HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” #312 “Killing Me Slowly”

By Catherine Giordano

Jimmy Carter 

“Killing Me Slowly” sums up my review and recap (and commentary) for HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” episode 212, which aired on 3/28/14.  Emphasis on “killing.”

The monologue began with a reference to Putin’s invasion of Crimea. Maher said it was not like the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “First of all, it worked.” He followed it up with a jab at John’s McCain’s (R, AZ) seeming eagerness for war. He reported that McCain said, “Russia is just a gas station masquerading as a country.”  Maher jested that Putin replied, “Arizona is just a nursing home masquerading as a state.”

Maher also joked about the whitewash report from Christie’s lawyers that exonerated Christie of any wrongdoing on anything, ever.  Maher said that the report was so over the top, fawning and complimentary, that it might have well have said “women want to date him, men want to be him, cows want to be eaten by him.”

The interview was with former president Jimmy Carter, former president, Nobel Peace prize recipient, and founder of “The Carter Center.”  Carter has a new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.  Carter wears his Christianity on his sleeve—he’s a Sunday school teacher, so Maher couldn’t resist challenging him on religion.  He told Carter those who advocate violence, enslave people, mistreat women, etc. and defend it with religious texts are interpreting the texts incorrectly.  Maher maintained that the problem is that they are interpreting the texts accurately and went on to cite passages to prove his point. Carter trumped him when he said “I go back to what Jesus said and did.”  (So Carter is pretty much saying he reads his Bible selectively, ignoring the parts he doesn’t agree with.)  But it was enough to get Maher to say “Jesus was a good guy” and to change the subject.

The panel was pretty well behaved tonight.  Even Rick Lazio (former Congressman R, NY) got me to thinking that he wasn’t so bad.  Then he would add the “but” and that killed my good feelings for me. “The government is not doing a single thing to help the inner city.” So far so good.  Then he adds, “At least Ryan is talking about poverty.”  Yes Ryan talked about it, blaming poverty on the poor.

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, had to set Lazio straight.  She said, “We should unite around solutions, not just blame people.”

Maher had a trick up his sleeve. He read a quote that sounded not too different from what Ryan had said and then announced that it was a quote for Michelle Obama.  W. Kamau Bell, the third panelist, a comedian and star of the TV series Totally Biased, who happens to be black, explained it.  He said that it was about the audience.  Michelle was talking to black people and “Black people talk differently to each other when you [white people] are not around.”  I say there was another difference—intent and context. Ryan was talking to white people castigating black people for laziness; Michelle was talking to black people urging them to do better for themselves.

Bell also stated that you can’t blame poor people for not working when they live in an area where there are no jobs, the schools suck, the hospitals suck, there are no grocery stores, and all the dads are in jail. In other words, In other words, change the inner cities and the people will change themselves.

Another topic was the Boston Marathon bombing.  Maher announced that it was the anniversary of that terrible event. He then showed a picture of the Boston police force marching down the street dressed in riot gear and accompanied by tanks.  “Who knew that Boston had an army?” he said. Maher said that we have police forces that act like armies all over the country. “An army that sustains itself on plunder.” He was presumably referring to the seizure of assets that occurs with drug busts.

Maher next brought up the Russian man, Ibragin Todashev, who was associated with the Tsaraev brothers who did the bombings and who is alleged to have committed a triple murder. We may never know for sure because the FBI shot him. Lazio defended the shooting, saying the guy flipped out and threw a table.  Maher correctly pointed out that we don’t know what happened since the only witnesses are the men who did the shooting and, in any event, killing the man was an excessive response.

Maher brought up “the corporations are people” issues.  They are people only when they want to be.  Hobby Lobby claims a religious exemption from providing health care coverage that includes contraceptives for women because a company, like a person, can have religious beliefs.  Lazio says, “I’m pro-choice.” So I’m liking him. Then he adds, “A closely held corporation, run by a family, is different” and is entitled to an exemption. So now I’m back to disliking him. Tanden has to set him straight once again.  “Why is it about religious freedom for the employer, why not religious freedom for the employees? Do corporations get to make religious decisions for all of us?

Corporations also don’t want to be treated like people when they destroy the economy and ruin people’s lives. No one on Wall Street was punished. They also don’t want to be treated like people when they kill people.  Like GM being slow to announce a recall of cars with faulty ignition switches. Over 300 people died. Maher said, “Corporations are killing us a little more slowly.”  I think he meant less directly compared to FBI agents with guns.

Another important issue discussed in the show was the killing of the oceans.  The search for the missing Malaysia jet turned up no jet wreckage but lot’s of garbage. Maher said, “We have turned the ocean into a porta potty. We are killing the ocean—radiation from Fukishima, oil slicks, fishing on the verge of collapse--and it is going to kill us if we don’t fix it. We need the ocean to live.  Agreement all around.  We are killing the ocean slowly.

The mid show guest was the actor Josh Gad, the voice-over star of Frozen.  He told us the movie has made over a billion dollars.  “It is a license to print money.” 

I recently saw Frozen and I have a problem with the hidden message of this movie: Girls rule and boys drool.  Once Disney movies portrayed girls as helpless just waiting for a man to come and save them, like Cinderella and Snow White.  Then the male and female roles became a little more equal—Aladdin and Jasmine were equal partners in their adventures.  Then the pendulum swung too far evidently when Disney realized that princesses were a financial bonanza.  The princesses in Frozen don’t need any men.  The “hero” in the show, Kristof, is an oaf, a fixer-upper (there’s a song about it), who has to be whipped into shape by Princess Elsa. Even then he is a bumbler who can’t rescue Elsa’s sister, Anna--Elsa has to do the job herself. The other men in the show are “Prince Hans”, a villain who acts like “Prince Charming” but only want to marry Elsa for money and position, and Olaf, a funny little snowman, sort of a pet.

By the way, little girls are desperate to have Princess Elsa dresses.  Disney can’t make them fast enough so some people are buying them on the Internet for $1,500.  And that is not t worse part. The worst part is that the retail price is $150—$150 for a dress or a little girl.

The mid-show comedy segment was funny. It seems there is a crack epidemic in Vermont, which also happens to be the home of “Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.”  So Maher renamed some Ben & Jerry’s flavors.

 

• Chunky Junky
•  Late Night Smack
• Grubby Hubby         
• Needles and Cream           
•  Robert Brownie, Jr.

In New Rules, in a segment called “Left Behind,” Maher railed against Democrats for always having talking points that begin with an apology. For instance, they are always saying the ACA needs to be fixed. Polls show that people are overwhelming in favor of the basic components of the act. Democrats should be proud to own ObamaCare. This is the “can-I-get-an-amen” moment of the week.

Maher cracked, “Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum said ObamaCare would kill children.  No, you are thinking about assault rifles.”

Maher brought the show full circle back to Jimmy Carter, saying “And they should be proud to own Jimmy Carter. A failed presidency?  By whose standards?  We may have had a bad economy, but you know what we didn’t have—a war!  And he was the last president to ask for shared sacrifice. Another “can-I-get-an amen” moment of the week.

Maher finished with, “Carter put solar panels on the White House roof.  Regan tore them down because he thought the sun was interfering with Nancy’s astrology.”

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HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher #314 Riot-Roundup

Rob Lowe, actor and author of Love Life,
was on Maher's panel.

By Catherine Giordano

"Pussy Riot"--great name for a band! Bill Maher did an interview with the political activist group of young women in Russia who masquerade as a band on Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 314, which aired on April 11, 2014.

Congressman Vance McAllister (R, LA) was the butt of a lot of jokes, as well he should be. The married congressman ran on family values, and now a video is all over TV and the internet showing him passionately kissing a female staffer who is also married (not to him). In the monologue, Maher said, “Republicans are either voting against women or rubbing against women.” Strike one.  McAllister if forming an exploratory committee—his tongue was an exploratory committee.” Strike two. “That wasn’t kissing, that was fracking” Strike three. You’re out. Only he wasn’t out. The staffer he was kissing has resigned, but he’s still there. Being exposed as a hypocrite is not putting him out of the game.

One of the panelists was Rob Lowe, actor and author of a new book Love Life. With a book title like that, there had to be a joke about Lowe having been involved in a few “pussy riots” of his own.  This was the “cheap-shot-joke” moment of the week. I checked out the table of contents on amazon.com. —Lowe’s book appears to be both more serious and more entertaining than the cheap shot joke would imply.

Continuing with this theme, the mid-show comedy segment featured the “Sex Harasser’s Manual.” The book would include tips for Congress, such as: 

·        Never say, “Are those your real breasts or have they been gerrymandered?

·        Grow up—We all know it is pronounced BAY-ner.

The mid-show guest as Matt Taibbi, a journalist, and author of The Divide:

American Injustice in the Age of  the Wealth Gap. He was reading us the riot act about our so called “justice system.”  In a nutshell: “It is very easy to go to jail if you are poor; very hard if you are rich. All those crazy things you do when you are young—the poor go to jail, the rich don’t. It’s morally unjustifiable.” 

Since the interview was concerned repression in Russia, Maher had to point out that America is #1 with respect to the percent of its population that is in prison and Russia is #8.  Taibbi added that crime is down by 44%, but the prison population is up by one million. 

Another panelist, Anna Marie Cox, political columnist for Guardian USA, blamed “for-profit prisons.” And that is all that you need to know to understand this issue.  Every business wants to grow and if your business is prisons, you are lobbying for harsher laws and longer sentences. You are also providing minimum services to squeeze ever last bit of profit out. There’s no rehabilitation or humanity. As Maher said about our so-called “correctional institutions”: “We are creating so many bitter unemployable people.”

During a discussion about the Ukraine situation, the third panelist, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R, CA) said he was in favor of “tactical nuclear weapons.”  When everyone else was so shocked they were on the verge of a riot, Hunter explained that he only advocated tactical nuclear weapons, the kind that explode underground. Maher rightly chastised him saying “Nukes are a genie we shouldn’t let out of the bottle.”  People like Hunter scare me half to death. Doesn’t he realize if we nuke them, there are a whole lot of thems who can nuke us right back?

Maher pointed out that ignorance equals belligerence. He mentioned a recent poll asking people to locate Ukraine on a map. As you might have guessed, few got it right. Some even put Ukraine inside the U.S. The poll also asked if we should use nukes. The people who didn’t know where Ukraine was were far more likely to want to use nukes.

The New Rules finale was titled “The Call of the Riled.” Maher talked about Mike Rogers leaving Congress for a talk-radio gig and Jim DeMint who left the Senate to become head of The Heritage Foundation (a right wing “think-tank.”) Maher said, “There has never been a better time to quit government and go into the lucrative business of talking about government.” He concluded by naming Sarah Palin as the “one night stand of governing” and claiming that Ted Cruz sees “higher office as just a higher form of talk radio."

There was no riot of the set of “Real Time with Bill Maher” this week, just a riot roundup of scary scary stories about scarcity of good government. Fortunately, although the panelists were mostly “straight-men”, Maher gave us a few moments of humor.  

I hope you enjoyed this recap and review of the show.  Please leave a comment.

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HBO's The Game of Thrones #32 “Two Swords”

Here Be Dragons

Daenerys with one of her dragons on "The Game of Thrones"

By Catherine Giordano

Daenerys, a star in The Game of Thrones, is the “mother of dragons” and the mother of all warriors. Her cute little dragons appear to be adolescents now and they are getting a little hard to handle. Daenerys is warned, "Dragons can never be fully tamed."  Be careful, Dany, they may soon bite the pretty little hand that feeds them.

Daenerys is a wonderful female character who has come a long way since Season One.  She began as a innocent child bride given in marriage as a bribe to obtain military help for her brother’s quest for the Iron Throne.

She went from being used by her family and abused by her husband to become his beloved wife. Upon her husband’s death, she became a fierce leader of her people—like Ruth in the Bible her husband’s people, the Dothraki, became her people.  She’s a tiny little thing, but no one would dare toy with her now.  She outwits her enemies. amasses a loyal army, and moves steadily towards her goal of taking the Iron Throne for herself.  And she does it all while looking beautiful.

The Game of Thrones has so many strong interesting women and she is one of them.

The Game of Thrones is such a complex story and each episode contains a multitude of characters and dozens of plot developments. There are plenty of websites to provide recaps. I’m just going to write about one female character each week. I chose Daenerys this week because she is beautiful, smart, strong, and she has dragons. I have dragons also, but mine are collectibles made of glass and ceramic and wood.

Click Here for more info on a great collectible dragon.

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Real Time with Bill Maher #313 “Going Going Gone”

Alex Wagner, MSNBC host

By Catherine Giordano

The discussion on Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 313, aired on April 4, 2014,  focused on what’s going well, what doing down, and what’s going gone.

ObamaCare is going well. On March 31, the end of the 2014 enrollment period, sign-ups had gone through the roof, surpassing the 7million target number.  This success has made Republicans go crazy (crazier). The “truthers” are back--only this time it is not about a birth certificate, it is about cooking the books.  And now that the Supreme Court has gone and voted down more spending limits, the billionaires will be pounding that message into our heads with even greater ferocity. 

The interview was with Captain Paul Watson founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation organization and the “star” of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, a documentary-style reality show.  He told us that ocean life will be gone unless we change our ways.  “If the oceans die, we die.” He advocated for protecting bio-diversity in the ocean. He warned that “global warming/climate change” could alter the oceans currents, plunging Europe in a deep freeze. I feel our planet is going downhill like an Olympian in a luge, and maybe it is already too late to stop this downhill slide.  [See The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.] It’s the extinction that could wipe out human beings.]

The panel included Alex Wagner, host of MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner.  She speaks with confidence and passion—she knows her stuff.  I’d say that Wagner presents the liberal viewpoint, but it is more accurate to say she presents the honest viewpoint..

Wagner stands in stark contrast to another female panelist, Carrie Sheffield, a columnist for Forbes, decidedly in the Republican/conservative camp, spewing forth the same old discredited talking points. Worse yet, she seemed to think she was on a game show, smiling inanely each time she thought she had scored a point.  She thought she had landed a zinger when she said that campaign spending in 2012 is the same amount Americans spend on chewing gum.  Maher looked at her like she had gone off on the train to Crazy Town.  “It’s not the amount in aggregate that matters,” he explained. “It’s the percentage spent by rich people.”

The third panelist was former Representative (R VA) Tom Davis.  He too spewed the talking points, but at least he didn’t make a fool of himself while doing so.  And, towards the end of the show, he even said something I agreed with. He said that the rogue agencies in the CIA must be held accountable.

I hope Davis will continue to be for accountability when the CIA torture report is made public.  The report will show how the Bush administration, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the rest, violated the Geneva Convention and engaged in torture and gained no useful information in the process.  Maher seemed really angry when he castigated the movie Zero Dark 30 which showed that torture helped in the search for bin Laden. He called it “product placement for torture.”  [I refused to see the movie when it played in theaters, but I did catch it on HBO and it made me as angry as it made Maher.]

Bill came back to the torture report in New Rules. He said, “If the torture report makes you disgusted, you’re liberal; if it makes you shrug, you’re conservative; and if it makes you hard, you’re Dick Cheney.”

The comedy sketch dealt with a report that said 43% of college age and high school aged boys have been coerced into sex.  He then did a showed video about the terrible threat of LBS, Lucky Bastard Syndrome.  The title speaks for itself.

The mid-show guest was Nas, a rapper and songwriter with a new album, Illmatic XX.  He’s very soft-spoken for a rapper—I had to turn the volume up on my TV to hear him.  He mentioned that he did a song with Jay Z on a prior album (Hip Hop is Dead) ironically titled Black Republican.  (“I feel like a Black Republican--I got money coming in.”) This put Sheffield into a tizzy because she took Maher’s joke—“You may have a new recruit”-- literally.  Nas, gently put her in her place saying, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

In New Rules, Maher spoke about how the middle class was going, going, gone.  He said that Tiffany was doing great and umpteen different versions of dollar stores were doing great, but stores that cater to the middle class like, Sears and Penney’s, were dying.  “We are becoming a country of rich people and desperate people.” The bit wasn’t all that funny so we got the “Maher-goes-for-a-desperate-joke” moment of the week.  “Lube up,” was the tag line, “time to do some porn.” 

 

The final New Rules bit wasn’t as sharp as it usually is—Bill didn’t seem to know where to go with it.  Nonetheless, I’m going to HBO every Friday at 10pm.  Because, despite one kinda-fell-flat joke, Maher has gone and done it again, delivering an hour of news-focused opinion, commentary, and humor. Bill Maher has got it going on.

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Real Time with Bill Maher #308 "News Values"

By Catherine Giordano

 

I lot of talk about news and values and the value of news and whether or not the news has values on Real Time with Bill Maher #308 which aired on February 21, 2014.

Rachel Maddow, host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and the author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, was a panel guest.  She has a new documentary that is sure to make news, Why We Did It, a follow up to her previous documentary Hubris: Selling the Iraq War.   It’s about the real reason we went to war in Iraq.  It will air on Thursday March 6, 2014.  Maddow is the best-she always puts the news in context, delving deep, while being entertaining.  It’s about time we got a definitive report about the Iraq war.

Maher said he was a big fan of MSNBC, but he thought there was too much emphasis on the Chris Christie scandals.  Maddow said, “I’m totally obsessed with the Christie story, unapologetically. I thought the Blogojevich scandal was the gonzo scandal of my career,” [but this is bigger]. Maher said “It’s not Watergate.” [I say, “You’re right, it’s worse.”] I was getting a little angry with Maher for badgering Maddow on this, but he redeemed himself when he that MSNBC scrupulously fact checks; Fox scrupulously makes up facts.”

In the monologue, Maher made a joke about Pussy Riot, the Russian girl band that was beaten by police at Sochi.  He said he was “shocked to see police behave this way …to white people.”  This set us up for the interview with Michelle Alexander, author of the book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  Blacks are disproportionately targeted and prosecuted in the name of the war on drugs.  Once they a named a felon, then all the Jim Crow discriminations become legal—like losing the right to vote. 

Maher then talked about Ted Nugent saying that calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” was not racist and how Zimmerman and Dunn think that they are the victim. There was a hung jury on Dunn’s murder charge, but he was convicted of three counts of attempted murder. Maher said, “When an attempted murder is successful, isn’t that murder?”  I’ve heard others say, only half joking, that if Dunn had killed all four boys, he could have been acquitted.

Jane Harmon was another panelist. She is a former Democratic congresswoman from California. California is in the news because of the extended drought in that state.  In the monologue, Maher joked that “if Jesus came back to California, he’d be pissed because there is no water to walk on.” Later in the show, Maher mentioned that the Conference of Catholic Bishops told people they should pray for rain. This is actual fact, not a joke.  Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which.

Maher mentioned that Jon Kerry said that “climate change is a weapon o mass destruction.  Maddow said that billions of people will be displaced due to rising seas. The Pentagon believes in climate change because it is their job to see coming threats.  She pointed out what Dick Cheney said about war: if f there is a 1% chance that we may be attacked (by Iraq), then we must behave as if it’s a certainty.  Shouldn’t this apply to climate change?  Isn’t there a 1% chance that 95% of climate scientists are right?.

The third panelist was Charles Cook, a writer for The National Review, a conservative magazine.  Cook tried to disassociate himself from Republicans saying, ”I’m a conservative, not a Republican.”  This is the “The third panelist was Charles Cook, a writer for The National Review, a conservative magazine.  Cook tried to disassociate himself from Republicans saying, ”I’m a conservative, not a Republican.”  This is the “nice-try-but-if-it-quacks-like-a-Republican...” moment of the week. He sure sounded like a Republican, railing against “over-regulation” and “government making problems worse.”

Maher had a great jibe against Republicans in his monologue.  He said, In the Ukraine half of the people want to modernize and half want to stay in the past…just like in the U.S.“

The comedy segment was about religious sexual repression and a Mormon video, “Overcoming Masturbation.”  The video advised wearing pajamas that were hard to open.  That is so funny, it is hard to believe that it is not one of Maher’s jokes.  It wasn’t. These were Maher’s tips:  “Hold a live porcupine in your hand”, Spank an actual monkey”, Imagine Chris Christie putting out traffic cones”, Smack yourself in the nuts with a Bible”. 

The mid-show guest was Steve Coogan, who wrote and starred in the Oscar-nominated movie Philomena, (based on the book Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search by William Sixsmith)which was partly about sexual repression in the Catholic church. The movie deals with one of the 60,000 women who because they became pregnant out of wedlock were taken to convents to live as slaves and had their babies sold for adoption. Coogan said that he wrote the screenplay using the tactics he learned from Maher’s movie Religulous, primarily the use of humor to make a point.

In New Rules, the final segment was “Wrong Division”.  It was about the fragmentation of news and how the internet is now delivering “personalized news.”  “My news feed," Maher said, “will be all about pot, American history, and Christian Mingle. Ted Nugent’s will be all about Prozac and bullets.”

Maher concluded with, “Only seeing the stuff that confirms what you already believe, that’s not news, that’s Fox News. Newspapers try to tell you what is actually important news, not just what is important to you.”

Each week, Maher gives us the news--the important news—and that is why I value this show.

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Real Time with Bill Maher #309 “In the Dark”

By Catherine Giordano

Real Time with Bill Maher is, as always, a candle in the darkness enlightening us on issues and shining a light on Republican hypocrisy and lies.  

The February 28, 2014 show (#309) was no exception.

A lot of references to darkness this week.  In the monologue, Maher said that the favorite Tea Party game is “Pin the Blame on the Darkie.”  And in New Rules, he spoke about the new Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor  “Core Ice Cream”.  He said it was introduced to taunt Obama, “half dark chocolate, half white. and really dark at the core.  And to taunt Hillary Clinton, Ben and Jerry’s have ‘Hubby’s Chubby.’ “ [Except Bill Clinton is not really chubby anymore; Hillary is the one who needs to get on her husband’s diet.]

There was a great line in the monologue about Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona.  Bill said, it was a good thing that she vetoed the bill allowing businesses to discriminate against gays on the basis of their religious beliefs because she looks like “a lesbian warden in a prison movie.”   Low blow, Bill, but I’ll laugh at it because ever since she wagged her finger in Obama’s face, there is nothing she can do to redeem herself in my eyes.  I think she occasionally does the right thing, but for the wrong reasons.

The interview was with Christopher Leonard, author of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover ofAmerica's Food Business.  He talked about the terrible conditions in the food industry.  A lot of us are in the dark about how our food is raised. Leonard said that the chicken factories, like Tyson, have so much power in rural areas it is like a “feudal system”  from the Dark Ages. The FDA has been almost entirely dismantled due to the influence of the powerful meat industry.  [Remember The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.  It led to reforms in the meat industry.  Can The Meat Racket do the same?]

Maher had a lot of criticism for the Tea Party, although he gave them credit for becoming a force in American politics in only five years.  In Overtime, he said, they had “baked themselves into the cake that is the Republican party.”  Although they are supposed to be about deficit reduction and lower taxes, Maher said there was virtually nothing about that on their website.  It was all about Benghazi and Obamacare.   Bill says they are all about hatred for a black president.

There were two conservative panelists this week.  One was Margaret Hoover [great grand-daughter of President Hoover—so we know where she gets her bad ideas from.]  She a commentator on Fox news and is the typical blond airhead Fox News likes to put on their news shows--all low cut dresses, short skirts, and girlish flirtatiousness.  [I noticed on Fox News the camera frequently pans down to newscaster-ettes legs whereas on other channels the female newscasters are treated with respect and the camera remains on their faces. ] Hoover is the author of a new book, American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party. I hope she had something worthwhile to say in the book. She had nothing worthwhile to say on Maher’s show.

Bill Kristol, the other conservative panelist, had a smug combative attitude on the show.  I liked the part where Maher confronted him as being totally wrong about the Iraq war, suggesting that this does not inspire confidence in his prognostations and opinions.  Kristol quickly admitted that he was wrong—a brief moment of honesty-- and then just as quickly returned to is in-your-face opinionating and lying. Just looking at him, I could see the darkness of his soul.

The third panelist was Austan Goolsbee.  He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the author of MicroEconomics. He is no light-weight—he was formerly chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.  He had some important things to say about the current cuts to the military supported by Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.  He said that we need a different kind of military now that in prior eras—we need technology more than troops and armaments.  We should get rid of the tanks and aircraft the military doesn’t even want any more.  He said “They are cutting strategically, not willy-nilly.”  Hoover and Kristol, as would be expected, were in hysterics about how these cuts would be the end of America.

In the comedy segment, Maher mentioned that the obesity rate had dropped among only one are group in America—two-to-five year olds.  He gave us some toddler diet tips.  Most were really gross—the whole segment was the “let-me-get-the-audience-to-groan” moment of the week. I think there was only one non-gross diet tip: Cut carbs—dump the Spaghetti-Os over your head.

The special guest was Bruce Dern, the actor currently starring in Nebraska.  (The movie is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and Dern is nominated for Best Actor for his role in this movie.  Bill Maher likened Nebraska to King Lear, Don Quixote and Grapes of Wrath. Dern spoke of his admiration for the people of the Mid-West, honest, hard-working, with a strong sense of fairness.

The New Rules final segment blasted “the 1%” for whining about being persecuted.  He said that the 85 richest peo0le in the world have more money than half of the people on the planet—more money that 3.5 billion people.

He said, “Masters of the universe?  They are more like babies on a plane.”  Tom Perkins who is worth eight billion said he is being persecuted like the Jews were by the Nazis.  Bill explained that the Jews never did anything to deserve their persecution.  Tom mentioned billionaire Sam Zell who said, “We are the 1% because we work harder.”  Bill said, “Really, you sit in your cushy office and talk on the phone and you think you work harder than a coal miner? You make 1000 times more than a coal miner will make in his whole life on just one deal.”

Maher said, “Let’s give you something to cry about.  You don’t want a minimum wage, how about a maximum wage?”  Maher pointed out that a maximum wage is not a new idea.  Several of the founding fathers argued for it—James Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton.  Maher added, “Your shady financial tricks tanked the economy and nothing happened to you.”  [They clearly were not even punished, much less, persecuted.]

Maher praised people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who give their money away.  Maher said that Buffet has said, “I should write a book about how to get along on $500 million a year because apparently there are a lot of people who don’t know how to do it.”

Thank you, Bill, for the light you shed each week.  You expose darkness and let good ideas shine and you do it all with good grace and humor.  

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Real Time with Bill Maher #307 Bon Bons Mots

Bon Bons Mots

by Catherine Giordano

Bill Maher and Bill Nye

Real Time with Bill Maher, #307, aired on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2014.  The hour breezed by.

It was a bit of a love-fest—the guests did not disagree with each other very much, and when they did everyone remained calm. Here's my review, recap, and commentary on the show.

In “New Rules,” Maher did a bit called “Zero Dark Chocolate.”  He began by saying “Politicians are like a box of chocolates. The Democrats are too often soft and gooey and the Republicans are mostly nuts.” I’ll take my cues from this and deliver up some Valentine’s Day bon-bons, a Whitman’s Sampler of the bons-mots served up on the show.

In the opening monologue, Bill Maher said that 58 million pounds of chocolate will be consumed on Valentine’s Day. Then he added “And one small diet Coke.”

In the monologue, Maher talked about Ted Cruz. With a nod to the blizzards occurring all over the country, Maher pointed out that both Ted Cruz and snow are white, but the snow eventually goes away.

The interview was with Bill Nye (The Science Guy), the author of numerous books that explain science to the layman, including Consider the Following.  Nye tried to explain how global warming leads to climate change which leads to weather. Hot air rising causes changes in the atmosphere—that’s why you have been hearing about the polar vortex. 

Nye also talked about his recent debate with Ken Ham, the creationist, about evolution.  Nye said that it is OK to say that we don’t know the answer to everything.  But whenever he did, Ham replied, “There’s a book.”  Nye said he had to resist the urge to slap his hand to his forehead in a gesture of disgust so many times during that debate. 

The panel included Dylan Ratigan, a former host of MSNBC, author of Greedy Bastards, and currently a sustainability entrepreneur; Jeremy Scahill, author of the best-selling book, Blackwater and writer/producer of the new documentary, Dirty Wars; and Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and author of the book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.  (This sounds like a book I want to read, but it was not discussed on the show.)

The panelists were not happy about the pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner/Brighthouse.  It will reduce competition.  Klinenberg pointed out that cable fees keep going up, forcing people of modest means to cut themselves off from the national conversation. Scahill described Fox News as the television station that thinks Obama is “the black Marxist Manchurian candidate who wants to resurrect Chairman Mao.”

On the subject of the nation’s crumbling infra-structure, Maher said that the real bridge scandal is that the George Washington Bridge is 80 years old and needs $1 billon in repairs.  Rattigan said that most of our infrastructure, like our power-grid, is pre-Eisenhower.  Obama recognizing that there is a lot of work that needs to be done and a lot of people looking for work and proposed a jobs bill that would address these two problems.  Of course, the Republicans blocked it. Klinenberg said “the Republican idea of infra-structure is a fence on the border.”

During the discussion about drone strikes against suspected terrorists, we got some disagreement among the panelists. This is a difficult one—Bill Maher said that if someone is plotting terrorist acts against America, even if he/she is a citizen, we can’t just do nothing.  Scahill, had a different point of view and thought the drone attacks were unlawful.  Where are the safeguards to protect people who may be innocent?  Where do you draw the line and who gets to draw that line?

Did you know that February 15, 2014 is “National Youth Enrollment Day” for the Affordable Care Act.  Bill had some spoof posters featuring celebrities for the Day. Here’s a few of them:

Miley Cyrus:        There is a 1 in 3 chance you are currently touching something I licked.

Sarah Palin:        Traumatic brain injury can strike anyone.          

Bob Costas:        When Putin poisons you contact lenses, will you be covered?

George Zimmerman: I still walk the streets. Any questions?

 The mid-show guest was Mayim Bailak. She has a PhD in neuroscience and is an actress. She plays Amy on The Big Bang Theory TV series.  She is also a vegan, and the author of a cookbook Mayim’s Vegan Table.   Cancer rates are increasing and there must be prevention and not just treatment. We can pay for organic food or we can pay for healthcare.  What role should the government play in regulating the food we eat.

Ratigan spoke about cities of the future being “green” cities. Louisiana is on the forefront of this movement. Texas, because of the drought they are experiencing is interested.

It seems that Philip Seymour Hoffman, the actor who recently died, kept a diary. Some of his diary entries have been published.  Klinenberg said “There is a feeding frenzy on the internet; we no longer have a news cycle, we have a news cyclone.”

Michael Sam, the football player, has come out publically as gay.  Maher said that the rednecks now know that they have been following and cheering for a gay man, “just like they do at the mega-church every Sunday morning.”

In NewRules, Bill spoke about how we like our politicians to be “new.”  If you are new on the political scene, people don’t know your negatives yet.  He said, “Chris Christie should have run in 2012 when he still had that new candidate smell… Now he is just 350 pounds of toast.”

Don’t forget the “Flip a District” campaign.  Send in your nomination for the congress person from a gerrymandered district who you think most needs to be retired. The Bill Maher show will do everything possible to help flip the district.

Noticed the show did not end with the “True Confessions” segment where the guests hold up signs making phony, but funny, personal confessions.  I wonder if it has been dropped?

So that’s the bon-bons, and the bons mots and now it is time for the bye-byes.

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