Bill Maher’s abysmal ignorance about J6
I highlight this not because of Maher, who doesn’t especially interest me. I think the clip is worth watching because of what it says about the way we get information and form our opinions these days. Maher isn’t exactly on the left, although he’s a Democrat and he repeats all sorts of Democrat talking points. But now and then he says sensible things, and he tends to be very much against “wokeness” and is also a free speech advocate. He’s been speaking on political and newsworthy events in the world for umpteen years, and has a relatively large number of viewers.
So you might think he’d know the basic facts of the biggest events of the past few years. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. In this clip he’s stupendously ignorant, and although perhaps he’s lying and really does know the truth, my gut feeling is that he’s more fool than knave about this although he partakes of both.
This is what I’m talking about. It’s very short:
Note how arrogantly Maher assumes he’s right and Kelly is wrong; his voice drips with sarcasm and condescension, and he gives that little laughing snort. Then when he realizes that she actually may know more than he does about what happened – at least she knows Officer Sicknick’s name, for example – Maher acts as though it’s of no import that he thought police were killed that day and that actually they were not. He pivots to the fact that they were attacked rather than killed, as though those two things are the same.
Again, one might think that a person might show a bit of surprise at having a long-held assumption – an important one on which that person had based some of his belief that J6 was an insurrection by a highly dangerous group of people – demolished. But Maher doesn’t miss a beat. His moving of the goalposts is seamless and doesn’t give him a moment’s pause.
And this isn’t just Bill Maher. This is so many people: their knowledge is shallow, but pointing out errors doesn’t change their belief system, which has been constructed on a huge edifice of such errors.
A mind is indeed a difficult thing to change.
Alas, it probably won’t even occur to him to question WHY he thought cops were killed. Or to wonder what else he’s been similarly misinformed about.
JLS:
Yes, and tons of people listen to this guy.
Hes a stupid vicious jackass who every once in a while finds a nut i do not forgetthe way he behaved im the tea party years nor how he wanted a recession to ‘restore democracy’
Fascinating that people like Maher are enraged by the attacks on police on 01/06/21 but think nothing of attacks on law enforcement in the summer of 2020, including an assault on White House defenses in which the President had to be taken to safe keeping and numerous police and Secret Service officers were assaulted and injured, and think nothing of attacks on police around the country all that summer.
Most of those who were triggered by tear gas fired into the crowd how those five capitol policemen died is still a mystery they committed suicide over some minor fracas, thats the story they are going with
Meanwhile the total fracas on innaugurati
on 2017 complete with the burning limo on conneticut avenue seems to have escaped him
I listened to the entire conversation with Kelly and Maher. Maher was equally arrogant and ignorant on the topic of election denialism; and, once again, Kelly had the receipts when he accused her of lying.
Maher is a strong example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s spoken insightfully about why many people would support Trump, yet he gets very irrational when speaking about Trump, the man, and Maher makes absurd predictions about Trump and Trump’s motives. And, Maher is very much a knave when it comes to Biden. In the same interview he completely discounts Kelly’s claims of the Hunter laptop coverup as election interference, even when Kelly backs up her statement with polling data.
Maher has shown equal ignorance in how much inflation is impacting Americans under Biden’s tenure. It’s confusing; sometimes Maher shows perceptive insight into Americans, like when he discusses reasons some support Trump, but other times he is incredibly out of touch and dismissive.
He was spouting some of the same carp on gutfeld well not the dead capitol police but other nonsense
Glae to hear from you rufus
He is equally ignorant about what newsom has done to his state with lockdowns and such
As Neo has documented here, a mind is a hard thing to change. Neo did it by facing facts and being willing to change her mind based on those facts. Maher isn’t there yet, in part because he doesn’t hear facts and is ignorant of them.
This is the democracy that maher demanded lie back and think of england
I credit taibbi as much as he is still a leftist he doesnt go on rages
He was ostensibly against al queda but hes been silent about the capitulations and the aftermath
The Democrat party has been hijacked by 100% dyed in the wool American hating Marxists. Its at the point that you can be an American or you can be a Democrat but you can’t be both, anymore.
“You’re misstating my argument”— Megan Kelly
If you give Mahr the benefit of any doubt, you might say he misunderstands the arguments by conservatives about the election.
If Mahr can’t follow a simple thread of logic– which either makes him incredibly stupid or evil. I’m sure there are more nuanced words than evil that could be applied here– but they escape me.
He also didn’t know that Hillary continued to deny the legitimacy of the 2016 election– continually calling Trump an illegitimate President. So it is fair to say Mahr is ignorant– very ignorant of anything that isn’t in keeping with his worldview.
Mahr is exhibit 1 of The Closing of the American Mind.
One reason a mind is hard to change is that’s who you are.
I watched the whole thing. Almost as jaw-dropping is when he professed pride in how Hillary conceded in 2016. Megyn refuted that immediately, saying “yes and then she spent the next 4 years saying she was cheated and Trump was an “illegitimate president””. Maher huffed and asked what words did she use at which point Megyn said “those exact words”. (I don’t know if the wording above is exact but it’s close.) My college roommate, a retired dentist, will not believe things like this. He refuses to go online and research what we talked about, saying that it’s been “hacked”. That’s when I said to never call me again with the expectation of talking politics. We’ll talk about the Steelers and the weather and our young and foolish days.
I watched the interview and although Kelly did a good job at refuting Maher’s ignorance about J6, she basically agreed with Maher that the 2020 election was not stolen. I don’t know why this is so hard for some on the right to admit. Perhaps it is because admitting that a Presidential election can be stolen is admitting that this country is in far worse shape than they are willing to admit. Perhaps because admitting this makes themselves somehow complicit.
The facts are simple. The election was decided by about 44,000 combined votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. There is ample evidence that there were far more illegal ballots cast in all of these states than the margin of victory. Election rules regarding mail-in ballots and signature verification were illegally changed or ignored by courts and state governments.
I know there are a lot of people who want to “get past” what happened in 2020, but there needs to be a public accounting of exactly what happened and who is responsible. Without such a reckoning, about half the country will never have faith in future elections and we are destined to resolve our disputes by other means.
Miguel cervantes,
Good points about the capitol police and the impact of the lockdowns and how they varied among states. He stated that MAGA insurgents killed policemen on January 6th and when Kelly said he was wrong, refused to believe her. And he scoffed when she mentioned the actual, BLM riot police death toll.
However, he has called out people like James Carville, who continue to lie about Trump’s “good people on both sides” statement.
Maher seems willing to upset all sides with his opinions, and deserves credit for that, but he can be to self-assured in areas where he is not well informed. He should at least recognize how intelligent Kelly is and that, as a former, practicing attorney, she is very good at interviewing and cross examination.
The problem with Maher is that though he occasionally strays off the lib plantation he does not show any intellectual integrity as opposed to, say, Taibbi even though Taibbi is still mostly on the left.
Maher wants to have it both ways — I’m a smart contrarian journalist beholden to no side and I’m a leftist activist who hates Republicans, especially stupid Trump supporters.
It’s weird how he interleaves the two positions. I wonder what his status is on the left. Do they just figure he’s more anti-Trump then anti-left and score him in their column?
It’s nice Maher can mention the problematic aspects of Islam and leftist hypocrisy. I still count him as an enemy.
“A mind is indeed a difficult thing to change.”
The Mahers of the world have always been with us. To be open to change, a mind must value truth above the false comfort of ‘certainty’.
“Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.” Jonathan Swift, 1721
Somehow I find Upton Sinclair more generally applicable:
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It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
–Upton Sinclair, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked”
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For those, such as myself, who confuse Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, here’s how I remember:
Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle,” an expose of unsanitary meat packing practices.
Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here.” a dystopian novel of the US turning fascist.
Im not a violent man but if i met bill maher i would punch him for many many reasons
I can’t watch Maher even the rare times he says something true. He’s just too arrogant.
Sometimes it seems people take arrogance as a sign of being correct. Don’t know why. If anything it’s the opposite.
Smarmy. That’s the word I always think of in regard to Bill Maher. I’m a big fan of Megyn Kelly, and I thought she did a great job here. I loved the exchange about Hillary the denier. That awkward silence after he asks, “what were her exact words” and Megyn responds “those were her exact words”.
I was was surprised how ill informed he was. It was fun to see him reach into his liberal bag of tricks and come up empty every time. Calling her arguments stupid and silly, and the exasperated sighs, as if she’s too dumb for words, didn’t work against someone who knew her stuff and without his audience of trained seals.
Toward then end of the interview, when she corrected him on the charges against Michael Cohen, he didn’t push back at all. He’d been whipped.
This was much better than Maher’s appearance on Gutfeld. (Gutfeld’s show is one of my “guilty pleasures.”) I expected sparks to fly between the two smartalecs – Gutfeld and Maher. They sparred a bit, but mostly were on their good behavior – a snooze.
I used to watch Kelly regularly when she was on Fox. She’s very sharp, quick witted, and she doesn’t back down easily. With the facts in hand, she was willing to go mano-a-mano with Maher. Maher’s problem seems to be that he gets his news from the MSM and believes it’s all true. That’s the lazy way, but it seems to work for him as he has a big audience.
It’s just the way things are these days. The facts are often difficult to find in the news. It takes some digging. That’s why we here admire Neo. She’s a miner who digs until she finds the truth.
I wrote a VDARE.com blog on this theme in October 2020: “Liberals: Informed By Their Ignorance And Adamant About It,” https://vdare.com/posts/liberals-informed-by-their-ignorance-and-adamant-about-it
[Unfortunately, some of the embedded links have expired …]
I had recently “discovered” Neo, and I quoted her on the point. My bottom line: To a first approximation, liberals and leftists know nothing.
Huxley @8:45,
The Upton Sinclair quote is perfect for this. Maher’s audience is slightly left of center. For him to keep his audience he must repeat their opinions back to them.
Compare and contrast with Dennis Miller who changed sides post 9/11 and actually increased his audience in the process.
Both men seem very intelligent, but one chose salary over truth.
@J. J.Maher’s problem seems to be that he gets his news from the MSM and believes it’s all true.
I’d modify this slightly. Maher believes the narrative from the MSM and doesn’t keep track of any of the facts the narrative is spun from, or the facts that prove the narrative to be untrue.
And in that he’s like 90% of us.
I caught on to this with Maher around 2005-ish when I saw Maher say that in WWII the US never used torture. That’s because he only knows the WWII narrative, that it was the Good War fought by the Greatest Generation, and he doesn’t know any of the facts. There were all kinds of things the Western Allies did in WWII that might shock us when we learn about them for the first time. Those things were not done out of a desire to do evil but because stone-cold realists facing very hard choices were in charge of most things then; in some cases they may have decided wrong but they rarely dithered.
Now a guy like Maher would never come out and say the US never did anything wrong in WWII because so much of the Left has built its narrative on Hiroshima and the Japanese internment. But he only knows what’s in the narrative.
Torn between your take on Maher with my assumption of his awareness