If Mort Divine ruled the world

[HamburgerBoy]

The biggest fault with Maher is that he's 200% smug and laughs at his own jokes, which amount to nothing more than smarmy sarcasm.

 

[CiG]

He must be funny, his crowd claps at everything he says brah.

 

[Dak]

I loved his movie

You mean the one where he picks on a bunch of uneducated hicks for the lolz and Ken Ham shows him some initial good faith and then gives him the Patrick Warburton treatment?

 

[CiG]

You mean the one where he picks on a bunch of uneducated hicks for the lolz and Ken Ham shows him some initial good faith and then gives him the Patrick Warburton treatment?

Religulous, yeah.

 

[Dak]

Religulous, yeah.

Yeah, I thought he came off like a tremendous douche "punching down" in that movie. Ken Ham is kind of a chucklehead, but he managed to look like the adult in the room. Incidentally the only not-hick he bothered to engage with iirc.

 

[CiG]

Yeah, I thought he came off like a tremendous douche "punching down" in that movie. Ken Ham is kind of a chucklehead, but he managed to look like the adult in the room. Incidentally the only not-hick he bothered to engage with iirc.

I haven't watched it in years and actually remember very little from it, but at the time I was soaking in all that atheist smugness and loving it.

 

[Dak]

I haven't watched it in years and actually remember very little from it, but at the time I was soaking in all that atheist smugness and loving it.

I'm agnostic at this point and have been for some time now, but I was raised Baptist, so that's at play but: Maher was clearly far more educated and intelligent than the people he engaged with, so I didn't find it to be tasteful at all. Would have been interesting if he was challenging theologians.

 

[Einherjar86]

Or better, philosophers.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Theologians don't practice a subset of philosophy?

 

[CiG]

I'm agnostic at this point and have been for some time now, but I was raised Baptist, so that's at play but: Maher was clearly far more educated and intelligent than the people he engaged with, so I didn't find it to be tasteful at all. Would have been interesting if he was challenging theologians.

I'm still an atheist I guess, but back in the middle 00's I treated it like a religion of my own and all I wanted was to see other atheists dunk on dumb religitards. Bill Maher was always one of the most smug "lol the south amirite" coastal elites I enjoyed back then. His comic abilities added to this, he's much more comfortable shitting on someone beneath him and always falls apart when in the sights of someone on his level or above, even when they're on the left, sometimes especially so.

Hell, even Russell Brand made him look like such an utterly corporate neo-liberal, that was an embarrassing episode. Actually that episode might be what I would use to demonstrate how Bill Maher is the narrative and nothing more.

 

[CiG]

I like how his panelists say a bunch of policy-wonk jargon and then Maher sort of switches back on after falling asleep and some drivel like "Republicans are backwards [smug smirk head tilt]" comes out of his mouth and everybody claps and they move on.



Edit: posted wrong clip. Okay I guess the full clip isn't on Youtube.

 

[Einherjar86]

Theologians don't practice a subset of philosophy?

They do; I meant that it would even better to engage more intellectuals under the broader umbrella of philosophy--many of whom study the architecture of religious belief (or any kind of mystical belief) without dedicating themselves to topics within religion.

 

[CiG]

Fuck it, couldn't find the proper clip of Maher and Brand having their full disagreement. I guess Maher's official Youtube channel thought it was too embarrassing to be isolated and uploaded...

 

[viewerfromnihil]

This has nothing to do with your background. If we're questioning industry X and their proportion of demographic Y, why not be quantitative about it and focus on the most over-represented groups? And I'm pretty sure that women do make up a modest proportion of YouTube right-wing stars. I don't follow any of them, but men clearly still comprise a giant chunk of that userbase, e.g. Stefan Molyneux, Ben Shapiro, that old black guy who calls everyone "beta males", Styxhexenhammer666420blazeit, Sargon, the "Change my mind" guy, etc. I'm sure there are women that are popular largely because they are attractive, but that applies to everything. Some men have great TV faces too, of course.

Again, I stick with my original point here: that you're trying to raise a disagreement with assumptions you yourself don't agree using assertions that are misleading, vague, or inaccurate. I didn't question the proportion. I questioned why they're worth listening to and implied that they're only there to rattle off shallow talking points while having tits, with tits and parroting being the two qualifications required--ironically for an audience who actually hates women doing what these women think they're doing, i.e., exercising non-conforming, independent thought, yet jerk off to them after writing how libtards are cucks in the comments section. The men far out-number the women here, drastically more-so than on MSM and similar de-centralized left-wing media.

The NPC meme is a take on the predictability in the range of available responses to a given stimuli for most people. It obviously applies to most people depending on context, but the context in which it has been/was presented are people parroting often word for word the rhetoric from MSM news sources, "late night funny men" (another label born somewhat in tandem for use in NPC memes), and social media influencers.



It also irritates me as well, except it also goes for the "centralized media" (I guess minus the fringe talking point thing, depending on your definition of fringe). These wahmen are incredibly annoying in their own right, and the fact that they have an audience of any size is obviously driven purely by sex appeal. Of course that's why most talking heads have an audience, but it's usually a tad more subtle in "mainstream" sources.

Ah, gotcha.

Centralized media as well, sure, but it corresponds much more closely to the Fox News blonde-bombshell than, say, Rachel Maddow.

Yeah of course. I used to love Bill Maher, I was a kind of generic liberal growing up, and an insufferable card-carrying atheist (like Bill still is) so Maher was my bread and butter. I loved his movie, I loved Politically Incorrect etc. In no way am I a traditional conservative nor did I grow up on the right, I liked all the typical left-wing shit, and it's not like I despise Maher even now.

Best thing that ever happened on Real Time was Hitchens flipping off his crowd though.


They're still both pretty poor excuses for being qualified, and Maher certainly makes higher claims for himself.


Not sure why this argument is even being thrown at me. I've never watched Tahmi or whatever her name is and the woman who triggered your sexist rant here in the video I linked is someone I've never even heard of. Throw them all down a well for all I care.


Not really. Shapiro is more known as the debater of the group, the intellectual of the group if you want to frame it in such an embarrassing way is probably Peterson or the fat Weinstein brother.


Not sure anybody said he only has people he agrees with on his show...


The biggest fault with Maher's show that I now see in hindsight and in current episodes is that he wants the credit that comes with "entertaining the other side" but he always sets it up as so one-sided that you don't get an honest discussion but rather some kind of dogpile.

Fuck it, couldn't find the proper clip of Maher and Brand having their full disagreement. I guess Maher's official Youtube channel thought it was too embarrassing to be isolated and uploaded...

I wouldn't say I was raised traditional conservative, but I was born and raised in what is now Trump country and very much absorbed all of it. I branched out to libertarianism later, as I found it's intellectual aspects attractive until I realized the intellectualism was mostly a facade. I liked Maher's show the whole way through though, despite hating him, because of the other opinions offered on the show. The show used to be more genuine in this respect, I'm sure you'll acknowledge. It wasn't uncommon for conservatives (libertarians obviously included) to be the majority on the show before. He's getting older and doesn't have the patience for it anymore.

Sorry, but sexist rant, no. Since when did you get all PC?

I meant among the radio-but-not-radio-show hosts, but yeah.

 

[CiG]

I wouldn't say I was raised traditional conservative, but I was born and raised in what is now Trump country and very much absorbed all of it. I branched out to libertarianism later, as I found it's intellectual aspects attractive until I realized the intellectualism was mostly a facade. I liked Maher's show the whole way through though, despite hating him, because of the other opinions offered on the show. The show used to be more genuine in this respect, I'm sure you'll acknowledge. It wasn't uncommon for conservatives (libertarians obviously included) to be the majority on the show before. He's getting older and doesn't have the patience for it anymore.

I don't think Maher's show has had any balanced ratio in many years, but I won't assert it with any surity because I haven't really kept up with him. I loved Politically Incorrect and even now still return to old episodes for some entertainment. It was like Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd with less comedian guests. I eat that shit up, I love a good shitfest. Another great moment of Maher's modern show was when Sam Harris triggered Ben Affleck.

I don't really know where I would put myself politically anymore.

Sorry, but sexist rant, no. Since when did you get all PC?

I don't care that you're being sexist, but you are objectively speaking --- being sexist.

I agree with HBB: "I'm sure there are women that are popular largely because they are attractive, but that applies to everything. Some men have great TV faces too, of course."

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Yeah, I've never been a fan of Harris, but the Affleck thing was embarrassing. And agreed that one of the best was Hitchens flicking of the crowd.

In a rehashing of already-discussed news:

Gillette goes abroad: Gillette's "The Best a Man Can Be" campaign seems to have hit the German market, but the thrust is different. The ad caught my eye on FB. "The Best Man has Many Faces." The one I saw stars a guy with big muscles doing work outs and doing community organizing with kids. Background is he used to get in trouble on the streets, in a fitting, thick Ruhrgebiet accent (jo, ich bin Daniel und ich trainiere heute die Kids, damit sie nicht auf der Straße abbhängen). He overcame it with sports and sees helping others reach the next level in life as being a man.

Pre-post edit:
I just did some looking around, however, to see if they had a translated version of the commercial that caused a shitshow. I didn't look closely and didn't immediately spot one, but I did notice that this ad and a couple other similar ones were posted back in November, so now I'm a little curious of how long they've been testing the waters on this. The slogan is actually the same, "Das Beste im Mann." I'll write it of as differences in cultural marketing styles. American marketing is about lifestyles, as in, "We're no longer a brand, we're a lifestyle" (Gibson recently took this pivot), and it has been for the last 20-30 years. Occasionally they try to take this to the next pitch as a social movement--"we've ditched the box. Have you? Join the movement"--boils over to a faux cultural movement. Feel good and do more than just buy a product. I think they rolled the dice wrong and underestimated the stupidity of the American consumer on this one. Doesn't matter though. Gillette isn't going anywhere. Moxie made quite the case in that respect.

 

[CiG]

Yeah, I've never been a fan of Harris, but the Affleck thing was embarrassing. And agreed that one of the best was Hitchens flicking of the crowd.

In hindsight Hitchens was a warhawk but those were glorious days.

Gillette goes abroad: Gillette's "The Best a Man Can Be" campaign seems to have hit the German market, but the thrust is different. The ad caught my eye on FB. "The Best Man has Many Faces." The one I saw stars a guy with big muscles doing work outs and doing community organizing with kids. Background is he used to get in trouble on the streets, in a fitting, thick Ruhrgebiet accent (jo, ich bin Daniel und ich trainiere heute die Kids, damit sie nicht auf der Straße abbhängen). He overcame it with sports and sees helping others reach the next level in life as being a man.

Sounds good to me. A lot better than a black dude stepping in front of a white guy who was about to try and chat up a passing woman. That shit was just weird faggotry.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Too Taboo for Class?

Professor is suspended for using the N-word in class. He was discussing language in a James Baldwin essay. Given the slur's potential to throw learning off course, is it ever worth using in the classroom -- if it ever was?

@Einherjar86 @rms @Dak

What are your guys' opinions on this?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

You didn't ask me but it's been a long-standing sexual fantasy of mine to become an English professor and find the most socially awkward white kid in class to force to say "my pals" during a reading, so naturally this story upsets me a lot.

 

[CiG]

Baldwin being censored in a class is more offensive than any slur I can think of.