 There are places that go too far on either side. Can we agree with that? But I bet you're most places in America. I mean, again, this is 2023. The people who are doing the teaching are of a generation that is not mostly interested in suppressing the past or being racist. I mean, I disagree with that. Well, then you don't watch a lot of the videos that they themselves post. They themselves. Teachers and educators, trust me, they're hyper aware of race. If anything, it is injected too much into everything. But you sound like you're more in the Hollywood woke camp and that's fine. It doesn't mean we have to... No, it's like it's a humanistic camp. Well, you heard it here first, folks. Brian Cranston, star of Breaking Bad, has been infected by the woke mind virus. Yeah, at least according to Bill Maher. Now, that exchange got relatively heated during Bill Maher's club random podcast. And I think that Brian Cranston, you can tell that his heart is in the right place and he means well, but he just doesn't necessarily know how to defend his position and combat the points that Bill Maher was making. And as a result, I think that Bill Maher kind of steamrolled him through this conversation. But the problem is that what Bill Maher is saying is the result of years of right wing culture war nonsense that he fell for himself hook, line and sinker. But nonetheless, let's watch the moment that escalated to Bill Maher essentially calling Brian Cranston a member of woke Hollywood or whatever he said. It's time. It's 400 years that we've dealt with this. Oh. And our country still has not taken responsibility or accountability. For what? For the history of the systemic racism that's in this country. What should we do more? Well, I mean, for one thing, critical race theory, I think is essential to be teaching. It depends on what you mean by that. Well, I mean teaching how the race trade and racism is systemic in everything we've done in government, in social activities. Yes, it has been. I mean, it's embedded in it. But critical race theory can mean, it's just one of these catch-all terms. If you mean we should honestly teach our past, of course. If you mean more what the 1619 book says, which is that it's just the essence of America and that we are irredeemable, that's just wrong. It's not. I mean, I agree with that. But even teaching our past and being honest and owning up to who we are as a country in the history of most schools are doing that. I mean, I'm sure there are ones in Texas that are not. In Florida, they want to do away with critical race theory in a lot of other states. Because sometimes it veers off into things that are really not appropriate in schools. So how do you govern that? If you're telling five-year-olds that you're either an oppressor or someone who was oppressed, you're introducing ideas about race that are inappropriate for kids that age, you can't understand it. Okay. So common sense would cover that. Common sense is what's lacking in this country. But that is why people wind up passing laws about that. And yes, you're right. Very often the laws go too far. But it's not coming from nothing. It's coming from things that have started in colleges and very far left woke thinking that many people feel is not appropriate in schools. I mean, it's the same thing with gender stuff. Can they just be kids for a minute? Right. Okay. And that's absolutely. And we have to find that time, that level of maturity when a child can understand that at certain times in this country's history, there was a grave mistreatment of other human beings. I think we get that. Well, no, we don't get it. What do you mean you get it? Really? You think that is not something that is now widely understood and agreed? It's definitely not widely understood. That America has a sorry races past? It's talked about and whispered, but they don't know it. Whispered? Yes. What, the Jim Crow laws? But that's 100 years ago. So emancipation proclamation in 1865, it was 1965 or in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed by LBJ. But this is 2023. It took 100 years. I know, but what is my point? Can we live in the year we're living in? So even though Bill Maher is a liberal, when I hear him, if I didn't know the context or know about his politics, I would just assume that he was some sort of a Fox News watching grandfather. Because he's basically parroting the same exact talking points that we hear from Fox News and individuals over at the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh. What right-wingers do is they take this one small anecdote, perhaps a TikTok of some blue-haired teacher saying something that is seemingly woke and going too far, and then they'll blow that up into a years-long nationwide witch hunt against woke teachers. As if that one example is indicative of a broader trend. When in actuality, all of this is a red herring, and what Maher should be doing if he were savvy enough was rejecting the premise put forward by right-wingers. It's not that teachers are too woke, and we've gone too far in education, where we're just trying to overcompensate for our nation's bad history. The problem, Bill, is that all of this is a distraction. The talk of critical race theory, gender studies, this was all concocted by the right to distract you from very serious issues. And the individual who has popularized critical race theory, Christopher Rufo, admitted that this is all nothing more than strategy. Back in 2021, he tweeted out, we have successfully frozen their brand critical race theory into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. So it's a strategy, and Bill Maher isn't smart enough to understand that, and he doesn't know the game that's being played. So once you buy into the premise that the GOP is selling you, then it's easier to digest the other things that they say. So he brought it out from critical race theory and teaching about history to, oh, well, look at the gender studies. They're teaching kids about gender studies. When in actuality, what does that even mean? Do we have any examples of a teacher telling elementary school students that you can be transgender or non-binary? Even if that were happening, that wouldn't be bad because it's true. But the way that these conversations are taking place is at an age-appropriate level to where a teacher just says, hi kids, you may have known me as this, now I'm known as this, my pronouns are this. And that to Bill Maher, if that were to go viral, is just further evidence that the left has gone too far. I mean, I just, you have to understand that all of this is a distraction. The culture where nonsense is a distraction that the GOP is putting forward. It's like a squirrel moment. They don't want you to look over here and how elites are exploiting you and how workers are exploited by their employers. They want you to focus on these things that they tell you to focus on. And like the rub that he is, Bill Maher has fallen for it. When in actuality, you have to reject the premise because what they're selling you is nonsense. Kids are not being indoctrinated into woke education systems. And critical race theory is not being taught at the elementary school level. Critical race theory is a legal theory. It's an offshoot of critical theory. And I for one didn't even encounter critical race theory until I was in a PhD program. But what the right has done, as explained by Christopher Rufo, is take that label and attach it to anything that they don't like. And that's how they win the culture war. It's been highly effective. And Bill Maher doesn't understand that. So for Brian Cranston to say, well, they should teach critical race theory, even he inadvertently has fallen for right-wing propaganda because this isn't necessarily something that's being taught at a wide scale. Sure, you can find anecdotes, but broadly speaking, this is not necessarily something that is being taught. So even in a defensive position, you can see how one can be duped by the right-wing culture war. But I won't fault Brian Cranston because his heart is in the right place. Critical race theory is not this thing that's being taught at elementary schools. But I have one more clip to show you where it kind of devolves into Bill Maher just typically shitting on the left. It seems like they feel like the worst I think things are, the better person I am, that's what I get from a lot of the left. I think things are worse than you do. So that's what makes me good. And like, I just want the reality. See, to me, this is between liberalism and woke-ism. Liberalism is about lifting people up. Woke is just about self-loathing and hating yourself and scolding everybody and virtue signaling. It doesn't actually help anybody. Lifting people up who have gotten a bad shake in this country, who are for some reason downtrodden or have been cheated. Absolutely, I've always been for that. Have you now, Bill? Well, when the left proposes things to lift people up, like Medicare for all, you call us purity testers and tell us to fall in line and support the Democratic Party uncritically. And when we're trying to make the pitch for these types of programs, well, we oftentimes bring up how underserved communities, black and brown people, would benefit disproportionately from free healthcare. And this is to kind of pitch it to the Democratic Party where they themselves, I think you could probably characterize as more woke in the sense that they cynically weaponize identity politics to distract from the real issues that their donors don't want us to talk about. But when we bring in that angle, we're still woke. So you can't be nuanced. You can't talk about any issues. Like, there's no winning for Bill Maher. He's just already determined that the left is persona non grata. So he doesn't like us regardless of what we say. But it's funny that he says, oh, the left is just overly negative and they don't want to ever recognize the good. It's really easy for him to say that in his position of privilege as a multi-millionaire. But by pointing that out, I would be woke according to Bill Maher. Now, he also says here that liberalism is about lifting people up. Wokeism is about self-loathing. As if wokeism is some defined ideology. Wokeism is an ill-defined concept that was hijacked by the right and any and everything that they don't like by their definition is woke. So if we bring up healthcare and how nobody should die if they can't afford health insurance, well, they just say healthcare has gone woke. This is what they do. And Bill Maher doesn't understand that he is falling for their nonsense. He buys into the caricature that the right is portraying the left as. And the fact that Bill Maher even believes that wokeism is such a huge issue in this country is evidence that the right's branding exercise and culture war has worked. And rather than like bringing on leftists onto his podcasts to talk to real leftists and see what they want, he'd rather just accept the portrayal from the right and just dismiss them as woke when that's really not smart if you wanna have a fleshed out political ideology and understand why people say the things that they're saying. It's not because they're overly woke and they wanna be language police. It's all a ruse and Bill Maher has fallen for it. And that's what irritated me about this conversation.