In Bill Maher’s new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You, the activist’s disingenuous claim to the profession of comedian is a surprise. Playing the political version of a radio shock jock on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, he insults both sides of current political debates. And only his in-studio audience of sycophants is laughing.
This bipolar provocation isn’t new in the craven world of entertainment (insult-comics want everyone to love them), but it indicates a new ruthlessness for the pundit class. Maher is a creature of the Clinton era. He has desperately sought significance since the end of his Politically Incorrect show, which ran from 1993 to 2002, first on Comedy Central and then on ABC. His HBO rebirth in Real Time with Bill Maher smacks of leftist Millennial revenge on Bush II and Trump — it’s an effort to maintain media power.
As entertainment, Real Time has a limited audience of HBO subscribers, yet its clips serve as a crutch for conservative TV programs — those outlets too feckless to generate their own talking points but that are always following the lead of left-wing media.
Maher’s book (his eighth since 1994) exposes the bland similarity of political media commentary feeding off itself rather than staking out bold moral or political claims.
When Maher mocks former New York representative George Santos (a convenient target of that state’s RINOs), he could as well be confessing his own maverick egotism. He writes, “Santos is just the first one to realize you could do both sides’ shtick and get away with it because people have completely tuned out anything that doesn’t already fit their narratives.” That’s more honest than Maher’s recent boast on the Megyn Kelly Show that he’s “someone without a political home.”
Maher has always made his bed with the mainstream — starting when he promoted frequent Politically Incorrect guest Arianna Huffington’s toward her rise to journalism-killer at the Huffington Post website.
Maher’s always incorrigible political comedy takes the leftist approach to everything, using Democrats’ favorite tactic: insult and defamation. It’s no mystery that Maher is a leftist agent. His cable-proof profanity either intimidates or convinces foolish viewers that he’s right because he’s adamant. He’ll lie (as when he insisted that Hillary Clinton never said Trump was an illegitimate president) and then curse, as if his wrongness cannot be contradicted. As clueless and ignorant as the comediennes on The View, he takes advantage of the personal insecurity by which those ex-comics pretend to have politic convictions — as if having a big mouth makes one an expert.
Unlike his contemporary, former stand-up comic Joe Rogan, whose podcast has become a platform for nonconformist politics, Maher capitalizes on the demagogic aspect of flaunting a comic façade. Maher’s dour mug resembles a Debbie Downer; his only mirth comes from disbelieving or humiliating someone else for having a different point of view. Maher’s scummier side comes out on his podcast Club Random, which invites guests to join him in alcohol- or cannabis-fueled ramblings. Even when drunk, Maher consistently shifts back to left-liberal partisanship.
A more honest book title would be: What This Comedian Said Will Try to Influence You. Maher’s power is the fascination his facetious commentary holds for other, less secure pundits. The reason for their insecurity is worth further analysis, but it comes down to a misunderstanding of news, journalism, and commentary.
As a uniparty court jester, Maher writes:
Real Time has always attempted to be a show about ideas. The people who know of it, but don’t know it, talk to me about the show like we’re investigative journalists; we are not. We don’t break stories, we break new ways of looking at stories. And that is especially true of the editorial — I always want them to introduce novel ways of thinking about something.
Such is Maher’s trickster narcissism — and it’s adored by other media folk who depend on his clips to fill out their broadcasts and give them talking points. (Real Time’s recent jabs at Biden’s foibles are easy, not strong conservative arguments.) Maher’s trite topicality shtick goes back to his 2008 film Religulous, an ugly blend of atheism and the anti-Americanism of the Bush II years. Corporate media, lacking the confidence to launch their own salvos, gratefully follow Maher whenever he deigns to criticize fellow leftists. Needing Maher’s truculent approval to sustain their own arguments, they’re defined by their enemy.