Re: Warren
 

It's not that he offends me. It's that he's boring. His stuff is tedious. Offending people is no substitute for good material.

Re: Warren
 

People at Trump rallies say the same thing.

Re: Warren
 

His monologue is dull. His interviews, round table, and New Rules are usually excellent. He gets fantastic guests.

I forgot Ricky Gervais in my previous list. And Louis CK. Gervais’ standup is fearless. CK is in exile, but adults can separate his work from his private behavior, and his standup (“Of course, but what if...” most notably) was brilliant and biting.

Re: Warren
 

I rest my case.

This shit is what may cost a D the election.

Re: Warren
 

Jesus. You have no taste at all.

The Office was spectacular. Extras and Idiot Abroad were a lot of fun. I am a big fan of his old podcast and radio show.

He's terrible at stand up.

Re: Warren
 

He is also an apparent self-aggrandized twit.

Re: Warren
 

Bollocks. I love his standup, and his Don Ricklesesque Golden Globes appearances.

But the hidden gem in his catalogue is the animated podcast series with Carl Pilkington. I could listen to Pilkington all day. I won’t pretend to know why. He’s like a sophisticated version of Medicated Pete from the Stern Show, whose prank calls and interviews are fucking amazing, because he has no idea he’s funny.

ETA: But if we’re debating standups, I think you have the Big Three - Pryor, Carlin, Murphy - and everybody else is bouncing around tiers below. Carlin’s final HBO special is a rare moment where an aging pro goes out with a grand slam. And I still listen to Delirious and Raw.

Chris Rock comes closest to that rarified air. But he’s not quite there yet.

Btw, when Anthony Jeselnik is firing on all cylinders, he’s hysterical. But he often seems to phone it in.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I grew up in a real bubble, a right wing one, in upstate NY. My general impression is that blue America understands red America much better than red America understands blue America.

What I still can't understand, though, is who the hell goes to Sebby's cocktail parties? I mean, those sound just awful.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Off my corner, ho! I invented making fun of Sebby's cocktail parties.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Do you think Bill Maher attends them? Yaaaawwwwwnnnnn.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

No.

This is why only I should comment. His cocktail parties are guys from his area, some poor white Trumpers, other "economic" Rs, racially diverse liberals including both rich and poor- but all the average Joe, no celebs. Geez, haven't you been reading?

Re: Warren
 

An episode of Monkey News in one of the podcasts forever killed him for me. So the podcasts were Ricky and Stephen insulting Carl, and they were funny. But there was a Monkey News where Carl claimed there was a shortage of doctors and so a chimp did a heart surgery. To comment on that stupidity (which seemed terribly contrived) one should not say something stupid, yes? Ricky said Carl was stupid because, “a chimp can’t do surgery, you need opposable thumbs.” I don’t think he was saying some meta-dada thing, I think he believes only man had thumbs.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Come on, his cocktail parties are filled with nothing but male mid-level bank loan officers who will only keep coming as long as he's paying for the booze. I bet even his wife skips them all.

One of the loan officers has a spanish sounding surname of some sort, another thinks their grandmother may have been Jewish, and one once voted for a Democrat back in college under the sway of a hippie chick, and so they call themselves diverse.

Also, there is a guy who at the end of every evening, precisely at 10:25, when someone suggests a cup of coffee before getting in their cars, shouts out "Coffee is for Closers" and everyone laughs, so they think they are witty.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Maternal gma or paternal?

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

This is flat. You can do better.

And do you really think I'd throw the party? That may happen by accident. But I prefer attending. I'm the guy who bugs you for a Gauloises in the driveway, complains it's harsh, and walks off. You prattle on in an affected cadence about some carefully selected subject, with someone who buys your bullshit. I look at the moon. Fuck. The Uber is still 3 minutes away.

Re: Warren
 

Me thinks you're analyzing a bit too deeply there. Cognitive dissonance, suspension of disbelief, might serve you well.

(If this is your most dry vintage and I'm whiffing, well done sir. But you owe an assist to two martinis.)

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

They're all kind of awful. People can be really fucking boring. And they're all boring in the same ways. A lot of wit is canned, and most people are not really listening but thinking about the next thing they're going to say. Or they're thinking about how they might elicit some form of reaction, or remain consistent with some personal brand or image they wish to convey.

You can try to outrun Shakespeare's stage, but you'll never succeed.

Re: Warren
 

Not a whiff. The podcasts went on forever- and there was a sameness, Carl is stupid and Ricky will goof on him. The whole Monkey News was stupid on its face, but funny. But Ricky’s goofs were always accurate. Then, in one of dozens of podcasts he says this stupid thing about opposable thumbs? It’s like Norman Rockwell suddenly went dada; or Ricky ain’t so smart? You gonna call someone stupid, you can’t be stupid.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

If you are still talking about Maher's show, agree completely, and he is the worst of them.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I'm betting paternal.

Of course, if they want real diversity, they can always invite Dershowitz. He's always available.

Re: Warren
 

You’ve just undone Trump Nation and identity politics in a sentence.* If you cared about humanity, you might... buy billboards, perhaps airtime?


____
* The redundancy is noted.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Maher’s show, here, the next conversation you’ll have. The third rail is always insecurity and ego. Wrecks all conversations.

You know this.

The only guy who honestly doesn’t exhibit ego of any kind is Hank. I suspect he’s crazy. In a great way.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I've been watching Maher's show for years, due to a spouse that likes him for some reason or another he can't articulate very well. I don't really find him all that interesting or insightful, but he can have a point every now and then.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I'm sorry.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

The shows where he’d have Andrew Sullivan, Rushdie, and Hitchens on were his best moments. Rushdie is a fantastic guest. Sullivan still performs well, also.

He had Charles Blow on a few weeks ago and there were numerous testy exchanges. That was somewhat insightful, because Blow explained a definition of social justice warrior I’d not heard before.

If you’re famous and you’ve done a big book, you do Maher. And he does a solid job of actually researching the books.

His interview with Bannon was also great. He can’t stand the guy, but he held it together and hit Bannon with a polite but strong cross examination.

Maher reminds of the old days, when people engaged rather than shouted over or refused to entertain the positions of their opponents. The days before deplatforming, call out mobs, or someone asserting the opponent had no right to speak because he or she didn’t come from a certain background.

And of course I love his refusal to kowtow to either side’s sanctimonious positions. He rips the crybabies and virtue signalers on the right and left. Is he revealing some amazing new insight? No. But he’s tacking toward the middle and calling out the children and bullshitters on both sides. He’s this rare thing we see little of in political debates anymore: A rational person with common sense.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism is a devastating take on Google. Worth reading.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

My god, Sebbie showed an interest in Rushdie*, someone who is not an old white dude. Amazing. Sebbie, what have you read by him?

* Even Blow gets a mention.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

You select your books by opening the dust jacket to check the photo?

None but some of Joseph Anton. I commented on Rushdie as a guest. I’ve read about as much by Sullivan, as well.

Rushdie, if one is to judge from public statements, close friendship with Hitchens, and non-fiction, appears to be of a sort who would find you quite frivolous and contrived. An object of brief amusement, but not to be dwelled upon for more than a moment.*

____
* The irony is noted. I plead guilty to being a small man at times. But I’m trying to be bigger - to reach “the Hankness” where one is permanently elevated beyond the petty.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

You should read some of his books, dig deeper into his thinking. Maybe after we discuss something like Midnight's Children or Satanic Verses, the two most popular works by him, I'll consider whether your opinion on what he might think is worth any consideration.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No comment on how there does not appear - yet - any new conservative bloc with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh? So far, they have often been in conflict.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Blocs have always been overstated - easier for simple minds if it's a team sport. I think the most notable development this term, however, has been Clarence Thomas going ultra-right without significant criticism from any of the federalist society or libertarian sorts who like to pontificate about the court or from any of the conservative members of the court itself. If you are fond of bloc analysis, I'd say look for the emergence of a third block of the radical right, and don't be surprised if that bloc has a fundamentalist vibe to it (oddly, a Catholic fundamentalist vibe). So there will be an increasing number of decisions where Thomas together with Alito or Kavanaugh or one or two others goes uber-right, the majority kind of shrugs and ignores them, and maybe one or two of the liberals point out that they're total lunatics challenging the very fundamentals of representative constitutional democracy.

And, of course, the court continues to engage in truly crappy historical analysis. But that is neither new nor particularly partisan, even if Alito and Thomas deserve particular awards this year, Alito for Bradensburg and Thomas for the Indiana case. Someone in Bradensburg should have done a "concur but for the moronic view of history" opinion.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I actually see what may be a three-justice pragmatist bloc with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Breyer. Thomas is an absurdity, and Alito simply scary.

As for Bladensburg (correct spelling), it is the next step in the death throes of Lemon, which Scalia colorfully described as:
I am a rabid First Amendment adherent and an often outspoken atheist, but reason is winning out over theism, and the odd cross on a hill is less important or symbolic than it used to be.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I don't disagree with the outcome in Bladensburg, that isn't my beef.

But the historical discussion in there of what the cross means is totally bizarre, and on par with Thomas' scree about eugenics. Crosses at the time were emblematic of a resurgent, New Testament based theology - you see few crosses in 18th & 19th century graveyards, where old testament symbols dominate - and there is lots of history about why the US military adopted medals with crosses at almost exactly the same time that cross went up (the court cites these medals, things like the distinguished cross, as evidence of "secularization" of the cross as if they were longstanding examples not tied to the very historical events they're discussing). The poem cited by them as the use of the cross in the secular is specifically using the cross to symbolize death and resurrection. Just as the justices get wrong what the resurgence of religion in the WWI period meant and how it is memorialized, they often get wrong how irreligious and even anti-religious the founders were, because they have this fiction of the country as a static religiously based culture. They miss the importance of the fact that military graves, by design, didn't carry religious images in the 19th century, and that graves even adopted classical and mythological designs instead of religious designs, and the artistic vision of a field of crosses was new and very aggressively religious (and still is). The whole idea of secularizing religious history to make it acceptable is a total cop-out and abuse of history. The irony is that it is in the context of an historical memorial whose very goal was to preserve the history. I don't think this stuff was needed to get to their conclusion, but the way they fill their opinions with what are really myths is pretty frightening for a body trying to figure out things like "original intent". By way, the athiests who brought this case really ought to want to preserve the history of religion in America, with all its warts, as well.

And that's where it is going to come back to bite us all, in turning some of these myths into accepted history. It's all like preserving Jefferson's home with care but not preserving the horror of the slave's quarters.

But, set aside my pet peeve. Why do you think Kavanaugh would be in a moderate block? He sided with liberals on the Buddhist case, but that fits in with an approach that is broadly protective of religion, and I'm kind of surprised it didn't get more support from conservatives. His other cases of being in the middle so far seem more procedural than substantive, unless I'm missing some (and I may be).

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I've given up on him. The stuff that makes sense is fewer and farther between. I find it astounding that he can talk about how the right is completely resistant to facts and experts when it comes to something like climate change and then talk about how we poison ourselves and we shouldn't have to be subjected to vaccines (for example) in the next fucking breath. He's far too convinced of his own brilliance. And he's mistaken.

TM

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I get annoyed that he doesn't let anyone contradict his worldview. Someone says something smart that he doesn't like, and he shuts down the conversation. And he's terrible with women.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

As lots of women who have worked with him but won't any more will tell you if you listen.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Watching Congresswoman Porter pull his gonads through his urethra and stuff them up his anus was the most entertaining bit I've seen on his show. I bet she can hog-tie a porker in under ten seconds at the county fair.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

I find him perfect in this regard in three areas:

1. Religion. It’s dangerous nonsense.

2. Climate change denial. See #1.

3. Free speech. You’re offended? Well then you’re not that bright. To register offense is to apply to the referee. Now, of course, if you play the refs well, good strategy on you. But the offended Maher skewers aren’t playing anyone. They’re dangerous and frivolous, much like climate change deniers. Or the religious. Maher has a consistency to him in this regard.

On the issue of vaccines, however, if TM is right and Maher believes they cause autism or any other adverse effect, Maher is full of shit. But full of shit on 5% of what a TV personality says is a quite enviable level of gravitas these days.

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

She was very funny, and this is a warped recollection. I’m not sure what you’re going for here, but I’m willing to guess anyone with HBO GO (everyone) would be perplexed, or perhaps unsurprised, by your take on that episode.

She was excellent, and she forced him to work, as does Dan Savage (another great guest) and Sullivan.

Maher’s greatest guest of all is John Waters. I need not explain why. He’s a national treasure (a compliment which would compel him to feign gagging).

Re: Turd in the Bowl
 

Look, dude, frankly, it's just been TMI on you and Maher. I mean, whatever turns you on, I don't want to chill your kink, but you don't need to broadcast. Because, for most of us, ewwwwwwwwww.