Real Time with Bill Maher #353 05 08 15 "I Feel Your Crazy"

Billy Crystal

by Catherine Giordano


“I feel your crazy,” Bill Maher said in New Rules playing off of Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain.” And there seems plenty of crazy in the news these days. Maher and his guests discussed some of the crazy in Real Time with Bill Maher, episode #353, which aired on Friday may 8, 2015.

Billy Crystal
The interview is with Billy Crystal, actor and comedian. He’s the author of several books, including 700 Sundays (turned into a Broadway one-man show and an HBO special) and Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?. Billy Crystal is currently starring on an FX TV series, The Comedians.

The show seemed a little topsy-turvey because the interview is usually with a politician or scientist and the person from the world of entertainment is usually the mid-show guest. But tonight, Maher did the interview with Bill Crystal. I figured out why. Crystal is a very strong fan of The Clippers football team, the team was playing a game on Friday night, so Crystal couldn’t stay for the whole show. He had to be at the game.  

The interview was Crystal telling a story about the Yankees (he’s also a big fan f the Yankees) and George W. Bush throwing the first pitch at a balland a few other stories about Kissinger and Reagan. It was a funny bit, but it was a bit and not much of an interview. I really don’t know anything about sports. I put a link to the interview at the end of this post.

 

Erin Brokovich



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The mid-show guest was Erin Brokovich, consumer advocate and president of Brokovich Research Consulting. She’s the author (with Marc Eliot) of Take It From Me : Life's a Struggle But You Can Win. I think she was supposed to be the interview guest, but got moved to mid-show because Crystal didn’t want to miss the Clipper’s game.

 

Erin Brokovich talked about all the chemicals in our food and environment—84,000 of them and only about 200 have actually been tested and found to be safe. There are some bills in Congress now that will take away consumers rights to sue if they are harmed by any of these chemicals.

 

It got funny when Maher mentioned the super blondness of her hair and she had to admit it was bleached blonde.  Maher joshed that there had to be a lot of chemicals in hair dye. Brokovich laughed it off. Blond hair is worth whatever damage the chemicals might cause.

 

Lincoln Chaffee

Lincoln Chaffee was a panel member. He is the former senator (R,RI), former governor of Rhode Island (as an Independent), and author of  Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President (He’s talking about GWB; it was written in 2008). He has now registered as a Democrat and will probably be a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Maher tried to get him to announce right then, but he dodged and weaved and said he would make a decision soon.  



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Shouldn’t Chaffee as the former governor of Rhode Island and potential Democratic presidential candidate have gotten the interview slot?.Afferall, Mike Huckabee, former Republican governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate got the interview slot a couple of weeks ago. However, Chaffee was demoted to just one of three panel members. He must really want the exposure because it is kind of an insult.  (Read about the Huckabee interview in In a Blather.)

 

Lincoln Chaffee said “We need to calm down on terrorism.” He may be right, but he is not going to win the presidency saying things like that. I am very unimpressed with him--just about everything he said was uninspiring. If somehow, Chaffee became the Democratic candidate, one of the clowns will be our next president. I’m glad there are a few other potential candidates to represent Democrats if Hillary should be unable to be the candidate.  
 

Presidential candidates

The Republican clown car is picking up speed. There could be as many as 22 (or even more) candidates jumping on that car. It’s a great situation for comedians, not so great for the country.

 

Carly Fiorina entered the race. “The Republicans need a woman,” Maher quipped, “either her or Lindsey Graham.” (Graham is expected to announce soon.) Fiorina is a laughing stock for her demon-sheep ad in her unsuccessful bid for senator of California. She points to her career as CEO of Hewlett Packard as her qualification. “Let’s see,” Maher quipped, “She reduced the sales of the company and increased its debt. She might just be the one to run the country.”

 

Mike Huckabee is in. He believes we are in the biblical end-times,” Maher said. “And Ted Cruz proves it.” (Ted Cruz has already announced.)

 

Ben Carson is in the race. He said Obama is a psychopath, but it is Carson who sounds nutty. He believes the earth is only 6,000 years old.

 

Maher remarked that Hillary is making sure there is no room to her left. She has come out for campaign finance reform, prison reform, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. If elected, she will be undoing a lot of what Bill Clinton did. The former president, her husband, is OK with that.  

 

New Rules: Legend of Curly’s Fold

Bill Maher is very disappointed in Rand Paul. Maher was once Libertarian, and although he has become more liberal as he matured, Paul Rand, because of his Libertarian bent, was the one Republican that Maher thought he could consider.  

 

He said Paul Rand was last seen in front of an aircraft carrier setting fire to everything he once believed. Now Rand is telling the crowd what they want to hear, e.g.: increase the defense budget, ban gay marriage.

 

The most shocking thing he said was what he said at a prayer breakfast—“We need another Great Awakening a tent revival.” (The Grat Awakening was  an evangelical religious movement of the 1700’s).

 

Maher brought up the Jade Helm conspiracy theory. “You can’t call out nutty people for being crazy. Crazy is not a small group. Crazy is a constituency.”  So the governor of Texas calls out the National Guard, and Rand Paul says he is going to look into it.

 

Maher called out rural white people who think they are being “messed with” “You have outlawed abortion. You are armed to the teeth. You are the white Somalia.”

 

“Stop worrying about the new world order. You are barely in the old world order. The reason we conduct military exercises in your area because it there is no danger of damaging anything anyone cares about.”

  

Mid-show comedy bit

Some European countries are worried about declining birth rates. There is a “Do it for Denmark campaign.”  Maher made up some posters for other countries to encourage more copulation. For instance, in France, the slogan could be “Pretend your wife is your mistress.”  In Germany, it could be “Ich be ein be in her.” In Greece: “Try it around the front.” And in VaticanCity, “Pretend she’s an altar boy.”

 

Islamic Jihad

Some loon in Texas sponsored a contest inviting people to draw caricatures of Mohammed, ala Charlie Hebdo. The group deliberately tried to provoke an attack and they got it. Fortunately, a police officer shot the two Muslim gunmen who showed up to avenge the insult to the Prophet before they could hurt anyone. Stupid young men—if they had just ignored the provocation or denounced them on TV as bigots, they would have won.

 

Will Cain, ESPN Sportscaster, host of The Cain Conversation on The Blaze and the conservative on the panel, agreed saying that this country is built on free speech and it should never be reined in.  “If they say, if you offend me I will kill you, then you need to offend them.”  

 

Alex Wagner, MSNBC host of Now with Alex Wagner, disagreed said, “Insulting Muslims is not the same as insulting Catholics because Muslims are more marginalized.”   

 

Maher said, “Acting like Muslims are unable to control themselves is bigotry. The Westboro Baptist Church always protest my shows, but it doesn’t end in a gun battle.”

 

I think there is free speech and there is deliberate provocation, and we should not confuse the two. Charlie Hebdo drew caricatures of everyone to satirize religion and power; this group had no larger purpose than being offensive. It is crazy to do something for the sole purpose of offending someone whether you have the right to do it or not.

 

Crazy, crazy, crazy

Clown cars, weirdo conspiracy theories, offensiveness run amok—can you feel the crazy? It’s getting more than a little scary.

The interview with Billy Crystal:

 

 Bill Maher’s Guests: #353 May 8, 2015



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The interview was with Billy Crystal, actor and comedian. He’s the author of several books, including 700 Sundays (turned into a Broadway one-man show and an HBO special) and  Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? He is currently starring on an FX sit-com, The Comedians.



Billy Crystal 700 Sundays DVD

CLICK HERE to look inside















The mid-show guest was Erin Brokovich, consumer advocate and president of Brokovich Research Consulting.  She’s the author (with Marc Eliot) of Take It From Me : Life's a Struggle But You Can Win

The panel included:

Lincoln Chaffee: Possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, former senator (R,RI)  former governor of Rhode Island (as an Independent), and author of  Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President (He’s talking about GWB; it was written in 2008). He has now registered as a Democrat.  

Alex Wagner: MSNBC host of Now with Alex Wagner 

Will Cain: ESPN Sportscaster, host of The Cain Conversation on The Blaze

 

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 #255 08/17/12

Chelsea Handler

Bill Maher is baaaack and he is as “badass” as ever.

On August 17, 2012, (episode 255) as usual, Bill had a smack-down rundown of the news in his opening monologue.  Paul Ryan got most of the abuse. Best line:  “Paul Ryan is an English-speaking version of Sarah Palin.” Pow! Double whammy!

Bill said Paul Ryan rails against government, but has worked his whole life in government and the only job Ryan ever held in the private sector was driving the Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile while in high school.  Later on, he mentions that Chris Christie is going to be the keynote speaker at the Republican Convention. They lured Christie there by having Paul Ryan drive the Weiner Mobile. Pow! Double whammy!

There were three guests on the panel on the 8/17/12 show.  Alex Wagner who hosts the MSNBC show “Now with Alex Wagner,” a charming liberal; Mark Cuban who is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, a sensible middle-of-the roader; and Reihan Salam, who is a CNN contributor, a frothing-at-the-mouth conservative. They were later joined by Chelsea Handler, a smart and sassy comedian.

One of the problems I have with the Bill Maher show is that often the lone conservative is an obnoxious loud-mouth who dominates the show. He interrupts the others, talks over them, and generally makes civilized conversation impossible. Reihan Salam performed that role on this panel. Finally, Chelsea Handler had enough and told Mr. Salam, “You need to calm down.”  The audience cheered.  I just about jumped off my couch as I cheered at home. Chelsea, I love you!  You actually got that man to sit down and shut up and let someone else talk.

The worst shows are when Bill has two conservatives. I have to turn it off. The best shows are when he has three liberal-leaning guests. The conversation is great—intelligent and witty. I usually learn something. Are you listening, Bill?

However, I think this confrontational show is the kind of show Bill likes. On the 8/17/12 show he was talking about election politics, but his comment illuminates how he picks his panel. “The people want The Hunger Games. They want a bar fight.”  And that is what we get on his show most weeks.

“New Rules” is one of the best parts of the show. It closes the show and it is always outrageously funny.  Bill gently bends “The Rules” from jokes to serious (yet still humorous) commentary. On the 8/17/12 show he commented on the Republicans’ plan of voter suppression—suppression of the voters who are most likely to vote Democratic. He said the Republican get-out-the vote philosophy was, “You’re here to vote? Get out!”  Then he suggested we bring back literacy tests for the tea-partiers.  Question #1: What was the name of the World War that preceded World War II? He expects that that one would remove most tea-partiers from the voter rolls.

It was a good show.  I’d give it a 7 on a 10 point scale where 5 is “So-So” and 10 is “Amazing!”  Bill, Mark, and Alex were able to refute Raihan pretty well, and Chelsea delivered the knock-out punch. Chelsea is a delight; she fairly sparkles. Bring her back, Bill!

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P.S.  My focus on this blog is usually drama, comedy and dramedy shows, but maybe once in a while I can include some other types of shows, like “Real Time with Bill Maher” or a made for TV movie.