Real Time with Bill Maher #342 2/6/15 “The Scream”

The Scream

by Catherine Giordano

Remember the primal scream. It was all the rage back in the 70’s. It was a type of therapy in which you get all your pent up anger and grief out in an epic fit of screaming. (The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov). I think the whole world is having one great big primal scream.

 

Johann Hari and The War on Drugs

Johann-Hari: Chasing the Scream

The War on drugs has been going on in this country for more than 100 years. We are not winning. Johann Hari, a journalist, has written a book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, that gives the best explanation I have ever heard about why we are losing the war on drugs and what we need to do to treat drug addiction.

 

He says everything we think we know about addiction is wrong. He pointed out that people in hospitals get heroin, often for long periods of time. “Your grandma didn’t become a junkie from her hip operation.”  

 

He described an experiment with rats. If you put a rat in the cage with types of water—regular water and water with heroin in it. He will choose the heroin water. But if you create a Rat Park, a place that has everything rats like, he will choose the regular water and won’t touch the drug water. Happy rats don’t become addicted.

 

Hari told us about Portugal a country with a really bad drug problem. They decided to take all the money they were spending on treating drug users like criminals and use it to help them instead. They got them subsidized jobs. (The government essentially paid employers to hire the addicts. It worked. There are far fewer addicts.

 

I want to scream because the United States probably won’t try this. I think it goes back to the Calvinistic and puritanical roots of this country. People are sinners and no one deserves anything they have not earned. So we treat drug users like animals and lock them in a cage at enormous cost both financial and socially. Will any politician be brave enough to try treating people with love?

 

I want to learn more about this. Maher kept interrupting Hari to make jokes. I know it is Maher’s job to make jokes, but I wanted to scream at him to shut up and let the man talk.

 

Vaccines

Vaccines

Everyone is screaming about vaccines. Maher is in favor of the measles vaccine (I think, but he just had to go off on how the flu vaccine is useless. He had a doctor on the show who explained it to him, but Maher can be just as stubborn as anyone else about not letting the facts get in the way of his opinion.

 

Panel member, Marianne Williamson is a spiritual teacher and author of 10 books including Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual Citizens. Her best known book is Year of Miracles based on A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman. Williamson said “it is a public health issue that overrides individual choice.”

 

Panel member, John McCormack, senior writer, The Weekly Standard said that the measles vaccine does not cause autism.

 

Panel member, Amy Holmes, news anchor on the TheBlaze.com/tv, said the criticism of Rand Paul and Chris Christie for suggesting otherwise was “gotcha politics.”

 

Maher jumped on this bandwagon. “If you ask any questions, it is like you are a climate denier. Medicine is more complicated than climate science.” (Really!?) He compared vaccines to antibiotics which he called “too much of a good thing.” He then went on to say “The body needs a workout to build the immune system.” To some extent this is true, but Maher doesn’t seem to know how vaccines work. A vaccine gives you a small dose of the weakened virus so your immune system can go into action, conquer, and produce antibodies that give you immunity in the event you are exposed to the real thing. Vaccines give your immune system a workout! (The italics are to indicate that I am screaming.)

 

Williamson had to force spirituality into the debate. She said,”People who have been prayed for live longer.” Maher, said “Sure, but not because the prayers reached God.” (People who are prayed over live longer because they have social support. Many experiments have shown that random intercessory prayer has no effect.) Williamson is not arguing prayer over vaccines is she? I don’t think so. So why bring up prayer?)

  

Obama and the National Prayer Breakfast

Obama at the 2014 National Prayer Breakfast

Everyone is screaming over Obama’s remarks at the national prayer breakfast. He pointed out that terrorism in the name of religions is nothing new. Christians did it with the Crusades and the Inquisition. Homes said “These are non-sequitors. They are from 800 years ago. What does one have to do with the other?”

 

Maher explained it. “We did it then, they are doing it now.” Nonetheless, Maher went on about how Islam was worse. “The evil is right in the book.” Christianity had the reformation and Islam needs to have its own reformation. Maher said, “They worship Allah; we worship money.” He meant that we have more of an interest in living well here on Earth.”

 

Then everyone started screaming and talking over each other and I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. So I’ll just have to report on my own comments. Obama said those things because he is smart. If he wants allies in the Arab world in the fight against terrorism, he can’t insult Islamic nations. He must say that these terrorists are not part of the true Islam. The U.S. and Europe need to be allied with Muslim nations in order to suppress terrorism! They will not be our allies if we insult them! (Screaming again.)

 

Williamson blamed it all on our invasion of Iraq. I believe she is correct bout this, but she forced it into the conversation just the way she did when she made her comments on prayer. So everyone started screaming again and talking over each other again and I couldn’t hear a thing.

 

The Jobs Report and the Good Economic News

More good economic news and more new jobs created last month. The number of jobs has increased for 55 straight months. Maher taunted his conservative guests. Remember how Republicans said ObamaCare would be a job killer? Has it killed jobs? No!”

 

McCormack said it hasn’t killed jobs yet because the employer mandate was delayed. Again not letting facts get in the way of opinions.  

Obama’s poll numbers have been steadily increasing since the November elections despite Republican screams of outrage over everything he does or says. Why are the poll numbers going up? I think it is because all the negative attack ads are off the air since the election is over.  

 

Janet Mock: Transgender Issues

Janet Mock

The mid-show guest was Janet Mock, transgender rights activist, author of Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

There was a discussion about Republican presidential contender, Mike Huckabee, making his bid on gender issues and by criticizing Beyonce.

 

Bill Maher said Janet Mock sees herself as a girl who just happened to be born with a penis. She had gendered reassignment surgery many years ago and came out in a 2011 article in a magazine, Marie Claire.

 

Mock said that gender is not just Male female. Maher mentioned that facebook has 56 gender categories. Mock said that on tinder (an online hooking-up site), there are over 1000 gender categories.

 

A Spoof on Two Mommies

The mid-show comedy segment concerned news reports that babies can have three parents. Women who have a genetic defect in their mitochondrial DNA can have it removed from their eggs and replaced with healthy DNA from another woman before in-vitro fertilization and implantation of the fertilized egg.

 

Maher took the book Heather Has Two Mommies which is about children who have lesbian parents and turn it into a spoof. Watch the segment here.

 

 

 

New Rules: Babble Rouser

Finally Republicans are willing to admit that Sarah Palin is a crazy person. “They have finally realized the emperor has no clues,” Maher said.

 

Matt Lewis wrote a column in The Daily Beast titled, You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin.

 

Maher asked what else Republicans might finally realize they are wrong about

 

You Betcha I Was Wrong About Climate Change: Germany gets 70% of their energy from renewable.)

 

You Betcha I was Wrong About Sending 12 million Mexicans back to Mexico: There are not enough trains. Just ask Germany. (Groans from the audience.)

 

You Betcha I Was wrong About Middle East Invasions and Heroic Snipers

 

 And finally, the grand daddy of Zombie Lies—You Betcha I Was Wrong About Trickle-Down Economics: It’s like have three dogs and giving one a wiener and thinking he’ll share it with the others.

 

What are Zombie Lies? It’s from an earlier New Rules Segment. Read about it here:

Zombie Lies

 

I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream

It seems like everybody is mad as Hell and they are not going to take it anymore. We may need to take a collective deep breath and calm the f@#k down.  

 

 

Bill Maher’s Guests #342 February 6, 2015

 

The interview was with Johann Hari, journalist, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

 

The mid-show guest was Janet Mock, transgender rights activist, author of Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

 

Amy Holmes, news anchor on the TheBlaze.com/tv

 

John McCormack, senior writer, The Weekly Standard

 

Marianne Williamson, spiritual teacher, author of 10 books including Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual Citizens. Her best known book is Year of Miracles based on A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman