Bill Maher is basically a Reptilian now, the transition is complete.

My appreciation of Maher has dwindled to about nothing these days BUT...

I refuse to watch any video with the clickbait title of So-and-so DESTROYS so-and-so.

[quote] clickbait

Hyperbolic clickbait treats us like infants.

Maher hates Trump so I doubt he'll be MAGA by this or any Tuesday.

I recall that before the 2022 midterms, he encouraged people to vote democrat.

R1 Almost as bad as 'XYZ BREAKS THE INTERNET!!'

Good on Bernie!

love Bernie too. Sharp as a tack.

That was satisfying to watch. Good for Bernie.

Who is the rather cute guy who made the video? Is he a gay?

He tries to be provocative. A few months ago, he started lurching further right. Recently. He seems to have moderated.

Well, Bill Maher just "negotiated" a spot on Fox to debate Tucker Carlson. Producers asked to only talk about the issues they agree upon. Tucker denying he had anything to do with it.

As I said above, Maher is basically a Republican at this point and Fox News knows that. Oh he will try to save face and put on a show as the contrarian but it will be with a velvet gloves as he then throws Democrats or Progressives under the bus.

Bill: "Yuck, yuck, yuck, you and I are the same only different sides of the coin Tucker..you makes some great points, the Democrats should think about and maybe tuning into your show..."

Tucker: You are right, Democrats need to have an open mind!" As Tucker purposely neglects to return the favor and ask his Faux News audience to do the same.

[quote] Well, Bill Maher just "negotiated" a spot on Fox to debate Tucker Carlson.

Unless they call each other “queer” or “crypto-nazi” it will be a snooze fest.

[quote] He used to be a progressive centrist kind of guy, now he seems full Republican rhino. Will be be MAGA by Tuesday?

As usual, RIP, nuance. Maher carries multiple thoughts and opinions. He's not necessarily one thing or the other.

All these threads about Maher being a Republican now, which is simply willfully ignorant, just sound the ugly chicks ragging on the pretty chicks for being pretty. As I've said before, I bet 99% of you know nothing of Bill Maher beyond selected soundbites. Get out of your own heads, do some research & expand your perspectives. Maher & his panel are typically spot on with their commentaries & discuss beyond the prescribed bullet points & agendas you all seem to irrationally & blindly defend.

That BS r12. Everyone has witnessed a change in HIM over the last ten years. It's not just we have moved too far left. He defiantly has picked up a lot of Republican talking points lately. Again, I ask if he didnt change, why all of a sudden is he getting so much bromance for the right? Plus, Bill is not and never was a Democrat. He gets labeled as a liberal but he never was one, he's said so publicly.

Fox News folks talk about him like he's the ONLY sensible Liberal they can sometimes agree with but I have to point it out again, he's not that at all and never was.

[quote]Plus, Bill is not and never was a Democrat.

Awful nice of him to give $3 million to Democrat election campaigns, then.

Strident liberals accuse anyone not agreeing with them as MAGATS. So fucking stupid.

I see that Joe Rogan knuckledragging fanboi brigade has found DL.

[quote] just sound the ugly chicks ragging on the pretty chicks for being pretty.

In no universe is Maher considered a "pretty chick". That's why he has to pay Russian hookers and serve them party favors.

He’s the male version of Ann Coulter.

Yeah he definitely seems to have turned into a right wing dickhead. But whatever keeps the money rolling in I guess.

With whom he's been buddy-buddy for a couple decades now R20.

Are we saying that if Maher argues against any Biden action, he is a Republican “rhino”? (Whatever that is as I thought RINO was a derive term for progressive Republicans.) OP is just mad because Maher is arguing against the student loan forgiveness which is a legitimate point of discussion. I think some DLers might agree there are too many give aways and, yes, including most definitely to the rich and corporations. That is actually more of a traditional centrist economic view.

/ “derisive” term

I still turn on his show but it usually makes my blood pressure climb.

I watched the beginning of last night's episode. It was worth it just for a joke David Sedaris told:

[quote] A cop runs up to two priests and says, "I need your help! I'm looking for a couple of child molestors!"

[quote] The priests say, "We'll do it!!"

He's pissed that he gave Obama a million dollars and he didn't invite him to Martha's Vineyard to smoke newly legalized pot. These white guys go nuts when they feel dissed. See also Matt Taibbi and Russell Whatever his name is

[quote]and Russell Whatever his name is

Crowe?

Tovey?

Johnson?

R26 Maher has been a fan/promoter of Taibbi's for at least 15 years. Birds of a feather get old together.

I liked his closing monologue last night about nepo's. It's true that if you want a career in sports, it doesn't matter who you know if you can't cut it.

He also rants against college now—not against the cost of tuition, not against private elite universities charging more than they return in value, just against higher education in general. He says most people don't need it anymore.

Bill Maher has a degree from Cornell and chose to become a standup comic, and so he thinks college degrees have no value.

A lot more people think this way now, including young people. While employers are now emphasizing skills and certifications more and more, driving young people away from college is going to result in more people who have poorer critical thinking skills and less contextual understanding of society and civics, and it's definitely going to wedge the class divide even further and further as people with means will get those Cornell degrees and most people who opt out are going to end up in poorly paying service work, growing resentful over time and voting for dangerous populists.

Watching more of last night's episode, Bill Maher at least makes sense to me in pushing back against this disturbing reproduce-as-much-as-possible movement.

Both of his guests, NYU professor Scott Galloway and Annie Lowrey, a staff writer from The Atlantic, sound like they are proponents of incentivizing people to breed more, more, more for economic growth and without concern to the environment.

[quote]Awful nice of him to give $3 million to Democrat election campaigns, then.

When the alternative is Trump, that's not a hard thing to do. In fact a lot of Republicans did that. That does not stop them from being Republican just because the crossed the line because their own parties pick was the worst one in modern history.

[quote]All these threads about Maher being a Republican now, which is simply willfully ignorant, just sound the ugly chicks ragging on the pretty chicks for being pretty. As I've said before, I bet 99% of you know nothing of Bill Maher beyond selected soundbites.

Translation = Girl, you dont know me, you dont know me, talk to the hand cus the face aint listening.

R33 eats corn poo.

[quote]driving young people away from college is going to result in more people who have poorer critical thinking skills and less contextual understanding of society and civics

Reality check: Colleges and universities today are captured by DEI and cancel politics. Biology is being cancelled, math is being 'decolonized", profs can't teach classical literary works because students cry 'harmed by white privilege'. Anyone with views deviating from the orthodoxy is being hounded out. Even DEI directors are being forced to resign when they aren't woke enough.

[quote]Bill is not and never was a Democrat. He gets labeled as a liberal but he never was one,

Maher is a liberal / libertarian. He's not a progressive, woke, however you wanna call it, and neither are many liberals and Democrats who aren't Bernie Sanders.

Liberal arts universities tend toward liberal/progressive thinking and teaching, including leading civil rights movements. I went to a public state university in Virginia ans graduated in 2001—a long time ago in what then was a pretty conservative state—and my education was far more progressive than mainstream culture. Among other things, I studied how the media depicts race and ethnicity, sexuality including LGBT people—who in all academic literature were referred to as 'queer'—women, et al. I studied Buddhist art and architecture, and I specifically recall learning of how an angelic-type being called a bodhisattva of compassion was depicted as the male Avalokiteshvara in India but then as the religion spread to Korea, Avalokiteshvara became the female Guanyin, a goddess of the Moon and compassion. We discussed male and female stereotypes with respect to compassion, and the 'transgenderism' of Avalokiteshvara as an idea.

The point is that none of this is new at all.

I found a lot of old papers from my college years, and I made arguments that are as woke as the woke-ist of young people today.

A major difference that is essentially important to the discussion is that when I was in college, we were taught to factor in historic social context, and today a lot of young people for some reason reject that and instead declare that any non-progressive historic events were 'bad' and condemn them without any further consideration.

I think that is a foolish and dangerous way of thinking.

And I think that that will resolve itself. It is something of a fad. It has to be because a culture, a government, cannot reject history altogether and still function. I think this tendency is a fad that will work itself out within a generation or two.

Liberal/progressive thinking is not new to higher education and it's not destroying or corrupting minds.

What is extremely dangerous is throwing the baby out with the bath water by declaring that colleges and universities no longer serve any useful purpose because they "are captured by DEI politics."

Anyone who is half awake knows that our K-12 schools are absolutely failing students overall today thanks not to well-intended DEI awareness efforts—which, by the way, continue to save lives of countless gay kids—but because of poorly design testing and other reforms. Young students learn less today than probably ever in the history of American schools. They are taught certain values, either liberal or conservative, depending where they grow up, and they are taught what they need to know to do well on tests so that their teachers will not be penalized. They are not taught to think critically.

The false notion that all colleges and universities are perversely corrupting young people's minds with 'wokeness' is hardly more of a real threat than the 1980s' satanic panic that made Concerned Moms of America certain their children were going to be abducted and sacrificed to Satan on a stone altar by neighborhood witches.

What most colleges and universities still do is teach higher-level thinking than what kids are taught in K-12 schooling.

People who go to college overall always have tended toward more progressive thinking specifically because they are taught to think critically, and that breaks old paradigms, whether those paradigms are sexist, homophobic or racist, or whether they are scientific or based in political policies.

College has been seen for a long time by the most extreme religious factions as a direct threat to their faiths specifically because people who are taught to think critically end up unable to deny evidences of reality and fantasy.

College is only a threat to concepts that cannot hold together under scrutiny, against the application of logic and reason.

There are endless observations on this site about how Bill Maher has locked himself into the unreasonable thinking characteristic of an old man, with his own ego front and center, and this is why he has come to resent colleges and universities. His critical thinking abilities over the past decades have degraded. His ability to weigh evidence against his own unfounded notions are so bold now that he even developed a recurring 'bit' based on the premise that he 'just knows it's true' despite no evidence or counter-evidence to the contrary. People who think this way are like Meghan McCain on The View, whose judgments are arbitrary and based on personal guideposts. In her case, it's "I AM JOHN MCCAIN'S DAUGHTER." In Bill Maher's case, it's because his glory days involved taking drugs and sticking his dick into grossed-out model-hookers at the Playboy mansion, where he muttered then-liberal viewpoints to other now-old horny white men who thought he was an intellectual, and now those days are gone and he is outmoded and resentful of forces that displaced his indulgent fringe cultures of bygone eras.

All he has left now is resentful nostalgia, and it is a shame that HBO keeps him on the air to preach week after week and influence people to think that universities are a force that is as harmful to the US as Trump and his Nazi followers.

That is insane and it is wrong, and yet these notions are now reverberating among formerly liberal people who resent tha they can no longer live within their bygone glory days. They cling to the nostalgia of what was progressive and exciting when they were young—for example, the fight for gay civil rights—and resent that younger people have expanded civil rights to include new groups and think in new ways about discriminatory forces.

But then again, this is natural behavior, liberal young people becoming resentfully, angry old stuck-in-their-ways people who can't tolerate changes in values and reinterpreting how they were brought up to think. Oh well. As the elderly population grows, there'll be more and more Bill Mahers, people who once argued respect and freedom for all and then aged into Bill O'Reilly types, exerting influence, with resentful old audience members continuing to believe his cranky old opinions are the insights of a great intellect.

I call Bull Shit on all you people who whine about colleges being too liberal, woke or whatever label you want to call it. Most people don't go to college for those kind of studies. They go to learn a skill or fallow a career path that has nothing to do with politics or ideology. I can honesty say I had no idea what most of my professors though about politics or social issues outside the class. They taught the course and everyone was on to the next class. Thoughts revolved around other classmates my own age not what some instructors personal beliefs were, even if they were openly pushing them in the classroom.

[quote] All he has left now is resentful nostalgia, and it is a shame that HBO keeps him on the air to preach week after week and influence people to think

Spoken like a true fascist prick. God forbid someone gets to say something you don’t agree with not to mention that you think the public is too stupid to think for themselves and they’re influenced like children - a hallmark of progressives.

[quote] They go to learn a skill or fallow a career path that has nothing to do with politics or ideology. I can honesty say I had no idea what most of my professors though about politics or social issues outside the class.

Oh, fucking dear.

He's old and rich now so there is some truth to his resentful outlook. It's not about agreeing with him, or being open to a difference of opinion. Everyone, not just the DL has noticed this sort of global conservative shift in his comments the last few years. Like noticing the first stages of your grandfather and dementia, subtle but something definitely going on you cant pin down.

R42 It's not subtle with Maher, but it can be challenging to describe because Maher never was a Democrat. He always was closer to libertarian values but he supported a lot of Democrats as—as he would have posited it—because they were the best compromise.

Maher was farther to the left, as true libertarians are, than mainstream Democratic leaders were decades ago. He favored legalizing drugs (or the drugs he uses, anyway—a hallmark of many Libertarians), legalizing sex work, accepting gay people, environmental stewardship (beyond typical libertarian views), and perhaps above all, he condemned and mocked organized religion. Like a standard Libertarian, he made fun of the people who he criticized in a patronizing and demeaning way, asserting himself to be a superior intellect.

While he was doing that, say, 20-30 years ago, the standard Democratic leader was a Good Christian who thanked God for public display, who dodged more progressive environmental concerns, who was against gay marriage, and who absolutely would not have even broached discussing legalizing sex work or drugs. Remember, Howard Dean's whole career was tanked when he howled on a radio show because that was just considered WILD and unhinged at the time.

And like a standard Libertarian, Maher's reference points seemed primarily self-centered. He likes drugs, and so he wanted to legalize them. He likes hookers and porn stars and so he wanted to make fucking hookers legal and socially acceptable. He thinks religious people are stupid, and yet he proselytized atheism as a competing beliefs system and tried for decades to convert believers into a specific brand of belief in non-belief. One non-selfish value he promoted was environmentalism. So non-self-centered liberals mistake him for one of them.

But he changed over time as an aging man and as a self-centered person, his views have changed markedly. He almost entirely stopped promoting environmental custodianship at least a decade ago. He favors legalizing the drugs he likes but not other drugs. He still brags about his glory days at the Playboy mansion, unaware that this is not edgy and doesn't make him look cool to anyone under 60. He still brags about smoking pot, mistaking that for edgy, rebellious behavior. He buddies up to rappers because he thinks Black rapper buddies make him edgy. His true feelings about religion surfaced, as he boldly framed Islam as public enemy no. 1 and more or less stopped criticizing Christian abuses, with the exception of pedophile-priest jokes—but those are standard, stale, mainstream bread-and-butter jokes now. He suggests now that Christianity is just normal and Islam is evil. His former Greta Thunberg values dissolved almost completely over time, leaving him only to bitch week after week about how California regulations made it difficult for him to get solar panels installed on his home. Once they were installed, he stopped talking about the environment again.

His ego is as fragile as Donald Trump's is. He took on Trump because Trump punched back. Every time Trump calls him a name, he reports it via his show. He cares a lot because he is egocentric and fragile. When his audience doesn't laugh, he boos them—the same attitude Trump showed when Obama told jokes about him. You can feel the rage brewing when Maher is criticized. He takes it personally and his responses are petty.

Jimmy Carter strikes me as an opposite to Maher and Trump. He is truly liberal. He is truly altruistic. He publicly disclaimed Christianity because of its abuses. Maher is all self-referential and self-indulgent, and any altruism he shows is a narcissitic extension of his own interests. Anything beyond that, he condescendingly looks down upon.

[quote] I can honesty say I had no idea what most of my professors though about politics or social issues outside the class. They taught the course and everyone was on to the next class

If so be pleased you aren't a student today. Times change. Now much of academia wishes to push undisguised indoctrination on faculty and students both.

The university of California, Berkeley is currently advertising for a “director of cell culture, fly food, media prep and on-call glass washing facilities”. Applicants need an advanced degree and a decade of research experience, and must submit a cv, a cover letter and a research statement. They must also send in a statement on their contributions to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion. Seemingly everyone (this director, the next head of preservation for the library, anyone who dreams of a tenured professorship) must file a statement outlining their understanding of diversity, their past contributions to increasing it and their plans “for advancing equity and inclusion” if hired.

Not long ago, such statements were exotic and of marginal importance. Now they are de rigueur across most of the University of California system for hiring and tenure decisions. Studies claim that as many as one in five faculty jobs across America require them. And government agencies that fund scientific research are starting to make grants to labs conditional upon their diversity metrics and plans.

------------------

The 64-campus SUNY college system is turning into the Woke University of New York — telling incoming freshmen at all of its colleges that they will have to pass a new “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice”-themed class to earn a diploma.

According to State University of New York documents, the new college racial equity courses must:

Describe the historical and contemporary societal factors that shape the development of individual and group identity involving race, class and gender.

Analyze the role that complex networks of social structures and systems play in the creation and perpetuation of the dynamics of power, privilege, oppression and opportunity.

Apply the principles of rights, access, equity, and autonomous participation to past, current, or future social justice action.

While the primary focus is on equity and social justice in the US, courses can also look at what has happened or is happening in other countries for comparison, the mandate reads.

R30

[Quote]driving young people away from college is going to result in more people who have poorer critical thinking skills and less contextual understanding of society and civics,

I laughed bitterly at this. Colleges are a mix between finishing schools and seminaries now. Students are actively discouraged from any thinking. Conformity reigns.

I usually like Scott Holloway but man he's dead wrong about spawning.

Why do so many otherwise smart people miss the forest for the trees when it comes to having more and more and more kids?

[quote]Everyone has witnessed a change in HIM over the last ten years.

I did and stopped watching two years ago. He wanted pot legal and he knew only Democrats would achieve it. When thy did he had no more use for them.

[quote] His ego is as fragile as Donald Trump's is. He took on Trump because Trump punched back. Every time Trump calls him a name, he reports it via his show.

I don't like Maher at all, but it's pretty obvious that an entertainer would use that for his act. Jimmy Kimmel also shares on his show when he ruffles feathers with a Conservative and words are exchanged on social media.

[quote] Now much of academia wishes to push undisguised indoctrination on faculty and students both.

I don't understand why this has become a problem now? School was always about indoctrination, as is religion. It's about being taught the rules of the game and following them. The only difference is that times have indeed changed, and the new rules don't favor the rich white men type. Is that the issue?

Either you are far left or you are Republican. There is no in-between. That makes Maher a Republican.

[quote] Why do so many otherwise smart people miss the forest for the trees when it comes to having more and more and more kids?

Have you ever seen the opening scene of Idiocracy?

The issue is that the wrong kind of people, aka the stupid, are spawning like rabbits. Stupid breeds stupid and we devolve as a society with not enough smart people around to guide the stupid to be less destructive.

[quote] Describe the historical and contemporary societal factors that shape the development of individual and group identity involving race, class and gender. Analyze the role that complex networks of social structures and systems play in the creation and perpetuation of the dynamics of power, privilege, oppression and opportunity. Apply the principles of rights, access, equity, and autonomous participation to past, current, or future social justice action.

Why are these values bad or threatening?

[quote] I laughed bitterly at this. Colleges are a mix between finishing schools and seminaries now. Students are actively discouraged from any thinking. Conformity reigns.

Conformity reigns in all areas outside of college right now, as well. It is frightening.

Among Republicans, we have seen that members are happy to be a 'flock' and follow wherever their most perverse leaders tell them to go.

Among gay men who form social circles, ultra-conformity is mandatory. Same haircut, same body type, same types of clothing, same performed gay jargon; even conformity to PrEP-over-condoms was an immediate and total change among almost all gay men.

I locked up and left my Twitter account at the end of 2022 because I hate Elon Musk. I wandered over to TikTok.

I have bad news for the people who believe universities are converting young people to McCarthyist witch hunters and word police: This is youth culture among Gen Zers and younger Millennials, college or no college. TikTok has revealed to me that young people absolutely proselytize among themselves about what is and is not 'problematic,' and they immediately 'cancel' anyone who makes any misstep or misstatement outside the bounds of what they deem to be allowable speech. And many of these are the very young people who reject college in favor of playing the influencer lottery, believing now that there are better and easier ways to get rich, and that college is a big scam to trick young people out of their money.

Wokeness resides within youth culture, not just within universities.

People fail to understand that these values have been taught to young people all their lives, and they now have organically taken it upon themselves to patrol society for violations and then shame violators into oblivion.

They do this before they are college aged.

They do this without college.

They do this even when they regard college as a waste of time and money when they can be selling activism and their bodies online.

The only large group of nonconformity I see today is the Democratic party, of all things. It is an amalgamation of people who are ultra-ultra liberal, people who live in gray areas and consider context for all things, people who regard scientific practitioners as ultimate authorities never to be questioned like church leaders of old, and people who believe vaccines are biological weaponry aimed at converting everyone to the autism spectrum and targeting minority populations with deadly chemicals. The Democratic party really is the one big group of outliers that contains people of wildly opposing views who nevertheless agree to compromise most of the time, albeit without ever being silent about their opinions.

R51 Build your castles in the air, you're just going to get left behind.

Ah, the wisdom of Y2K EDM!

^Lmao. I secretly love the music video troll. Don't tell anybody.

Maher is the person who made Ann Coulter a household name to non-Nazis, and he also had Milo Yiannopoulos on and called him "very reasonable," and he's invited Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and others onto his show for one-on-one interviews as part of their book promotion tours.

It's curious that liberal people who have noted these things and denounced him for it are on his "anti-woke" bandwagon, choosing what levels of discriminatory thought to embrace and pretend are not alt-right philosophies.

I will never get the point of having to reach out to pundits who pander to Deplorables. It's like someone telling you that you have to keep checking if a hot plate still burns your hand when you touch it. You do that once or maybe twice, but then you should've learned your lesson.

Maher is an entertainer who pushes the media's narrative that we have to spend precious time (on top of making a living to afford food, shelter, electricity, water, HBO level of premium cable, etc.) to listen to shitheads about how they rationalize they are shitheads. I reserve my compassion for the deserving. And I am sorry, but Deplorables and right wing pundits don't deserve my compassion.

Do I still have to check whether those precious right wing guests on Maher make sense to me or watch if there will come a day where they admit that they are wrong on Maher's show? Gurl, no.

Girlies, I just think that he has mind of his own.

I mean, wtf is this everyone has to be on Rep or Dem lines, some people have outgrown the teenage stage when you were eather a punker or neo romantic.

THat's just what he does NOT have. His opinions are focus group tested, I suspect. You can tell by the way he presents them.

I'm disturbed by his audience's reactions. For many years, one woman with a loud, totally over-the-top laugh has been present in every show. I know all TV shows recorded in front of audiences elicit audience reactions, but his is a political show and I find it creepy that he has orchestrated supportive responses to his opining. I can't even imagine what it would feel like to write up a long political rant like his "new rules" and perform it in front of an audience who you know will cheer and laugh on cue.

He seems like an asshole to me. Has he really changed, though, or is he just showing everyone what he's always been really like?

Has he started slating gays yet? If not, I expect we're next in the firing line. I've only seen the odd clip of him, as I don't 'hate watch' anyone.

I know I should try to look it up, but does anybody know how his ratings are faring, with the switch away from television to the Internet? Is the average age of his audience 60-something like everybody else's? Maybe he's just a cynical old leech or it really is true that his brain has become addled by age (and possibly too much pot).

[quote]If so be pleased you aren't a student today. Times change. Now much of academia wishes to push undisguised indoctrination on faculty and students both.

Well that went right over your head. Its not about what the teachers do or how convoluted their job descriptions are, STUDENTS DON'T REALLY CARE or NOTICE. There there to get in, get out and get laid. Maybe a job when they graduate.

I don’t trust any white person who uses the word “woke” in the way racist, bigoted conservatives stole from black people fighting for racial justice and twisted it.

[quote]Has he started slating gays yet?

He loves the A-Hole conservative gays and puts the on his show like Milky Loads Sullvian and Milo. Although Milo hasn't reappeared since the Pedo incident.

Liberals are so fucking tribal. God forbid anybody question the smallest part of any plank in the "progressive" platform. "You're a fucking DEPLORABLE!!" they screech.

Those of us who are still sane and reasonable, aka centrists, need our own political party. US Democrats and Republicans are both nutty as fruitcakes!

Only one side is aligned with Putin. Only one side stormed the Capitol. Only one side had their lies about the election thrown out of court dozens of times and still refuse to accept reality. Only one side blocks gun control.

There are not good people on both sides.

R65 You're the same. Your first sentence gives you away, because you're clearly using the term "liberals" as an insult.

Maybe look a little closer to home before you start accusing others of being partisan.

R69 is under the impression that "centrist" means a gutless, spineless coward.

[quote]He wanted pot legal and he knew only Democrats would achieve it. When thy did he had no more use for them.

Pot is not legal across the US, as Maher frequently mentions.

R63 stealing is heavy word. Are blacks stealing white culture when they speak English?

Why are you marxists always so delusional? And big fat ugly liars?

[quote] Only one side is aligned with Putin. Only one side stormed the Capitol. Only one side had their lies about the election thrown out of court dozens of times and still refuse to accept reality. Only one side blocks gun control.

Only one side insists that men can become women and women can become men, while at the same time also insisting that biological sex is a spectrum, but also it's not real. Only one side thinks it's totally fair and "inclusive" to have been complete in women's sports, or for violent male rapists to be housed with women prisoners, or for men to live in women's domestic violence shelters because they simply say they identify as women, or for men to counsel women at rape crisis centers, or for men to pressure lesbians to fuck them because those women need to "get over their genital bias."

Only one side wants to go back to racial segregation in the ironic name of "diversity." Only one side thinks it's a great idea to let criminals run amok because "they're only shoplifting" "only burning down a store that has insurance, " "only living in tents and shooting up on the street, " and how can those things possibly hurt anybody, you racist?

I repeat: both sides are batshit crazy.

No they are not and you know it. The evil on the right starts at the top and runs unmitigated to the bottom. Like they do with the Bible, you cherry pick this experiment here that you don’t like, that policy there that you can hyperbolically claim will destroy civilization and create a scapegoat out of a fraction of a percent of the population and claim it’s falsely equivalent to trying to overturn an election, storming the Capitol to hang the Speaker and Vice President and coddling despots because you are treasonous, compromised and corrupt.

R65 — don’t pretend you give a shit about women.

Women have always been demeaned in the grossest terms on DL — until trans people became a thing. Now all of a sudden posters like you act like women’s biggest protectors. GMAFB.

[quote]Describe the historical and contemporary societal factors that shape the development of individual and group identity involving race, class and gender. Analyze the role that complex networks of social structures and systems play in the creation and perpetuation of the dynamics of power, privilege, oppression and opportunity. Apply the principles of rights, access, equity, and autonomous participation to past, current, or future social justice action.

[quote]Why are these values bad or threatening?

Because it's not liberal values (individual rights and freedoms, equality, rule of law, etc.) they espouse. They believe in social determinism on steroids where the individual is only a product of the oppression power differentials. So the individual is always seen as part of some collective engaged in oppression or being oppressed. It's also obsessed with grabbing power, not so much with what may really help people improve their lives.

[quote]Awful nice of him to give $3 million to Democrat election campaigns, then.

[quote]When the alternative is Trump, that's not a hard thing to do. In fact a lot of Republicans did that.

He gave a million to Obama in his race against Romney.

r23 it's a contagion, like this lesbian native rightwinger (which at the time of this comment, got her attacked by the right of course, but also many on the left didn't appreciate her speaking out against Biden. Typically the same people that say Democrats are wasting their time with these flyover states filled with illiterate magat hicks.. where the most liberal are still to the right of their educated betters.)

I'm not on the right, dumbass R73. I'm just no longer a liberal, which I was all my life until the lunatics took over the asylum. Now I don't have a "side" because both conservatives and liberals in the US are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

The fact that everybody who doesn't buy into trans ideology, blatant racism under the guise of "inclusion," and allowing criminals free reign is labeled a MAGAT, a January 6th nutball, a QAnon freak, etc. amply demonstrates my point, so thanks!

Enjoy your intense identification with

R78 is one of this idiots who equates the left being too woke with the right being perfectly willing to burn down our entire country and replace it with Christian nationalism.

People like R78 is why our country is probably not going to make it. Have fun in your new righting Christian America!

Those of us who are moderates and who vote for democrats have not all of sudden become republican. It's just that the party is going through a shift to the left, and our moderate positions come across as conservative to progressives. We haven't changed, the party is changing; and luckily thanks to moderates and southern black people, the Democratic Party has not completely gone off the cliff like the Republican Party has with the MAGAs.

Bill Maher is an entertainer who makes his living being contrarian. He is not your enemy. This is a big problem with progressives, you are constantly going after people who are not your enemy. It's one thing if you just focused on the real enemies, MAGAs, but you have to go after people who are basically on your team just with slight policy differences and people who don't pass certain purity tests.

I love Bill Maher. He’s thought provoking and hilarious. He police's the left from within the left.

I can't hate him because of "Religulous" and his other efforts supporting atheism but I had to stop watching him and all his rightwing guests like Ann Coulter and I think Santorum? Oh I can't remember but if I wanted to listen to them I'd watch Fox News. This was even before he got off on the 'woke' thing.

I watched his new interview with David Sedaris and the whole thing was just peak boomer nonsense. After some back forth about Sedaris showing up in a bog standard Thom Browne suit (whoa weird gay outfit! Edgy!) Maher starts off by congratulating Sedaris for being as funny as “an actual comedian”, sought reassurance from an almost seventy year old man that even though he has a “boyfriend” (of what like 35 years now?) that he wasn’t going to have a baby - because kids todays are the worst, congratulated Sedaris on refusing to take care of his now dead depression-baby father in his twilight years (admittedly, Pa Sedaris has always sounded like a total nightmare) and then finished the whole thing off by congratulating Sedaris, who has been obviously creatively hamstrung for years now that his daily life is nothing but kooky rich person bullshit and all the sad chickens have come home to roost with his weird family. on how his writing is better now than it was thirty years ago!

He’s been sucking coulter’s cock for decades

Thing is we must have dialogue. Having a different point of view with someone we don't know then acting holier than thou will not help. Maher is not one of the bad guys.

Bill Maher is really out of date and he's an arrogant jerk - but I like him. I would love it if he was my grumpy neighbor who always talked down to me and complained about everybody. He's such a boomster that it's cute to me. He's a huge party animal too so he's probably a really fun hang.

OP Maher predicted that Trump would not accept the results of the 2020 election long ago

[quote]OP Maher predicted that Trump would not accept the results of the 2020 election long ago

That didn't take a Nostradamus, r87. Did you think he would?

R39 - you’re an idiot. This type of thinking has infested all majors via the cores/pre reqs. I had a business major friend who, in a core elective, was writing a white privilege paper based off of the (garbage, yet sacrosanct to “academics”) article by Peggy McIntosh in the 80s.

This was in the mid-late 00’s.

You have to withdraw from these classes the moment you suss this out, or just deal with it to move on.

University educations are largely garbage now, and the whole system needs to be completely rebuilt (including financing) but that’s way beyond the scope of some kvetching over Bill Lager’s HBO late night show.

Every day we see this crap: some allegedly woke opinion piece supposedly written by a leftie no-one ever heard of given a national platform just so the right can attack it, meanwhile the right passes actual laws forbidding the mention of gays in school, as though that is somehow the equivalent. We will of course find out eventually that some of these "woke" pieces were written by right-wingers under a psudonym, but meanwhile the public will have fallen for it. It happens over and over and I really think the public must be taking some type of drug that makes them stupid or they would have woken up to this dynamic.

And Bill Maher is certainly part of this right-wing dynamic. Perhaps even an originator of the tactic.

Maher is pretty smart and knows that a very gradual pivot to the right will protect him, even though he claims Libertarian values. He knows, as others that completely blissfully ignore the upcoming election in 2024, Trump's return with all the angry magats which will make the first Trump presidency look like an Obama term. The complete and utter inaction of our current government to root out this garbage pile of republic party members who are traitors will come to bite us in the ass so hard, the lines for passports out of the country will be a record, which actually they are currently now.

So don't blame Maher for his views, he is just laying the groundwork for the eventual Christo-fascist takeover, and he wants to be on a side or at least a fence that he can sit on when they start coming for us.

Totally agree with R80.

He is openly hostile to religion. No amount of pivoting would prevent him from being the first sent to firing squads of a theocracy. Are you unable to masturbate so you just type as a substitute?

[quote]He’s been sucking coulter’s cock for decades

I don't think she's been on his show for at least a couple of seasons now, has she? If so, perhaps I missed her.

[quote]driving young people away from college is going to result in more people who have poorer critical thinking skills and less contextual understanding of society and civics,

Seems like we did way better with critical thinking, contextualization and civics (especially civics) prior to the 1990s when fewer people went to college.

I watched about an hour of NewsMax yesterday (I wanted to see the trash at the Trump rally), and they kept gushing about Maher. They kept saying he's not a conservative but he's finally seen the light of common sense. Maher has stumbled upon a song and dance that appeals to stupid people on the left and on the right. I

R13 thank you. First of all I never agree 100 with my political personalities. However Maher puts on a provocative show independent of his stance on any given issue. A host must still function within the demands of television network, originality, uniqueness, and profitability. He would be doing a great disservice by being pedestrian but 100% right or even moral.

Hell a brilliant host will be parr devil advocate seemingly working into their overall persona.

R97 gets it.

R80 Excellently said. Some on here seem to act like Maher is the new age Bill O’ Reilly.

The problem that the fringe left have with centrist liberals or independent thinkers because they’ve been told they’re entire the smartest people in the room. That’s the thing they are smarter than their ideas work on society at large.

Social media only deemed him a “Republican” when his antivax views came out during Covid. His antiwoke rants seem from him being “canceled’, most recently by the left.

Bill Maher is our enemy. Always has been. He still has MIlky Loads on his show.

I think the insanity of the neo-progressive left is driving a lot of centrists to the right.

Reminds me of the old Pogo cartoon (and yes, that has me showing my age)

R103 I fucking despise them and I'm sick of living under their boot.

R101 He’s been aggressively anti-vaxx for years. I remember his anti-flu and H1N1 vaccination arguments being particularly ignorant.

Yeah right, r103, it's the "neo-progressive" left who are the problem.

YOu're not and never have been. But I think we need to start enforcing some discipline because that's one thing the right has always been good at.

[quote]He’s been aggressively anti-vaxx for years.

Yes, I’m aware. But he caught more shit for it during Covid than at any other time in his career.

[Quote]I watched about an hour of NewsMax yesterday (I wanted to see the trash at the Trump rally), and they kept gushing about Maher. They kept saying he's not a conservative but he's finally seen the light of common sense.

The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general. They celebrate when they find common ground and work to cooperate and build bridges.

Everything liberals delude themselves about and never actually do because they're too busy reenacting the Crucible, usually in an egregiously inappropriate personal situation. Liberals send so many personal relationships down in flames and then seem genuinely surprised to be hated.

[quote]The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general.

Yes, that's exactly how I'd describe Donald Trump.

You'd be right, R110, because that's exactly how he is.

[quote] Yeah right, [R103], it's the "neo-progressive" left who are the problem.

Someone who’s upset because they’ve heard a truth they don’t like will post a sarcastic retort with no actual refutation in it.

Hi r106!

[quote]The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general.

I don't think this is true, but they are more willing to support the candidate with the R after his/her name, even if they are not their first choice candidate. As republicans have told me time and time again, any republican is better than any democrat. After a brutal nomination fight, it can be hard to bring some democrats around.

I definitely get annoyed with his entire Covid stance. But I think that's why I like his show. He does have Ann Coulter on. And Bernie. And Milo. And Scott Holloway. And himself, of course.

I actually like hearing people debate their divergent views in an intelligent way. It either further codifies my own beliefs or, if the evidence is insurmountable, acts as an agent to change or alter my beliefs.

I am never, ever afraid of new, different, oppositional or challenging ideas. Never. I welcome them.

And then I call them out as either good, bad, or both using ethical and critical thinking skills.

Thought he was an Independent.

(For instance, when Kellyanne Conway was on Maher? I really, really understood what a lying sociopath she is. Ditto Milo. Maher, in a way, let them hang their own noose by allowing them to talk to an entirely new audience who otherwise would never really hear what they had to say - other than in news clips and soundbites.)

Oh, cool!

It's the weekly "ermuhgerd, Bill Maher is turning into a MAGAt!!!!" thread that somebody starts every time a new episode of Real Time drops.

Such insightful comments! Such thoughtful discussions, full of nuance! Always the hottest of hot takes!

[quote] As I've said before, I bet 99% of you know nothing of Bill Maher beyond selected soundbites. Get out of your own heads, do some research & expand your perspectives.

So you're saying it's our responsibility as human beings to research a humorous news commentator until we have come to the same opinion as yours.

Got it.

What a persuasive argument!

[quote] The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general.

You’re so right!

I agree Heather!

Rightwing people are very tolerant of difference!

That young Dylan Roof, he was a very respectful fellow.

Ron DeSantis is particularly tolerant of gays and trans people!

I really admired the respectful way Payton Gendron politely shot me in that Tops supermarket.

[quote] I definitely get annoyed with his entire Covid stance.

He's an entertainer who got cock blocked, making money by touring with his stand-up routine. It just shows that making money is more important to him than some old and people at risk dying from coughing a little.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Sometimes I like Bill (used to love him) and other times I want to punch his smug face. In the end, I think he's still an ally but fed up with a lot of bullshit. I don't believe he totally lost the plot.

R66 which Maher makes a point of reiterating every week.

[quote]Awful nice of him to give $3 million to Democrat election campaigns, then.

[quote] When the alternative is Trump, that's not a hard thing to do. In fact a lot of Republicans did that.

[quote]He gave a million to Obama in his race against Romney.

Again, look at the alternative, Mr. Romney "corporations are people too, got binders of woman"

Besides, lest be honest, Bill is out for himself and the one issues he cares about above all else is his right to smoke pot. Republican party was were never pro pot. In fact it was lock em up.

"Maher is a right-winger who repeatedly gives money to Democratic campaigns because he doesn't like any of the candidates the right-wing party puts forward!"

[quote] However Maher puts on a provocative show independent of his stance on any given issue. A host must still function within the demands of television network, originality, uniqueness, and profitability. He would be doing a great disservice by being pedestrian but 100% right or even moral.

Again, that's not what's happening here. Maher was doing that when his show started decades ago. Now as other have pointed out he has shifted to the right when taken in totality. No we have not moved to the left BS, he is the one that is apposing right wing ideology he would not have embraced before.

[quote] I definitely get annoyed with his entire Covid stance. But I think that's why I like his show. He does have Ann Coulter on. And Bernie. And Milo. And Scott Holloway. And himself, of course. I actually like hearing people debate their divergent views

Oh for fuck sake, people like Ann Coulter and Milo are not politicians with a different view of America, they are shock jocks who have made a fortune string up shit for profit on TV and social media. Their goal is to make money by saying things to piss people off or get the praises and viewers for "owning the Libs".

Bernie is an actual politician elected by the people he represents. The fact that you cant differentiate that from media personalities says a lot about your lack of intellectual ability to compare public statements without digging into the motivation behind them.

R131 Maher is not fkin right wing. Cultural issues be like 3/4ths of these political shows topics. Most people would be seen as right based on hollyweird standards and common sense.

[quote]The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general.

Oh really? Please show me where NewsMax or FOX has a full time host that is openly Liberal. I am not talking about their little bitch Juan Williams they pull out once in a blue moon to pretend they are "fair and balanced". I am talking about something like MSNBC where Morning Joe who started the show as a Republican and still has many many Republican on his show nightly. Nicolle Wallace, Michael Steele just to name a few. Where is the right wing version of that on Fox or NewsMax where the host is a Democrat?

Maher is a bit of a dipshit.

How Dare he have a thought that you disagree with. String em up boys

[quote] The right is much more tolerant of ideological differences and respectful toward people in general. They celebrate when they find common ground and work to cooperate and build bridges.

Come on. You don't really think anyone is going to take you seriously with that garbage.

I don't watch his show anymore but didn't Maher defend the up to 3rd grad Florida "Don't Say Gay" ban when it passed?

What has ol' Bill said since Meatball Ron intends to raise it up to 12th grade level now?

Bill Maher isn't a conservative, he's a libertarian, which is probably worse. I watched his show about 2 months ago and he was saying how he's glad he no longer has anybody in his audience who groans or feesl awkward when he make an off-color or questionable comment. Which to me means he want's dittoheads who agree with everything he says. Shout it out to the echo chamber Billy!

I love the word dittohead and I intend to start using it again. I had forgotten it. Thank you R139.

Member when all & sundry on here wanted to carry him on their shoulders, because he sang from their song book? Since he isn't doing that anymore the pitchforks are out for him.

For R139 and many others here - Bill Maher is also a comedian. People have forgotten how to take a joke, and the progressives / wokesters are especially guilty of literal thinking.

[quote]They kept saying he's not a conservative but he's finally seen the light of common sense. Maher has stumbled upon a song and dance that appeals to stupid people on the left and on the right.

Maher hasn't really moved anywhere. The rest of the spectrum moved, further right and further left.

R132 your claim is that I don't understand that Bernie and Coulter have different professions?

Um. Okay. Cool.

[Quote]That didn't take a Nostradamus, [R87]. Did you think he would?

But many did disagree with him R88

Whenever I see someone complaining about "wokesters" here I immediately tune them out.

Go Bernie. Bill Maher is a complete moron just like his out of touch fans. And yes, he and they are both conservatives.

R142 "Maher hasn't really moved anywhere. The rest of the spectrum moved, further right and further left. "

That is inaccurate and false equivalency. The the left does have a small number of ridiculous woke, but they are a small minority. The right is overwhelmingly MAGA extremists today, with at least 90% Republicans falling within that category. Bill Maher makes it sound like both liberals and conservatives are equally extreme, which is why he's out of touch.

R147 no he doesn’t. Again, he makes a point of that every week. Maybe he goes more on in on the woke because he knows the Dems eat their own (ie the cancellation of Al Franken) and he doesn’t want them to lose. He’s right in that Republicans know how to play the long game - and win.

Concern troll, maybe- turncoat , no.

[quote]the cancellation of Al Franken

The moment a lot of sane democrats started to go WTF

I stuck with Bill for a lot of years and always liked him. Then at some point I just burned out on his schtick.

I may watch a show of his again some time but I'm not really planning on it.

I like him even more after he exposed the trans activism as homophobia (which objectively is) with Andrew Sullivan.

R147, you're the one calculating shares and percentages. I just mentioned the general shift which is there.

And a lot more centrist Dem politicians than you imagine have slid into further left positions on various issues - out of expediency, political opportunism or responding to activist and donor pressures. R149 is right on the money bringing up the Al Franken affair as one watershed moment.

I still want Franken back and I'm not a "WTF" Democrat. I'm totally on board with the Democrats in Congress, the Senate, the White House and the administration. I think Joe Biden is doing a great job. My only issue is that the Democrats have gone so far to the right and it's insane.

The radical right has shifted everything everything everything in this country to the right-wing extremist position. This defines normal, centrist Democrats as "hard left" but it's a phony label.

The Democratic Party today has moved to the Reagan Republican positions. We need to move it back to the Left for real.

Hey asshole, maybe nobody really shifted that far left and you just slid right without noticing?

[quote]The Democratic Party today has moved to the Reagan Republican positions.

Like what?

Lying about election results sucks. Russia sucks. There shouldn’t be pictures of the First Lady with her fingers in her snatch available to the general public. North Korea sucks. Trying to kill the Speaker and VP is treason.

The guy guest this week says he believes that the planet can comfortably house "100 or 110," presumably billion, human beings. Insane.

A recent poll has 57% of Americans viewing the word/movement "Woke"

as a positive thing so he is out of the mainstream (along with the GQP).

R151 Hi Andrew!!!

He looks like an old turtle, to me.

R147. 99.9% of dem positions have a solid majority of the nation behind them.

The "San F. $5 million per black" plan doesn't have a majority but that isn't the national party position anyway.

Woke has just become an acceptable replacement for the n-word.

OP, he was never a progressive. A centrist yes, which he still is.

R162 Agreed.

R12 Ha, yes, Maher has always been so "nuanced"....

If you haven't tracked his continued drift to reaction and the Right, you haven't been paying attention. It has nothing to do with nuance and complexity.

R139 I am a libertarian. Fake conservatives pass legislation like the don’t say gay under the guise of protecting children but it’s really a ruse to dredge up identity politics and cultural resentment. Conservatism is about passing minimal laws and doing the most so business can succeed. Only a fake conservative would support the don’t say gay ban as it is not a purposeful law. Well unless your purpose is to create cultural wars and ostracize an already marginalized group. It’s time real conservatives and libertarians call out these fake ones.

Republicans suck ass

Republicans are fascists

[quote] The guy guest this week says he believes that the planet can comfortably house "100 or 110," presumably billion, human beings. Insane.

The 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 people for a long time have openly called for the human race to be pruned down by 17 eighteenths.

Lotsa luck being included with the chosen few.

This is what Republicans really want. White Christian fascism. Gay people are not safe under Republican. No minorities are. And women aren’t either.

R170

*Republican rule.

I skimmed through the past 80 or so comments that I had not seen yet and, wow, a majority of them read like the comments under a Fox News or Breitbart article. (Is Breitbart still a thing, by the way?)

It's crazy to see on DataLounge, a site that used to be full of both wit and intelligence, and which was thoroughly liberal. Now it's childish name calling, conservative vitriol, hatred of different groups of people, cultural amnesia about how overtly gay people were discriminated against just a couple of decades ago...

I only hope that the clientele of the site has changed over time, rather than the same people who have always patronized it just drifting rightward to become MAGA-adjacent.

It's not lost on me that the original poster also used a QAnon-like 'reptilian' reference, of all things to say.

[quote]Rightwing people are very tolerant of difference! [quote]—6,000,000 murdered Jews

Me too

R172 the left has driven all of the intelligent and witty people out.

Tell me when you see or hear a progressive making light of anything in an insightful way. It doesn't happen.

R174 Why would a MAGA Republican even come to this site in the first place?

For the most part, MAGAs aren't coming here. The petite you're calling MAGAts are mainly disaffected liberals who are now without a party because the left-wing has become as crazy and detached from reality as the right. The fact that you and others keep insisting that we HAVE to be right-wingers because you cannot conceive of anything existing between hard left and hard right shows this to be true.

And yes, encouraging children to have cross-sex hormones that will sterilize them and/or surgery to obliterate their genitals is every bit as bad as denying elections (which the left also do), trying to seize the Capitol, etc. Both sides have gone completely bonkers and the sane people can no longer identify with either one.

[quote]Woke has just become an acceptable replacement for the n-word.

Wrong. N word is a derogatory word used solely because of person' s race.

Woke is used as an insult for a person who lacks critical thinking skills and sense of humor, no matter their race, gender or sexual orientation..

R175 It's a gay site, not the Liberal Arts adjunct and suburban librarian lounge.

[quote]I still want Franken back

WHY? He's a pussy who ran out the back door as soon as he could. Look at Gaetz, look at George Santos. They are shit but they dug in and said "I'm not going anywhere" and they haven't. Franken could have kick ass for the last two years and didn't.

He's a pot head.

R178 Right: It's a gay site, not a site that should be hospitable in any way to Republican sympathies.

[quote]too much pot

As if there even is such a thing.

R181 It isn't the 80s anymore. If Democrats want support they can earn it.

R183 Are you a Log Cabin Republican? A Trump supporter? A Putin supporter? A QAnon proponent?

[quote]Tell me when you see or hear a progressive making light of anything in an insightful way.

Tell me when you see or hear a conservative making light of anything without insulting a minority.

R181 Democrats now favor turning gay kids into trans kids. How's that grab ya?

R186 You're completely insane. You are not living in the real world. You're either a propagandist troll or else you are an obsessive compulsive paranoiac.

R185 Republicans are doing most of the successful comedy these days. They've dominated for several years now.

[quote]Tell me when you see or hear a conservative making light of anything without insulting a minority.

Tell me you're playing language games without telling me you're playing language games.

"insulting a minority' is the new 'cry wolf'

R168 It's not Republicans who are silencing and attacking women just for speaking about single-sex spaces.

I think you don't know what 'fascism' is.

[quote]Maher hasn't really moved anywhere. The rest of the spectrum moved, further right and further left.

LOL NO THEY DID NOT. We are not playing "both parties are bad" game here anymore. Only one party invaded the capital. Only one party wanted to kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House, Only one party defecated in the Capital during an insurrection. Only one party tried to overthrow the election. Only one party used activist Judges to overturn 50 years of legal precedent. Only one party is behind Don't Say Gay laws. I will give you a hit, it's not the left.

Spare me the BS about gender terms, you really think that is on the same level as trying to murder the VP or overthrow the U.S. government?

[quote]Republicans are doing most of the successful comedy these days. They've dominated for several years now.

Republican comedians are the Christian music of comedy. Christians music is very popular among it's believers, the rest of the world knows it's crap.

Nah, Maher just got older, more tired, and intellectually lazier.

I think this is just some of his existing prejudices now coming to the forefront. He's now just too tired to suppress them, and too lazy to properly engage in the issues. So he just relies on simple heuristics, which are easily applied by the dull mind, to make decisions and form opinions.

That's all that "radicalization" really is. Being spoon-fed propaganda that provides easy answers which promise to soothe one's ego, fits one's pre-existing intuitions about the world, and prevents one from having to undertake the exhausting task of thinking critically about things. It's a shame but that's sometimes the price of getting old.

I know he's a renowned atheist but I haven't really listened to him in a while. Is he starting to get on board the Christian train? That's usually a sign that one's having an existential crisis about death anxiety, and the true death knell of rational thought.

His God is money, right now that means kissing up the right wingnuts that watch Fox News.

He really is just a pathological contrarian. It doesn't matter what the person in front of him says. If he says something first and they say "I agree," the he heaps praise on them. If they disagree or if they say something first, he will disagree.

[quote] For [R139] and many others here - Bill Maher is also a comedian. People have forgotten how to take a joke, and the progressives / wokesters are especially guilty of literal thinking.

And you have apparently forgotten that your side chased Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger out of their own party for not kissing Trump's ass anymore. You accusing Liberals and "wokesters" of literal thinking is such an obvious projection of what you and your side are guilty of.

[quote] For the most part, MAGAs aren't coming here. The petite you're calling MAGAts are mainly disaffected liberals who are now without a party because the left-wing has become as crazy and detached from reality as the right.

Sure Jan. You're one of those die-hard Liberals who just couldn't vote for Hillary, because of how she handled her emails. *rolling eyes*

[quote] He really is just a pathological contrarian. It doesn't matter what the person in front of him says. If he says something first and they say "I agree," the he heaps praise on them. If they disagree or if they say something first, he will disagree.

Panels and interviews rely on discussing point and counterpoint. Even a Frau show like The View knows that. Why, as a viewer, have you not realized that?

R191 The histrionics are so fucking stupid. Do you not realize how goofy you sound?

Agree, R198. A majority of posts lately are written with a Richard Lewis-level neurotic intensity. It's gotten frustrating to read anything on this site anymore with all the urgent panicked posts, all the MAGA Nazis and Republican defenders, all the anti-transgender lunatics who say all of the exact same things antigay lunatics said up through the 1990s—and on a predominantly gay message board, of all places. I do not understand how this conversion happened. This used to be such a fun place with witty, intelligent, progressive posters.

R199 The only histrionics I see are from braindead partisan Democrats who live in a fantasy world. The right is steadily becoming more liberal and socially progressive than the left. It may be time to start making peace with that fact.

[quote] The right is steadily becoming more liberal and socially progressive than the left.

Ah. Right. You are wise., well informed and honest.

[quote] Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with his collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the ideological shifts and polarization of the political parties in Congress from the 18th century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.

[quote] "The short version would be since the late 1970s starting with the 1976 election in the House the Republican caucus has steadily moved to the right ever since. It's been a little more uneven in the Senate. The Senate caucuses have also moved to the right. Republicans are now furtherest to the right that they've been in 100 years.

[quote] The right is steadily becoming more liberal and socially progressive than the left.

No one with a brain could possibly believe this.

R202 He's a propagandist.

In 2015, this site was invaded by Milo Yiannopoulos/Breitbart white supremacist trolls. Longtime site visitors will remember that. That was the year before Trump was elected and no one believed any political operatives would target a site like DataLounge because it is small and populated by liberal gay people. Recall that it was effective, and many people shared the INSANE message that Donald Trump would be "the most gay-friendly president in history." Insane.

Then the trolls went away after the monster was elected and the people left here were in shock and noticed the sudden disappearance of propagandists.

Then, in the 2018 midterms, the site was flooded with "migrant caravans!" and transgenders-in-bathrooms! propagandists. They began in the spring and ended literally the day after the midterm elections.

Nazis, explicit white supremacists, took over around springtime the year before Biden was elected. Many disappeared after the election.

We are heading into an election year, and Muriel appears to be giving the site over to Nazis and other disinformation agents once again.

R203 You wonder why people turn their backs on you. Fuck off with your.... omg! You're a propagandist!

Maybe you're a Russian troll lol 😆

I think all the witty and intelligent posters either left or died R199.

Now it's trolls, young gaylings who seem to have stumbled onto this forum from god-knows-where, and others I can only assume to be fraus who find us through affiliated gossip sites like LSA.

[quote]The right is steadily becoming more liberal and socially progressive than the left.

What a world we live in - absolutely anything is asserted as true simply because someone wants to believe it and can find "validation" in some cranky corner of their social media universe. And the real point is not to state and share some "truth", rather just to say some in reaction that will 1) offend 2) anger and 3)"own" the "other side".... it's all about reaction now, not truth. A reactionary world. This essay from the LRB is spot on.

Everyone is a moron. Except him or course. It's his schtick.

I just realized that I have never even had one single thought about Bill Maher in a sexual way. LIKE EVER - NOTHING.

I find him sexually, well again, nothing.

R208 You and everybody else.

[Quote]young gaylings who seem to have stumbled onto this forum from god-knows-where

Unacceptable, R205. How dare they.

[quote]And you have apparently forgotten that your side chased Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger out of their own party for not kissing Trump's ass anymore. You accusing Liberals and "wokesters" of literal thinking is such an obvious projection of what you and your side are guilty of.

I literally said "people". Why your brain translated that into the whole left spectrum is a mystery. It's also a mystery why it's so hard to figure out a wokester isn't a Liberal. The term Liberal used to mean something more specific than 'everyone on the left'. But I guess that's not important to someone who just sees two teams and whoever doesn't maniacally cheer for your team must absolutely be on the other team.

The largest voter group in the US are the Independents. Apparently such people don't exist in your view.

Indepedents: gutless, spineless cowards who don't want to offend anyone with their choices, but in the end, offend everyone.

Wokes are neither left (in fact they despise American working class, predominantly white or Hispanic, they are middle and upper middle class snobs) and they certainly are not liberal, they are in fact illiberal and pro censorship. It is just a stupid fashion that will die out, like for eg. Mccarthisim did.

So, R213, given your obvious liberal-minded values... you certainly must abhor Governor DeSantis and all the many other Republicans in statehouses, state legislators, and local councils who are promoting the most significant censorship movement in our history. Books, curriculum, pictures of spouses, songs.... all ripped from students ' and teachers' hands.

It's just astonishing how these Republicans are suppressing ideas, literature, music, ideas, words... right? Right?

Let's hope it dies out. But it seems to be a totalitarian movement of young people who got a taste of power and is bullying everyone who is not one of their flying monkeys.

R215 So you are saying that DeSantis and the troglodyte Repub book burners are young people?? I don't understand...

Yes, both the uber wokesters and the DeSantis squad suck. See how easy that was?

Great. Consistency. I'll look forward to all your anti MAGA, anti-MAGA posts decrying their suckedness.

[quote] The right is steadily becoming more liberal and socially progressive than the left

you are fucking on CRACK.

What R176 said.

There's so much nonsense in this thread, and I am struck that—unless I overlooked it—the original post says that "Bill Maher is basically a Reptilian," a hallmark go-to wacky accusation of QAnon and not a single person has pointed out how bonkers such a thought is. It's just accepted as normal now to accuse a person of secretly being a nefarious shapeshifting cold-blooded humanoid lizard person. Fucking crazy crazy crazy, and this is our world now.

R221. I think people (speaking for myself at least) assumed that OP was gently poking fun at such conspiracy theorists who DO believe in shapeshifting lizards.

And whom Maher may be inadvertently aligning himself with.

OP's just a partisan look.

[quote] in the 2018 midterms, the site was flooded with "migrant caravans!" and transgenders-in-bathrooms! propagandists. They began in the spring and ended literally the day after the midterm elections.

The posts may have "ended" but the invasion on the border hasn't. Nor have the trannys

Three days ago ...

Or R224, the number if kids shot by guns in their own country while Republicans refuse to do anything about gun control. Kids dying from mass shooting is now the number one killer in which a child is likely to die in America.

Ugh. I kind of like waking up for a couple of hours between 3:30-6 am as I often do, but the downside is that the Russian trolls tend to be out in full force, posting pro-GOP propaganda and anything divisive based on hatred and fear, which is currently anti-transgender propaganda.

[quote]Are blacks stealing white culture when they speak English?

Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of people are even ON Datalounge these days? I cannot even imagine the kind of person who would say something like this.