Maher didn't realize it, but with his movie comparison at the end, he inadvertantly called GOP voters the "bad guys." That was about the only accurate point he made - his characterization of Democrat priorities certainly wasn't. He makes so much noise about wokeness, but then pretends as if the positions of the GOP aren't more problematic (by a long shot) or immediate. This is the problem with centrists - they don't have perspective.
Maher is no centrist he is a provocateur. True centrists are the only ones who do have perspective. Your problem with centrist is baffling.
I'm sure Maher intentionally called the GOP the bad guys. As @jiggyfly just noted. Maher isn't a centrist and is a provacatuer. He's an entertainer at heart and is there to grab attention. Politically though he himself calls himself a liberal. I believe that yes he thinks liberals have gottten too woke and it makes for a great monologue punching bag to make fun of Woke Hollywood most (not all) of his beliefs are still firmly liberal. He even said it himself that Fox news likes to trumpet the few things he says that the Right loves while ignoring all the stuff he says blasting them. Even though he takes shots at wokeness this piece was definitately a hit piece on Republicans.
Do you watch him regularly? He is ALWAYS saying the GOP positions are way more problematic and immediate. He literally argued this exact point with that Vivek guy for 15 minutes on Overtime the other night. A problem with lots of people is that they can't seem to occupy more than one idea at the same time, instead seeking tribal comfort by opting for their lazily-prepackaged labels.
"candidate as slumlord" is a classic political attack strategy, and Walker is executing it pretty well and at the right time
The problem is that his strawman rhetoric on the left (seriously, who on the left is advocating for any teacher to come into school dressed like an ugly Annie Sprinkle impersonator?) finds its way into the general conversation. Whether he intends it or not, Maher is reinforcing the idea that no matter how horrifying a GOP candidate or policy may be, GOP voters are justified in their support because of all the woke freaks on the progressive side. And it’s not just the woke stuff - Bill criticized the COVID relief bills as excessive while conveniently forgetting just how badly the economy was crashing in the spring of 2020 https://lastnighton.com/2022/06/27/...-after-viral-real-time-debate-resurfaces/amp/ You’re absolutely correct that he’s a provocateur but his arguments are parroted by centrists constantly. Maybe they’re not getting it directly from Maher, but he’s certainly contributing to the tone and (more importantly) lack of facts in the US political narratives.
the bigger problem are the people who fail to recognize the total lack of facts or accuracy in his portrayal of progressives. I don’t know if he’s just bitter because he can’t go to pajama parties at the Playboy mansion now that Hef is dead, or something else but the guy spends as much time misrepresenting the left as anything else.
I haven't watched him at all for a long while, but the last time I did I remember thinking "this guy was a lot more fun when he was a sexually deviant cokehead"
Except he isn't misrepresenting the left, and he talks about the right much more. Do you think the left is infallible, or something? It seems like your need to put things in these neat, rigid little boxes precludes you from seeing past your biases. The right can have bigger problems, AND the left can also have problems. They're not mutually exclusive.
see my previous post - he most certainly misrepresents the left. That you are too stupid to recognize this doesn’t make you unbiased.
As a person who is and is constantly around others on the left, I can safely say the group identity, woke **** is ubiquitous in my experience. I wish you could see the fact that your need to call me stupid for simply positing that the left has (lesser) problems is kind of proof in and of itself. Back to the topic at hand: Walker belongs in Kindergarten, and is a microcosm of the right's intellectual honesty and cynicism right now.
I'm inspired by a series of recent posts to say, with all the good will I can muster, that you folks are a perfect example of what I point to from time to time, uselessly, I might add, as why the Democratic Party and those independents who lean towards that party, lose elections to a smaller, distinctly outnumbered political party, the GOP, time and time again. We fight among ourselves even more ardently than we fight the Republican Party, who in contrast wallow in their extremism, chained to a liar and a conman who cares about nothing but himself, yet that party wins elections more often than they should because they are united in their ignorance and often bigotry, while too many of us stay home in a snit on election day, or vote Green or for some other useless political entity. Then later go through the entire stupidity during the next election cycle. One would think that now, in this moment, when so much matters on controlling Congress, that we could stop fighting each other and concentrate on winning the damned midterms. Clearly, that's too much to hope for.
