Bill Maher Takes Shot at Fellow Late-Night Hosts, Casts Doubt on Future of Their Shows
Bill Maher often mixes moments of political muddle-headedness with moments of sound thinking and genuine insight.
According to Fox News, the “Real Time with Bill Maher” host recently treated viewers to the latter type of moment.
During his “Club Random” podcast on Sunday, Maher dismissed late-night hosts such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon as both unoriginal and politically predictable.
The comments came as Maher and his guest, the infinitely more muddleheaded comedian Jim Gaffigan, discussed late-night television’s future.
Gaffigan, of course, regularly parrots establishment-media talking points. On Joe Rogan’s podcast in late July, for instance, Gaffigan dismissed what he called the “slim likelihood” that U.S. intelligence agencies had anything to do with the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Joe Rogan destroying Jim Gaffigan.pic.twitter.com/QXBaAJ14sB
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) July 30, 2023
On Sunday with Maher, Gaffigan predicted that the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike probably will “kill the late-night show that we grew up with.”
Maher disagreed, citing problems inherent in the format.
“This is, again, no knock on the guys who do it, but I don’t know how this art form has survived up until now,” Maher said.
Maher added that his own HBO show, due to the format and absence of commercials, feels “more edgy” and “more unpredictable.”
Furthermore, the current late-night shows face complications and competition their predecessors never knew.
Nowadays, Maher said, “you can watch anything — you get into bed, you can watch Netflix, you can watch HBO, you can watch YouTube, you can watch anything that was ever made, or do video games.”
“Even if you wanted to watch this late-night stuff, wouldn’t you watch it sometime when you could zip through the commercials and just see the stuff you like? It just seems so anachronistic. I don’t know how it survives until now,” he added.
Gaffigan replied that viewers “want to hear Colbert’s take about the day.”
Maher pounced on this palpable absurdity.
“It’s not a take. Those guys don’t have takes,” Maher said. “I have takes. I have a take on things. What they do is say exactly what a liberal audience wants them to say about that. That’s not a take.”
For a man with so many alternately foolish and thoughtful “takes,” Maher nailed this one.
Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, Maher channeled his inner Democratic Party hack when he urged viewers to vote blue in order to save democracy.
On the other hand, Maher has often mocked wokeness. In February, he even compared the modern woke mob to Mao’s Red Guards, who terrorized China during the Cultural Revolution.
In other words, Maher had a point when he described his show as “more unpredictable.” One never knows what to expect from him.
Of course, one always knows what to expect from the likes of Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon.
In fact, it is difficult to decide which of the three hosts has more thoroughly prostituted himself to the establishment.
Upon reflection — and in the spirit of late-night award-show skits — the Galactic Toady Award goes to Colbert.
Who can forget Colbert’s nauseating November 2020 interview with former President Barack Obama? The beginning of the interview alone belongs in the Toady Hall of Fame.
“Can we just take a moment? Can I just — and I want to talk — I just want to take a moment to — to — to drink you in — for just a moment,” the grinning, starry-eyed, slobbering Colbert actually said to the former president.
Colbert, of course, meant the comment as a dig against then-President Donald Trump.
“I’m happy to get used to looking at a president again,” Colbert added. Obama could not even feign embarrassment for dignity’s sake.
A liberal perspective is one thing. But sucking up to the powerful in the most shameless way imaginable?
Colbert did not even wait a whole year before outdoing himself.
In 2021, the establishment shill subjected viewers to the most cringe-inducing recurring skit in entertainment history: “The Vax Scene.”
The skit had various ghastly iterations, all of which involved dancing syringes, most of them animated.
On one occasion, for instance, Colbert sat at his desk while the animated syringes danced and sang propagandistic lyrics to the tune of the “William Tell Overture.”
Get a shot, get a shot, get a vaccine shot
Get a shot, get a shot, get a vaccine shot
With entertainment options multiplying, one can only guess how much longer late-night audiences will keep returning for such drivel.
Small wonder Maher got this one right.
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