Sorry Bill Maher, You've Been Cancelled [View all]

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Last edited Sun Mar 21, 2021, 05:23 AM - Edit history (1)

Daily Kos, March 20, 2021.

Tonight was the final straw.

I’ve been a regular viewer of Real Time with Bill Maher for almost all of the nearly 20 years it has aired, and it has often been one of my favorite shows. But after watching tonight’s episode, in which Maher turned nearly the entire show into a megaphone in support of the right wing “war on cancel culture”, I took a step that’s been building for a while now — I cancelled my Tivo subscription to Real Time.

Bill Maher has been someone I not only enjoyed watching, but admired in many ways. He never minced words, was highly articulate, and employed deadly wit in calling out the greed and dishonesty of the disingenuous Right. He literally put his money where his mouth was to support the liberal cause, and knowingly stuck his neck out in telling truth to power. I will always respect him for that.

But as time passed, his sharp edge grew dull, he became more chummy with adversaries, and he increasingly embraced the “mainstream media” tactic of constructing false equivalences between indiscretions on the Left and atrocities on the Right. On 11/9/2016, I entered a self-imposed blackout of all things political (for the sake of my mental health), and when I resurfaced in September of last year, the degree to which Maher had descended was quite striking. While it has always been his trademark to include right wingers on the show, some of Maher’s recent guest choices (e.g. Jenna Ellis, Kellyanne Conway) plumb the depths of shamelessness.

To make matters worse, Maher serves as no more than a punching bag when debating these deplorables, fecklessly stammering “well, OK” to their endless stream of lies, only coming to life to cheer “Now I agree with you there!” when a criticism of the Left strikes a chord. Maher has adopted many of the views of his right wing friends. In tonight’s hour long sermon on how “cancel culture” is ruining the world, he as much as implied that everyone says racist things in private, and it’s a damned shame that people have to be accountable for their words and actions — it may as well have been Tucker Carlson speaking. His extreme views on nutrition/health seem to have morphed into a Trump-like perspective on COVID,...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/20/2021963/-Sorry-Bill-Maher-You-ve-Been-Cancelled