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I saw that and it’s very true.
I found it principally weak to let Milo off as easy as he did, let him tell the outright lies he did about Transgendered people he did as well as other outrageous lies, NOT know anything about the outrageously racist shit he did to Leslie Jones.
I get why he sees Milo as a “kindred spirit” of sorts. Bill Maher came up through the nascent standup scene in the late 70s and early 80s where to make any money, people wanted to control what you said. And he loved college students a lot and did TONS of colleges up until the current (and I’d argue bad) climate on college campuses across the nation where almost NO comics can perform now of ANY ilk because comics mine humor from pain and refine that and deliver a product…and on today’s college campuses, it’s simply NOT ACCEPTABLE to use humor to address pain. And that “divorce” seems to have really struck Maher hard because he mentions not playing college campuses often and really takes issue with why. And on things like micro-aggressions, as a white male who went to Columbia, although I get it that he wasn’t rich and had to sell pot to help pay for school…while he gets what white privilege is, at least in the abstract, he doesn’t seem to understand how that manifests. It’s not always a punch in the face.
So, when he doesn’t do his homework on Milo and all he sees is “free speech”, then I can understand why he just thinks it’s all a matter of degrees.
Except it isn’t.
Milo is a scam. He’s a morally repugnant scam artist and he uses provocation and the infliction of emotional abuse to leverage more… for himself (if words couldn’t do harm as he suggests, then emotional abuse wouldn’t be a thing. It is very much a thing, of course and he knows this).
He doesn’t advocate for any cause, others glom onto his provocations for their nefarious purposes (see: Richard Spencer). He doesn’t advocate for any principle beyond the freedom for himself to advocate more…for himself. The “free speech” he advocates is a dystopian nightmare of discourse akin to a verbal Thunderdome where he profits by provoking people, thus bringing more willing combatants to the arena.
He’s actively using hate in all of its ugly forms to enrich himself. That he uses “free speech” is merely a guise no less transparent than if he put on Groucho glasses as a disguise.
I’m glad that at least Larry Wilmore stood up to the bullshit when everyone else was letting Milo just get a pass, but it should never have happened in the first place. Jeremy Scahill had it right by saying that it’s not shutting Milo up or out to NOT provide him with a high-profile venue to spill his brand of hate (a brand that he’s spent years cultivating meticulously). That he went unchallenged with his hate on Trans people was unconscionable. As I tweeted, I think Huffpo jumped the shark, but Huffpo Queer Voices nailed in their fact check of Milo’s blatant lies about Trans people.
I realize that Bill Maher doesn’t have the rigor of shows like the Daily Show had or John Oliver has or the Late Show has, but damn, that was some lazy shit that allowed a hateful, self-hating malignant narcissist (is there something besides lead in the water causing this?) to go relatively unfettered.
My youngest is Trans and they knew not to watch because Bill Maher doesn’t challenge lies often enough (we’re that odd house that DOES. We jump on that shit, so it’s hard to watch things like the news and certain comedy shows…). Hearing “that’s reasonable” to a lie would have been really hurtful.
As for the OP, yeah, the Magic R is real. Too bad many of his fans won’t have seen it because it was on the “Milo” episode that I know many fans refused to watch. Worse, if they watch the clips and see Maher actually agree with some of the Trans lies…oof.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
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