Real Time with Bill Maher #363 09/11/15 "Crazy Mad"

by Catherine Giordano

The Wind in the Reeds

Bill Maher had an excellent lineup of guests for episode #363 of Real Time with Bill Maher which aired on September 11, 2015. Enjoy the recap and review.

  

Alexandra Pelosi:

The interview was with Alexandra Pelosi. She is an Emmy-winning documentarian film maker and writer. Her latest project, San Francisco 2.0--debuting on HBO on 9/28/15--

 explores the impact of Silicon Valley’s tech influx on the city. It has forced the middle class out of the city. The film is about the effect of income inequality in San Francisco, but it is happening all over the country. Bill Maher mentioned the problem with “ghost apartments” in New York City—about 40% of the apartments are occupied only a few weeks out of the year because the rich people who own or rent them do not use them as their primary residence.

It is a crazy mad world that forces middle class people out of its cities.

Alexandra Pelosi is also the author of several books including Sneaking Into the Flying Circus: How the Media Turn Our Presidential Campaigns into Freak Shows and Citizen U.S.A.: A 50 State Road Trip (Citizen USA is also available on dvd).

Refugee crisis

The panel discussed the crisis caused in Europe by the Serbian refugees.

CLICK HERE

Panel member, Salman Rushdie is a well known author, and I always enjoy his appearances on Maher’s show. (Rushdie’s 12th novel, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, was published on September 8. In this novel. Rushdie conjures up a whole universe of jinns, blending elements of One Thousand and One Nights, Homeric epics, and sci-fi and action/adventure comic books.) Rushdie said, “We have to fix the reason the refuges are fleeing.”

Panel member Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, and author of An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of AnEx-liberal called the emigration of Syrians to Europe “a time bomb. She said “Europeans are not having babies anymore.” She said that Europe is having problems because, unlike the United States, they do not do a good job of assimilating immigrants. Rushdie said that there is some assimilation among the young, “the young immigrants in France feel French, Not Muslim.”

The whole mid–east has gone crazy mad when people are forced from their homes and countries.

Donald Trump

In the monologue, Maher said the Trump was talking about winning so much that he sounded like Charlie Sheen. “But Sheen had an excuse—he was on crack.” Next he called Trump “the insult comic dog.” He wrapped up saying “I’ve seen schizophrenics with Tourette’s with more control over their mouth.”  

Trump is such an easy target even I could get my licks in. (Read my essay, Donald Trump: I Love the Bible and Other Panders.) However, most of the entire Republican field will likely be grist for the joke mill. It is getting hard to tell satire from reality with these candidates.

Maher referenced the finding of a formerly unknown species of early human. Maher said, “It had a tiny brain… and a hat saying “make America Great Again.’

Panel member Michael Moynihan is a columnist for The Daily Beast and host of The Business of Life on Vice News. (His documentary, Launching Balloons into North Korea: Propaganda Over Pyongyang, aired on Vice earlier this year.)  Moynihan didn’t mince words. “Trump is completely bat-shit crazy.” He’s attracting the mad-as-Hell crowd.

Even Linda Chavez said, “He is a vile human being.”

Kim Davis mugshot

Kim Davis

Maher called Kim Davis “the Rosa Parks of homophobia” and Mike Huckabee “the white Al Sharpton.” He mocked her for saying God’s law supersedes the courts by saying, Yeah, in Saudi Arabia.”

Kim Davis would have been an excellent premise for the mid show comedy segment, but Maher shoes another topic. I put together some of the jokes he could have used in

Kim Davis Satirical Meme Photo Album. If Maher had done it, they would have been raunchier. Still they are pretty funny.

Panel member, Salman Rushdie said, “In Europe religion is not a big public thing. They had to conceal Tony Blair’s religious beliefs to get him elected.

Maher mocked Huckabee for saying “Send me to jail instead. He said, “It’s like saying, ‘I will take your cancer.’”

Wendell Pierce

Wendell Pierce was the mid show guest. He‘s an actor, author, and chairman of the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to rebuilding the neighborhood where Pierce grew up, after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. His recent book is The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, A Play, and the City That Would Not be Broken.

Pierce talked about the rebuilding f New Orleans and how the poor have been pushed out of the city. Only about one-third of the low-income housing has been replaced.

It is a crazy mad world that forces poor people out of its cities.

Mid show comedy bit

The mid show comedy bit was about how the venerable National Geographic would change now that Rupert Murdoch has taken it over. He listed the titles of the stories we could expect to see.

Space: Our Hillary’s Emails Out There?

Aborigines and White Face—Where is the Outrage?

The Gay Penguin Agenda

New Rules: Migrant Headache

Maher said the real immigration problem was not Mexicans, but Australians. “You can’t swing a dead wallaby without hitting one,” Maher quipped. “They flawlessly mimic our American accent and take all the acting jobs.” WE can’t build a wall across the ocean to keep them out, but [mimicking Trump’s voice] “We will build a great barrier reef.”

He segued to Mexican immigrants. “No one takes a job, he said, someone has to hire them. We have to build a war to protect us from people so dangerous that we just can’t stop ourselves from hiring them to raise our children.”

He took a whack at Sarah Palin at the end with a reference to her mangled syntax. . “Why are the ones who demand we speak English always the ones who can’t speak English.”

It’s a crazy mad world. It’s a good thing we have Bill Maher to make us laugh each week.

Bill Maher’s Guests September 11, 2015

The Interview

Alexandra Pelosi: Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and writer. Her latest project, San Francisco 2.0, explores the impact of Silicon Valley’s tech influx on the city.  (It debuts on HBO on 9/28/15) She is the author of several books including Sneaking Into the Flying Circus: How the Media Turn Our Presidential Campaigns into Freak Shows and Citizen U.S.A.: A 50 State Road Trip (Citizen USA is also available on dvd).

Mid-show guest

Wendell Pierce: Actor, author, and chairman of the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to rebuilding the neighborhood where Pierce grew up, after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.  His recent book is The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, APlay, and the City That Would Not be Broken.

The Panel

Salman Rushdie: Author. His 12th novel, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, was published on September 8, 2015. In this novel,Rushdie conjures up a whole universe of jinns, blending elements of One Thousand and One Nights, Homeric epics, and sci-fi and action/adventure comic books.

Linda Chavez: Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author of An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of An Ex-liberal

Michael Moynihan: Columnist for The Daily Beast and host of The Business of Life on Vice News. His documentary, Launching Balloons into North Korea: Propaganda Over Pyongyang, aired on Vice earlier this year.