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

HBO “Real Time with Bill Maher” #279 "Sky Diving"

by Catherine Giordano



Half the Sky

HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 279, airing on April 19, 2013, began with a funny monologue, continued with some very interesting guests discussing important topics, but fizzled at the end with a weak, “New Rules.”  I had the feeling that Bill ran out of time and had to cut the “New Rules” segment short.

Let me dive right in to this discussion by reporting that Bill began the show by announcing that the Boston Bomber had just been caught. He followed the announcement with a joke referencing George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq after 9/11, saying that Bush had just called for the invasion of Puerto Rico in response to the Boston Bombing.

Bill went on to talk about the Elvis impersonator who thought the government was selling body parts and so he sent letters containing ricin to Obama and others. (This is so weird that it sounds like Bill made it up.  He didn’t.) Bill joked that you can’t intimidate us with bombs and poison. If you are a paranoid lunatic—this is America--you have to use a gun. 

The interview was with Brian Levin, the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Levin, I hate to say this, is the typical knee-jerk liberal. He lost an opportunity to present his views because he was too extreme in his liberalism and ended up arguing with everything Bill said. Yes, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people, and during the Middle Ages Muslims were far more civilized than the Christians (Crusades, witch-burning, conversion by torture, etc.), but currently an extreme faction of Islam does advocate violence and is murdering and terrorizing in the name of Islam. Bill mentioned the Broadway show “The Book of Mormon” and asked if there could ever be a show “The Book of Islam.” Levin persisted in missing the point until Bill, exasperated, said, “What color is the sky in your world?”    

Bill pointed out that the American Islamic terrorists “don’t have the balls” of the foreign terrorists. The foreign ones are willing to kill themselves; the American ones like the Times Square Bomber and the Boston Bombers try to get away alive. Good point, Bill.  Perhaps living in America does make them “soft.”

One of the panelists was Nicolas Kristoff, a “New York Times” columnist and author of a new book and PBS documentary, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”  Kristoff’s documentary is about the need for education for girls around the world.  Education is the single biggest factor to empower women economically and put an end to violence against women. Kristoff is optimistic. The strong reaction about the rape of a woman on a bus in India shows that change is happening.  Nonetheless the statistics about the gender-cide—the killing of girls and women, are astounding.

While we are talking about killing, we have to talk about guns.  Bill mentioned that 90% of the people in this country want background checks andt a majority of the Senate voted for it, but it was defeated by the filibuster.  Can we still say we have democracy when (90% of the people want something and we don’t get it?

Kristoff compared the all-out effort to capture the Boston bombers who killed three people in the bombing with the 30,000 people who die from gun violence in America every year.

Amy Holmes, another panelist, appears on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze TV. If she is associated with Glenn Beck, you know she is extreme right wing. I’ve seen her on “Real Time” before so I groaned when I saw that she was a guest. Happily, she wasn’t as strident and loony as I expected, but more strident and loony than I would have liked. Holmes pointed out that support for gun safety is a mile wide and an inch deep. There is much more intensity on the right. She may be right about that, but I hope not. The activists for stricter gun laws are putting up much more of a fight than in the past.

Bill remarked, “The Senate is the place where progress goes to die. Right now a small “red state” might have 166,000 people represented by one senator while a Senator from California, like Democrat Diane Feinstein, represents 15 million people. Bill said the founding fathers never anticipated 50 states. I have to admit that Bill has a point. This is unfair—rural areas are far better represented than urban areas. 

Salmon Rushdie, the author who once had to go into hiding for a decade because the mullahs issued a fatwa calling for his death --They did not like a book he had written--has first-hand knowledge of Islamic extremism. He told an interesting story about his time in hiding. The British government offered to provide him with guns and to provide training so he could defend himself. Rushdie turned down the offer.  He said he knew he was not the kind of person who could shoot someone.

During the man hunt for “the second Boston Bomber,” I thought about what I would want if I lived in the area where the bomber like that was at large. ”Gee,” I thought, “Maybe it would be good to have a gun for a situation like that.”  I decided I did not want a gun.  Like Rushdie, I probably couldn’t shoot someone.  Also, statistics show that when there is a gun in the house, a resident of that house is three times more likely to be the victim of a shooting than a resident of a house without a gun.

The comedy segment was a very funny satire about Michelle Bachman giving a eulogy at the funeral for Margaret Thatcher.  According to Bill, Michelle said, “It is so nice to be here in the cradle of the original tea party. In 1776, we fought together to defeat communism and to end abortion.... We have a lot in common, conservative principles, fearlessness, and dementia…. They called her the ‘Iron Lady’, but I didn’t know the “Iron Man” had a wife.” It was very funny because it was similar in tone to the loony things Bachman actually says.

The interview was with Colin Goddard, an advocate for “The Brady Campaign” and the producer of a new documentary “Living for 32.” Goddard is a survivor of the Virginia Tech mass shooting.  The title of the documentary refers to the 32 people who were murdered during that shooting as well as to the 32 people who are killed in this country by guns every day. Goddard said, “We are never going to shoot our way out of a problem.” Holmes responded with the right wing cliché that a good guy with a gun can take out a bad guy with a gun. Colin refuted her. He said that having a gun wouldn’t have helped him. He didn’t know what was happening until after he was shot four times.

I have two points to make. When a gunman is shooting at you with a semi-automatic weapon, you don’t really have an opportunity to shoot back. The second point goes back to a witness at the Tucson shooting.  A young man who owned a gun was present, but he didn’t have his gun with him.  He said that if he had had his gun, he probably would have shot the wrong person. He initially thought that the person who was subduing the actual gunman was the shooter. If even police who are well trained accidently shoot innocent people due to a mistake or poor marksmanship, what will happen when panicked civilians start shooting?  

Bill had some points to make also. The second amendment is the only amendment with the word “regulated” in it.  Also, it has the word militia in it—it is about a citizen army.  We now have a standing army, we don’t need a citizen militia. I agree. We need to abolish the second amendment—it is outdated and as screwy as Prohibition. It doesn’t mean that people can’t still own guns, but it would turn gun ownership from a right to a privilege.  he Constitution says nothing about automobile ownership, but people still have the privilege of owning a car—under certain conditions (passing a driving test, registering the car, having insurance, not being “under the influence” when driving, obeying traffic signs, etc.)

The overtime discussion took up the issue about the Miranda rights of the Boston Bomber now in custody. Homes predictably jumped right in spouting off with the usual clichés about “high value detainees” and “enemy combatants. Levin called her out saying the criteria had nothing to do with those catch phrases, but rather required a determination of “imminent danger.”  Kristoff said he was uncomfortable about withholding Miranda. Rushdie just cut to the chase. “Just read them their damn rights. Trust the system.”

Rushdie got it right. The bomber was read his Miranda rights on Sunday, and he remained co-operative. When we break our own rules, we are in “free-fall.” The last time we got into “free-fall”, we had “enhanced interrogation” which was actually, in simple language, torture. Kristoff and Rushdie spoke about how when the U.S. abandons its principles, he hurts us around the world.  When the U.S. talks about human rights, “What about Guantanamo Bay” gets thrown back in its face. “Free-fall” means you hit the ground hard.

I’ll conclude with a couple of funny bits.

In New Rules, Bill poked John McCain and is ubiquitous presence on the Sunday morning talk shows.  He said, “John McCain needs to spend Sunday mornings with his family.”  So true, Bill.  I think we are all getting a little tired of seeing John McCain.

During “Overtime”, Rushdie was being sarcastic when he said that social media made up global warming. The ignorant Holmes agreed. She either missd or ignored the sarcasm.

 What color is the sky? I guess it depends on your viewpoint.

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