I’ve been a fan of Bill Maher for years; watched every episode of Real Time and even been in the studio audience once, recorded every stand-up special he’s done on HBO, and saw him at Radio City Music Hall in a live “debate” with Ann Coulter in 2008. I’ve defended him here and elsewhere from what I thought was unfair or unreasonable criticism, while getting on his case when I’ve thought he was wrong. But I’ve been increasingly disturbed lately at how hard he’s been working to burnish his Both Siderist bona fides by “going after” liberals, Democrats and the Left for, mainly, being just so darned annoying that people just can’t help but vote for a demented racist gangster and his perfidious, power-mad political party and its vicious, cruel, ruinous governing agenda.
Recently I’ve articulated a metaphor that I think sums up Both Siderism in its most invidious form: One side uses shovels to plant trees, the other side uses shovels to bash people’s brains in; so, Both Sides use shovels, and you can’t be upset about one side using shovels if you’re not upset about the other side using shovels; either using shovels is bad and wrong or it’s not, and it shouldn’t matter who is using them.
Last night, on the season finale of Real Time, Bill dropped the following quantum singularity of both-sides-use-shovels Both Siderism:
MAHER: This is from 2016; this is Trump talking about … well, just watch:
[clip from 2016 presidential debate] TRUMP: Our inner cities; African-Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell, because it’s so dangerous; you walk down the street, you get shot. [end clip]
MAHER: Allright, now remember, all the liberals going nuts about this; it was so unfair, it was so wrong. Here’s Corey Booker Wednesday night:
[clip from Democratic primary debate] BOOKER: I hear gunshots in my neighborhood. I think I’m the only one, I hope I’m the only one on this panel here that had seven people shot in their neighborhood just last week. [end clip]
Maher then just turns to the panel without another word and a smug look on his face, leaving it to guests Joy Reid and Adam Gopnik to debunk this spectacularly-obtuse false equivalence, explaining inter alia that yes, it does matter who’s saying it and why. Maher, of course, accuses Reid of “changing the subject” but Reid is having none of it:
REID: The difference is where it’s coming from … Donald Trump is the guy who his own lawyer says drives through black neighborhoods saying, “These people don’t know how to live.” His attitude toward African-Americans is important here. Corey Booker is not hostile to the African-American community.
[crosstalk]
GOPNIK: You can take urban violence as a serious problem without turning it into a plague of horror that is inflicted on us, which is especially inflicted on white people.
MAHER: Sounded to me like they said very similar things, but we hated one ‘cause he was on one team and liked one ‘cause he’s on the other. And that’s the problem.
No, Bill, that’s not “the problem” at all. Not by a long shot. You’re saying, in essence, that both Trump and Booker used shovels, and we hated Trump for using a shovel only “’cause he was on one team and liked” Booker’s use of a shovel just “’cause he’s on the other.” The problem, Bill, is not only that people like you believe Both Siderist bullshit like that, but that people like you who have a public forum by and through which to shape public opinion and perception, keep saying Both Siderist bullshit like that.
Gopnik tries, briefly, to set him straight:
GOPNIK: They said similar things in totally different contexts with totally different histories.
After some more crosstalk, Max Brooks changes the subject back to “illegal immigration” which, somehow, was what prompted Maher to show these two clips for the apparent sole purpose of gratuitously accusing “all the liberals” of rank hypocrisy, so Gopnik’s point — and Maher’s risible Both Siderism — gets lost.
Also lost is the fact that, notwithstanding the show’s editors completely stripping both statements of any and all context, the only thing “similar” about what Booker said compared to what Trump said is the word “shot”. Trump, if we’re being generous, was making a broad generalization about urban life everywhere; Booker was describing his own personal experience with urban life in one particular place. Yet the “problem,” as Maher sees it, is that “all the liberals” purportedly went “nuts” over the former, but didn’t go “nuts” over the latter.
And that’s the other thing that was so infuriating about this; showing those clips to implicitly make that point at that juncture contributed absolutely nothing to the conversation the panel was having. The topic was what’s happening at the border; Brooks brought up whether it’s OK to use the term “concentration camps” to describe the facilities there, Reid made a point about how what’s happening in those facilities makes us look to the rest of the world, and Gopnik said that if we treat these facilities and events as “normal political issues, we normalize Trump.” The debate clips, and the Both Siderist point that Maher wanted to make, came completely out of left field.
It’s a good thing this season of Real Time is over. For the first time, I’m having genuine reservations about whether or not to keep watching when the show returns from hiatus in August. Of course, I’ll probably still watch in order to see if Bill manages to get this Both Siderist disease out of his bloodstream. But for a guy who’s constantly accusing us of “helping Trump win” by being annoying and yelling things in restaurants, nothing is helping Trump win more than this relentless, wholly unironic, destructive wave of both-sides-use-shovels Both Siderism.
Bill, dude, m’man, boobie, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: You’re. Not. F***ing. Helping. Stop not helping.