 the comics should moan about you know hey they're trying to cancel me for this joke I made it's most of the time it's a nothing joke and it doesn't matter and and now you are positioning yourself as this bulls*** voice of I'm they're not going to cancel me you can't silence me for what your dumb joke that about trans people who gives a s*** I mean is it that important to you just move on and not hurt you know hundreds of thousands of people I don't really agree I mean I think the trans community is asking for too much you just watched a snippet of Bill Maher's reaction to comedian David Cross's criticism of other comedians who punched down on trans people and then subsequently used that routine as evidence that there's some sort of defenders of free speech by saying what nobody else will say even though everyone is punching down on trans people currently Bill Maher however he doesn't agree with that point of view because he thinks that trans people are quote asking for too much whatever that means so we're gonna watch a little bit more of that clip here because it's going to become abundantly clear that Bill Maher doesn't actually know what trans people are asking for and everything that he believes to be true about trans people is based on a straw man there's one thing I wanted to get your reaction to something because obviously Chappelle has been criticized a lot because of his making fun of transgender the transgender community this is what David Cross says and he's David Cross is a pretty edgy comedian yes great great comedian he says this is he's not talking about you certainly and he's not even talking about Chappelle necessarily in the quote but he's talking about people who make the kind of jokes making fun of transgender he said you're positioning yourself as this bullshit voice of they're not going to cancel me you can't silence me for what your dumb joke about trans people who gives a shit I mean is it that important to you just move on and not hurt hundreds of thousands of people it's a choice people make well I thought that was an interesting quote what would I mean I guess the larger criticism of Chappelle from people like David Cross is he's punching down not like what carlin did punching up what do you think I don't really agree I mean I think the trans community is asking for too much again the difference between liberal and woke liberals are people who I think would say I certainly would trans is of course a real thing you know some people are just you know I don't they probably don't like this terminology but born in the wrong body whatever the the the the equipment doesn't match how you feel absolutely and it's great we live in a time where people like that can freely live the lives they should live with all the dignity and protection of the law that we can afford them like anybody else in society I think that's the liberal point of view the woke point of view is something very different like well babies are born now and just jump all we don't know what they are congratulations you have a boy well let's not be hasty there's a penis that could be an indication of a male but it's it's really we'll find out later and we can always get rid of it and it's not wrong to have this discussion this is something that's very new yeah it's not to shut that to shut down debate with these words like phobia you're phobic and you hate we don't hate there's no hate it's not phobic we're not afraid we're just discussing something very new that involves children and what these interventions you're making have repercussions for the entire rest of their lives and they're about their health which I think should come first so I think of a trans activist we're here right now they might say we're not afraid of having discussions and debate but you're talking about these issues at a time when states like Idaho and Florida and others are talking about banning these procedures regardless of what the kid and the parents and the doctor want well that's a back and then that's like a bigger issue than the term pregnant people well that's probably a backlash that went too far but yeah yeah I think that is to completely ban it but I also I'd also don't agree with what you just said they absolutely do want to shut down debate yeah so there's quite a bit to unpack there so he differentiates between the liberal point of view and what he calls the woke point of view so he agrees with the liberal point of view in theory that trans people should indeed be free to live their lives as they wish how kind of him but he contends that the woke point of view goes too far by I guess effectively trying to force the rest of society to become gender abolitionists I don't know what examples he's referring to there but that's not a common phenomenon whatever he's referring to and he's abandoning his liberal principle of letting them live by agreeing with republicans who sensationalize and exploit examples of trans extremism and use that as a justification to politically persecute the entire community but then he goes on to say that it's not wrong to have these discussions and I'm assuming when he says discussions he's talking more broadly about trans issues and he says to shut down debate with words like phobia it's wrong because this is just merely a discussion and you know I wonder where I've heard this argument before because it sounds pretty familiar oh that's right homophobes merely a decade ago case in point an op-ed published in the atlantic in 2013 argues quote being against gay marriage doesn't make you a homophobe adding calling someone anti-gay when his behavior is undeserving of that label doesn't only end civil discussion it degrades the foundation that undergirds a democratic pluralistic society yeah so I think that most people in 2023 would view gay marriage opponents as homophobes because bigots often try to cloak their vitriol in debate or conversation while they literally try to justify the legal discrimination against the group that they're talking about it's the oldest trick in the book and we see through it but bill maher can't apply the gay marriage example to the current trans example he's too obtuse to see that and bill maher is likely feeling cognitive dissonance because as a lifelong liberal he can't accept that he for the first time is on the side of bigots in a civil rights fight but don't be a coward bill just own it if you think it's debatable whether or not we should deny medically necessary gender from a character minors for political reasons when you have no medical expertise yourself you are not living up to your liberal principles of live and let live you're siding with reactionaries so don't complain when people call you a transphobe because if the shoe fits wear it but he doesn't want to wear it he wants to have his cake and eat it too but ironically bill maher he's feigning concern over wokesters and their unwillingness to debate and how they shut down debate but look at how happy he is to see his show purge audience members who disagree with them what is it like to be a comedian in this era is it more difficult do audiences boo you at times that you're not ready for them to boo you or you're surprised it's always possible i mean it's interesting my studio audience at real time always booed me uh not for most of the show but they were definitely more woke than i was uh and definitely more sensitive you know i would ask all all the time they said why these are the people who they claim that they uh you know flew all the way across the country they waited for months to get tickets at this show they're my fans and then they come here and they say uh there's something about when you get in public you have to put on this act that you are somehow more of a moral person than you really are not that i'm doing anything immoral but that you would have to react in a certain way to things that are politically incorrect you'd think i would come pre-advertised i mean there's a sign right politically and the and the show was called real time um and then uh about five years ago we did i don't know what they did but the audience but they they got rid of the groiners and it made my life so much better and there are people who actually say to me now i missed the days when you used to fight with the audience well maybe you do but i don't yeah you know but i was never one of those comics who could just pretend oh i'm sorry i must have made a mistake there i'd be like no i didn't make a mistake there's nothing wrong with that joke stop groaning get the stick out of your ass i must have said that 20 times on my show yeah um and then when the pandemic came around first we didn't have any audience and we shot here uh and when we came back we were allowed to have like half the audience because of social distancing and again they just weeded out the people who were groaning and i would say in the last three four years i've never had that problem again and it is such a pleasure my audience who comes to my show now understands me they think like me they they have open minds you catch that at the end there he actually said with the straight face my audience who comes to my show now they understand me and they think like me and they have open mind yes because the hallmark of having an open mind means agreeing with me on 100% of issues no deviation whatsoever and if you disagree with me well then you're close minded that's how that works apparently according to bill marr see this interview it really helped me to understand bill marr's worldview more really i think what we're seeing here is projection this caricature that he's concocted in his head of wokesters is a projection of his own unwillingness to engage with people that he disagrees with because how often does he talk to right-wingers but not trans people he is purposefully choosing to ignore the people who he oftentimes critiques and he claims that they're the ones who's trying to shut down debate it's just ridiculous and aside from him being as close-minded as he says the wokesters are it's apparent to me that the people who he views as wokesters these are literally just fictional characters that he made up in his mind case in point listen to this example that he uses when he's asked by jake tapper to define wokeism woke is something very different it's it's identity part it's we see it all the time it's always the most important thing i don't think that's liberalism i mean i could mention so many issues like that i remember doing um that show on hbo a comic relief for the homeless and the idea then again among liberals i thought was you know for the sake of compassion can we get these people off the street so they have a roof over their heads and now it's like how dare you try to move the homeless this is where they live it's like again you change the definitions and then you say i'm more conservative i believe what i've always believed you change these things and then you yell at me for it that clip right there i think encapsulates the core problem with bill marr he is just extremely out of touch i mean what wokester is yelling at him for trying to help the unhoused who on the left views homelessness as some sort of a quirky lifestyle choice as opposed to a consequence of capitalism and the over commodification of housing everybody on the left wants people to not live on the streets everybody thinks that housing is a human right nobody's actually saying that you're bigoted for wanting to end homelessness do you honestly think bill that the left is claiming that homelessness is a choice because it's the right who says that but i mean you can see the issue here right he'll straw man the left and conflate these imaginary wokesters with the far right and claim that they're equally damaging to the country but if you had this view of the world then you can see how everything is going to be skewed to the right because sure there's far left people in the country but the individuals who actually have power indeed at this moment are members of the far right but let's listen to his world view do you think democratic politicians have changed their views or do you think they're just afraid of their party's activists the way that a lot of republicans are afraid of their party's activists the maga folks b they're afraid yes they're just afraid yes i think i think both sides i think again there's four tribes i think in this country i think there's old school liberals and old school conservatives republicans and democrats the kind of people who used to i think that's the majority of the country like Hillary Clinton and jeb bush or something yeah the kind of people who never agreed on a hell of a lot but they found ways to work together they didn't hate each other it wasn't all about making liberal tears and cry and all this stuff and you know owning and destroying people it was just yeah i don't agree with bob dole but you know we can work together we can get a grand bargain that kind of stuff and so i think that's the majority but then you have trumpers and then you have wokesters and you know those fringes are not doing this country any great favors and therein lies the problem that right there is the totality of bill's politics it's the extremes on both sides so if the far left and the far right were just theno snapped out of existence the moderates would come together as they did in the past and everything would be copacetic this is such a reductionist intellectually lazy view of the world but it explains so much about bill mar the lens that he uses to view politics is bereft of any sort of class or historical analysis he lacks a cohesive ideological framework to view the world yet he's a political commentator who influences millions of people this is why americans are so stupid because they take their political news from people like him and there was a time when i enjoyed bill mar's commentary admittedly but you know back then he actually was subversive and challenged institutions and made fun of religious fruit cakes but as time went on and his wealth grew he became increasingly out of touch and his politics got more stale because he wasn't able to adapt to the changing landscape and it's no coincidence that so many right-wingers are now lauding him for his recent turn because by falling for their culture war hook line and sinker he's giving them exactly what they want which is ironically a hyper focus on identity politics to the detriment of economic issues because it's very convenient for capitalists to have all of us fighting each other while they rob us blind but there's not really much else much else to say about that solely that there bill mar is incredibly out of touch and it's why so many people just have fallen out of love with his commentary myself included