HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher #322 "Bad Boys"

Hillary Clinton gives her book,
 Hard Choices, to Mr. Squirrel

Bad Boys

by Catherine Giordano

The bad boys came out to play on "Real Time with Bill Maher", episode 322, which aired on 6/20/2014. 

Bill Maher, who is always a bad boy, had a few comments in his monologue about some bad boys. He mentioned the Isis group in Iraq who took the Iraqi city of Baiji and robbed a bank in the process. Maher said “When they do it they are terrorists; when we do it we are venture capitalists.   

Maher also blasted the Republicans who got it all wrong when they urged the U.S. to go to war with Iraq—Dick Cheney, John McCain, Bill Kristol (to name a few) all over the TV now complaining that Obama is not handling the ISIS insurgency correctly. He called them “Satan’s V.I.P. list for Hell.” The bad-est of these bad boys is Cheney-- Maher joked that Cheney said, “My thoughts and prayers go out to our oil.” 

Later in a discussion about foreign policy, Maher reported that even Fox News was buying it anymore.  Megan Kelly, A Fox-News host grilled Cheney during a TV interview saying “All your predictions were wrong.” Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster for the company, Echelon Insights, and a columnist for The Daily Beast reported that “There is a wide spectrum of opinion on that by Republicans.”  Well perhaps.  There is Rand Paul vs. all the other Republicans.) 

The pope is now on Maher’s list of bad boys.  Maher said, “The honeymoon is over between me and Pope Frank.” It seems the Pope called drugs and alcohol evil and said there can be no compromise with evil. Maher added that this was coming from someone “who never drinks anything stronger than the blood of Christ.”  A wicked bad quip. 

The interview was with Ta-Nehisi Coates who is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, which recently published his much talked about article in The Atlantic magazine, “The Case for Reparations.”  He is also the author of the memoir. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.   Coates said that black people in America are in a constant state of “unfreedom.”   He talked about Jim Crow, debt peonage (share cropping) segregation and more making the case for reparations. Maher asked his if he agreed with Martin Luther King who said (repeating words first used by Theodore parker, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist) “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Coates responded saying “oh, nooo,” drawing out the word “no” and sadly shaking his head. The he added “It’s an arc of injustice.” 

Two of the panelists, both bad boys got into a bad screaming match. Paul Reickhoff is a veteran of the United States Army and the Iraq War and founder and Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and author of Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier’s Perspective. Reickoff is passionate about advocating for soldiers and veterans. His opponent in this fight was Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author I of several books. His most recent book is No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Greenwald is a passionate advocate for Edward Snowden and more transparency in government.

 

They strongly disagreed about whether Snowden was a traitor for revealing state secrets (Reickhoff’s position) or  a hero for exposing excessive government surveillance (Greenwald’s position). Greenwald made an excellent point when he said that Snowden did not reveal anything. He only turned the files over to newspapers and asked them to vet it carefully. It may be splitting hairs, but Greenwald is a lawyer, and a defense can turn on how hairs were split. 

Maher had to break up the fight before it came to blows by interrupting and changing the subject to the Flip–A-District campaign.   

Maher then moved on to a news story about Dr. Oz touting green coffee extract as a “miracle” and “magic” weight loss aid. (When a doctor uses words like “miracle” and “magic” you know he has sold out.) Maher then held up a Time magazine showing the cover story about weight-loss titled, “Eat More Butter.” Maher claimed this was all about telling people what they want to hear, and he had a few magazine cover story ideas of his own.  Here’s a few of them: 

Boys Life:                If All the Scouts are Doing It, It is Not Really Gay         

Sports Illustrated:    Video Gamers: The Real Athletes

AARP:                     That Smell Isn’t Really Coming from You

Hustler:                    Masturbation Prevents Cancer    

Modern Parenting:   How to Raise a Genius by Sticking Your Toddler in Front of the TV All   Day    

 

Read more about wish-fulfillment magazine over stories at BillMaherRules.

(I include the most salacious ones there.)

The mid-show guest was, Mike Shinoda a musician, record producer, and artist. He is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and one of the two vocalists of the rock band Linkin Park which has had more number one hits than any other band.  His newest album is The Hunting Party. Shinoda is also the author (with Shepherd Fairey) of Glorious Excess. 

Shinoda talked about how the band has moved from themes of teen-aged angst to songs about social issues over the years. Shinoda is now very involved with social issues like relief efforts for major natural disasters causes like climate change. 

In New Rules, Maher mocked “Co-dependence Day.”  He said “Broken nations are like broken people. You can’t fix them,” adding, “Maybe America needs Dr. Phil to ask, 'How’s that nation-building thing working out for you?’”  

Maher said that the United States went into Iraq thinking (My interjection: Or at least saying, because we all know the real reason was oil) we would liberate the country from a dictator, install a democracy, and then that democracy would be a model for the whole Mid-east. He brought the point home by finishing with “and then after lunch …” He said the United States was like a woman who thinks she can fix the bad boys.   

Have you seen that big bad orange squirrel on TV—the one that is following Hillary Clinton around. (Actually, it’s a person in a squirrel costume, and the squirrel looks cute and cuddly.) It’s leftover from the campaign against Obama and it was meant to associate Obama with the group, Acorn.  Maher pointed out that since Acorn has been defunct for many years now, the prop no longer makes sense. Unless, as Maher said, as he held up a picture of the 2012 Republican contenders on the debate stage, it makes sense because “Republicans like to gather all their nuts in the fall.” 

The whole squirrel thing is not working at all. I saw a clip on TV where Hillary approached “Mr. Squirrel”, as she called him, shook his hand, and gave him a copy of her book, Hard Choices.  Mr. Squirrel looked delighted as he hugged the book to his chest and gave Hillary a thumbs-up sign. (My guess is that the person inside that squirrel costume no longer has a job as a squirrel impersonator.)  CLICK HERE to see video.

 

The bad boys are not going to change, whether they are your boyfriends, or your   leaders, or your leaders, or even your comedians. I wish they would, except for Bill Maher—Bill, you keep on being your bad funny self. Keep that political and social satire coming. Our country needs it bad.

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Bill Maher’s Guests,  #322,  June 6, 2014

Paul Reickhoff: Writer, veteran of the United States Army and the Iraq War, founder and Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and author of Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier’s Perspective

Ta-Nehisi Coates: National correspondent at The Atlantic, which recently published his much talked about article, "The Case for Reparations." He is also the author of a memoir. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.

Glenn Greenwald: American lawyer, journalist, author I of several books.  His most recent book is No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

Kristen Soltis Anderson: Republican pollster for the firm, Echelon Insights, columnist for The Daily Beast.

Mike Shinoda: Musician, record producer, and artist. He is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and one of the two vocalists of the rock band Linkin Park.  His newest album is "The Hunting Party." He is the author (with Shepherd Fairey) of Glorious Excess.

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HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher #282 “Crazy Glue”

by Catherine Giordano

HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 282, which aired on Friday night, May 10, 2013 had a lot of good moments, serious and funny.

Bill had a big target during his opening monologue with Christ Christie and his lap band surgery--the surgery that staples off part of your stomach so your smaller stomach limits the amount you can eat. Bill reported that Christie lost 40 pounds. “He skipped breakfast,” Bill said. Many people think that Christie wants to lose weight because he wants to run for president. Bill commented that having this surgery is tantamount to admitting that you have no will power. He added,“That’s exactly what you want in a president—no will power.”  

He also got a shot in at Sarah Palin. Bill said that when Sarah Palin heard about the arrest of Ariel Castro in connection with his kidnapping of the three women in Cleveland, she said that she was glad that he “was no longer ruling Cuba.”

Bill had a dig for Obama-hating Republicans. “Obama has just done the worst thing ever. We just have to find out what it is. They can’t find the smoking gun. Imagine, this is America and they can’t find a gun.” [The Republicans are so desperate for a scandal and whether it is Benghazi, tax audits, vacations, they can’t get anything to stick. Maybe if they had some Krazy Glue. [They’ve got “the crazy”, all right, they just need the glue.]

The interview was with Mark Bittman, an op-ed writer for The New York Times and the author of VB6: Vegan Before Six. He claims you can lose weight if you eat vegan before 6 pm, while eating whatever you like after 6 pm. [It’s probably a regimen that can help some people—no bacon and eggs for breakfast, no hamburgers for lunch reduces caloric intake--but it is not a sure thing for a lot of people.] Bill pointed out that someone could eliminate all animal foods from his diet, but still be fat if he ate a lot of sugar. [My take: If your excess weight comes from eating too much meat and dairy, the VB6 diet can help you lose weight if you replace those foods with fruits and vegetables.]

This conversation gave Bill an opening to criticize Chris Christie for having lap band surgery—He said, “It is like a cocaine addict Krazy Gluing his nostrils shut to force himself to stop using cocaine.” 

The panel included Glenn Greenwald who writes for The Guardian.  He has just written a new book, With Liberty and Justice for All: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. During the discussion about the kidnapping of the three women in Cleveland, Greenwald pointed out how there is no longer class mobility in America. The abductor was “hiding in plain sight”, but he held those young women captive for ten years because boarded up windows were nothing unusual in the poor neighborhood where he lived.

Joy Reid, who writes for The Grio (a news website targeted to African-Americans) and an MSNBC contributor was also on the panel. She spoke about the Middle East saying that whenever we try to impose democracy we get something worse. Whenever they overthrow a dictatorship, they get the crazy—a theocracy; democracy just doesn’t stick .

The conservative panelist was Charles Cooke who writes for The National Review Online. Usually, I want to crazy-glue the conservative guests’ mouths shut, but Cooke was OK. He’s a libertarian, but not off-the-wall crazy. He said the Libertarians should be alarmed about the government getting involved in things like prohibition, the war on drugs, and removing the specs for making a gun from the internet. There was agreement with the first two, but not with people making plastic guns that could evade metal detectors at home.

For the mid show comedy segment, Bill gave us part three of his ongoing segment “Craziest Congressman.”  He talked about Paul Broun, a Republican Tea party representative from Georgia. Broun believes that Obama is a Marxist who want to destroy the U.S. from the inside. [t is one thing to disagree with Obama’s policies and feel that they are harmful, but to claim that his goal is to destroy America is crazy.  [As much as I thought G.W. Bush was an evil person, I never thought he was trying to destroy America; I believed that he was destroying America because he was incompetent, not because he hated America.] Bill said the Broun is a doctor who doesn’t understand embryology, and opposes abortion because “it puts storks out of work.” He’s the one who said that science is “lies straight from the pit of Hell” guy. [I’m glad he is not practicing medicine anymore.]

Broun was paired with Michelle Bachman, the Tea Party Republican from Minnesota.  Bill said that she thought that “Thomas Jefferson’s slaves were friends with benefits.”  “A woman once told her that her daughter got retarded because of a vaccine and she said ‘Mom?” You know she is way far-out crazy when you learn that the AP stopped fact-checking her because it overloaded the system.

The mid-show guest was Zachery Quinto, an actor who portrays Dr. Spock in the new Star Trek movie. He has come out as gay.  Quinto said that gays have to have visibility.  A total of 12 states have now made gay marriage legal and there is no stopping it now. Bill added that “when you say that the Bible is against the gay, it makes young people question the Bible.“

I liked Quinto. Sometimes I see actors who I like on the screen, but when they do an interview, I see that they are empty-headed morons. Quinto was intelligent and thoughtful. He calls himself a nerd. [Carey Mulligan, the actress who plays Daisy in the remake of The Great Gatsby is a case in point. She’s been doing a lot of TV interviews to promote the movie, and she comes across as an empty-headed moron. She giggles a lot in the hope that all the giggles will cover up the fact that she has nothing to say.]

Bill’s “New Rules” began with a discussion of The Great Gatsby. Bill said the movie is out of date because the wealth gap is so much greater today than it was during the 1920’s.  Today one in four Americans makes less than $10 a hour. Working at McDonald’s used to be a kid’s job, now people are trying to support a family with the earnings from that job. Close to half of all recent college grads have to live at home because they can’t afford to live on their own. A CEO makes 300 times more that the average worker. The six heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have more money than the 130 million poorest Americans.  [The statistics are frightening.]  

Bill talked about countries that have huge financial inequalities, like Mexico--kidnapping becomes a way of life. A kidnapping for ransom takes place 72 times a day in Mexico. He used this observation as a warning to the uber-rich in America. And it also gave Bill

an opportunity to to stick it to Donald Trump.

This is the “Don’t-get-into-a-fight-with- a-guy-who- buys-ink-by-the-barrel” moment of the week. [I’m referencing an old saying about not getting on the wrong side of someone who writes for a newspaper because he could inundate you with bad publicity.  Let me change that to “Don’t get into a fight with a comedian with his own weekly TV show.  He will make you the butt of his jokes over and over I bet Donald Trump regrets getting into it with Bill Maher.] Bill concluded his remarks about kidnapping by saying “I’m talking about you, Donald Trump” when he spoke about how the trophy wife of a rich man is not going to raid the Swiss bank account “to save your sorry ass.”

“What is the difference between a hedge fund manage and a mosquito?” Bill quipped. “A mosquito stops sucking blood before it explodes.” [Heed the warning!  A socialite once quipped, “You can never be too thin or too rich.” Perhaps you can be too rich.]

I’m glued to the TV set every Friday night When Bill Maher airs a new show.  You never know what crazy thing the guests will say or how crazy funny the show will be.

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Bill Maher made Donald Trump the butt of his joke on Friday, May 10, 2013 when he joked that his trophy wife "was not going to raid the Swiss bank account to save your sorry ass" if Donald was kidnapped.