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Like George Carlin and other comedians who came before him, Bill Maher is a social critic. "I'm a noticer," he says in his latest HBO Max special, Is Anyone Else Seeing This? "That's what I do."
Maher trots out his usual topics, beginning with marijuana:
"We've made a lot of progress in a lot of areas. Take something like pot. The fact that I can travel this country now without sweating bullets that I did for years, worrying that the fucking dog at the airport is going to narc me out... For years I took this much pot and I'd put it in Kleenex in a ball and hid it under my nuts. I smoked my own ball sweat for like 30 years and now I don't have to. Progress!"
Maher recalls how he felt "the time I went to a legal dispensary after so many years of being furtive about this shit, I was literally em0tional. I remember saying to the guy, 'Thank you for opening this place and making me feel like a free citizen whose participation in our hallowed democracy is now complete.' And he said, 'Sir, this is a Baskin Robbins.'"
Then it's off to the races as Maher ruminates about everything from Trump to liberals to wokeness to kids to religion and even to circumcusion. No subject is left untouched.
Bill Maher's goal is to play to a mixed house so he can knock both liberals and conservatives while hanging comfortably in the middle.
About Trump, Maher instructs: "He got the White House again, but he's not going to get my mind."
The crux of Maher's act these days is being caught between the left and the right. "They changed," he says about the former. "Not me."
That's debatable. Maher's swing to the center lane of American politics has been happening ever since he was booted off Politically Incorrect by ABC in 2001 for calling the 9/11 terrorists "courageous." That was his first cancellation and he rails against another with his main target being wokeness. This is where Maher continues to fumble the ball, like Dave Chappelle did with trans people. It's a tiresome part of his act.
Maher eventually wears you down and you generally accept his cranky form of comedy that's also reminiscent of Woody Allen. "I don't hold my tongue for anybody," he says, and that includes Kamala Harris who he claims "was bad on pot and threw thousands of people in jail" as California Attorney General, which is false. Maher tosses darts at Joe Biden, P. Diddy, JD Vance, Hamas, colleges students, marriage and Mexicans. One point he makes I agree with on immigration is who will pick the crops and work in food plants if all the migants are sent back to their home countries?
"I'm not a Republican," he reminds just in case you get confused with his politics, "and never have been."
Maher's goal is to play to a mixed house so he can knock both liberals and conservatives while hanging comfortably in the middle. It's not a bad strategy.
Surprisingly, at such a peak moment for him, Maher recently said he was leaving stand-up behind, at least for now at 69. He'd rather not travel so much even though he no longer has to carry weed in his crotch.
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