It was my pleasure to review Bill Maher’s new book, “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You,” for this week’s Washington Examiner. I confess that I am a Bill fan. I don’t have HBO, so I often watch a bootleg version of the live show that someone in some faraway country uploads on Friday night. I am part of a ragtag crew that shows up to haggle in the comments section. There are all kinds of people (freeloaders) represented there, from those that are probably sitting at home in their keffiyeh scarves to some guy whose profile pic is an eagle with a machine gun in its talons. I mostly comment on Bill’s appearance — his choice of belt, his glasses, the sheen in his hair.
I started watching sometime in 2020, looking for a little sanity in the pandemic, and quickly found that Bill had interviewed many of my favorite authors. He also had a reputation as a sex-positive libertine, a singleton by choice with a preference for big-titted broads as well as nerdy girls. He is a furious defender of free speech.
I always had the impression, though, that Bill was in fact a sensitive and shy person who only felt comfortable holding court from his throne on “Politically Incorrect” from 1993-2002 and “Real Time” from 2003 to the present. He’s a workaholic, a lifelong loner who has devoted himself to comedy with precision and singular focus. Raised Roman Catholic, his public atheism does little to conceal a kind of religious rigor, if one is willing to look closely. He told fellow comedian Adam Corolla that he eats nothing but raw eggs, yogurt, and nuts before 9PM each day. He often advocates vigorously for the return of certain virtues that have disappeared from modern life: personal discipline, formal dress, interpersonal toleration. He calls romantic love “the last mystery.”
You can also watch (and listen to) Bill’s podcast Club Random where he wears Hawaiian shirts and sits in a dank-looking basement with various illustrious guests. The chairs look uncomfortable and Bill often interrupts, but I enjoy watching him get high and talk over his guests. He’s unrepentant, the way the Marquis de Sade was unrepentant, but he has a soft heart. He cares about America.
Over at the pearl-clutching section of The New York Times, a commenter called Christine McM sniffed: “I used to watch him regularly, but in the past years, his edginess got to me … a country in turmoil simply isn’t funny.” It isn’t? Do we really need fewer reasons to laugh?
From my review:
[Maher] demands to know of the Democrats how “the party of FDR and JFK is turning into the party of LOL and WTF.” He defends creative liberty, warning that “art and coercion is a bad combination.” He laments the powerlessness of the individual in an unhealthy society: “You can … put a healing crystal up your ass, but there’s no escaping the environment we all live in.” He attacks the fat positivity movement: “You’re not a freedom fighter because you want to keep eating donuts.” Alongside that, there is surprisingly deep advice: “The answer isn’t to insist that everyone in society love you exactly the way you are, it’s to learn to tell the ones who don’t that you don’t need them.” And he is absolutely correct when he diagnoses millennials as emotionally squeamish — a notion any woman can verify by viewing the thousandth picture of a dating-app douchebag saying he’s looking for “good vibes only.”
Bill makes additional claims:
“[The] real issue” in America today is “class, not race.” He has no problem alerting incels (whom he hilariously terms “digital eunuchs”) that it might be time to take down their Ayn Rand posters: “Somewhere along the way libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession” with a “selfish prick” version of “free-market capitalism.”
Some thoughts on our era:
Individualism is giving way to solidarity, in ways both good and bad. And Americans — of all people — are yearning for constraint.
Writing in The Guardian, Ross Barkan calls this a new Romantic age. Trust the science is no longer an enforceable mantra, he says, and young people today, like the Romantics in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, are seeking “spiritual realms” that reach beyond “rationalist precepts.” Are you a heathen looking for a honey? It might interest you to know that according to a recent study by The Survey Center on American Life, almost half (49%) of Americans say they would be less likely to date someone who does not believe in God.
And finally:
These days, everyone is writing about either dissent or divorce. You half expect to see an Elon Musk essay in The Cut about how moving to Mars and ditching the third rock from the sun allowed him to “find himself.” But Maher urges us to stay grounded and embrace being on Earth.
I prefer Bill at his most acidic. Some people object to the rancor that fuels his current humor, but I appreciate the passion that drives his statements about controversial topics such as fitness. Bill can be frank, but as he says, being healthy isn’t just about being able to see a healthcare provider — it’s about being able to see your frank and beans. It’s about living a good life, which is a balanced life. And yes, that means making time to laugh.