Even though I’m a religious person, I’ve always had a soft spot for a certain kind of cantankerous atheist. And although I’d never let myself be yoked with an unbeliever, I’ve always had a bit of an “older man” crush on Bill Maher. Maybe it’s the way his eyes crease when he tells a particularly acidic joke. Or the fact that he understands the motivations of evangelicals much better than the average Democrat. Or maybe it’s that he admits to wearing a smoking jacket, Henry Higgins-like, in the evenings after work. In the sad absence of Christopher Hitchens during our censorious era, Maher has fulfilled a craving for a suave, irascible heretic.
Now 68 years old, Maher was raised Catholic in New Jersey and later found out that his mother’s family was Jewish. He started his stand-up career in New York City before establishing a solid reputation as an edgier thinking man’s late-night host with the shows Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and now Real Time on HBO, on whose throne he has presided for 21 years. His new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You, is a compendium of editorials from his current show — the concluding opinion pieces he presents to the audience at evening’s end. It is organized by subject. You’ll find herein assorted meditations on the media, cancel culture, guns, race, health, and even such abstract topics as “time” and “fragility.”
One of the most constant accusations Maher’s critics launch in his direction is that “he’s old.” His protestations against recent social initiatives in America, they say, are nothing more than the kvetching of a crabby, crumpled senior unable to digest the fact that the country has changed. But this is a mischaracterization of Maher’s message. And anyway, there can be deep value in listening to our elders. It’s something American youth doesn’t do enough of. If you don’t mind getting sand between the pages of a hardcover, this book makes a great beach read: It’s both fun and full of nuggets of wisdom.
For instance, he demands to know of the Democrats how “the party of FDR and JFK is turning into the party of LOL and WTF.” He defends creative liberty, warning that “art and coercion is a bad combination.” He laments the powerlessness of the individual in an unhealthy society: “You can … put a healing crystal up your ass, but there’s no escaping the environment we all live in.” He attacks the fat positivity movement: “You’re not a freedom fighter because you want to keep eating donuts.” Alongside that, there is surprisingly deep advice: “The answer isn’t to insist that everyone in society love you exactly the way you are, it’s to learn to tell the ones who don’t that you don’t need them.” And he is absolutely correct when he diagnoses millennials as emotionally squeamish, a notion any woman can verify by viewing the thousandth picture of a dating-app douchebag saying he’s looking for “good vibes only.”
Even though for many years he’s been a notorious, strident atheist, Maher espouses several values in his book that could be characterized as Christian and even deeply Catholic. Who knew a libertine could provide such moral guidance? There is a marked anti-utopian strain in his thinking. One of the points he makes over and over is that humans are not naturally virtuous and society is not infinitely perfectible. He despises the oversanitization of our era, preferring “the world as it is, messy and impure.” He is profoundly pluralist, insisting that “this new idea that each culture must remain in its own separate silo is not better, and it’s not progress.”
Maher, in short, believes in equality and improving life conditions for our fellow citizens, but he could never be called a reformist. In a 2019 monologue, he demonstrated an uncanny understanding of religious conservatives, pinpointing a frequent reason for Republican electoral success: “They’re not babies who think they can have everything. Evangelicals don’t really like Donald Trump — they know he can’t even pass a church without bursting into flames! But he got them two justices on the Supreme Court.” On economics, he’s surprisingly based (as the children say), declaring that “the real issue” in America today is “class, not race.” He has no problem alerting incels (whom he hilariously terms “digital eunuchs”) that it might be time to take down their Ayn Rand posters: “Somewhere along the way libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession” with a “selfish prick” version of “free-market capitalism.”
I’ll admit that I first started watching Real Time several years ago because I enjoyed the delicious dunking on progressive overreach. Maher presents himself as a moderate who helps normal people laugh at all those on both the Left and Right who seem to have lost their minds. At heart, he’s an Enlightenment stan: He believes in reason and common sense. Fair enough. But ours is an age of reenchantment, not rationality. Individualism is giving way to solidarity in ways both good and bad. And Americans, of all people, are yearning for constraint.
The monologues that make up What This Comedian Said Will Shock You span the past decade. It’s hard to tell the exact political environment each monologue is addressing since none of them are dated. But one in particular is certainly out of date: the entry in which Maher states that “nones,” or people affiliated with no specific faith, are the “fastest-growing religious group in the United States.” As of May 2024, according to data analyst Ryan Burge, the number of nonreligious people is no longer rising. In a Substack post called “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling,” Burge demonstrates that the newest adults, or Generation Z, are experiencing the biggest drop in none-ery. Signs of spiritual resurgence are everywhere. Many young intellectuals are Catholic or espouse Catholic ideas, and a charismatic revival known as the “Asbury Awakening” happened at a Christian university in Kentucky last year.
Writing in the Guardian, Ross Barkan calls this a new Romantic age. Trust the science is no longer an enforceable mantra, he says, and young people today, like the Romantics in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, are seeking “spiritual realms” that reach beyond “rationalist precepts.” Are you a heathen looking for a honey? It might interest you to know that according to a recent study by the Survey Center on American Life, almost half (49%) of people say they would be less likely to date someone who does not believe in God. And famed atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins are converting to Christianity or admitting that Christianity has cultural value.
For his part, Maher does acknowledge the presence of the ineffable when he speaks about romance, calling it “the last mystery.” He makes an excellent point when he argues that office love affairs should be less policed, especially since we’re in an epidemic of loneliness. In the book’s last chapter, he gets shockingly kumbaya for a cranky libertarian, urging peace, stability, and unity. (Those deep Catholic values are hard to shake.) His love for America is clear and moving. There’s a warmth in his message and a spirit of toleration in his voice, for all his jibes.
These days, everyone is writing about either dissent or divorce. You half expect to see an Elon Musk essay in the Cut about how moving to Mars and ditching the third rock from the sun allowed him to “find himself.” But Maher urges us to stay grounded and embrace being on Earth. “I don’t want to hate half the country, and I don’t hate half the country,” he has repeated in interviews this summer. Maher wants America to stay together, and so do I. We have a good thing going here.
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Emma Collins is a writer based in Washington, D.C. You can find her newsletter, A New Heaven, on Substack.