Dear Media: Stop Treating Bill Maher as News
What a badass!
Donald Trump loves to rage against the evil intertwined forces of big tech, social media, television news, and the government. The president sees these forces as hostile to his existence and, consequently, enemies of the people.
Trump has single-handedly corrupted each of those forces. He’s done so fairly recently. Social media was once a hotbed of anti-Trump rhetoric. In a world where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg look up to Trump as a badass alpha male out to defeat the evil forces of “Woke” rather than a messy little bitch who loves drama, Facebook and what I will always call Twitter have made a horrifying transformation into online Donald Trump Fan Clubs.
Trump and Musk are currently in the process of firing everyone in the government they suspect might vote Democratic or give opportunities to minorities. Big tech has similarly gone all-in on Trump 2.0. Ghoulish weirdo Peter Thiel is now the rule rather than the exception in Silicon Valley.
The media have followed suit. They’re firing journalists Trump doesn’t like and currying the crazed fascist’s favor at the expense of their dignity, autonomy, and self-respect.
I’m able to trust fewer and fewer news outlets these days. So many have joined the mad rush and made a right-wing shift when what we need right now is righteous leftist rage wedded to collective action.
One of the many things that annoy me about the media is the widespread attention Bill Maher continues to receive despite his cultural irrelevance. On websites like The Daily Beast and Huffington Post, every episode of Maher’s godawful talk show is treated as news, not some asshole bloviating obnoxiously.
I hate that Maher is treated like an important leftist public intellectual. He’s not important. He’s a smarmy stand-up comedian and television professional who has been getting progressively more insufferable for decades.
Maher has finally reached his peak form; it would now be physically impossible for him to be any more of an absolute tool than he is right now.
Maher is not an intellectual either. He’s just another wealthy, powerful, straight white man who thinks that he’s much more intelligent than he actually is.
Many of these useless articles about what Bill Maher said on his dumb show delve into the seeming incongruity of leftist Maher saying something that perfectly fits the mindset, sensibility, and prejudices of reactionary contemporary conservatives.
Nothing less grown-up than using the phrase “adulting” unironically.
That’s because BILL MAHER IS NOT A LEFTIST. His pet issues are anti-Muslim, anti-trans, and anti-woke. He’s enraged at the idea of green-haired college kids with pronouns in their online bios telling a genius master of the universe like himself what he can say or think.
Maher fundamentally does not matter. He finds himself agreeing with the right-wing Trump supporters on his show because those are his actual beliefs. He’s on their side. He just can’t admit it to himself or his audience yet.
Now that Maher has a stupid podcast where he smokes weed (like the badass sixty-nine year old he is) and holds court there are twice as many Maher productions for the media to treat incorrectly as news.
I’m a freelance writer. I get it: being on the Bill Maher beat is a gig. It might not be Pulitzer-worthy or follow in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein but it is at least hopefully a decent weekly paycheck for someone in my profession.
Maher is not the only funnyman or comic institution who gets covered in the news. The same is true of Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live. I have less of a problem with this because Saturday Night Live has been an important cultural institution for just under fifty years. It has created generation upon generation of comedy superstars. It has left an incredible imprint on pop culture. I’m writing a book about it. I really am! I just gotta get back on that horse and ride it all the way to Completion City, where the metaphors are tortured, and the girls are pretty.
Also, Saturday Night Live is 90 minutes long and involves lots of talented professionals. It’s not a matter of a dude being a dick every week on pay cable. Jon Stewart matters in a way that Maher does not because he is an actual leftist and genuinely funny, two characteristics Maher does not possess.
I am begging you, media: stop treating Bill Maher like news! He’s not news. He’s not important. He does not matter. We should stop behaving like he does.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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