Bill Maher took some potshots last night, but it was at the media this time. And I felt I was being critiqued as well. He used the ongoing pro-Hamas demonstrations sweeping college campuses nationwide, where police arrested 2,300. That’s a lot of people, but the HBO host’s point was that it’s the vocal minority. There are over 15 million college students in our universities, not all of them are pro-terrorist morons. He even cited a Harvard poll that placed Palestine near the bottom of issues that 18-29-year-old Americans care about.
He then listed his rules about media coverage in today’s hyperbolic atmosphere and had some pointed at everyone, including Townhall, for using inflammatory language in headlines. The irony here is that the headline for this New Rules clip on the show’s YouTube page was “Bill Maher DESTROYS the Media.”
The others you already know, like never trusting the initial reports, but the portion about blaming presidents was both right and wrong. Yes, I did find it agreeable when he said that Trump didn’t cause the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, or that Haitians run amok, lighting tires on fire because Biden is a weak president.
That very well could be the case, and it probably is. Still, the media, most of whom align with Mr. Maher on political issues, will blame Republicans and past Republican presidents for domestic and foreign policy woes. That’s not media malpractice; that’s how you win elections.
I can’t speak for everyone here, but I know I’m slanted and biased—proud of it. You know what you’re getting from me—I don’t hide it. Where criticism and media analysis is warranted relates to publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times, which maintain this veneer of professionalism and impartiality when we all know it’s non-existent. Even liberals know the media tilts in their favor. If these publications admitted tomorrow that they’re biased, left-wing, and will run interference for Democrats, the media bias wars would reduce in intensity considerably. It’s also something they’ll never do.
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The Guardian is left-wing, but they admit it. The late Breitbart editor Mike Flynn once said he read the publication partially for that reason, along with the paper covering issues that aren’t reported here. He knew what he was getting; there was nothing wrong with that.
The overall point of Maher’s segment was that everyone needed to dial it back. He can’t stand Trump, but he added that he didn’t start World War III last time, so until Election Day, he’s not going to panic. The comedian also isn’t going to wade into a perpetual cycle of hating half the country based on political differences. Is the sky falling? Maybe, but it could also be a piece of a Boeing plane, quipped the HBO host.
Yet, what Maher left out is the legacy media’s failure to hold itself accountable when they lied about the Russian collusion hoax, Trump overfeeding koi fish in Japan, denigrating World War II soldiers who died at Normandy, and a host of other fake news narratives that had political goals.
Inflation was transitory, and now it’s not. Illegal aliens weren’t carriers of disease, but they are. And Biden presides over the most significant economic recovery ever, even though MSNBC host Katy Tur noted that most jobs are those returning to their previous post-pandemic employment. That’s not job creation.
Maher’s rant has some good points, though they’re aspects of the business that won’t change. The other part is the failure to admit that there is a liberal bias, though he mentioned it in passing. Democrats did blame Trump for the Ohio train crash over loosening regulations. The Left has played this game for decades, long before the Right had their outlets. In the 1980s, radio and letters to the editor were the top methods of pushing back against liberal bias. That’s no longer the case.
There are two types of media factions, and we’re at war. Is that a bad thing or a natural occurrence when Americans have differing political views?
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