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#634 - Old Skin on the New Rules (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-25 22:54:22
Imported:
2026-06
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David

People here may like the podcast "I Hate Bill Maher," where a comedian watches every ep of Real Time from 2002 on. Similar to the OG Michael & Us format

Ciaran Colley
>>178405758

I particularly love the snippets of him in the current opening to each episode where he comes out with the following gem: "I wasn't the class clown in school, but I was the class wit"

Oliver Elliott

As someone who saw the original run of the special editions, I can assure you that the Jabba CGI always looked like complete shit.

Oliver Elliott

Maher is right that younger people have the politics that they have because they don’t remember the Soviet Union. My pet theory is that there are basically two generations in the West: people born c. 1935-1975 whose worldview was shaped by schismogenesis with the USSR and everyone born after. The “free” West is/was defined as everything that the USSR wasn’t. So if the USSR was collectivist then the West had to be hyper-individualistic, etc etc. If you weren’t raised in that Cold War propaganda atmosphere, none of it makes a whole lot of sense. I’d argue that’s even true of a lot of younger right wingers.

Kainien Morel

Ah, AI-enhancement of Hong Kong Cinema and Bill Maher. No doubt the boys are firing on all cylinders today. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of all my STAR WARS-devotee friends, I can't really be convinced to give a shit about the preservation of "the original, O.G., celluloid, slightly-turned, highly-combustible STAR WARS trilogy"', presumably because, like many people though not as many Americans, the films were an element of a moment of my childhood that I didn't carry on with. Sure, I assume Han Shot First, but I don't have a residual fondness for blurry, jilted shots of otherwise-detailed models moving in front of poorly matted green screens; I'll have to leave that to the at least dozen distinct "de-specialized" edits of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK that keep appearing on my YouTube feed, I'm sure they know what they're doing. On a subject I'm more capable of relating too: I don't know when I had my own turn on Bill Maher. He's a fixture of that period immediately after I emigrated to the United States an was still an undergraduate student, and I know there was a time I found myself agreeing with him broadly, though with two exceptions from the start (the inevitable future hegemony of California, and that weed is natural, comes from Mother Earth, and good for you, but the later is because of my national creed, "No Weed Please, We're Taiwanese."). So whenever that turn happened, it may've not been unlike STAR WARS--I grew up, and didn't take Bill Maher with me. I don't recall being very impressed by his anti-clerical irreligiosity, though I probably agreed with it when he started voicing it at the height of North American Catholic Church sex scandal coverups breaking into the wider consciousness, despite my own hostility for anything that wasn't my own family's ignoble Tao-Buddhist-Confucianism, and I did recognize his own common Islamophobia. Unfortunately (as noted by the likes of Chapo Trap House, and to your boys' dismay I'm sure), while outright anti-Abrahamic atheism isn't quite the immediate execution-by-firing-squad offense among the American political right that it was back when George Bush said admitted atheists probably shouldn't be entitled to U.S. citizenship, the current incarnation of the conservative right--and its immediate neoconservative/paleocon predecessors that it's awkwardly managing and Maher has a familiar history with, at least, as a "boomer liberal"--is still thoroughly steered and dominated by conservative Christian and particularly Evangelical sentiments and priorities (and considering how the vast majority of American still profess some kind of 21st century piety, that's not really surprising), which renders Maher's "Hollywood weed-smoking California atheism" more of an accessory than anything, not unlike how even openly secular white liberals have to cheer, say, a historical Southern Black Church who played a noted role in bringing down Jim Crow but still thinks gays, Muslims, and non-Christian foreigners are going to hell, in that order. Atheism, particularly like that of Maher's, no longer has the shock value that probably attracted personalities like Maher's in the first place anymore, but it doesn't really change that it's still politically marginalized to a comedic degree, just as Sagan and Dawkins noted forty years ago; it's political bark without bite, which they would've seen in political societies where admitted atheism was already nearly or completely socially respectable, as in certain parts of East Asia. In Taiwan, Christians are a far more unified voting "bloc" than Atheists, and they certainly are more successful at getting their own flock elected to high office despite the numerical disadvantage; Maher and his ilk and just skipping the step of there being "lots of atheists" to the next step of religious political mobilization on one side of the American spectrum or another. Or he just likes "triggering the conservatives"--many of them are still religiously pious, and they might not care for naughty language either. I will say he was right about one thing: good riddance to the trope of the "stupid, idiot sitcom father" whose practical function was to demonstrate the sainthood of his female counterpart, the paragon mother (because no one's childhood was ever characterized by a less-than-perfect mother, of course), and that brief moment where that was held in a universal standard, particularly in American animation (in the hegemonic cultural wake of THE SIMPSONS, SOUTH PARK, FAMILY GUY, etc.). It was funny about a year, and then for the remaining nineteen it was required just increasingly stupid and tired, to the point where even comparatively "mainstream" programs, your BOB'S BURGERS, etc., found themselves quietly refuting it. I fully believe that 20-odd years of hegemonic insistence (presumably from a male-dominated television industry that....apparently hated their fathers and had a clearly unhealthy worship of their mothers as their own personal canonized Mother Mary) is a major reason for the right's current demand for the "pater familias" in backlash to it.

Dan

40:57-42:46 I was a Bill Maher fan, and I still have all of these titles on DVD/download. I purposely didn't acquire "Victory Begins at Home" for my collection until the mid 2010's because I had seen it, and it was absolutely noxious. As a Bill Maher fan, I was always able to compartmentalize my fandom, and forgive truly horrific and bizarre statements about Muslims and women, because I attributed these to his Libertarian phase. From 2016, Bill was actually pretty decent for a while, up to supporting Bernie, so I overlooked his past; after he turned on Bernie, it began a descent where he has repudiated everything positive thing that he has ever said. Now, I can see "Victory Begins at Home" as an airing of his deepest held convictions, and a preview of what was to come.

sinesynced

I for one look forward to the AI powered coverage of seasons 4, 5, 6, etc. the Newsroom. Infinite Sork!

Robin A

I've never really been convinced that Bill Maher's politics are anything other than "Republican who likes to smoke weed." Luke is bang on that his commitment to progressivism has never really been anything other than abstract and skin-deep. Whenever the rubber hits the road and being a liberal/leftist becomes a real political commitment to a progressive program with a chance of victory rather than something he could cynically wield to cement his reputation as an iconoclast his conviction is found desperately lacking. For that matter, in this 2003 special that is supposedly before his rightward slide, I don't really see a lot of daylight in his attitude on Muslims compared to say, modern Ben Shapiro. His hack war of the sexes material wouldn't be too out of place as part of the standup of noted Republican Tim Allen - it might even be a little worse!

Crazy Christian

Star Wars can't get any better than it got in Chile's 2003 "Cerveza Cristal" campaign, which inserted beer ads seamlessly into the broadcast of an original trilogy marathon. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmLwH0mnDAA) 90% chance I learned about this on an old "Michael and Us" episode? But can never miss an opportunity to put people's eyeballs on this!

Iain

Noted Republican Will McAvoy has better politics than Maher.

Kirsty

Hey guys, really good episode as always. The discussion you had at the beginning about AI and its effect on film got me thinking and I have an argument that I think can pull us away from total despair. Luke focuses in on the individual aspect of these AI creations. That everyone can prompt an AI to make a singular work suited exactly to their own fancy and how this will result in culture being reduced to nothing but atomised, derivative, slop. While I agree that this is a worry I think that it ignores the role that the idea of having the approval of an authority can play in a lot of people’s enjoyment of a work. Individually prompted AI art lacks this approval, being that it was generated from the whims of the person consuming it and not by a ‘higher power’ like a director, author, or even corporation. An example of what I mean is when after buying Star Wars Disney declared the extended universe novels non-canon and you had a lot of people getting upset saying that the time they spent reading them was now worthless. They put more weight on Disney’s word on what was cannon more than their own feelings. I am absolutely not saying that this is a healthy relationship to have with art, but that this way people relate to art clashes with the idea of people being satisfied with creating the slop themselves. I think too many people crave being told what art matters.