HBO Real Time with Bill Maher #265 "It's the Facts, Stupid"

by Catherine Giordano

HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” episode #265, airing on November 2, 2012 was smart and funny as usual.  (Except when the Republicans are talking as usual; Bill had two of them this week.)

I’m naming this episode “It’s the Facts, Stupid.” It’s a take-off on the headline of Bloomberg Business Week. The cover of this magazine was shown on the show. In big red letters, the headline was “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.” Bill discussed how during the Republican National Convention Romney turned Obama’s words into a joke.  Romney, with his customary smirk on his face, quoted Obama as saying, “I will stop the rise of the seas and heal the planet.” Har! Har! Har! This is the “Not-So-Funny-Now-Is-It?” moment of the week. The rising seas inundated communities in New York and New Jersey and killed close to 100 people. As Bill said, “The rising seas” is not a laugh line.

While I’m talking about Romney’s smirk, take a close look at Romney when he is supposedly offering condolences to the victims of Sandy at his Victory Rally/Relief Event last Wednesday. It was a very brief statement. He followed it with his smirk and a nod of his head. It was as if he was saying, “There, that’s done. Now let’s get back to campaigning.”  And get back to campaigning is exactly what he did.  

Romney did this phony food drive. His aides went to WalMart the night before and bought canned goods. At the rally, the aides handed the cans to attendees who then marched in front of the cameras to give them to Romney. Obama is supervising FEMA and touring the destruction, and Romney is holding a fake relief rally. And here’s the kicker. The Red Cross will not accept food or clothing. They don’t have the resources to sort, store, and distribute. They want money so they can buy what is needed when and where it is needed. 

Mitt Romney, if you had one ounce of humanity, you would have gone to that rally and made a speech about how you were donating one million dollars (or five million or ten million) to the Red Cross. (You earn $20 million a year. You could easily have given a million.)  And then you could have said that you had asked all your billionaire and multimillionaire supporters to do likewise and told us how much you had raised from this.  And then you could have asked the attendees to give you checks made out to the Red Cross. That would have been a way to show compassion and to actually help. Instead, you bought canned goods with campaign money that the Red Cross doesn’t want and can’t use.  (I hope that stuff ends up in a food bank somewhere.)  Have you contributed even a dollar of your own money yet? Probably not. Too busy out on the campaign trail making empty gestures and telling lies. 

One more thing. The Red Cross needs blood. Why didn’t Romney have several bloodmobiles at his rally?  Why didn’t he roll up his sleeve in front of the cameras?  It’s what I would have done in his position. This was supposed to be a relief event, wasn’t it?  What exactly did he do at this rally to help anyone but himself.

 

Forgive the digression. I’m back to the show now and the funniest line in the monologue. Bill said Obama was getting bi-partisan support.  Even Fox News said, “Heck of a job, Brownie.” Second funniest line was about Mitt always being wrong—wrong about Bin Laden, wrong about letting Detroit going bankrupt, wrong about FEMA. Then he goes out and denies that he ever said those things. Bill said “Now he loves FEMA. If Mitt ever met anti-Mitt, his head would explode.” 

The interview was with James Balog, a photographer who has science credentials and who has just completed a documentary about the melting of the glaciers entitled “Chasing Ice.” He did a great job explaining global warming. Solar energy melts the ice that is needed to reflect that energy back into space; then the dark water that is exposed by the melting ice absorbs more energy. Less reflection; more absorption. This causes changes in the weather. Bill seems to be devoting a lot of time to this issue—it is discussed every week and he often has a guest who has expertise on the subject. Bravo to Bill for using his show to educate people about facts. 

The panel was Rob Reiner, actor/director and a strong Democrat; Margaret Hoover, a CNN contributor and an obvious Republican partisan; a Rick Lazio (a former Republican Congressman from NY who lost his bid for the Senate to Hillary Clinton).

 

BTW, was Margaret Hoover ever a beauty pageant contestant? She had this inane smile on her face constantly. She was so “girly,” how does anyone ever take her seriously?  Maybe they don’t.  

During a discussion about FEMA vis-a-vis Katrina under Bush and Sandy under Obama, Bill pointed out that “people who like government run it better.”Rob said privatizing FEMA (as Romney said he wants to do) is insane. Bill added, “When it is life and death you don’t want a private business in charge—“they put profit over human life.” 

How do we combat global warming? Lazio suggests that we don’t know if global warming caused the storm. He also suggests nuclear power as an alternative to carbon-based fuels. Bill tells him that there are better options. I agree. Just because solar alone, wind alone, hydro-power alone, bio-fuels alone can’t do the job, doesn’t mean that they all can’t be a bigger part of the mix. We may also have to build off-shore barriers. Bill said it would be too hard and too expensive.  I say that just because it is hard and expensive doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. And the sooner we start, the more lives (and property) we will save.  

Bill said that Obama’s biggest endorsement was from Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey. (It was a tacit endorsement because Christie only praised Obama’s response to the storm, but he, nonetheless, praised him effusively.) Bill pointed out that the Salt Lake City Tribune endorsed Obama. Romney is a Mormon and Utah has a very large Mormon population, yet the Utah paper endorsed Obama over Romney. Bill pointed out in the places where “they know Romney best, they don’t like him.”  (In Massachusetts where Romney was a one- term governor, Obama leads by over 20 points.)   

Bill showed a mock ad jokingly claiming that it should be Obama’s response to Romney’s false ads about Chrysler sending American jobs overseas--an ad that is condemned as false by everyone except rabid Romney-ites. (Even Chrysler has denied Romney’s claims.) Bill’s satirical commercial was about Romney’s experience running the 2002 Olympics in Utah.. It was very funny.  The ad said that Romney gave jobs to foreigners from Iran and Russia taking jobs away from American athletes, Arab terrorists killed 11 Jews (that was a different Olympics, but we are not going to let facts intrude are we?) while Romney stood idly by, then the Olympics went to China (again another Olympics) and ended with “Romney ran the Olympics and so did Hitler.” 

Mathew Segal was the last guest. He is the young (only 27) president and co-founder of “Our Time”, an organization that represents young people.  He said young people vote ideals, not parties. He also pointed out, as so many others have, that there are not two sides to every issue; there are not “two sides to facts.” I’d like to see more of him. 

On the economy, Matt said he learned in his economics classes that it takes 10 years for an economy to recover, and that Obama has had less than four years. The Republicans tried to deny that economists say this. Bill said that there have been 1.9 million new jobs in 2012. Over the almost four years (including the first few months when America was losing jobs due to the continuation of the trend from the Bush administration), there has been a net gain of 562,00 jobs. He also pointed out the Congressional Research Service (a non-partisan organization) reported that tax cuts for the 1% do not create jobs. The Republicans, true to form, protested--unsuccessfully.  It’s the facts, stupid! 

Hoover and Lazio seeing that they were losing the argument do what Republicans so often do. Talk louder, talk faster, talk over everyone else in the room. Further, It sounded to me like they raised the pitch of their voices—My ears hurt. I was ready to turn off the TV. (I didn’t because I have to do this review.) Hoover said that she tries to reform the Republican party. Perhaps there is some hope for her—at least she realizes that the Republican party needs reform. Nonetheless, she continued to deny facts and defend Republicans.   

Bill had some good zingers in “New Rules.”  Here’s a few of them. 

“The 2012 election might be remembered as the election where one candidate was suspected of not being born in America, and the other candidate was suspected of not being born on Earth.” 

“How did we get the shameless weathervane from the Planet Kolub? The other choices were Rick Perry, Santorum, the mom from Carrie (Michelle Bachman) and the black guy from Ghostbusters (Herman Cain).” 

“Clint Eastwood was not their first choice for a celebrity speaker at the Republican National Convention.  Honey Boo Boo refused to dumb it down.” 

“There is only time for five more reincarnations of Mitt Romney.  By Tuesday, he’ll be saying he is a staunchly pro-gay Unitarian who hates corporations and has is proud of his Latino heritage who doesn’t want old white men telling him what he can’t do with his vagina.”  

Bill concluded by saying that the election is win-win for him.  “If Obama wins, America wins.  If Romney wins, comedy wins.” 

Nate Silver, the statistician who crunches poll numbers, and almost exactly predicted the number of electoral votes for Obama in 2004, has reported that Obama now has an 81% probability of winning. And that was before he got the endorsement of Chris Christie. 

 
I pray that America votes based on facts. I pray that America wins on Tuesday.

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Real Time with Bill Maher #258 09/07/12

Real Time with Bill Maher #258 (airing September 7, 2012) was one of those rare Real Time episodes that just didn’t gel. Bill’s opening monologue was weak, the guests were dull, his comedy bit that comes during the middle of the show didn’t really work, and even the highlight of the show for me, the “New Rules” segment was only so-so. I’m going to name this episode “Treading Water” because it could barely stay afloat.

One of the best lines from the opening monologue was Bill’s comparison of the Republican National Convention to “a seminar to flip real-estate for Jesus.” Another good line was when he said, referencing Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention and Republican’s complaints about having an ex-president appear, “not every party has an ex-president who can talk.” Yes, they were clever put-downs, but rather weak as far as Bill’s zingers go. 

You know the show is not up to par when the best segment is Bill’s interview with Christine O’Donnell, the former ditzy U. S. Senate candidate from Delaware. You know, the one who said “I am not a witch.”  (By the way, although Republican’s are all about personal responsibility, she blamed her advisors for that ad.)

Christine livened up the show because everything she says is so bizarre that she is inadvertently funny.  Her lies and off-the-wall statements come so fast it is like a batting machine pitching balls at warp speed.  Bill just couldn’t keep up.

Some examples:

 

Christine repeats the Republican talking point that Obama could have done everything he wanted during his first two years because the Dems had majorities in the House and Senate.  Wrong!  The House did pass bills for everything on the liberal agenda, and then the bills died in the Senate because the Republicans filibustered them. The Democrats had 50+ votes, but nothing could be passed because the filibuster requires 60 votes.

Christine then went on to prattle about economic theory, evidently under the mistaken impression that she is an economics professor instead of a nitwit who probably can’t even balance her checkbook. Her words came so fast and furious, Bill didn’t know what to swing at first. She didn’t wait for a response; she just kept up a barrage of verbiage. She has evidently learned that if she gives someone a chance to respond, she is going to be shot down.  

On ‘Overtime”, an online discussion after the TV show, she got even worse. The other panelists were practically crying due to the futility of trying to talk sense to her. Christine got a viewer question about why Republicans who want small government are mandating medical procedures for women (e.g. medically unnecessary ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion that the woman must pay for). Christine denied that there were mandates (Wrong). She said it was wrong for the federal government to infringe on a woman’s rights, but OK if the states did it (What!). She said abortion is a risky procedure. (Blatant lie—it is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term if done by a doctor in a medical setting.) She compared the mandates to requiring certification for heart surgeons. (Spurious analogy, abortion doctors are certified and there are no laws mandating that people have to have pace-makers whether they want them or not.)  She just kept moving from one outrageous statement to the next, so fast no one had time to get a word in edgewise. 

Then she announced that churches in New Jersey lost their tax exempt status because they wouldn’t perform gay marriage (Outrageous lie—New Jersey doesn’t even have a gay marriage law—the legislature passed it, but Governor Christie vetoed it. Further, not a single church in the country has lost their tax exempt status for this reason; no one has even suggested telling churches who they must marry or how to perform their ceremonies.)

I’ve gone on at great length because Christine needs refutation, and Bill and his panel just couldn’t manage it.

There was a big “ick” moment-of-the-week during Bill’s interview with Christine.  Bill at one point told Christine that she should have sex with him “right here right now.” Not funny, Bill. Really icky, Bill. Now I understand why Christine didn’t want to go on Bill’s show during her Senate campaign. She was probably tired of being propositioned by him. This suggestion put an image in my head that made me want to bleach my eyeballs.

The panel was bland on bland. 

 

Katerina vanden Heuval, the editor of The Nation is earnest and erudite, but has no excitement, unless you find wonkiness exciting.

 

Jim Vanderhai, co-founder and executive editor of Politico, is a soft-spoken nice guy. He denied that Politico has a conservative bias, describing it as middle-of-the-road, yet every comment he made supported Republicans and conservatives. He defended himself against the charge of political bias, by saying that Fox News said he had a liberal bias.  Right, Fox News also claims to be fair and balanced.  But I guess, to Fox News anyone who is not a raving right-wing radical is a liberal.

Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former head of the McCain campaign, is having an identity crisis. He looks pained having to defend Republican positions; he pretty much doesn’t even try anymore. (I see him on MSNBC all the time looking just as pained and just as unable to defend the indefensible positions of the Republicans.)

The special guest, David Simon, executive producer/writer of the HBO shows, The Wire and Treme, appeared to be a really smart guy whose heart is in the right place, but he is just not a quip-master. He’s too thoughtful.

 

Bill did a mid-show bit about the “The Dueling First Ladies”, each trying to out-poor the other.  “When hubby and I were young we were so poor that ….”  Nice concept, but it just didn’t make me laugh that much. I think Bill was rushing it a bit, and that may have muted the impact.  

Here’s a bit I really liked. Bill gave a shout-out to Michelle Obama. He said, she had “a shiv in a velvet glove.” When she said “Obama doesn’t judge success by money”, she hit an artery. I noticed it immediately as she said it, but the talking heads didn’t say a word about it that night. However, they were all over it the next day and pointed out a few other knife strikes that I had missed. One pundit said, “She cut Romney to ribbons, and you never even saw the knife.” Way to go, Michelle! 

Even New Rules fell a little flat. But Bill did get in a few slashes with his own shiv in the final rule talking about how rich Republicans think they got rich all by themselves, ignoring the fact that they had a little luck going for them just because of the family they were born into. Then he did a “rich kid/poor kid” bit imagining how Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump would have fared if they had been born into a poor family.

 

Spoiler Alert: Here are the punch lines. Ryan ends up a bouncer at Chili’s, Romney ends up a greeter at Staples, G. W. Bush ends up a skid-row drunk, Trump ends up as a mop-pusher at a fried chicken joint and his signature line is “you’re fried”.  (“You’re fried”—that was funny!)

This episode won’t go down as one of Bill’s best, but he kept his head above water and  the guests paddled the roiling waters proficiently making some good points. But no one made any really big waves.

 

This picture from abc news.

 

Christine O’Donnell dominated the show.  First Lady Michelle Obama was mentioned only briefly, but I’d rather look at a picture of Michelle, wouldn’t you.   

HBO Real Time with Bill Maher #257 'The Empty Chair"

“Real Time with Bill Maher” is a talk show/comedy show so the “episodes” are not given a name. I’m taking the liberty of naming  my recap and review of this episode, “The Empty Chair.”

The name, of course, refers to Clint Eastwood’s performance at the Republican National Convention on the night before where he gave a speech which wasn’t a speech. It was a stand-up comedy act according to Bill. 

Clint addressed an empty chair pretending that Obama was sitting in it. He lectured and chastised the empty chair and pretended to respond to vulgarities uttered by the chair.  

Bill gave Clint props saying he did a great improvised stand -up comedy act that was right on target for his audience who ate it up. Bill may be right; if so, Clint was portraying the angry old man (like he did in Gran Torino) so the stuttering and rambling must have been part of the act.

But, and it is a big but, Clint wasn’t there to do a stand-up comedy act.  He was there to lend his support to Mitt Romney. Network TV gives only one hour each night to live coverage of the convention, and the Republicans squandered 15 minutes of it on a comedy act. On Friday, what was everyone talking about?  Senator Rubio’s speech?  Governor Romney’s speech?  No!  All anyone can talk about is the empty chair.

Did anybody on the campaign staff ask the speakers what they were going to talk about?  Apparently not.  Except for Ann Romney, all the speakers I heard spent most of their time talking about themselves. (It looked like they were setting themselves up for 2016.) They were supposed to be there to tell us how great Romney is and they barely mentioned his name. If this is how badly Romney runs his campaign, do we really want to put him in charge of the whole country?

In his opening monologue Bill mentioned another problem with the convention speakers--the huge number of blatant lies in the speeches. V.P. nominee, Paul Ryan, was especially guilty. Bill said that when Ryan heard that the consensus of opinion was that his speech held the record for “the greatest number of lies in a single speech,” Ryan said “Game on!”

Bill’s interview was with Dinesh D’Souza, a so-called journalist who has a so-called documentary in theaters right now. The film makes the most bizarre accusations against President Obama. This isn’t just my opinion, it is the opinion expressed in every review of the film I have seen. Bill and the panel said that D’Souza was practicing the “Big Lie” a theory popularized by the Hitler regime. Make the lie so outrageous that people will believe it just because they can’t believe that anyone would make such a preposterous thing up. 
  

D‘Souza came on the Real Time to promote his film. I don’t think he will be back. Bill was clearly on a mission to take D’Souza down. First he ripped into him for the nutty claims in the film, and then it got personal. Several years ago, Bill had another TV show, “Politically Correct.”  He lost that show because he said that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards. He said that it takes a lot of courage to smash a plane into a building when you are on the plane.

It turns out D’Souza was a guest on the show that night, and Bill was only agreeing with a similar comment D’souza made. Bill was angry that D’souza just laid low as Bill was widely castigated for his remark. He felt that D’souza should have spoken up.

The conservative guest last night was Ron Christie, Republican political strategist.  I have seen him all over cable TV as a guest on talk shows making ridiculous statements. He did the same tonight. At one point, Bill lowered his head to the table in exasperation during a conversation about global warming. Bill said that it was impossible to have a conversation with Ron because Ron has his own “facts” as well as his own opinions.  Bill said, “We can disagree about how to handle it, but not on whether it exists.The fact that global warming is real is now beyond dispute.

I will say one thing for Ron. He was a gentleman last night. Unlike most of the conservatives on Bill’s show he spoke calmly and did not raise his voice, cut off the other guests, or talk on top of them.

I can’t help but wonder—do he and D ‘Souza and the others of his ilk actually believe the things they say. These are intelligent educated men!  I can only think that they have found this niche for themselves, they earn a good living from it, so the truth be damned.

It’s like Mitt Romney claiming that he no longer believes everything he appeared to believe his whole life—his whole life until he started running for president. Or was he lying before in order to get elected as governor of Massachusetts. Only he knows the answer to that. I think it doesn’t really matter what he personally believes, if he is elected the radical right would have their way with him.

The other panelist were Soledad O’Brien (CNN news anchor) and Jason Alexander (actor and director). The final guest was Walter Kirn (writer and ex-Mormon) who was there because Bill wanted to discuss Mormonism. Since Romney’s faith is a big part of who he is (by his own admission), we can understand Romney better if we understand Mormonism. Although Kirn is an ex-Mormon, he is not critical of the faith. He did a good job of explaining how some of Romney’s positions may have been shaped by his religion.

At the end of the show, Bill returned to discussing the Republican National Convention.  He said that although G.W.Bush and Dick Cheney were the most recent president and V.P, they were not present, and their names were almost never mentioned. He said, It was like having a Star Trek Convention without inviting William Shatner.”  

Perhaps the real empty chairs at the convention were the ones that Bush and Cheny should have been sitting in.

I found this picture at www.mediaite.com.  It's not from the 8/31/12 show, but it suits this post very well.

Real Time With Bill Maher # 256 Ninth Circle

Bill Maher opened his show on August 24, 2012 (episode 256) as he always does –with a brief clip from the archives.  He aired the one where someone in the audience started shouting something (I couldn’t make out what), and Bill gets off the stage and walks down the aisle and personally ejects the heckler (with a little help from the paid security guys).

There were times last night when I wished that Bill would jump across the desk and evict a few of the panelists. Last night was my worst fear come true about the show.  Two conservatives on the panel and one middle-of-the-roader who said, “a pox on both their houses”. That left Bill as the only voice of reason. Now Bill is a good advocate for rationality, but he is mainly a comedian. The professional politicians and policy makers can sometimes score points off him.

Bill’s opening monologue began with the Republican convention scheduled to begin in Tampa, Florida on Monday. Hurricane Isaac is also scheduled to arrive in Tampa on Monday. Bill’s Joke: “An evangelical party nominating Mormon and a Catholic and then getting wiped out by a hurricane.”  The sub-text is that evangelicals are always saying that hurricanes are God’s punishment for human wrongdoing, like a gay pride parade.  So if Isaac hits the convention, is the Republican Party being punished for something. If I remember correctly, the first day of the last Republican convention had to be cancelled because of a hurricane. I’m seeing a trend. Maybe God thought they didn’t get the message last time.

The show opened, as it does every week, with an interview. The interviewee was Ariana Huffington, currently a liberal) from the hugely successful Huffington Post.

During the show Bill put a decade-old picture of Ariana and the very liberal Al Franken in bed together (Photo-shopped—they were never actually in bed together.) The picture was making the point –“strange bedfellows”.  Ariana, embarrassed by this reference to her past, quickly changed the subject to her hair. (I bet she gave bill “what-for” backstage after the show.)  Ariana Huffington now espouses liberal views (and does it very well), but she used to be a conservative. Perhaps she shed her politics when she shed her conservative husband; perhaps she saw a profitable niche on the liberal side—I don’t know.

As I said, Ariana does a great job. She more or less said that Ryan was “Romney’s poodle,” the way, Blair, the prime minster of England used to be “Bush’s poodle.”  She said his treatment of Romneyy was like a couples’ relationship pre and post marriage. A woman gets courted by a man because she is an exciting person; but after marriage that’s not what he wants anymore—now he wants her to be a doormat.  The analogy is right-on. Ryan is being forced to tone down everything that made him an exciting choice.

Back to the panel. The conservatives were Avic Roy, from a conservative think tank, Jack Kingston, a Republican and congressman from Georgia (A frequent guest, a much too frequent guest, in my opinion. I groaned out loud, when I saw that he was on the show).  Katy Kay, a correspondent World News America (the BBC in America), was the sole defender of sanity, albeit no liberal.

They argued about Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (Kingston won’t “forgive Justice Roberts”) ,about how Mitt Romney went “birther” the other day while disingenuously saying it was only a joke (mainly Bill), about how Todd Akin’s ideas about rape are the same as those held by Ryan and many other Republicans in Congress (Bill again), about whether or not the stimulus was good or bad for the economy (Avic said bad, whereas most economists agree that it saved the country from a second Great Depression), and maybe some other stuff.  It was hard to follow with everyone talking over each other.

Conservatives have a hard time giving someone else a chance to speak.  I kept hoping that Bill would do what Chelsea Handler did last week—tell them to pipe down.

As the babble went on, I’m yelling at my TV as if Bill could hear me, “Come on. Do some jokes.  Do a “bubble segment”; do the bit with the mock-ups.”  Maybe Bill heard me because he segued to a comedy bit about Republicans putting ads on Craig’s List trolling for sex partners during the convention.  He skewered Christie, Gingrich, and a few others. It’s was very funny.

Finally, it is time for the second guest usually someone from the entertainment business; tonight that guest was D.L. Hughley, a stand-up comedian who stands up for liberal ideas. The exchange between him and Bill was informative and funny. Then, he did it! Kingston interrupted the interview with the guest.  That is very bad form! (I hope Bill gave him “what-for” backstage after the show.) The panel almost always remains silent after the guest comes on.

Chaos broke loose and everyone on that stage was talking at the same time so I couldn’t make out much of what any was saying.  Mercifully, it was time for “New Rules.” The final rule, the one where Bill makes a serious point, concerned the Republicans.  It is where I found the–funniest- line-of-the-week-that-is-also-true moment. “The symbol for the Republican party should not be an elephant; it should be a unicorn “ A unicorn because they live in a fantasy land. Most of their ideas are not based on reality, but some fantasy that just happens to suit their purposes.

Bill, doesn’t title his shows, so I’m going to give This one a title: “The Ninth Circle of Hell is Two Conservatives on the Bill Meher Show.” Can you hear me now, Bill?

 I found this picture at http://wn.com