’s a classic example of the smirking, contemptuous, privileged guy who lives in a bubble,” Bourdain told the magazine. “And he is in no way looking to reach outside, or even look outside, of that bubble, in an empathetic way.”

I want to disagree with him, but I mostly can't.

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Maybe.

I haven't watched Bourdain's show religiously but he comes across as a poseur.

Too old to be the hipster he portrays.

But it's got to sting Bill, being accused of being in the bubble when he often accuses conservatives of the same thing.

As for polarizing, it's a function of expressing faith in his convictions, of not pussyfooting around, trying to be "fair" to people who believe the opposite of what he does on a lot of issues.

For instance, most candidates in 2004 danced around the issue while Howard Dean said bluntly that Bush lied about WMDs.  He was way ahead of the curve and if he didn't flame out for that stupid yell, he would have enraged Republicans for accusing Bush of lying.

But it was the truth and there was no point in faux civility on that point.  That is Bill's style, the blunt truth as he sees it.  If people feel that's him being mean or "polarizing," whatever ... 

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11 hours ago, scrb said:

As for polarizing, it's a function of expressing faith in his convictions, of not pussyfooting around, trying to be "fair" to people who believe the opposite of what he does on a lot of issues.

Bill has been consistent on the false equivalency/normalization of Trump throughout the whole campaign. He and Moore were the only people I saw that were begging people to vote because they knew Trump had a real chance of winning Yes, he could be more "diplomatic" in his opinions, but it's his show. So I could see that one might call that "polarizing." I don't think being in a bubble is accurate because again, on the show, he's consistently pointed to actual facts when people accuse Obama of tanking the economy or not creating jobs. 

I don't think Bill is nearly as smart as he thinks he is on science issues for me, but I don't see those statements as entirely accurate. 

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16 hours ago, Victor the Crab said:

As far as Bourdain's opinion about Bill is concerned, he's bang on. Bill doesn't do anything except polarize and divide.

What pisses me off about Bill is his flip flopping. In the lead-up to the election he was calling Trump supporters "idiots" and "rednecks." When former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerry said something about not stereotyping, and that there were good people who supported Trump, Bill got up on his high horse. "Really? No good person would support Trump," he definitely declared. The other panelists laughed and the audience clapped their approval.

But after the election, with the media buzzing about how HRC lost because she failed to reach out to average Americans, there's Bill bashing the Democrats as coastal elitists who live in a bubble. As if he hadn't spent months ridiculing and mocking anyone who'd even consider voting for Trump. Along with many celebrity guests and panelists who got in on the act. (I remember Rob Reiner and John Legend as being particularly smug and condescending).

It's always amusing to me how Bill and other mega-wealthy entertainers don't see themselves as part of the elite. The parade of show biz celebrity Hillary endorsers in the media, on talk shows, and in campaign appearances probably hurt her more than helped it. It made people feel that there was a party going on to which they weren't invited. (How inept were the Dems to allow a Republican billionaire to successfully portray himself as the candidate for working people?)

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14 hours ago, bluepiano said:

(How inept were the Dems to allow a Republican billionaire to successfully portray himself as the candidate for working people?)

Yeah, the $2 billion of free media Twitler got had nothing to do with it, right?

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Conway:

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 “Talk about a Hollywood story — folks are unnecessarily flattering themselves to think for two seconds that Donald Trump is going to call out the big dogs to make their lives miserable,” she said.

Yet this literally happened. Trump sued Bill and demanded the $5 million over an absurd and obvious joke. He dismissed a legitimate news organization as "fake" this week. I don't think Trump is going to sue Streep, and I don't think he'd sued Baldwin for making fun of him on SNL, but don't tell me it can't happen again.

Conway isn't stupid. She knows well enough the influence of the "bully pulpit" that the president has. I have no doubt there's swathes of the butthurt white dudes who now think CNN is some kind of tabloid news now. 

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1 minute ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Yeah, every where I look online, I see "TBA" for the panel this week.

Maybe he is planning a monologue for the entire hour, ending with something having to do with the new administration and awaiting continued threats.   

Maybe he can't get anyone to show, especially since the event will be taking place the same day and those in the circle can't make it across country for the show.

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