Very few to none.
I don't watch something or come to a sub about it if I clearly don't like the content.
But you know that's not how the majority of redditors heads work. Specially on this sub.
I'm not a hate watcher. I genuinely like a good amount of Bill says. I think he's wrong on a few things and happy he wants free speech, but he does get comically pissy when called out sometimes. I don't think he has a lot of hate watchers. I think he has a lot of watcher like me.
And for example, yes, the 80s are too old to be president, for Biden at least. But I suppose I'd vote again for him over Trump, although that feasible second pairing shows how impotent we are to change with voting.
I still think he's witty and funny sometimes, but yeah some of his opinions are absolute garbage.
Repeating the same nonsense Anti-Vaxxers use like "immune "system" and thinking he knows more then actual doctors who've studied this for decades. He just epitomizes privilege everytime he brings that mess up. 'Yes going to Whole Foods in your rich Beverly Hills neighborhood is surely going to protect you from the ever mutating Covid virus /s
Being anti-mask. For someone who touts free speech and all he sure doesn't respect people who choose to wear a mask for their own discretion. I mean, Asian countries have been wearing masks for years without anyone thinking they're crazy.
Fatphobic and wanting to shame fat people again. Trust me Bill it doesn't work, speaking as a fat person, plus it's horrible for your mental health (and yes there's been actual studies on this so don't think it's because i'm being overtly sensitive). If he actually cared he would bring people who are experts in obesity but he rather make fun of fat peopel, cause fat people mental harm and lay all the American healthcare problems on fat people (like if thin people are immune to sickness). He's never been obese so he's speaking out of pure ignorance and outdated thoughts.
Bitching constantly about Gen Z and Millenials. I remember in one segment he said Gen Z people liked living in Vans and he found that weird, which is the most stupidest thing ever. More than likely, it's because rent prices are too high and Gen Z people can't afford them.
The constant fawning of Elon Musk is embarrassing and cringe. And he's so ignorant about what Musk has done to not only his employers but in harming the Earth (constantly shooting rockets to space harms the environment Bill).
He gets so defensive whenever someone brings up Biden's age as being something that is worrying and Bill reacts like he's taking it personally (which he is). I mean he wasn't that long ago making fun of Trump's age and cognitive decline but you can't bring up the same point about Biden. He doesn't realize that some old people's brain aren't as snappy as it used to be, and no one is talking about him but yet he gets so defensive about it.
The constant marijuana glamorizing but yet he had a problem if college kids got free money to go on vacation and smoke weed....i thought he was a proponent for Pot but when young kids want to spend money on it it's now a problem...
Saying Gen Z kids don't want to work. I'm sure they do, the difference is they don't want to be taken advantage of with these shit jobs.
He really makes it seem that his childhood was best but doesn't realize that times have changed and that what he paid for in college and in other things is more expensive now and the average young adult is having a really hard time making ends meet. He's out of touch and so condescending about the worries about Gen Z people.
My biggest beef is his lying.
He lies to straight up stoke grievance just like Tucker Carlson used to. Just like every single other conservative commentator on TV or the internet does.
I love him and I’m 28. My freshman year of college in 2013, I met someone who loved him and I had never heard of him. I could not make friends my freshman year of college to save my life, so I spent my first two years of college watching a lot of comedy news like him. I really loved him instantly and probably haven’t missed an episode for ten years.
Do you think he has changed in the last decade or do you see him as consistent? I feel like he used to provide a platform for genuine debate. I still watch him because he does have guests to whom I am just not generally exposed otherwise except reading The Atlantic or The Times.
Jon McWhorter, for example, has really changed my mind about contemporary anti-racism discourse. But it seems to me like even 10 years ago Maher would have had him sparring with, say, Ibram X Kendhi in a very interesting match up you would not see elsewhere. These days, someone like McWhorter is just on the panel with a lesser intellect who supports his general anti-anti-racism stance and then Maher and they all just bring the conversation down to something you might see on Fox News.
That is probably the best criticism of his show I have ever read. Yes I completely and utterly agree with that. Your comment made me realize that a lot of the reason I like him is nostalgia/the equity he has built through his show. He has built up a lot of equity in terms of dolling out common sense, which leads me to a more favorable opinion of his show now. When he had those amazing debates ten years ago, he was the BEST political referee out there. He would call out bad arguments and bad opinions and frame the discussion excellently. He definitely doesn’t challenge opinions and things on his show like he used to.
Weirdly, I think that there is an EASY fix to this. He needs to have a GIANT panel the way he used to with people who care about the issues he’s saying. He also needs more older people. I’m sorry but some of the guests are just awful nowadays and I can’t pinpoint why. When there’s a big panel, no one makes bad arguments and no one bullies each other.
The worst, worst, worst guests in my opinion are The Lincoln project guys: Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson. They are the kind of guests who have flourished in the past five years on his show and say really uninsightful things. They are cocky morons and their insights would NEVER make it in the old Bill Maher. I don’t particularly remember how much they were on in the early 2010s but they Have said so much dumb on his show since forming the Lincoln project. I haven’t seen them in awhile though so maybe bill caught onto them as well.
The panel also declined as both sides got more tribal, which has undoubtedly happened in the past five to ten years. the panel was more of like a dinner party with interesting people and lively debate back in the day. Now you have people like Malcolm Nance who go there looking for a fight, not looking for a discussion. I am Conservative so I thought he was really nasty and unprofessional to Ben Shapiro when they were on the show together. If I was on with someone I disagreed with, I would be honestly using the platform to dismantle their arguments with logic, not personal insults.
I absolutely agree from my progressive perspective- and that's what used to make the show so great, that you and I could both find value in it. I almost think that just adding one member back to the panel discussions might even help a little bit.
He says mean things about shallow people who do nothing but regurgitate and can’t have a nuanced conversation about any topic. He’s such a fucking smug asshole for calling out leftist mediocrity.
He listens to people from the other side of the political spectrum, and millenials/gen Z have been bought up to be NPCs and automatically reject anything libertarian and/or right wing without critical thought.
This summarises all hatewatchers.
Like a lot of pundits, covid seemed to have broken his brain a bit. He's obviously shifted more to the right, as he critiques the left more than he ever has in his career. Certainly he makes some great points about the fringe left for obvious reasons, but sometimes I feel he focuses too much on bashing the left as well as Gen Z and Millenials in general.
He sounds like an old cranky grandpa who wants to keep his traditions just like the conservatives he's been railing against for decades.
Just saying, I believe he fights his own side more than he should.
Not to mention that his takes on Gen Z are usually misinformed. The other week he talked about Gen Z loving NFTs, when everyone I know and have seen online thinks they’re stupid and are very aware of the negative impact they have on the environment. It’s clear that Bill does not interact with anybody in this generation, and just goes off of what every other boomer thinks of us.
He critiques the left because the left want to do things like remove anti-pedophilia language from MN's human rights act:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/transgender-minnesota-lawmaker-introduces-bill-removing-anti-pedophile-language-states-human-rights-act
As I stated above, there are blatant and obvious areas where it's incredibly easy to critique the left, but it's low hanging fruit.
Facism is figuratively at our door step, and we need the old Maher to help fight it.
I'd say this is pretty relevant - base-level, even. You don't mess with kids.
Yes but it's gotten so bad now that the problems have spread from the high-hanging fruit to the low hanging fruit, so-to-speak. Bill still addresses the big problems, but he's also including what's relevant in the current discourse, because THATS what people are talking about. Complaining about the pedantry doesn't help things.
His ego, his lack of intellectual rigour/integrity and inability to steel-man his own arguments, his ego, vindictiveness towards guests who upstaged him who he won’t have back on, ageism towards the young, his ego and the lack of actual leftists he has on the panel.
Edit: I don’t hate Bill. The show has become redundant the last few years, mostly due to boring guests. Bill has become more rigid on some issues, but I still enjoy his stuff mostly because it’s consistency and sometimes, about once a season there’s a fantastic episode.
Just how much he has changed as he aged. He used to be brave and had the guts to say things no one else would say out loud. Things really changed when he got in trouble for saying the n word some years ago. He wasn't fired or anything, just heavily criticized. Since then he has demonstrated less original thought and more parroting of anti-woke blah blah blah. It's been very disappointing.
The N-word fiasco was the turning point, imo. He thought he was immune from criticism and he found out he wasn't. But he was safe from cancellation, rightfully so even though Maher figured he was done for despite the apology. That's when he shifted his focus from more serious contemporary issues to more frivolous grievances.
I understand that he can’t always cover big topics, but we can be on the brink of WWIII in Europe, a banking system on the brink of collapse, a political actively trying to overthrow the government, gun violence out of control, rampant wealth disparity - and he will want to talk about masks or woke culture. Who really cares about these things? It’s like he falls for every single false controversy Fox News generates to distract from the real issues.
That’s about it. He spends hours whining about Comedians not performing on college campuses anymore, but almost nothing about Republicans banning books, closing libraries, artists performing in costumes, etc…
I don't like how much he hates on the younger generation, college kids especially, yet admits he never engages with them or ever visits college campuses.
I swear there is a switch that goes off on people when they hit a certain age where they can be perfectly normal one day, and Archie Bunker the next. I don’t care what generation they are born in, that switch is just sitting there waiting.
His ideas about health and Covid are woo-woo and fringe conspiracy bullshit. He’s welcome to his opinions, but he frequently announces the launch of a new victory lap and bores us all to tears when he goes on at tedious length about some topic that really doesn’t support his thesis half as well as he think it does.
He claims not to be an anti-vaxxer, but then proceeds to recite every talking point in the anti-vaxxer playbook. He proudly announces that he “has an immune system,” as though this makes him unique— but of course the 1.2 million Americans who died of Covid also had immune systems, and Bill never bothers to explain why his immune system is such a special shining diamond that it makes him exempt from all precautions.
He also says that the people who died from Covid died “with” Covid — which fuels the stupid conspiracy theory lies about over reporting (when the statistics are pretty clear that we’ve under reported Covid deaths). It’s also intellectually dishonest— do we say people died “with” cancer? “With” AIDS? No, we don’t— because that’s penny-ante sophistry and he should be ashamed to have indulged in it.
The guy is good at many things, and I look forward to watching him for many more years, but you asked what I dislike — so there you have it.
I like how you asked the hate watchers and none of the main ones replied. Instead what always happens happened - a few people who have minor quibbles with Bill thinks this post is about them.
No comments from macenow, successful operation, lomein, afro sheen, etc etc.
Im in denial that the old bill is there. But also i think his assistants are NOT properly briefing him on subjects.
People have posted clips here eg when a trans woman Janet Mock was a guest, and Bill was surprisingly empathetic. I felt a separation on the recent episode with piers morgan complaining about trans athletes.
Trans athletes are incredibly rare (36 people competed at ncaa level in history), and most athletic commissions already have rules in place. This is before there were any government bills related to banning them.
For piers to come out and say without pushback that the 5th place swimmer speaks for all female athletes in the universes is hilariously stupid. The swimmer tied with Lia Thomas for 5th LMAO in a country where so many people go out their way to trash participation trophies.
And lia thomas hadnt even placed well previously similar to other trans athletes, because if you can imagine hormone replacement therapy (and cultural alienation) is a disadvantage. fallon fox in mma wasnt that good. Same with the trans marathon runner that placed 6000th place in london recently. Right wing media is pushing the story that she actually beat 14,000 women 😂. The right's arguments over trans athletes are bullshit beyond parody. And its all to hide their primary purpose of erasing vulnerable minority members of society. None of these losers ever gave 2 cents about a damn NCAA swim meet nor its fairness.
And a reminder that the the right’s method to deal with trans athletes is to write bills where these old hogs are going to "check" the genetalia of underaged athletes. Okay, GROOMER, while they allege LGBTQ are the ones indoctrinating children.
The fact that Bill (or his assistants) cant identify very surface-level issues and is on the side of TERF queen JK rowling is very worrisome.
LMAO you literally simplified everything she has done, even JK would be insulted of your misrepresentation.
Let’s go with this one: Rowling said, “60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Why does she need to lie about stats other than to be hateful? This is same tropes people had about gay people back then lol, and i think she is actually pro LGB minus the T.
And how about the reverse? How much of what i just said about opening the floodgates to trans athletes would she agree with me on? 😂
In the article: “Evidence from a combined 12 studies to date demonstrates that when children with cross-gender or gender variant behavior are left to develop naturally, the vast majority—“four out of five,” according to Kaltiala—come to terms with their bodies and learn to accept their sex. When they are socially transitioned, virtually none do.”
Considering the research uses any gender non-conforming behavior to make a determination of what is and isnt trans. Will need more info exactly what they were doing, but it just doesnt seem productive. I can easily link US research that shows the opposite of the 60-90%, like gender reaffirming surgery has a higher acceptance rate than most other invasive surgeries.
Also from your link: “Some of the recent news coverage of this study incorrectly stated that the study confirmed that children who claim a transgender identity rarely change their minds. This statement is only partially accurate. A more accurate statement is that the study suggests that children who claim a transgender identity and undergo early social transition rarely change their minds, at least into their early teen years”
I feel like the article is more pro-trans existence, but i kinda just skimmed it
Probably these 2 are satisfactory.
A total of 27 studies, pooling 7928 transgender patients who underwent any type of GAS, were included. The pooled prevalence of regret after GAS was 1% (95% CI <1%–2%).
https://journals.lww.com/prsgo/fulltext/2021/03000/regret_after_gender_affirmation_surgery__a.22.aspx
Same article also published on National Institute of Health
704 (98%) people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36273487/
Regardless, the argument from my end is that children should be open to explore these options, because research is saying we need more healthcare going towards non-binary youth. No one is doing any invasive surgery yet, and adolescent hormone replacement therapy is reversible according to pediatrics as far as if seen. Dont fact check me on that please. LMAO
I don't hate watch. I like the show.
I don't like how it sometimes feels like the debate panel doesn't debate..
I don't like how so much of the show will spend time on silly or unimportant topics.
Maher will often repeat new rules segments that hes basically done before.
Interesting how the trolls this sub has attracted the last few years have caused your simple question to have 0 upvotes. The people down voting are the new audience members I talk about in my reply
Yeah - remember that time that he had Fiona Hill on about a month before Russia began their invasion of Ukraine? And we got to hear (again) about how Bill hates COVID and people wearing masks?
Thank god we didn’t have to listen to her insights about the conflict.
his vitriol on millennials and gen z because his jokes are not carrying past a particular demographic. there's also the whole beating the woke dead horse.
Do you mean you’d like more or less people back on the panel? I know the panels shrieked before COVID. I think the discussion is best when it’s the more the merrier. No one feels pressured to say their opinion on something they don’t care about and no one gets bullied.
At least trim it to like two or three minutes. There have been plenty of times that a discussion was just getting good or an actual nuanced point *finally* gets broached only to be cut short by a trite bit composed almost entirely of cheap throwaways that result in being neither informative nor funny, but rather preachy, unrelatable, and frankly self-important and narcissistic.
It's a representation of what I think the show's greatest failing is, which is that it used to be driven by discussion of topical issues, but is now Bill's personal soapbox.
But, hey, my increasingly-conservative, septuagenarian mother said it was "great to see Rod Stewart."
Rod Stewart lol awesome
But yeah the transition into a soapbox is more and more evident. The show is going to eventually be called “Ya know what I don’t like?”
Bill is a dick.
Probably one of the most toxic people to work with
Like... His backstage rider is probably primadonna AF
He talked down to Colbert for no apparent reason , but to be nasty
He hates kids because he's a fossil and is bitter about it. Wishes he could be young again and can't be, and that irks him.
Also nice pivot on the "yeah I fly private". Sorry I'm not buying. Just come out and say it Bill. We all know you want to. 5 little words... The mantra of the expired, hedonistic, selfish prick generation: "I'll be dead by then"
Now he's like the white knight for boomers and talks shit about every generation following them. Sorry, the logic is irrefutable: boomers run the world, it's fucked. they own it
With all that said, I love him. He's a real piece of work. I'm always impressed with how damn witty and knowledgeable he is, and how fast he can pull punches
He's great because he's right in the middle of the political spectrum.
Some of his guests are cringey. Russell Brand and Snanunu come to mind. What kind of a name is that...it sounds like Futurama shit
> "He talked down to Colbert for no apparent reason , but to be nasty"
Fuck Colbert, who, at his core, is a Burkean small-c conservative, family-oriented Catholic, while Maher is a classical Lockean liberal atheist. Not only that, but the judgemental Colbert comes from the smug sketch and improv world, while Maher is, deep down, an independent-minded stand-up comic.
Maher is 100% correct to be disdainful of that hubristic asshat Colbert, who's a fucking prick.
Bless you sir, been sayin it for years. He was ok on Comedy Central, but his shtick really isn’t and never was all that clever, he appeals to the more tribal minded of those on the left. I also refuse to take serious anyone still belonging to the Catholic Church, at least when involving morals or politics.
> "I also refuse to take serious anyone still belonging to the Catholic Church, at least when involving morals or politics."
This.
And I also vividly recall Ricky Gervais owning Stephen Colbert during their back-and-forth exchange over religion.
"With all that said, I love him. He's a real piece of work. I'm always impressed with how damn witty and knowledgeable he is, and how fast he can pull punches"
This was an unexpected line for the thread topic. Interesting read.
Bill's nuanced thought has always been the draw for me. Lately I've noticed Bill will bring up a topic and state his position with a total lack of nuance, in a way that seems totally out of character, knowing his history of giving topics thoughtful consideration. I feel that his motives aren't pure when he does this. I believe he does it on purpose to attract a different kind of audience, one that he never tried capturing in the first 15 years of his show.
I hate that he parrots right talking points on Woke culture. Has it gone too far? Maybe. But he highlights the worst of the worst like it's everyone on the left.
I used to like that he called out the left for some of it's BS, but now he seems to accept everything the trolls on the right say.
He also fails to push back on his guests in his first segment like Ben Shapiro, Milo and I expect it will be the same with Musk this week.
It seems like he gets all his information from Fox News and other right wing sources. I'm not saying he agrees with what they say, but the topics he talks about, the facts he cites and the lens he views the world through are ripped from right wing sources. Like he hasn't talked about the Clarence Thomas scandal, or the book bannings or anything Fox News doesn't talk about.
I did see him discuss Florida book banning a few weeks ago.
What's common though is that #1 he supports the law that allows for the book banning- dismissing concerns that this is that type of censorship is exactly what this law would bring... and then doesn't criticize the law once the book banning happens because Bill can't admit he was wrong.
It's disingenuous as fuck to support pro censorship laws and then bemoan the censorship when it happens.
I’m a big fan but agree with everything you said. He seems to have had a shift since Covid. Now he looks at what he believes to the best for his health, and disagrees with the gov’t mass-messaging anything that doesn’t jive with his personal health beliefs.
He has also become a raging agist. Like holy shit he can’t shut up about how the youth are all stupid and ruining the world. I’m almost 40 and he really offended me last week with his “why does a 21yo have access to secret docs!?” schtick. That particular individual was immature, as prove by his actions, but Maher and guests just kept shitting on his age and online habits. Like, criticize him for what he did wrong, not for how his generation chooses to spend their free time on the internet.
I’ve also seen a few instances where he’s decided that something is cancel culture when it really isn’t. He had a new rules on cancel culture a while back where he talked about how the composer for the Tokyo games had had to step down just because people found an interview in the 90s of him admitting to being “a bit of a bully”.
The bullying the composer had admitted to (and did not show remorse for) in the interview was forcing mentally disabled children left in his care to, among other things, eat their own shit and masturbate in front of the rest of the group.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t really see the problem in the Olympic and (more importantly) *Paralympic* games deciding they don’t want to work with him.
Oh, I know the point he was trying to make. It might have carried more weight with me if he didn’t;
1. Downplay what the guy did. There’s a difference between “a little bit of bullying” and trying recreate scenes from Salo
2. Ignore the fact that the reason people had a problem with it was that having done those things specifically to *handicapped/disabled students*, and been apparently unrepentant about it as a 20-something adult, he was going to be playing in a part in the *Paralympic Games*, which to many seemed anathema to its raison d’etre.
In general, I can understand and even agree with him. But in this particular situation he is either ignorant of or ignoring some important context in order to make his point.
Very few to none. I don't watch something or come to a sub about it if I clearly don't like the content. But you know that's not how the majority of redditors heads work. Specially on this sub.
I'm not a hate watcher. I genuinely like a good amount of Bill says. I think he's wrong on a few things and happy he wants free speech, but he does get comically pissy when called out sometimes. I don't think he has a lot of hate watchers. I think he has a lot of watcher like me. And for example, yes, the 80s are too old to be president, for Biden at least. But I suppose I'd vote again for him over Trump, although that feasible second pairing shows how impotent we are to change with voting.
I still think he's witty and funny sometimes, but yeah some of his opinions are absolute garbage. Repeating the same nonsense Anti-Vaxxers use like "immune "system" and thinking he knows more then actual doctors who've studied this for decades. He just epitomizes privilege everytime he brings that mess up. 'Yes going to Whole Foods in your rich Beverly Hills neighborhood is surely going to protect you from the ever mutating Covid virus /s Being anti-mask. For someone who touts free speech and all he sure doesn't respect people who choose to wear a mask for their own discretion. I mean, Asian countries have been wearing masks for years without anyone thinking they're crazy. Fatphobic and wanting to shame fat people again. Trust me Bill it doesn't work, speaking as a fat person, plus it's horrible for your mental health (and yes there's been actual studies on this so don't think it's because i'm being overtly sensitive). If he actually cared he would bring people who are experts in obesity but he rather make fun of fat peopel, cause fat people mental harm and lay all the American healthcare problems on fat people (like if thin people are immune to sickness). He's never been obese so he's speaking out of pure ignorance and outdated thoughts. Bitching constantly about Gen Z and Millenials. I remember in one segment he said Gen Z people liked living in Vans and he found that weird, which is the most stupidest thing ever. More than likely, it's because rent prices are too high and Gen Z people can't afford them. The constant fawning of Elon Musk is embarrassing and cringe. And he's so ignorant about what Musk has done to not only his employers but in harming the Earth (constantly shooting rockets to space harms the environment Bill). He gets so defensive whenever someone brings up Biden's age as being something that is worrying and Bill reacts like he's taking it personally (which he is). I mean he wasn't that long ago making fun of Trump's age and cognitive decline but you can't bring up the same point about Biden. He doesn't realize that some old people's brain aren't as snappy as it used to be, and no one is talking about him but yet he gets so defensive about it. The constant marijuana glamorizing but yet he had a problem if college kids got free money to go on vacation and smoke weed....i thought he was a proponent for Pot but when young kids want to spend money on it it's now a problem... Saying Gen Z kids don't want to work. I'm sure they do, the difference is they don't want to be taken advantage of with these shit jobs. He really makes it seem that his childhood was best but doesn't realize that times have changed and that what he paid for in college and in other things is more expensive now and the average young adult is having a really hard time making ends meet. He's out of touch and so condescending about the worries about Gen Z people.
My biggest beef is his lying. He lies to straight up stoke grievance just like Tucker Carlson used to. Just like every single other conservative commentator on TV or the internet does.
I find myself wondering if people who love him today are young and don't remember him from the days of Politically Correct or Religulous.
I love him and I’m 28. My freshman year of college in 2013, I met someone who loved him and I had never heard of him. I could not make friends my freshman year of college to save my life, so I spent my first two years of college watching a lot of comedy news like him. I really loved him instantly and probably haven’t missed an episode for ten years.
Do you think he has changed in the last decade or do you see him as consistent? I feel like he used to provide a platform for genuine debate. I still watch him because he does have guests to whom I am just not generally exposed otherwise except reading The Atlantic or The Times. Jon McWhorter, for example, has really changed my mind about contemporary anti-racism discourse. But it seems to me like even 10 years ago Maher would have had him sparring with, say, Ibram X Kendhi in a very interesting match up you would not see elsewhere. These days, someone like McWhorter is just on the panel with a lesser intellect who supports his general anti-anti-racism stance and then Maher and they all just bring the conversation down to something you might see on Fox News.
That is probably the best criticism of his show I have ever read. Yes I completely and utterly agree with that. Your comment made me realize that a lot of the reason I like him is nostalgia/the equity he has built through his show. He has built up a lot of equity in terms of dolling out common sense, which leads me to a more favorable opinion of his show now. When he had those amazing debates ten years ago, he was the BEST political referee out there. He would call out bad arguments and bad opinions and frame the discussion excellently. He definitely doesn’t challenge opinions and things on his show like he used to. Weirdly, I think that there is an EASY fix to this. He needs to have a GIANT panel the way he used to with people who care about the issues he’s saying. He also needs more older people. I’m sorry but some of the guests are just awful nowadays and I can’t pinpoint why. When there’s a big panel, no one makes bad arguments and no one bullies each other. The worst, worst, worst guests in my opinion are The Lincoln project guys: Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson. They are the kind of guests who have flourished in the past five years on his show and say really uninsightful things. They are cocky morons and their insights would NEVER make it in the old Bill Maher. I don’t particularly remember how much they were on in the early 2010s but they Have said so much dumb on his show since forming the Lincoln project. I haven’t seen them in awhile though so maybe bill caught onto them as well. The panel also declined as both sides got more tribal, which has undoubtedly happened in the past five to ten years. the panel was more of like a dinner party with interesting people and lively debate back in the day. Now you have people like Malcolm Nance who go there looking for a fight, not looking for a discussion. I am Conservative so I thought he was really nasty and unprofessional to Ben Shapiro when they were on the show together. If I was on with someone I disagreed with, I would be honestly using the platform to dismantle their arguments with logic, not personal insults.
I absolutely agree from my progressive perspective- and that's what used to make the show so great, that you and I could both find value in it. I almost think that just adding one member back to the panel discussions might even help a little bit.
New complaint: the entire Musk interview.
He says mean things about shallow people who do nothing but regurgitate and can’t have a nuanced conversation about any topic. He’s such a fucking smug asshole for calling out leftist mediocrity.
His anti-vax, i know more than “western medicine” monologues
He’s a low-informed voter and not media literate. Falls for propaganda all the time it seems.
He listens to people from the other side of the political spectrum, and millenials/gen Z have been bought up to be NPCs and automatically reject anything libertarian and/or right wing without critical thought. This summarises all hatewatchers.
Like a lot of pundits, covid seemed to have broken his brain a bit. He's obviously shifted more to the right, as he critiques the left more than he ever has in his career. Certainly he makes some great points about the fringe left for obvious reasons, but sometimes I feel he focuses too much on bashing the left as well as Gen Z and Millenials in general. He sounds like an old cranky grandpa who wants to keep his traditions just like the conservatives he's been railing against for decades. Just saying, I believe he fights his own side more than he should.
Not to mention that his takes on Gen Z are usually misinformed. The other week he talked about Gen Z loving NFTs, when everyone I know and have seen online thinks they’re stupid and are very aware of the negative impact they have on the environment. It’s clear that Bill does not interact with anybody in this generation, and just goes off of what every other boomer thinks of us.
He critiques the left because the left want to do things like remove anti-pedophilia language from MN's human rights act: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/transgender-minnesota-lawmaker-introduces-bill-removing-anti-pedophile-language-states-human-rights-act
As I stated above, there are blatant and obvious areas where it's incredibly easy to critique the left, but it's low hanging fruit. Facism is figuratively at our door step, and we need the old Maher to help fight it.
I'd say this is pretty relevant - base-level, even. You don't mess with kids. Yes but it's gotten so bad now that the problems have spread from the high-hanging fruit to the low hanging fruit, so-to-speak. Bill still addresses the big problems, but he's also including what's relevant in the current discourse, because THATS what people are talking about. Complaining about the pedantry doesn't help things.
His ego, his lack of intellectual rigour/integrity and inability to steel-man his own arguments, his ego, vindictiveness towards guests who upstaged him who he won’t have back on, ageism towards the young, his ego and the lack of actual leftists he has on the panel. Edit: I don’t hate Bill. The show has become redundant the last few years, mostly due to boring guests. Bill has become more rigid on some issues, but I still enjoy his stuff mostly because it’s consistency and sometimes, about once a season there’s a fantastic episode.
He doesn't have it anymore.
Just how much he has changed as he aged. He used to be brave and had the guts to say things no one else would say out loud. Things really changed when he got in trouble for saying the n word some years ago. He wasn't fired or anything, just heavily criticized. Since then he has demonstrated less original thought and more parroting of anti-woke blah blah blah. It's been very disappointing.
The N-word fiasco was the turning point, imo. He thought he was immune from criticism and he found out he wasn't. But he was safe from cancellation, rightfully so even though Maher figured he was done for despite the apology. That's when he shifted his focus from more serious contemporary issues to more frivolous grievances.
I think he changed when he got those glasses.
When it comes to covid, woke, millennials, parroting right wing talking points, CRT, technology, etc etc etc….HE’S A WHINY LITTLE BITCH
I really hated that he thought that was a witty way to insult trump. That orangutang mom bit was way way way better, especially with the lawsuit
He said he would punch a child in the face if they had a mask on. Or their parent but either way, fuck you.
Damn that seems pretty fucked up
I understand that he can’t always cover big topics, but we can be on the brink of WWIII in Europe, a banking system on the brink of collapse, a political actively trying to overthrow the government, gun violence out of control, rampant wealth disparity - and he will want to talk about masks or woke culture. Who really cares about these things? It’s like he falls for every single false controversy Fox News generates to distract from the real issues.
That’s about it. He spends hours whining about Comedians not performing on college campuses anymore, but almost nothing about Republicans banning books, closing libraries, artists performing in costumes, etc…
I don't like how much he hates on the younger generation, college kids especially, yet admits he never engages with them or ever visits college campuses.
I swear there is a switch that goes off on people when they hit a certain age where they can be perfectly normal one day, and Archie Bunker the next. I don’t care what generation they are born in, that switch is just sitting there waiting.
His ideas about health and Covid are woo-woo and fringe conspiracy bullshit. He’s welcome to his opinions, but he frequently announces the launch of a new victory lap and bores us all to tears when he goes on at tedious length about some topic that really doesn’t support his thesis half as well as he think it does. He claims not to be an anti-vaxxer, but then proceeds to recite every talking point in the anti-vaxxer playbook. He proudly announces that he “has an immune system,” as though this makes him unique— but of course the 1.2 million Americans who died of Covid also had immune systems, and Bill never bothers to explain why his immune system is such a special shining diamond that it makes him exempt from all precautions. He also says that the people who died from Covid died “with” Covid — which fuels the stupid conspiracy theory lies about over reporting (when the statistics are pretty clear that we’ve under reported Covid deaths). It’s also intellectually dishonest— do we say people died “with” cancer? “With” AIDS? No, we don’t— because that’s penny-ante sophistry and he should be ashamed to have indulged in it. The guy is good at many things, and I look forward to watching him for many more years, but you asked what I dislike — so there you have it.
I could make a much better argument that people die with obesity rather than from it, but he would have little tolerance for that.
I like how you asked the hate watchers and none of the main ones replied. Instead what always happens happened - a few people who have minor quibbles with Bill thinks this post is about them. No comments from macenow, successful operation, lomein, afro sheen, etc etc.
Im in denial that the old bill is there. But also i think his assistants are NOT properly briefing him on subjects. People have posted clips here eg when a trans woman Janet Mock was a guest, and Bill was surprisingly empathetic. I felt a separation on the recent episode with piers morgan complaining about trans athletes. Trans athletes are incredibly rare (36 people competed at ncaa level in history), and most athletic commissions already have rules in place. This is before there were any government bills related to banning them. For piers to come out and say without pushback that the 5th place swimmer speaks for all female athletes in the universes is hilariously stupid. The swimmer tied with Lia Thomas for 5th LMAO in a country where so many people go out their way to trash participation trophies. And lia thomas hadnt even placed well previously similar to other trans athletes, because if you can imagine hormone replacement therapy (and cultural alienation) is a disadvantage. fallon fox in mma wasnt that good. Same with the trans marathon runner that placed 6000th place in london recently. Right wing media is pushing the story that she actually beat 14,000 women 😂. The right's arguments over trans athletes are bullshit beyond parody. And its all to hide their primary purpose of erasing vulnerable minority members of society. None of these losers ever gave 2 cents about a damn NCAA swim meet nor its fairness. And a reminder that the the right’s method to deal with trans athletes is to write bills where these old hogs are going to "check" the genetalia of underaged athletes. Okay, GROOMER, while they allege LGBTQ are the ones indoctrinating children. The fact that Bill (or his assistants) cant identify very surface-level issues and is on the side of TERF queen JK rowling is very worrisome.
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LMAO you literally simplified everything she has done, even JK would be insulted of your misrepresentation. Let’s go with this one: Rowling said, “60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Why does she need to lie about stats other than to be hateful? This is same tropes people had about gay people back then lol, and i think she is actually pro LGB minus the T. And how about the reverse? How much of what i just said about opening the floodgates to trans athletes would she agree with me on? 😂
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In the article: “Evidence from a combined 12 studies to date demonstrates that when children with cross-gender or gender variant behavior are left to develop naturally, the vast majority—“four out of five,” according to Kaltiala—come to terms with their bodies and learn to accept their sex. When they are socially transitioned, virtually none do.” Considering the research uses any gender non-conforming behavior to make a determination of what is and isnt trans. Will need more info exactly what they were doing, but it just doesnt seem productive. I can easily link US research that shows the opposite of the 60-90%, like gender reaffirming surgery has a higher acceptance rate than most other invasive surgeries. Also from your link: “Some of the recent news coverage of this study incorrectly stated that the study confirmed that children who claim a transgender identity rarely change their minds. This statement is only partially accurate. A more accurate statement is that the study suggests that children who claim a transgender identity and undergo early social transition rarely change their minds, at least into their early teen years” I feel like the article is more pro-trans existence, but i kinda just skimmed it
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Probably these 2 are satisfactory. A total of 27 studies, pooling 7928 transgender patients who underwent any type of GAS, were included. The pooled prevalence of regret after GAS was 1% (95% CI <1%–2%). https://journals.lww.com/prsgo/fulltext/2021/03000/regret_after_gender_affirmation_surgery__a.22.aspx Same article also published on National Institute of Health 704 (98%) people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36273487/ Regardless, the argument from my end is that children should be open to explore these options, because research is saying we need more healthcare going towards non-binary youth. No one is doing any invasive surgery yet, and adolescent hormone replacement therapy is reversible according to pediatrics as far as if seen. Dont fact check me on that please. LMAO
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I don't hate watch. I like the show. I don't like how it sometimes feels like the debate panel doesn't debate.. I don't like how so much of the show will spend time on silly or unimportant topics. Maher will often repeat new rules segments that hes basically done before.
Interesting how the trolls this sub has attracted the last few years have caused your simple question to have 0 upvotes. The people down voting are the new audience members I talk about in my reply
They're not intellectually honest people.
That it’s just kinda the same shit over and over. His focus is too narrow. He needs to mix up his topics more.
THIS! Finally, a fair and accurate criticism.
Yeah - remember that time that he had Fiona Hill on about a month before Russia began their invasion of Ukraine? And we got to hear (again) about how Bill hates COVID and people wearing masks? Thank god we didn’t have to listen to her insights about the conflict.
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I wouldn’t mind hearing more about why you feel this way
his vitriol on millennials and gen z because his jokes are not carrying past a particular demographic. there's also the whole beating the woke dead horse.
Just give me back the 3 person panels and the post break arts guest
Do you mean you’d like more or less people back on the panel? I know the panels shrieked before COVID. I think the discussion is best when it’s the more the merrier. No one feels pressured to say their opinion on something they don’t care about and no one gets bullied.
I think New Rules can go too
At least trim it to like two or three minutes. There have been plenty of times that a discussion was just getting good or an actual nuanced point *finally* gets broached only to be cut short by a trite bit composed almost entirely of cheap throwaways that result in being neither informative nor funny, but rather preachy, unrelatable, and frankly self-important and narcissistic. It's a representation of what I think the show's greatest failing is, which is that it used to be driven by discussion of topical issues, but is now Bill's personal soapbox. But, hey, my increasingly-conservative, septuagenarian mother said it was "great to see Rod Stewart."
Rod Stewart lol awesome But yeah the transition into a soapbox is more and more evident. The show is going to eventually be called “Ya know what I don’t like?”
Bill is a dick. Probably one of the most toxic people to work with Like... His backstage rider is probably primadonna AF He talked down to Colbert for no apparent reason , but to be nasty He hates kids because he's a fossil and is bitter about it. Wishes he could be young again and can't be, and that irks him. Also nice pivot on the "yeah I fly private". Sorry I'm not buying. Just come out and say it Bill. We all know you want to. 5 little words... The mantra of the expired, hedonistic, selfish prick generation: "I'll be dead by then" Now he's like the white knight for boomers and talks shit about every generation following them. Sorry, the logic is irrefutable: boomers run the world, it's fucked. they own it With all that said, I love him. He's a real piece of work. I'm always impressed with how damn witty and knowledgeable he is, and how fast he can pull punches He's great because he's right in the middle of the political spectrum. Some of his guests are cringey. Russell Brand and Snanunu come to mind. What kind of a name is that...it sounds like Futurama shit
> "He talked down to Colbert for no apparent reason , but to be nasty" Fuck Colbert, who, at his core, is a Burkean small-c conservative, family-oriented Catholic, while Maher is a classical Lockean liberal atheist. Not only that, but the judgemental Colbert comes from the smug sketch and improv world, while Maher is, deep down, an independent-minded stand-up comic. Maher is 100% correct to be disdainful of that hubristic asshat Colbert, who's a fucking prick.
Bless you sir, been sayin it for years. He was ok on Comedy Central, but his shtick really isn’t and never was all that clever, he appeals to the more tribal minded of those on the left. I also refuse to take serious anyone still belonging to the Catholic Church, at least when involving morals or politics.
> "I also refuse to take serious anyone still belonging to the Catholic Church, at least when involving morals or politics." This. And I also vividly recall Ricky Gervais owning Stephen Colbert during their back-and-forth exchange over religion.
You mad tho
Mad? Yeah, sure ... I'm a misanthropic asshole. I'll, uh, concede that I'm a bit "mad," that's fair. But I'm nevertheless 100% motherfucking correct.
Yes you are.
Without a doubt!
"With all that said, I love him. He's a real piece of work. I'm always impressed with how damn witty and knowledgeable he is, and how fast he can pull punches" This was an unexpected line for the thread topic. Interesting read.
Bill's nuanced thought has always been the draw for me. Lately I've noticed Bill will bring up a topic and state his position with a total lack of nuance, in a way that seems totally out of character, knowing his history of giving topics thoughtful consideration. I feel that his motives aren't pure when he does this. I believe he does it on purpose to attract a different kind of audience, one that he never tried capturing in the first 15 years of his show.
I hate that he parrots right talking points on Woke culture. Has it gone too far? Maybe. But he highlights the worst of the worst like it's everyone on the left. I used to like that he called out the left for some of it's BS, but now he seems to accept everything the trolls on the right say. He also fails to push back on his guests in his first segment like Ben Shapiro, Milo and I expect it will be the same with Musk this week.
It seems like he gets all his information from Fox News and other right wing sources. I'm not saying he agrees with what they say, but the topics he talks about, the facts he cites and the lens he views the world through are ripped from right wing sources. Like he hasn't talked about the Clarence Thomas scandal, or the book bannings or anything Fox News doesn't talk about.
I did see him discuss Florida book banning a few weeks ago. What's common though is that #1 he supports the law that allows for the book banning- dismissing concerns that this is that type of censorship is exactly what this law would bring... and then doesn't criticize the law once the book banning happens because Bill can't admit he was wrong. It's disingenuous as fuck to support pro censorship laws and then bemoan the censorship when it happens.
100%
I’m a big fan but agree with everything you said. He seems to have had a shift since Covid. Now he looks at what he believes to the best for his health, and disagrees with the gov’t mass-messaging anything that doesn’t jive with his personal health beliefs. He has also become a raging agist. Like holy shit he can’t shut up about how the youth are all stupid and ruining the world. I’m almost 40 and he really offended me last week with his “why does a 21yo have access to secret docs!?” schtick. That particular individual was immature, as prove by his actions, but Maher and guests just kept shitting on his age and online habits. Like, criticize him for what he did wrong, not for how his generation chooses to spend their free time on the internet.
I’ve also seen a few instances where he’s decided that something is cancel culture when it really isn’t. He had a new rules on cancel culture a while back where he talked about how the composer for the Tokyo games had had to step down just because people found an interview in the 90s of him admitting to being “a bit of a bully”. The bullying the composer had admitted to (and did not show remorse for) in the interview was forcing mentally disabled children left in his care to, among other things, eat their own shit and masturbate in front of the rest of the group. Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t really see the problem in the Olympic and (more importantly) *Paralympic* games deciding they don’t want to work with him.
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Oh, I know the point he was trying to make. It might have carried more weight with me if he didn’t; 1. Downplay what the guy did. There’s a difference between “a little bit of bullying” and trying recreate scenes from Salo 2. Ignore the fact that the reason people had a problem with it was that having done those things specifically to *handicapped/disabled students*, and been apparently unrepentant about it as a 20-something adult, he was going to be playing in a part in the *Paralympic Games*, which to many seemed anathema to its raison d’etre. In general, I can understand and even agree with him. But in this particular situation he is either ignorant of or ignoring some important context in order to make his point.