Okay. I've been a fan of Bill Maher for years. He's often willing to take on topics that few others are discussing seriously. As a comedian, he is able to be irreverent and expose absurdities in our politics and our culture. The last few episodes of Real Time, however, have revealed that he is either super burned out OR he is no longer able to contain his misogynistic douchebaggery.
My need to vent is inspired primarily by his interview with Sri Lankan rapper, M.I.A.
Follow me after the jump for my analysis! (Unless you are an unfunny dick)
So, you may or may not know who M.I.A. is. You may or may not care. Honestly, I have little exposure to her or her music with the exception of her song, "Paper Planes" which was featured in Slumdog Millionaire and sampled in several American hip hop songs.
Bill had M.I.A. on to talk about the current situation in Sri Lanka, which is abysmal for the Tamil minority, of which M.I.A. is a member. Having left the country as a young girl, M.I.A. is seeking to draw attention to the circumstances of her cultural kin in the wake of a decades-long civil war.
Unfortunately, several minutes of the interview are wasted because Bill chooses to focus on the fact that M.I.A. performed at an awards show when 9 months pregnant. His first comment was that she seemed to have "lost the baby weight!"
He was extremely condescending toward her, saying that M.I.A. looking like the "Octomom" during the performance, and he insinuated that she might have been endangering her baby by dancing while pregnant! It was so offensive to me as a woman, a mother, and a peace activist. Again, an intelligent female guest on Bill Maher's show gets treated like an object- his judgments offered based on looks and how bad a mother she must be.
If it weren't for the fact that Muhammed Yunus is a guest on tonight's show, I would've turned it off. M.I.A. was clearly trying to get on topic and share information to make the audience more aware of the current situation and let us know what we might do about it. Because Bill was too busy being a chauvinistic asshole, the segment was much less effective than it could or should have been.
In addition to being offensive toward M.I.A., Bill was horribly insulting to his audience- stating several times that M.I.A. needed to go all the way back and break the Sri Lankan conflict down into the most simple possible terms because "they" (his audience) are too stupid to understand the concept of civil war between majority and minority populations of developing countries.
NEWSFLASH! People who watch Real Time (or used to) tend to be college-educated, civic-minded, pretty well-informed individuals. It's not great for business, Bill, to treat your fans like idiots!
I welcome your comments and I'll upload video when it's available.
Peace.
UPDATE: Video of the interview below
NOTE: Some folks have commented that "comedy is covered under free speech," and "I'm being sexist calling Mr. Maher a dick," etc. Just to clarify- my point has nothing to do with "jokes" by Bill being censored or any assertion that he doesn't have the right to attempt any kind of humor he wants. It was clearly not humor he was going for when calling his audience stupid, however, and I was commenting on his "jokes" about M.I.A.'s pregnancy and exercising my free speech by stating how offended I found them. Period.