Tag: Real Time

Bill Maher: I don’t believe in God, but horses have spirits and Liam Neeson crushes them

by Douglas Ernst 25 Comments

Bill Maher PETA

Bill Maher is a very confused atheist. On one hand he mocks religious people for believing in God, but on the other hand he gives interviews with PETA where he laments the fact that Liam Neeson favors crushing the “spirits” of horses in New York City. Horses have “spirits,” according to the guy who thinks that humans are all just a bunch of atoms and molecules and random electrical impulses that just-so-happen to collide in ways that make life (and the illusion of free will) possible.

Mediate reported Thursday:

HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher is no longer a fan of actor Liam Neeson. In a new video posted Wednesday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Maher railed against Neeson’s support for New York City’s controversial horse carriage business.

“My life-long Liam Neeson fandom has ended, I can’t stand to look at him,” Maher said. “Why a guy would go out of his way to champion animal abuse, I have no idea. […] If anyone has ever seen a horse run wild, even in movies or whatever, you know that’s the furthest from the way these animal should be,” he concluded. “I mean they have a wonderful spirit and to get them to do that job, you have to completely break it.”

Someone needs to inform atheist Bill Maher that for guys who believe we’re all just a bunch of random electrical signals following a program we can not control, words like “should” and “spirit” are a no-no. If we’re all essentially running on a computer program that will end in black, why does he care what Liam Neeson advocates for or against? In fact, if the Real Time host wasn’t so intellectually confused he would say that Liam Neeson has no choice but to advocate for horse-and-buggy rides in New York City because that’s what his computer program is telling him to do.

Dinesh D’Souza puts Mr. Maher’s problem in perspective in his amazing book “What’s So Great About Christianity.”:

“We are moral beings. We have moral concepts like “right” and “wrong” and “good” and “evil.” We “ought” to do this and “ought not” to do that. Try as we can, we cannot avoid this way of thinking and acting. Morality is an empirical fact no less real than any other experience in the world. Kant argues that for these concepts to have any meaning or applicability whatsoever, it must be the case that we have a choice whether to do something. Ought implies can. This is not to deny that factors both material and unconscious might influence our decision. But even so, we are at least sometimes at liberty to say yes to this option and no to that option. If we never have such a choice, then it is simply false to say I “should” do this and “shouldn’t” do that because there is no possibility of deciding one way or the other. For anyone to recommend one course or action instead of another is completely pointless. If determinism is true, then no one in the world can ever refrain from anything that he or she does. The whole of morality — not just this morality or that morality but morality itself — becomes an illusion.” — (Dinesh D’Souza. What’s So Great About Christianity. 248)

Are we just a complex computer program that luckily wrote itself with the creation of the universe, or do we have free will? If we have free will, then Maher is in for a whole new load of headaches.

I’ll let Stephen Hawking describe it for him:

Now if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories in science into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. Our ideas about scientific theories…assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and to draw logical deductions from what we see. In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer toward the laws that govern our universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion?” — (Stephen Hawking. A Brief History of Time. 12-13)

Perhaps we should cut Bill Maher some slack, since even Stephen Hawking finds himself aimlessly wandering around inside a paradox — or perhaps not since Bill Maher regularly says really mean things about people who believe in spirits, the soul and a non-local consciousness that directs and guides us.

The point is this: Bill Maher might want to think twice the next time he mocks religious individuals, given the fact that he now finds himself defending the spirits of horses, which his atheism demands he must deny.

 

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Lena Dunham and ‘Girls’ crew ‘rage’ on ‘sexist’ reporter — but zip it for Bill Maher

by Douglas Ernst 14 Comments

Lena Dunham Bill Maher

If you’ve ever watched HBO’s ‘Girls’ and wondered why it features so much of Lena Dunham’s skin, you’re not alone. A reporter at the Television Critics Association press tour had the same question. He asked it tactfully, and was suddenly deemed “sexist” by Judd Apatow.  Producer Jenni Konner pronounced that the question had sent her into a “rage spiral.” Oddly enough, there were no “rage spirals” sent Bill Maher’s way when he made a comment that — using Konner’s standards — was certainly worth one. More on that later.

First, the “offensive” and “misogynistic” comment that irked Apatow, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.

“I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show — by [Dunham] in particular,” the reporter said, according to EW. “I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you go, ‘Nobody complains about all the nudity on “Game of Thrones,”’ but I get why they do it. They do it to be salacious and titillate people. And your character is often nude at random times for no reason.” — Reporter

Now, the response by the ‘Girls’ crew:

Judd Apatow: “That was a very clumsily stated question that’s offensive on its face, and you should read it and discuss it with other people how you did that. […] It’s very offensive.”

Jenni Konner: “I literally was spacing out because I’m in such a rage spiral about that guy. […] I was just looking at him and going into this rage [over] this idea that you would talk to a woman like that and accuse a woman of showing her body too much. The idea of it just makes me sort of sick.”

Lena Dunham: “I totally get it. If you’re not into me, that’s your problem and you’re going to have to work that out with professionals.”

Now to what Bill Maher said on HBO’s ‘Real Time’ while interviewing Mike Rowe of ‘Dirty Jobs’ fame. The two were talking about 3 million good “blue-collar” jobs that can’t be filled in the U.S. because Americans either a.) won’t train to take them or b.) refuse to apply.

Bill Maher: Do you watch the HBO show ‘Girls’?

Mike Rowe: *with sarcasm* Religiously. …

Bill Maher: Well it’s very hard to imagine those chicks — who don’t have jobs and they’re sponging off their parents and doing stupid things like working at coffee shops — they would never even consider taking a job as a plumber even though the lead girl shows more ass crack every week than 100 plumbers.”

What is more “sexist” and “misogynistic,” Mr. Apatow — a reporter who simply wants to know the rationale behind what he sees as an excessive amount of nudity, or Bill Maher referring to “chicks” that “show more ass crack every week than 100 plumbers”?

Where is the “rage spiral,” Ms. Konner, for Bill Maher? Or do you only go into “rage spirals” for men with a smaller megaphone than you? When one puts the two comments side-by-side, it appears as though Bill Maher’s comment would be worthy of a “rage tornado” or perhaps a “rage vortex.” What gives?

Question for Ms. Dunham: Should Bill Maher seek help with professionals? And (admittedly, a side note) do you regret making that creepy ad where you likened voting for Barack Obama to losing your virginity — especially since most women don’t lose their virginity to a guy with a “Terror Tuesday kill list”?

One guy flatly said he “doesn’t get the purpose” of the amount of nudity on the show and he’s accused of being a sexist; the other guy refers to “chicks” like Dunham and likens her to the stereotypical (male) plumber who shows too much of his hairy butt to customers — and crickets chirped.

Given that ‘Girls’ and ‘Real Time’ both air on the same channel, one would think that Mr. Apatow would want to make it known that there isn’t room for such “misogynistic” talk amongst HBO family. I guess not. Either the ‘Girls’ crew sits silently while Maher does his thing because he has too much clout, or they do so because he’s an ideological ally. Which is it? My money is on the fact that Bill Maher tends to defend the guy Ms. Dunham lost her “voting virginity” to in 2008.

If any of the “chicks” over at ‘Girls’ — particularly Jenni Konner — go into a “rage spiral” now that Maher’s observations have been more forthrightly brought to their attention, I’ll let you know. Chances are that you’ll see Lena Dunham naked again before Bill Maher gets a public earful from Judd Apatow, since they like to talk about drugs together on ‘Real Time.’

Judd Apatow is perfectly fine calling a reporter who asks an innocuous question a "sexist" to his face, but would he do the same to Bill Maher? Magic 8 Ball says: "Not likely."
Judd Apatow is perfectly fine calling a reporter who asks an innocuous question a “sexist” to his face, but would he do the same to Bill Maher? Magic 8 Ball says: “Not likely.”

Bill Maher discovers: Subsidizing ‘dirt bags’ creates more ‘dirt bags’

by Douglas Ernst 9 Comments

Bill Maher

Either Bill Maher has been watching Dinesh D’Souza videos, or he has been playing Oregon Trail. Whatever the case, it seems as if something went off in his head because he’s finally acknowledging that there are an awful lot of people asking for an awful lot from the American taxpayer. Or perhaps Maher and D’Souza have the same accountant, and the guy explained the situation to each of them using the same wagon metaphor? Who knows.

The “Real Time” host used Friday night’s show to admit that Romney sorta-kinda had a valid point about America’s growing entitlement culture:

Maher: Okay, so basically what Mitt Romney was saying was, you know, “These spongers, these grifters, these people, I wouldn’t piss on them if their ass was on fire because they don’t pay in.” But it’s not really 47 percent. But I, here’s my question: It’s not zero percent either, takers. I mean, there are a lot of dirt bags in this country, and I think it’s somewhere in between 47 and zero. I think we should split the difference and say we have 23.5 percent dirt bags in America. I do. …

And here, listen to this about disability. People who take disability, who are on disability, in 1968 it was 51 to1, people on disability to people who worked. In 2001, not that long ago, it was 23 to 1. Now it’s 13 to 1, 13 people to one who are on disability. Now, of course, you know, some of that is real. We are an overworked, overstressed, polluted, ripped off and lied to people. So, I mean, obviously there are some people who really do have disabilities. But 13 to 1? You know, it just seems like there’s less people pulling the wagon and more people in the wagon, and at some point the wagon is going to break.

Compare the point Maher was making with Dinesh D’souza speaking to a group of college kids at Oregon State University in October, 2012:

Dinesh D’Souza: I’m simply saying that here we are as a country and for two centuries we’ve had people pulling the wagon. And we recognize, and I would agree, that there is a group of people — and you can disagree about how many — but I would say about 10 percent of people are weak and disadvantaged and need to sit in the wagon and need to have the rest of us pull that wagon. Again, you can disagree about how many people should pull the wagon, but that number [of people sitting in the cart] has been increasing considerably.

This is sort of what Romney was getting at. That at some point there are more people in the wagon than there are pulling. And then the people who are pulling begin to think, “Maybe I should stop pulling and get in the wagon. It’s kind of nicer in the wagon.” And what my criticism of Obama is, instead of saying: “Listen, I really want to thank the people who are pulling the wagon,” he goes, “The people who are pulling the wagon are greedy, selfish and materialistic, and the people sitting in the wagon are wonderful.” He is morally demonizing the wagon-pullers and championing the superior morality of the guys who are sitting int here.  And all I’m saying is, this is an inverted morality. The guys who are actually contributing to help the disadvantaged, these are the sacrificial members of our society, and they’re the ones who deserve a little more credit.

Bill Maher is a conundrum. He’s dumb enough to publicly say that “socialism works,” but he is smart enough to identify some of the accounting problems exacerbated by its philosophical implementation. Given that, one must assume that his real problem is that he’s just dishonest. He knows what’s on the horizon. He knows that we are speeding toward that cliff. He knows that the great big debt-tower is going to come crashing down. He knows it’s all a matter of time, but because he wedded himself to a philosophy years ago, he now spends most of his time figuring out ways to obscure its failures. And like Darth Vader, somewhere deep down inside there’s still a piece of him that seeks to do the right thing, and from time to time he’ll say something that makes his droids squirm.

Think about it: Bill Maher, the guy who donated $1 million dollars to Obama’s SuperPAC (and all he got were higher taxes) is now on the same page as the guy who starred in 2016: Obama’s America. Classic.

Family Guy Waxing Political, Comes off as Bill Maher’s Dumb Bumblebee.

by Douglas Ernst 1 Comment

Well known and established Reagan Scholar Seth MacFarlane believes The Gipper would try Cheney for war crimes. The good friend of Reagan advisor and Attorney General Ed Meese wowed scholars with his insights. Oh, I’m sorry, I misspoke. What I meant to say was: Seth MacFarlane, intellectual light weight, talked with good friend and Reagan-hating bile belcher Bill Maher. I apologize to all of those at The Heritage Foundation who actually know a thing or two about conservatism.

But Bill Maher isn’t interested in having conversations with conservative heavyweights like Meese or Lee Edwards because, these days, even his reliable ego-massaging audiences and actor friends think he’s troubled. Bill needs to be the smartest guy in the room, even if that means hearding a bunch of 9/11 conspiracy kooks into the studio.

But back to Seth. You know, the guy who probably never read Reagan: In His Own Hand, or Dinesh D’Souza’s Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, or any book on Reagan for that matter. Seth is too busy doing serious research on old reruns of Mr. Belvedere.

Here Seth, I’ll make it easy for you: Watch John Yoo dismantle liberal “intellectual” Jon Stewart here. I know it’s a bummer that questions about protecting America can’t always be boiled down to a Stewie sound bite for you to benefit from financially, but the sooner you realize that the sooner you’ll stop making a fool out of yourself on Maher’s little liberal HBO coffee klatsch ( I was going to say “circle jerk,” but Anderson Cooper has the market cornered on lewd words and phrases meant to denigrate those you disagree with while making old people scratch their heads in confusion).