Bill Maher

Briefly Noted: Bill Maher’s Ridiculous (and Unethical) Analogy

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In a monologue being hailed for its Democratic centrism, opportunistic comic/pundit (you never know when he is being which) Bill Maher argued that the woke position that men should be regarded as women and vice versa accoring to their heartily felt whims of the moment was the irrational equivalent of the conservative belief that human fetuses were as worthy of having a chance to live as newborn babies.

I don’t have any interest in the policy analysis of anyone who regards that as a valid comparison. For one thing, human fetuses that are allowed to live become babies, and after that, fully functioning human beings. Men do not become women no matter how much they want to. I suspect know his analogy is false, but he also knows the majority of his fans lack the intellectual capacity to realize that.

It demonstrates the miserable state of public discourse in America that a cynical lightweight like Bill Maher is considered profound.

Bill Maher Is Smarter Than Colbert But No More Ethical..And About That Cory Booker Outburst

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

HBO’s smug clown nose on/clown nose off star Bill Maher has been getting plaudits from conservatives—yes, even Fox News!—for supposedly being one of the few knee-jerk Trump critics to have the integrity to admit, “Gee, I guess Trump was right about something.” Lately Bill has said that he “loved” the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and that he, like everyone else on the Left, was wrong about Trump’s tariff policies crashing the economy. (Today we learned that the GNP took a leap to 3%.)

There will be no salutes for Maher here.

This is the same guy who said, during Trump’s first term, that making the economy crash would be worth it to get rid of Trump. (And that’s exactly what Democrats and their allies, the Deep State CDC, the NEA, and the New York Times did with the Wuhan virus freakout.) Bill the Truth-Teller had his barking-seals studio audience rolling in the aisles throughout 2024 as he mocked news accounts, the Hur Report, and any other evidence that President Biden was half-there (at best) usually pairing his commentary with shots at Trump’s cognitive abilities. Now, however, that it is obvious to him that Democrats are the Titanic, this particular rat senses that he best interests lie in tacking a bit to sanity: most of his audience may be Trump Deranged, but Maher will do what necessary to keep his ratings up.

Comedians who deliberately alienate half the country are not in a secure position when that half starts growing; Maher is many unpleasant things—a hypocrite, a misogynist, an arrogant creep, but he’s not stupid. Admitting the obvious even when it ticks off some of his fans doesn’t require integrity, it requires common sense.

I suppose this is as good a place as anywhere to discuss Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker’s hysterical anti-Trump rant yesterday in the Senate. The fun part begins around the 2:30 second mark.

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Yeah, It’s Bill Maher, Much As It Pains Me To Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“If the thought leaders in the Democratic Party keep encouraging and not rebuking the idea that America is cringe and the people who run Gaza are great,” he warned, “the Democrats are doomed.”

—HBO’s “clown nose on/clown nose off” comic Bill Maher on his weekly political commentary and discussion show “Real Time.”

I have made it clear in the past few months that I do not take professional asshole Bill Maher’s recent criticism of progressives and the Democratic Party to be sincere or particularly admirable. He is obviously making self-serving calculations regarding where his own best interests lie, and the comic is smart enough (not as smart as he thinks he is, but smart enough) to recognize a declining brand when he sees one. Nevertheless, we should always try to judge a message independently of a flawed messenger.

Maher is right. Last month a Harvard poll found that only 24% of young Democrats said they were proud of being American compared to a 76% of young Republicans. (I find it alarming that a quarter of young Republicans aren’t proud of the U.S.). The poll surveyed 2,096 Americans from 18 to 29 years old nationally, and among Democrat respondents, an amazing 54% said they are embarrassed to be Americans while 21% said they were neither proud not embarrassed. With Republicans, it was 8% embarrassed and 16% neither proud nor embarrassed

Yeah, yeah, “polls” and “Harvard.” Still.

In addition to his Quote of the Month, Maher told his audience after citing the results,

“Seriously, this is a serious problem for Democrats,” Maher said during his Friday monologue. “Less than 1 in 4 Democrats under 30 say they’re proud to be an American. 54% say they’re embarrassed by it. Embarrassed? Like America is your mom picking you up at school? You’re embarrassed to be an American? Well guess what — the feeling’s mutual, because you have no perspective. Is America perfect? No, of course not. No country is. But the US is leagues ahead of the rest of the world on most of the progressive issues that are important to young people.  America has 14-million women-owned businesses. Seventeen percent of black women are starting businesses, which is faster than white women or white men. Gay Americans are free to marry and 49% of them own property. Yes, in America gays buy buildings. In other places, they get thrown off them….And we proudly live in a land where every TV commercial features a mix-raced couple, including the ones where it makes no sense. Mom’s black, dad’s white, and the kid’s Asian.”

Well, I’m embarrassed by that last part, but Bill’s over-all analysis is valid.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the Children of the Left hate America, because for decades our education system, news media-celebrated activists and elected leaders have been assiduously indoctrinating children from kindergarten through college to believe that the U.S. is defined by slavery, racism, colonialism, bigotry, murder, unjust wars and robber barons. And for much of that period, Bill Maher and his ilk have been cheering the anti-Americanism on. But New Bill is absolutely correct about the Democrats committing cultural suicide and trying to lead the public off the cliff with them.

Whether he means it or not.

On Bill Maher’s Calculated Flip-Flop and Patti Lupone’s “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Bill Maher of HBO’s obnoxious “Real Time” is being reviled and repudiated by his mostly Trump-Hate obsessed fans because of the clip above, where he appeared to say sincerely, in effect, “Gee, President Trump doesn’t seem like such a bad guy after all when you meet him!” But Bill Maher doesn’t say anything sincerely. I have pointed this out more than once in 2025: like so many media-dependent weasels before him, Maher has made the ruthless calculation that simply bashing everything Trump does now will make him just another screaming voice among the Deranged, so he has to find a more nuanced identity if he’s going to get headlines. Despite the fact that he had cheered on the worst of the Angry Left’s stunts and outrages for years and derided anyone with an (R) next to their name as a (I’m quoting now) fascist, idiot, liar, “cunt” (for the women) or worse, now he is suddenly a voice of fairness and moderation.

The tale of the Scorpion and the Frog comes to mind. Maher was never a legitimate pundit, and his favor can be easily purchased with a ticket to notoriety. With Democrats thoroughly disgracing themselves daily, it didn’t take much analysis for a professional iconoclast to conclude that the smart move was to buck the Blue.

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New Rule: Bill Maher Deserves No Credit For Rants Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This much-praised clip from Maher’s HBO show goes into the Ethics Estoppel file.

Not that it isn’t a thorough and effective defenestration of the Democratic Party for its role in the disastrous LA fires, it is. However, its excellence only magnifies the revolting hypocrisy that is, and always is, Bill Maher.

Maher, an amoral, anarchist libertarian, has been a pimp for progressives and Democrats and their policies for his entire career, except when they directly threaten his comfort and interests. He is an a enabler and propaganda agent for the Left who periodically has these loud and much-praised outbursts of the obvious to create the illusion that he has integrity and is a truth-teller. You know he voted for Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom and Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and probably even Adam Schiff. He actually anticipated the Wuhan lockdown’s role in putting Democrats in power, saying on the HBO show that the economy crashing would be “worth it” if the result would be getting rid of Trump. Maher wouldn’t dare say that the Palisades fires would be “worth it” if it meant putting Republicans in power in California.

I’d begin changing my opinion of Bill Maher if he owned this disaster, which is a direct result of the ideology and party he supports 90% of the time. He doesn’t and won’t. Like the slightly less despicable Jon Stewart, Maher is a clown-nose-on/clown-nose-off hubris-radiating phony as well as an odoriferous hypocrite. I’d applaud that monologue if it was performed by J.D. Vance or Greg Gutfeld, or, in the alternative, if it was really funny. Maher doesn’t even warrant the “Welcome to the party, pal!” clip.

Asshole.

Pssst! Bill Maher! The “Saved By God” Belief Has Inspired Some of Our Greatest Presidents. Shut Up.

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Atheists and agnostics in the public sphere don’t have to be obnoxious, but an awful lot of them are. Their explanation for where the universe came from is no more persuasive that that of the faithful (The Big Bang? Come on.) but they just can’t restrain themselves. HBO’s Bill Maher is a prime example: along with mocking committed relationships (he hates the concept of marriage), extolling drugs and debauchery, and generally keeping his Axis of Unethical Conduct membership current, he ridicules Christianity at every opportunity.

The fact is, and it is a fact, that the United States of America had a much healthier and ethical culture before organized religion had discredited itself so thoroughly, driving whole generations away. Moral codes are especially essential for those who don’t have the time or ability to puzzle through ethics, and believing in God is the best catalyst for an ethical society that there is….and it has always been thus.

Heck, just look at what a jerk Maher is. That’s what atheism can do to you. But I digress.

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Essential Addendum To “From The ‘Res Ipsa Loquitur’ Files: Rob Reiner Provides A ‘Bias Makes You Stupid’ Case Study” [Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Lest this post mislead you into the dangerous conclusion that snide comic and would-be pundit Bill Maher has suddenly developed integrity, some perspective may be necessary.

You will recall that in said post, I recalled Maher’s previous approval on another installment of his HBO show of using any means necessary to bring down Trump, rendering his apparent current condemnation of a media “conspiracy” to defeat him in the 2020 election less than convincing:

Maher is, of course, right, but he’s ethically estopped from making this argument. Before he decided that exposing the Left’s unethical plots to take out Trump would get his show some publicity, Maher had said on his show, during Trump’s Presidency, that crashing the economy to defeat Trump was “worth it.”

Conservative blogger Don Surber has a better memory than I do: he recalls how Maher treated the Hunter Biden laptop story ten days before the election:

“It’s getting so crazy. The ‘October surprise’ that the Trump people have now… have you seen this? It’s Hunter Biden’s laptop. Joe Biden’s ne’er-do-well son, Hunter, has this laptop which apparently had incriminating evidence—maybe stuff about influence-peddling on it—that was contained in his emails. And apparently, according to this, Hunter was trading on his name, selling access to his father, accepting money for nothing—what Don Jr. calls living the dream….Here’s the part that gets a little swirly about the story. How do we know about these emails? Well, apparently Hunter took his computer—which wasn’t working—to a computer repair shop, as we all do in 2020… and left it there and forgot about it, because, says Rudy Giuliani… he was drunk. And the computer repairman is blind. I’m not making that part of the story up. So, how did the blind man know Hunter was drunk? How you repair a computer if you’re blind? I don’t know about that either. But in the process of repairing Hunter’s computer blindly, he read Hunter’s emails and turned it over to the FBI. Is that how you fix a laptop nowadays? You read somebody’s emails? It’s like a plumber saying, ‘Well, the problem with your pipes is that you have cocaine in your underwear drawer.’”

That Bill! Anything for a laugh! The ethical time to question the deliberate blocking of the Biden influence-peddling evidence raised by the laptop was before the election, of course. But Maher went along with the conspiracy he’s attacking now, because those involved in it are his ideological allies most of the time, not that Maher can be trusted by friend or foe. Now Maher thinks it’s advantageous to pose as a truth-teller, so he’s temporarily turning on the metaphorical hands that feed him, like poor, addled Rob Reiner.

Bill Maher is a Machiavellian, unethical, dishonest and unprincipled asshole. There are many such creatures in today’s popular media, but he is one of the most pernicious. Don’t let him fool you.

From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur”Files: Rob Reiner Provides A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Bill Maher managed to goad outspoken Trump Deranged Hollywood progressive Rob Reiner into a spectacular demonstration of what his lockstep ideology does to brains. From Newsbusters, which generously watches Maher’s HBO show so I don’t have to:

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you a more nuanced question about, is it okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of Trump. This came up this week because my friend Sam Harris was on a podcast and he said—

ROB REINER: What do you mean a conspiracy to get rid of Trump? 

MAHER: I’m going to tell you.

REINER: Okay. Thank you.

MAHER: He was talking about—

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: I’m going to defer to my lawyer here. 

MAHER: Truer than you know. They were talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop which was a story and now all the mainstream press has finally admitted it was a real story, it was a real laptop with, now look, let’s not pussyfoot around this, he was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden. 

I mean, most political sons do, but let’s not pretend that, at least, wasn’t going on. I mean the guy, some guy from China gave him after a dinner, an $80,000 diamond, after dinner as one does. 

REINER: Yeah.

MAHER: If you are Naomi Campbell, but it doesn’t usually happen. Okay, so, Hunter Biden’s laptop was buried by the press, even the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said that was a mistake. They buried this story because they remembered what happened with James Comey and the letter 11 days before the 2016 election. Comey said we have to reopen this email investigation with Hillary Clinton and it probably was the—I mean, she ran a horrible campaign, didn’t go to Wisconsin, we know all that. This is probably the last thing that sunk her. 

So, Sam Harris says it was appropriate– “it was appropriate– for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the heads of journalistic organizations to feel that they were in the presence of something that is a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency,” meaning Trump. 

So, he’s saying it’s okay to have a conspiracy to get rid of somebody as bad as Trump. It’s a little bit of a thorny question because once you go down this road, this is sort of where we are in this country, the other side is so evil, anything is justified in preventing them from taking office, is it? 

REINER: No, no, you know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified. 

MAHER: Answer this question. Is it, was it, answer this question—

REINER: What is the question?

MAHER: –was it appropriate. The question [crosstalk] is was it appropriate bury the Hunter Biden – 

REINER: You’re talking about the press doing that? 

MAHER: He’s saying that’s what they did and that is what they did, they buried the Hunter Biden story before the election because they were like we can’t risk having the election thrown to Trump, we’ll tell them after the election. 

REINER: And we know for fact that that’s what they did? 

MAHER: Of course, you don’t follow this? 

REINER: No, but, I’ve been saying that you know for a fact that’s what they did, I don’t know what they did. 

MAHER: I know, because you only watch MSNBC. 

REINER: No, that’s not true. That’s not true.

MAHER: Well, then you would know about this. 

REINER: I do know about that.

MAHER: Well, you’re acting like you don’t.

REINER: I do—I do know about that. I do watch Fox, but the point is we’re going to prove now that the press played, you know, tried to—

MAHER: They’re admitting it!

REINER: The press is admitting it?

MAHER: That’s not—yes, that’s not even an issue anymore, they’re saying yes we basically did this because we didn’t want this to throw the election. Yes?

KLOBUCHAR: I don’t know that they’ve all said this and I believe strongly in the First Amendment—

MAHER: Well, the New York Times definitely didn’t–

KLOBUCHAR: My dad was a reporter, I believe in it and I think you have to make sure you’re treating people fairly, but I think Rob’s point here is we are dealing with a man who used to be the president right now who literally tried to lead an armed insurrection and that’s why we are so focused on this right now.

Observations:

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From Acceptance To Celebration: An Ethics Conflict (Don’t Bother Trying To Explain This To Bill Maher)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

With his uncanny instinct for taking bows for making an obvious observation while missing the point, pseudo-comic Bill Maher once again engaged in his favorite topic of fat-shaming last week, this time with a “Eureka!” to share. The U.S. has inexplicably gone from fat acceptance to “fat celebration,” which the HBO wit <gag!choke!> calls a “disturbing trend.”

This isn’t a “trend,” nor is it disturbing, and it isn’t a phenomenon confined to obesity. Bill could have educated his audience—which, as usual, arfed and clapped like the human seals they are—but instead ignored the real problem, which is partially fueled by people like him.

And it’s an ethical one. Society’s goal is to make the human beings within it safe and happy. This requires setting standards, much of which it accomplishes with law and law enforcement, and the rest it pursues by making values, virtues and positive, societally beneficial conduct clear. Society then encourages and rewards those who meet those standards, and shames, disapproves and rejects those who defy them.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ex CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I saw a lot of brave men and women deciding to take somebody on who had a tremendous amount of power and who had come at them by name too and that’s a scary thing.”

—-Disgraced CNN star Chris Cuomo, celebrating himself and CNN for slanting new reports in order to oppose Donald Trump.

Cuomo could not have made a stronger case against the left-biased news media if that had been his objective. Many of his statements to Bill Maher in Cuomo’s appearance on HBO’s “Real Time” would serve as well as the above to prove just how arrogant and unethical Cuomo’s previous profession has become. For example, there is this: Continue reading →