New Rule: Bill Maher Should Look in the Mirror: The talk show host, who denigrates people of religious faith, is now lecturing Democrats for alienating voters with woke policies.

Date01 January 2022
AuthorScher, Bill

Earlier this month, on his HBO show, Bill Maher lectured Democrats: "You're alienating a whole lot of people, particularly whites without a college degree," he said, because "you come across as the 'Cares-About-Everybody-But-Me Party.'" He asked, rhetorically, "Why is the party that supports so many issues that benefit the middle class still considered out of touch by 62 percent of Americans?" Then he answered himself: "In plain English, nobody likes a snob ... Your micro-aggression culture doesn't play in the Rust Belt."

At 65, Maher is in his fourth decade hosting a political comedy show, and he's probably never been taken more seriously. Chris Cuomo gave Maher the whole hour of his former prime-time CNN show, Larry King style, to tee off on wokeism. The Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis (and my co-host on the Bloggingheads.tv show The DMZ) dubbed the host of Real Time with Bill Maher "the most powerful voice critiquing the excesses of the progressive left and defending liberal democracy."

But Maher is not the jester speaking truth to power. He is a hypocrite pushing misinformation. If he wants Democrats to win as badly as he claims, he should either get his facts straight or cancel himself.

First, let's recognize how ridiculous it is for Maher to condemn snobbery. He has been the epitome of the condescending coastal liberal sneering at Middle America through much of his career. In a famously awkward Real Time interview a few days after George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, Republican Senator Alan Simpson scolded Ma her for "making fun of Americans who have some religious bent or faith. Keep doing that, and your people will never win an election."

Simpson's advice was not heeded. Maher escalated his fight against the devout with the 2008 documentary Religulous, in which he interviews representatives of several faiths and tries to make them look like idiots. He closes the film with an apocalyptic, histrionic monologue in which he declares, "The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live." (Like Maher, I am a nonbeliever, but the fact is that mankind has lived with religion for a rather long time.)

Two years ago, Maher's snobbery went beyond those who worship God to those who worship fried food. In the course of tweaking the Democratic presidential candidates for supporting expanded health care coverage, Maher said on Real Time, "The problem with our health care system is that Americans eat shit" and "citizens don't lift a finger to...

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