even when i was 19 years old in my "edgy atheist" days after breaking out of my religious indoctrination... i HATED Religulous, shit is absolute garbage. i expected something so much better than Maher just going around being a dick to people and not even making good points.
it's really telling how that was one of his better lines and IT SUCKS lmao it's not even funny because it's STUPID. it would be funny if it actually worked as a "gotcha" hell even if it FELT like it worked before you really thought about it but nah it's just obviously stupid on its face. bill was embarrassing himself acting all smug as if shit like that were good points when really there's NOTHING CONTRADICTORY about a religious person believing in a better afterlife but also that they're meant to live a good life on earth first.
i was especially frustrated as an "edgy atheist" back then because i expected him to be at least HALF as smart as me about religion and make GOOD points he could be a dick about, instead he just made himself/atheists look like STUPID dicks with shit arguments who don't understand religion well enough to meaningfully critique it 😅
This was actually an issue in church history and rules against suicide came later. So, although it seems like a simple and shitty quip, it is actually an issue with the Bibles.
OMG same. I was atheist and edgy as hell, loved righteous anger of holding someone's feet to the flames when they could not admit that their participation in organized religion was anything but 100% ethical.
But I was not into being just kinda being a dick to anyone that holds a belief.
That film made me cringe and feel bad.
There is huge irony that back in the day Bill Mahr was thought to be a centrist warning of polarizing partisanship and as he aged he became another conservative asshole unitil he had to admit his retirement was from not being funny anymore
I'm technically an atheistic agnostic, but I exclusively refer to myself as an agnostic. One of the key reasons is because repeated exposure this exact kind of shit has soured the term atheist for me. I don't think these smug assholes understand how much damage their egoes can do when they take it upon themselves to drown out more reasonable voices and go crusading for their cause.
Fuck Maher and anyone else trying to be the atheist Lorax. You don't speak for the trees.
hard disagree, i don't think you could tell me with a straight face that you honestly think there is the SLIGHTEST EQUIVALENCE between these two things...
flipping your entire political ideology and aligning yourself with the side directly opposed to and actively fighting against your previous professed principles/beliefs
no longer wanting to outwardly personally identify yourself with a certain label that doesn't make ANY REAL DIFFERENCE whatsoever (atheist)
Well put. I also never said I have anything against atheists, or that there's anything ideological about this, I just don't like the label because some assholes can't behave themselves and I now associate the two.
Some people are just looking for a chance to crusade, I guess.
not wanting to outwardly label themselves as "atheist"? yeah i've known many people who ARE atheists but prefer to go with "non-religious" or "secular" or "agnostic" instead. it's not like it's lying or misrepresenting themselves because they ARE those things and the meanings are effectively the same. i still use atheist but i don't blame them AT ALL.
well then obviously lol are you implying this a unique thing to the label "atheist" or something? there have been labels with negative associations people prefer to avoid even if they perfectly fit them FOREVER there's countless examples. idk what your point is or why you want me to spoon feed them to you tho 🤷♀️
holy fucking cringe 🤦♀️ you using "one of the good ones!" against them as if atheists were some oppressed/marginalized group is SO FUCKING IRONIC on r/Persecutionfetish because congrats, you've become an example of it yourself! no one is a pick-me or throwing their own under the bus to appease an oppressive majority because they don't personally label themself specifically "atheist"
get tf over yourself you're not talking about being black or queer or muslim etc, you're talking about being an ATHEIST with that specific label lol cry me a river you poor oppressed thing 🙄
I was also at some point and edgy atheist, I still am an atheist but people like Bill Maher are why I refuse will only say that if asked. I was an actually well informed person, I didn't pick atheism to feel smart or superior to others, when I watched Religulous I was so angry, so many outright lies and falsehoods were presented as facts, the whole section talking about the story of Osiris is completely false. People like Maher, TheAmazingAtheist, Thunderfoot, The Armored Skeptic, ect are exactly why I actually keep atheism private these days. They act smart when they are not, and like atheism makes them an authority on everything when they are not
I’m Catholic and I enjoyed it as well. Performative religious people need to be taken down several pegs. Jesus said don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. And having your faith questioned is important. It’s through challenges that we grow and develop our belief system
that's why i watched it and what i expected to see, performative religious people being taken down a few pegs by someone who's good at critical thinking and making salient points about the problems with their ideology and personal hypocrisy...
instead i got 100 minutes of a smug asshole who's not nearly as smart or well-versed on the subject as he thinks he is making himself/atheists look dumber and worse than most of the people he talked to, some of which weren't even remotely the performative shitty religious types.
it was a fucking embarrassment, he failed to take anyone down a few pegs and instead just made his own side look like dumb assholes without much of a point. 0/10 F- garbage 😅
I might be remembering the wrong schtick, but didn’t he go into a trailer church for truck drivers and try to pick apart their faith? Buncha guys getting together and trying to find some human connection on the lonely road, and then there’s this asshole telling them that the thing that gives them comfort is bad and wrong and stupid.
It really felt like he was too chickenshit to go after Westboro Baptist and their lawyers, so he tried a gotcha on people who didn’t evangelize, didn’t preach, didn’t get in anyone’s face, and didn’t even vaguely deserve it.
Like, when somebody uses their invisible sky friend as an sober accountability buddy, or to keep them imaginary company on a very real lonely road, you gotta be a special kind of edgelord to try and yuck that yum.
yeah you're right on the money, and that's not the only time he used people who were simply NOT APPROPRIATE for a project like Religulous either. it was not only a huge asshole move but like you said, fucking chickenshit. it's not like he had to go after westboro or anything but dude there's OVER A HUNDRED shitty megachurches in country with rich ass pastors whose massive congregations treat them like prophets... you couldn't have found one or two of them willing to do it to fill that time?
anyways that just makes it all the funnier and more embarrassing that HE COULDN'T EVEN SEEM SMART OR MAKE GOOD POINTS WITH THE EASY TARGETS 🤣🤣🤣
I watched it when I was in kind of an anti-religious phase of my fundie deconstruction, and most of the segments made me go “Hurr hurr religion is stupid!”
That one, though…. That one pissed me off. I remember yelling “Oi! Leave those guys alone!” at the TV even. Their entire jam was the good part of religion (doing what helps them sleep at night), without too much of the toxic parts of religion (keeping anyone else awake). That kind of “you do you, I’ll do me, we’ll get through this together” mentality is so lacking in the world, and here’s this fuckin guy trying to tinkle on it.
That was the moment I realized what a putz Mahr is. He’s hate for profit, just like all the rest.
I never took it is that. A key part of Christianity is questioning and challenging your faith. I just rewatched that scene to see what you’re saying is happening but he’s asking important theological questions. Blindly believing something without backing it up does a complete disservice to your intelligence and faith.
i just rewatched that one too cause it has been FOREVER can't remember everything super well and it was really all the moments he was being a dick that got burned into my memory, which explains why i didn't remember the dialogue of that one because outside of going for such low hanging fruit HE WASN'T exactly being a dick there.
at the same time the substance of it was far from smart or worthy of belonging in a project like this. he just got up in front of everyone and listed off some super well known basic biblical contradictions/logical problems, got some reactions and the only actual argument anyone made he could really respond to was the EXTREMELY CLICHE "pascal's wager", to which he gave the logical response but in terms of religious debate pascal's wager is the equivalent of 2+2, it's shallow as hell and been used and countered a trillion times over lol
so at least he wasn't a dick to them but this scene was still an example of him going for the lowest of low hanging fruit to get some funny reactions so the viewer can go "HA HA look at the crazy christian guy!" without providing anything of worthwhile substance ya'know
There are a lot of people who take down performative religion much more effectively and all without being a massive douche. Heck, there are christians who do a better job of it.
Bill Maher is not mature enough for adult conversation. I also think he thought of that quip ahead of time and was so giddy to use it that he let it out when it makes no sense.
Despite the fact that he primarily spews right-wing talking points, they think he's a leftist. Because of that, they get validation from watching him, in a "even this guy gets it, so clearly my feelings are just common sense" sort of way.
Exactly. When I was young, Bill Maher was the guy who was "liberal" because he thought smoking weed should be legal. Here's some of his "liberal" views:
He said he was a "9/11 liberal" meaning that he should get to criticize Muslims without being called Islamophobic.
He calls himself anti-woke and anti-political correctness.
He supports the death penalty.
He thinks distrust in the "elite" politicians is hypocritical when people want elite doctors to treat them and elite lawyers to represent them. (I'm not even going to go into why this is a stupid fucking idea other than to say that I've never heard someone call a politician "elite.")
Bill Maher's whole schtick is "[right wing talking point] is just common sense" while doing the idiot/coward technique of "I don't like labels, I'm just a rationalist." Yeah, thinking you're right is definitely a political philosophy and I'm sure most folks actively believe in things they'd personally admit are irrational.
He has to be the most well-paid talentless hack in show business. The amount of money HBO pays for his drivel is insane, and I cannot comprehend how he could still have an audience at this point.
When The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was canceled, I checked his numbers, and he gets about 500k viewers a week. His audience is 'liberal leaning' men, 54+ with a smaller conservative base as well.
Maher is starting from a couple different brain-dead racist assumptions:
America is (or should be?) only white people, such that America=Whitey.
Instability in the Middle East is entirely because chaos is an intrinsic quality of Islam, such that Islam=Chaos.
If "Whitey" is a synonym of "America", and "Islam" is a synonym for "Chaos", then "America is responsible for the chaos in the Middle East" can be rephrased as "Whitey is responsible for the Islam [in the Middle East]".
Heh. That was a fun little typo. Islamophonic white nationalist, sounds like you got like a Klansman reciting the adhan or something equally melodic-but-absurd.
Spot on. Islam is a religion which has a small contingent of its followers who are right wing extremists. Christianity is a religion which has a not-so-small contingent of its followers who are right wing extremists.
America is and always has been a melting pot of different origins, ethnicities, cultures, and skin colors, despite the fact that a lot of white people swear up and down that it's a white Christian country.
And America has been f'ing over countries in the Middle East for last last century or so, largely because of oil (and made much more palatable at home by bigotry - "they're not like us so therefore they're inferior") - that is the major reason so many of them are angry at us, not because of the age-old religious differences.
you're missing the context, this was not some zoomed out top level historic biopsy of everything that's lead to the current state of the middle east asking "WHO/WHAT'S MOST TO BLAME???" nah that wasn't the question, ana was speaking specifically about what harm the US HAS DONE (which is PLENTY SIGNIFICANT), and this was maher's reaction to THAT
there's also the additional context of who bill maher is and his very well established relationship with islamophobia 😅 this is completely in character for him lol
Tbh he's actually been even worse than Piers Morgan for a while. In fact the first time I've ever agreed with Piers on something was when he was on a panel with Bill Maher and said something Bill didn't want to hear.
I had a professor who made us listen to and debate Harris my last semester of my senior year (for a “media ethics” class, no less!) and I thought that I was going to spontaneously combust from rage or that my eyeballs were going to fall out of my head from how hard I rolled them.
Yeah, it’s always been clear that the New Athiests (the term for this group) like Maher and Harris were/are a bunch of charlatans who couch their Islamophobia in the usual arrogant pseudo-centrist and “both sides” garbage that appeals to the LCD.
Even Chris Hitchens, probably among the most sincere and articulate of the "Four Horsemen" was a vocal advocate for torture for quite some time before allowing himself to be waterboarded
I swear HBO purposely edited Ben Affleck when he appeared on Bill Maher's show. He still ended up sounding much better than Bill Maher did. They couldn't edit out how much of a bigot Bill Maher is. Maher has Double Standards when it comes to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Yup. You will never hear Maher call out Zionism (which absolutely is violent Jewish extremism) even as the Israeli government and settlers attack Armenian and Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem. Just like he ignored the ones getting shot in their churches in Gaza by the IDF.
I don’t think they were trying THAT hard to edit Maher out. Islamophobia sells and is still that one fully accepted form of bigotry in America.
I mean it’s more conservative than most of the other abrahamic faiths, just because there has been some sort of reform in many Christian and Jewish denominations. But they wouldn’t have a nuanced take on religion and admit it’s not Christianity that’s better, it’s moving away from Christianity that has made life better.
That’s also inaccurate, there are lots of different flavors of Islam, but the Saudi royal family in particular has spent billions to export their particularly violent brand to every country that isn’t theirs, because they’re bad at their own religion. Better for them to export their crazies everywhere else than live up to their own bullshit or moderate their beliefs.
Don’t get me wrong the wahabi sect is very extreme and their various Emirati kingdoms that support its export are awful. I’m just saying that Sunni and Shia Islam is more akin to Catholicism and orthodox Christianity at their height of power. Like if you went back a couple hundred years where those denominations had more political capital in Europe you will see similar policies to that in the Middle East today.
I believe it started when Rush Limbaugh in the 2010’s referred to Republicans or conservatives who slightly deviate from staunch right wing populism as cuckservatives.
Basically, they’re cucks because they go around with other people that aren’t like them. The same for liberal and leftist men.
The right took the word and use it likes it’s a personality trait now.
Yeah, I'm like they both suck. And as somebody who is descended from an Armenian genocide survivor, myself, it disgusts me that she works for the organization named after the people who perpetuated said genocide
I hope this "anti-American sentiment" puts the breaks on Ana's rise in the ex-leftist grifter circuit and she ends up having to settle for a guest appearance on The Rubin Report.
Both of these people suck but he asked her what city in the Middle East she would be comfortable wearing that dress and she responded by blaming America for destabilizing those countries. It’s like they were having 2 different conversations and trying to talk over each other
My greatest wish for Bill is to retire into obscurity and a deep cloud of pot smoke and things he likes and not bother the rest of humanity any further
He isn't capable of understanding a train of though more complex than a sound bite, so this is what any explanation of politics is gonna be coming from him.
Yea unfortunately knowing Ana she did not really push back on this, because she's kinda just not at all capable of talking to fascists, since she refuses to push them on anything, like when she talked to Tucker Carlson and he got her to be anti immigration within like 5 minutes
I mean look at her old debates with Ben Shapiro where she basically sheds his arguments. Last I saw she was getting all buddy buddy with him which was just gross.
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Normally I agree with that account but this is a misleading post. She wasn’t just criticizing American foreign policy
He asked if she could wear the dress she’s currently wearing if she lived in the Middle Eastern countries they had been talking about. She said no, when asked why she brought up western intervention in those countries
Bill then asked her if western intervention was the reason for her not being able to wear a dress like that in those countries, she tried to dance around it but eventually admitted that was not the reason, she then pivoted to jihadism, blaming jihadism as the reason she couldn’t wear that dress. And Bill replied that it didn’t make sense, under that logic all those Muslim countries are jihadist, and she backed away once again.
This is a classic problem with leftists that they can’t just say “I don’t agree with that” and move on, they’re obsessed with fighting losing battles.
You’re not betraying your progressive ideals when you criticize fundamentalist conservative ideologies and cultures. Those middle eastern countries they were talking about happed to have those issues. White washing it and pretending it was all caused by western intervention only makes you look historically illiterate and like a dummy to everyone who is neutral on the topic.
Learn to say “yeah those things are bad” and move on to a better topic. Don’t be dishonest to try and reframe the whole moment as Bill just randomly saying western countries caused no problems 🤦♂️
I always thought Bill Maher was a smug little prick, but he's gotten even more insufferable as the years drag on.
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even when i was 19 years old in my "edgy atheist" days after breaking out of my religious indoctrination... i HATED Religulous, shit is absolute garbage. i expected something so much better than Maher just going around being a dick to people and not even making good points.
I will admit I thought it was funny when I first watched it in high school. But it has aged poorly.
Jews for Jesus guy: “I believe when I die I will go to heaven.”
Bill Maher: “then why don’t you kill yourself?”
it's really telling how that was one of his better lines and IT SUCKS lmao it's not even funny because it's STUPID. it would be funny if it actually worked as a "gotcha" hell even if it FELT like it worked before you really thought about it but nah it's just obviously stupid on its face. bill was embarrassing himself acting all smug as if shit like that were good points when really there's NOTHING CONTRADICTORY about a religious person believing in a better afterlife but also that they're meant to live a good life on earth first.
i was especially frustrated as an "edgy atheist" back then because i expected him to be at least HALF as smart as me about religion and make GOOD points he could be a dick about, instead he just made himself/atheists look like STUPID dicks with shit arguments who don't understand religion well enough to meaningfully critique it 😅
This was actually an issue in church history and rules against suicide came later. So, although it seems like a simple and shitty quip, it is actually an issue with the Bibles.
OMG same. I was atheist and edgy as hell, loved righteous anger of holding someone's feet to the flames when they could not admit that their participation in organized religion was anything but 100% ethical.
But I was not into being just kinda being a dick to anyone that holds a belief.
That film made me cringe and feel bad.
There is huge irony that back in the day Bill Mahr was thought to be a centrist warning of polarizing partisanship and as he aged he became another conservative asshole unitil he had to admit his retirement was from not being funny anymore
I'm technically an atheistic agnostic, but I exclusively refer to myself as an agnostic. One of the key reasons is because repeated exposure this exact kind of shit has soured the term atheist for me. I don't think these smug assholes understand how much damage their egoes can do when they take it upon themselves to drown out more reasonable voices and go crusading for their cause.
Fuck Maher and anyone else trying to be the atheist Lorax. You don't speak for the trees.
This has some "I used to be liberal until those liberals annoyed me and I became right-wing" energy.
hard disagree, i don't think you could tell me with a straight face that you honestly think there is the SLIGHTEST EQUIVALENCE between these two things...
flipping your entire political ideology and aligning yourself with the side directly opposed to and actively fighting against your previous professed principles/beliefs
no longer wanting to outwardly personally identify yourself with a certain label that doesn't make ANY REAL DIFFERENCE whatsoever (atheist)
Well put. I also never said I have anything against atheists, or that there's anything ideological about this, I just don't like the label because some assholes can't behave themselves and I now associate the two.
Some people are just looking for a chance to crusade, I guess.
Can you think of any other examples of people doing something like this?
not wanting to outwardly label themselves as "atheist"? yeah i've known many people who ARE atheists but prefer to go with "non-religious" or "secular" or "agnostic" instead. it's not like it's lying or misrepresenting themselves because they ARE those things and the meanings are effectively the same. i still use atheist but i don't blame them AT ALL.
I mean similar labels and the avoidance thereof.
well then obviously lol are you implying this a unique thing to the label "atheist" or something? there have been labels with negative associations people prefer to avoid even if they perfectly fit them FOREVER there's countless examples. idk what your point is or why you want me to spoon feed them to you tho 🤷♀️
I'm a social democrat, never been a liberal or right-wing. Thanks for playing.
Amazing takeaway. Just astounding. Keep reminding people you're One Of The Good Ones when the subject comes up!
holy fucking cringe 🤦♀️ you using "one of the good ones!" against them as if atheists were some oppressed/marginalized group is SO FUCKING IRONIC on r/Persecutionfetish because congrats, you've become an example of it yourself! no one is a pick-me or throwing their own under the bus to appease an oppressive majority because they don't personally label themself specifically "atheist"
get tf over yourself you're not talking about being black or queer or muslim etc, you're talking about being an ATHEIST with that specific label lol cry me a river you poor oppressed thing 🙄
I never claimed to be "one of the good ones," whatever that means. I simply corrected your idiocy. You do realise you're fighting shadows, right?
Then why not use the actual normal term?
And your actual political beliefs weren't relevant.
I was also at some point and edgy atheist, I still am an atheist but people like Bill Maher are why I refuse will only say that if asked. I was an actually well informed person, I didn't pick atheism to feel smart or superior to others, when I watched Religulous I was so angry, so many outright lies and falsehoods were presented as facts, the whole section talking about the story of Osiris is completely false. People like Maher, TheAmazingAtheist, Thunderfoot, The Armored Skeptic, ect are exactly why I actually keep atheism private these days. They act smart when they are not, and like atheism makes them an authority on everything when they are not
I’m Catholic and I enjoyed it as well. Performative religious people need to be taken down several pegs. Jesus said don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. And having your faith questioned is important. It’s through challenges that we grow and develop our belief system
that's why i watched it and what i expected to see, performative religious people being taken down a few pegs by someone who's good at critical thinking and making salient points about the problems with their ideology and personal hypocrisy...
instead i got 100 minutes of a smug asshole who's not nearly as smart or well-versed on the subject as he thinks he is making himself/atheists look dumber and worse than most of the people he talked to, some of which weren't even remotely the performative shitty religious types.
it was a fucking embarrassment, he failed to take anyone down a few pegs and instead just made his own side look like dumb assholes without much of a point. 0/10 F- garbage 😅
I might be remembering the wrong schtick, but didn’t he go into a trailer church for truck drivers and try to pick apart their faith? Buncha guys getting together and trying to find some human connection on the lonely road, and then there’s this asshole telling them that the thing that gives them comfort is bad and wrong and stupid.
It really felt like he was too chickenshit to go after Westboro Baptist and their lawyers, so he tried a gotcha on people who didn’t evangelize, didn’t preach, didn’t get in anyone’s face, and didn’t even vaguely deserve it.
Like, when somebody uses their invisible sky friend as an sober accountability buddy, or to keep them imaginary company on a very real lonely road, you gotta be a special kind of edgelord to try and yuck that yum.
yeah you're right on the money, and that's not the only time he used people who were simply NOT APPROPRIATE for a project like Religulous either. it was not only a huge asshole move but like you said, fucking chickenshit. it's not like he had to go after westboro or anything but dude there's OVER A HUNDRED shitty megachurches in country with rich ass pastors whose massive congregations treat them like prophets... you couldn't have found one or two of them willing to do it to fill that time?
anyways that just makes it all the funnier and more embarrassing that HE COULDN'T EVEN SEEM SMART OR MAKE GOOD POINTS WITH THE EASY TARGETS 🤣🤣🤣
I watched it when I was in kind of an anti-religious phase of my fundie deconstruction, and most of the segments made me go “Hurr hurr religion is stupid!”
That one, though…. That one pissed me off. I remember yelling “Oi! Leave those guys alone!” at the TV even. Their entire jam was the good part of religion (doing what helps them sleep at night), without too much of the toxic parts of religion (keeping anyone else awake). That kind of “you do you, I’ll do me, we’ll get through this together” mentality is so lacking in the world, and here’s this fuckin guy trying to tinkle on it.
That was the moment I realized what a putz Mahr is. He’s hate for profit, just like all the rest.
I never took it is that. A key part of Christianity is questioning and challenging your faith. I just rewatched that scene to see what you’re saying is happening but he’s asking important theological questions. Blindly believing something without backing it up does a complete disservice to your intelligence and faith.
i just rewatched that one too cause it has been FOREVER can't remember everything super well and it was really all the moments he was being a dick that got burned into my memory, which explains why i didn't remember the dialogue of that one because outside of going for such low hanging fruit HE WASN'T exactly being a dick there.
at the same time the substance of it was far from smart or worthy of belonging in a project like this. he just got up in front of everyone and listed off some super well known basic biblical contradictions/logical problems, got some reactions and the only actual argument anyone made he could really respond to was the EXTREMELY CLICHE "pascal's wager", to which he gave the logical response but in terms of religious debate pascal's wager is the equivalent of 2+2, it's shallow as hell and been used and countered a trillion times over lol
so at least he wasn't a dick to them but this scene was still an example of him going for the lowest of low hanging fruit to get some funny reactions so the viewer can go "HA HA look at the crazy christian guy!" without providing anything of worthwhile substance ya'know
Well you certainly have an opinion. Happy for you
There are a lot of people who take down performative religion much more effectively and all without being a massive douche. Heck, there are christians who do a better job of it.
Bill Maher is not mature enough for adult conversation. I also think he thought of that quip ahead of time and was so giddy to use it that he let it out when it makes no sense.
He thinks Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are white People because they supported invading Iraq.
Foreign policy = whitey?
Who the hell is Bill Maher's target audience? Who makes the choice to listen to him?
Enlightened centrist boomers.
Enlightened Centrist™ boomers who "aren't MAGA" but voted for Trump because Kamala was "too woke"
"I'm a centrist and its a total coincidence I agree with Republicans 99.99% of the time"
The middle-aged couple Chuck Schumer talks to in his head
What can I say the Baileys really advise Chuck well
He is loved by older, conservative white guys.
Despite the fact that he primarily spews right-wing talking points, they think he's a leftist. Because of that, they get validation from watching him, in a "even this guy gets it, so clearly my feelings are just common sense" sort of way.
Exactly. When I was young, Bill Maher was the guy who was "liberal" because he thought smoking weed should be legal. Here's some of his "liberal" views:
Bill Maher's whole schtick is "[right wing talking point] is just common sense" while doing the idiot/coward technique of "I don't like labels, I'm just a rationalist." Yeah, thinking you're right is definitely a political philosophy and I'm sure most folks actively believe in things they'd personally admit are irrational.
He has to be the most well-paid talentless hack in show business. The amount of money HBO pays for his drivel is insane, and I cannot comprehend how he could still have an audience at this point.
When The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was canceled, I checked his numbers, and he gets about 500k viewers a week. His audience is 'liberal leaning' men, 54+ with a smaller conservative base as well.
Liberal boomers
Old people who might vote Democrat but complain about how things aren't the right way anymore that they're supposed to be.
He is already warming up for when he takes over Greg Gutfeld’s slot
He'll have to wait until Gutfeld leaves to take up his new position as head of the FCC.
Bill what the fuck are you talking about?
Maher is starting from a couple different brain-dead racist assumptions:
If "Whitey" is a synonym of "America", and "Islam" is a synonym for "Chaos", then "America is responsible for the chaos in the Middle East" can be rephrased as "Whitey is responsible for the Islam [in the Middle East]".
We have a name for islamophonic white nationalists. The word is Republican. Bill Maher is a Republican.
And an insufferable prick.
Heh. That was a fun little typo. Islamophonic white nationalist, sounds like you got like a Klansman reciting the adhan or something equally melodic-but-absurd.
Spot on. Islam is a religion which has a small contingent of its followers who are right wing extremists. Christianity is a religion which has a not-so-small contingent of its followers who are right wing extremists.
America is and always has been a melting pot of different origins, ethnicities, cultures, and skin colors, despite the fact that a lot of white people swear up and down that it's a white Christian country.
And America has been f'ing over countries in the Middle East for last last century or so, largely because of oil (and made much more palatable at home by bigotry - "they're not like us so therefore they're inferior") - that is the major reason so many of them are angry at us, not because of the age-old religious differences.
you can roughly translate it to: "I HATE ISLAM MUSLIMS ARE SAVAGES AND ALWAYS THE PROLEM" 😓
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you're missing the context, this was not some zoomed out top level historic biopsy of everything that's lead to the current state of the middle east asking "WHO/WHAT'S MOST TO BLAME???" nah that wasn't the question, ana was speaking specifically about what harm the US HAS DONE (which is PLENTY SIGNIFICANT), and this was maher's reaction to THAT
there's also the additional context of who bill maher is and his very well established relationship with islamophobia 😅 this is completely in character for him lol
Who's "we"? That's a weird statement given your username. I mean, the rest of it is idiotic as well, but that bit's just weird.
I haven't seen the clip yet but I assume he's saying she shouldn't blame others for the problems that come with religion.
Watch the clip before you comment, please. I'm feeling generous in keeping that up, even though I consider that bad faith argument.
He is slowly becoming more like a american Pierce Morgan.
Tbh he's actually been even worse than Piers Morgan for a while. In fact the first time I've ever agreed with Piers on something was when he was on a panel with Bill Maher and said something Bill didn't want to hear.
Easy response:
"Bill, are you implying America is a white nation?"
That's not a gotcha for them.
No. But it is for him, and his audience will catch it.
For those interested, there is a fantastic podcast out there called I hate Bill Maher. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-hate-bill-maher/id1746469734
I hate bill Maher, you can’t change my miiind 🎶
Keith Olbermann has a bunch of "interesting" stories about Maher and how they first met, as well.
Even if Maher is an atheist he’s doing the “Islam is uniquely violent” thing that comes out of Sam Harris and other such douchebags.
Harris is another simpleton that's bizarrely worshiped by insufferable pricks. I just don't know how these guys get mistaken for intelligent.
I had a professor who made us listen to and debate Harris my last semester of my senior year (for a “media ethics” class, no less!) and I thought that I was going to spontaneously combust from rage or that my eyeballs were going to fall out of my head from how hard I rolled them.
Or both.
It just goes to show how far you can get by putting on this pantomime of a "smart person".
Harris is a Hollywood nepo baby (his mom created The Golden Girls!)
Yeah, it’s always been clear that the New Athiests (the term for this group) like Maher and Harris were/are a bunch of charlatans who couch their Islamophobia in the usual arrogant pseudo-centrist and “both sides” garbage that appeals to the LCD.
Affleck clocked them on this years ago.
Even Chris Hitchens, probably among the most sincere and articulate of the "Four Horsemen" was a vocal advocate for torture for quite some time before allowing himself to be waterboarded
And he's another dope with sharp rhetoric who played word games that idiots mistake for a good argument.
I swear HBO purposely edited Ben Affleck when he appeared on Bill Maher's show. He still ended up sounding much better than Bill Maher did. They couldn't edit out how much of a bigot Bill Maher is. Maher has Double Standards when it comes to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Yup. You will never hear Maher call out Zionism (which absolutely is violent Jewish extremism) even as the Israeli government and settlers attack Armenian and Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem. Just like he ignored the ones getting shot in their churches in Gaza by the IDF.
I don’t think they were trying THAT hard to edit Maher out. Islamophobia sells and is still that one fully accepted form of bigotry in America.
He’s been a raging Islamophobe for over a decade. He tries to excuse it by saying he’s an atheist but tbh I think he just hates brown people.
I mean it’s more conservative than most of the other abrahamic faiths, just because there has been some sort of reform in many Christian and Jewish denominations. But they wouldn’t have a nuanced take on religion and admit it’s not Christianity that’s better, it’s moving away from Christianity that has made life better.
That’s also inaccurate, there are lots of different flavors of Islam, but the Saudi royal family in particular has spent billions to export their particularly violent brand to every country that isn’t theirs, because they’re bad at their own religion. Better for them to export their crazies everywhere else than live up to their own bullshit or moderate their beliefs.
Don’t get me wrong the wahabi sect is very extreme and their various Emirati kingdoms that support its export are awful. I’m just saying that Sunni and Shia Islam is more akin to Catholicism and orthodox Christianity at their height of power. Like if you went back a couple hundred years where those denominations had more political capital in Europe you will see similar policies to that in the Middle East today.
Currently, it is uniquely violent.
Oh, Ana has pivoted so far to the right that she's now on Bill Maher's show?
I kinda lost track of her after she started making being transphobic her main thing, but I see that was just the beginning.
your name is excellent i love the honesty
It certainly triggers a lot of far right weirdos at least.
I know nothing about that.
I believe it started when Rush Limbaugh in the 2010’s referred to Republicans or conservatives who slightly deviate from staunch right wing populism as cuckservatives.
Basically, they’re cucks because they go around with other people that aren’t like them. The same for liberal and leftist men.
The right took the word and use it likes it’s a personality trait now.
Yeah, I'm like they both suck. And as somebody who is descended from an Armenian genocide survivor, myself, it disgusts me that she works for the organization named after the people who perpetuated said genocide
they deserve each other
I am going to guess Bill got super creepy with her as the interview went on
“Now this might strike some viewers as harsh, but I believe everyone involved in this story should d*e.”
-Norm Macdonald
Bill’s NDAs must really be a powder keg
I hope this "anti-American sentiment" puts the breaks on Ana's rise in the ex-leftist grifter circuit and she ends up having to settle for a guest appearance on The Rubin Report.
Both of these people suck but he asked her what city in the Middle East she would be comfortable wearing that dress and she responded by blaming America for destabilizing those countries. It’s like they were having 2 different conversations and trying to talk over each other
People say this as if the Muslim world wasn't the center of civilization for 1000 years.
My greatest wish for Bill is to retire into obscurity and a deep cloud of pot smoke and things he likes and not bother the rest of humanity any further
Bill Maher is the living personification of the stereotypical neoliberal.
He isn't capable of understanding a train of though more complex than a sound bite, so this is what any explanation of politics is gonna be coming from him.
Colin Powell is black...
Yea unfortunately knowing Ana she did not really push back on this, because she's kinda just not at all capable of talking to fascists, since she refuses to push them on anything, like when she talked to Tucker Carlson and he got her to be anti immigration within like 5 minutes
Ana sucks now, but at least she’s better than Maher.
Has Ana stopped losing her mind/doing a right wing grift?
Of course not.
You're being kind assuming she ever had a mind. Even when I obsessively watched TYT from 2010-13, I never thought Ana to be an insightful thinker.
I mean look at her old debates with Ben Shapiro where she basically sheds his arguments. Last I saw she was getting all buddy buddy with him which was just gross.
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Ana’s brain has termed to mush in recent months
Saying the quiet part out loud
These people love to say "whitey." No one says that dumb shit.
Let them fight
She was only "voicing her criticism" as a way to avoid honestly answering his prior question on Women's rights in the Middle East.
Normally I agree with that account but this is a misleading post. She wasn’t just criticizing American foreign policy
He asked if she could wear the dress she’s currently wearing if she lived in the Middle Eastern countries they had been talking about. She said no, when asked why she brought up western intervention in those countries
Bill then asked her if western intervention was the reason for her not being able to wear a dress like that in those countries, she tried to dance around it but eventually admitted that was not the reason, she then pivoted to jihadism, blaming jihadism as the reason she couldn’t wear that dress. And Bill replied that it didn’t make sense, under that logic all those Muslim countries are jihadist, and she backed away once again.
This is a classic problem with leftists that they can’t just say “I don’t agree with that” and move on, they’re obsessed with fighting losing battles.
You’re not betraying your progressive ideals when you criticize fundamentalist conservative ideologies and cultures. Those middle eastern countries they were talking about happed to have those issues. White washing it and pretending it was all caused by western intervention only makes you look historically illiterate and like a dummy to everyone who is neutral on the topic.
Learn to say “yeah those things are bad” and move on to a better topic. Don’t be dishonest to try and reframe the whole moment as Bill just randomly saying western countries caused no problems 🤦♂️
Are you sure you want to be in this sub? It is ran by a leftwing nutjob...