Bill Maher was angry that certain messages get attention and certain others do not on his Friday Real Time show on HBO.
He led off with a prime example of that in an interview with Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), the director and producer of the HBO Original documentary The Insurrectionist Next Door, which debuted October 15.
The film talks to several people who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 about what brought them to Washington, D.C. on that fateful day, and whether their views have shifted since.
Maher noted that the people in the film are “remarkably relatable and likable.”
“It’s the forgotten man,” Pelosi said. “They fell behind this great American dream, they’re feeling left behind.”
Maher tried to get Pelosi – who blamed social media feeds for the divide in political views – to say what the Democrats are doing so wrong to engender these feelings of being left out when they are the ones that are trying to help the working class.
Pelosi dodged, but Maher wouldn’t let her off the hook, noting, “You made a whole movie about it.”
Finally, Pelosi allowed that the bubble of social media brainwashed people to be “programmed to hate on both sides.”
Maher ultimately showed which side he’s on by bidding her farewell with a quick, “Say hello to your mother for me.”
In the panel discussion, Maher talked with Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.
They attacked those whose opinions did not match theirs on the current situation in the Middle East.
Begala summed it up: “There are not two sides here.”
The most thorny issue tackled was which side fired the missile that hit the Gazan Al-Alhi hospital. Maher brought up a New York Times headline that accused Israel, ending in the equivocation, “Palestinians Say.”
Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, noted how journalists should not take what the Palestinians say at face value, since it’s an authoritarian society. “Everything that comes out of it has to be double-checked and triple-checked,” he said. “It’s Hamas. It goes to the basic difference. In an open democratic society (like Israel), journalists do not live in fear that they’ll be hurt. It has to be treated with skepticism, and Israel has to be believed.”
Begala also brought up social media, noting, “Too many people are prisoners of the algorithm of their social media.” Stephens agreed, noting that school indoctrinates children into one value – tolerance. That leads to a problem in situations that have two sides. “The tolerance brigade couldn’t bring themselves (to acknowledge things) without equivocation.”
Stephens called for Hamas to be wiped out to its fifth level, while Maher noted that such extreme actions are “a trap to get us to overreact.” Maher noted that level of retaliation would escalate the conflict, perhaps opening other fronts that could overwhelm Israel.
Maher’s “New Rules” editorial advised students, “don’t go to college,” particularly to the Ivy Leagues. “As recent events have shown, it just makes you stupid,” and noted how higher education has become “a stew of bad ideas.” Both comments referred to the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.
Although the students have no knowledge of history, Maher opined, “It doesn’t deter them from having an opinion.”
College, Maher claimed, “is a day care center with a meal plan.” He noted that if “ignorance is a disease, Harvard is the Wuhan wet market.”
Noting some famous Harvard grads, Maher said they all have punchable faces in common, “and some, I assume, are good people.”
He closed by telling the older folks in his audience that “college today is not the college you remember,” and told students, “You don’t need four years to hate America when you can watch five minutes of Selling Sunset.“
