Conservatives Can Have Bill Maher! We Don't Want Him!

On Twitter recently someone posted a five second clip where some white guy in a suit on FOX, over a chyron reading, “Bill Maher Calls Out the Lunacy of Masking Children”, observed, with palpable shock and delight, “When liberals have lost Bill Maher, they have lost nearly everyone.”

It’s a testament to the fundamental wrongness of the FOX talking head’s statement that the man expressing amazement at Bill Maher doing something not in line with Liberal thinking could literally be referring to dozens, if not hundreds of things Maher has said and done over the past few years. 

The denizens of Twitter were quick to point out that despite what FOX might like to believe, Bill Maher is the farthest thing from a Progressive icon beloved by everyone on the Left. The right wants desperately to believe that Maher enjoys a popularity among Leftists on par with John Lewis or Michelle Obama so that when he says or does something racist or sexist or transphobic they can point an angry finger at him in judgment and angrily implore, “Look what a horrible thing Progressive hero Bill Maher said! Yet because he’s a dyed in the wool, FDR-style Democrat, he won’t face the negative consequences a Conservative would if they had said the same thing.” 

The other reason Conservatives love to pretend that Bill Maher is a widely respected Progressive is because that way when he says that Cancel Culture is out of control or the Woke Crowd are destroying society they can pretend that the Left has gotten so extreme and unreasonable that even staunch Liberals like Maher have run out of patience. 

The truth of the matter is that the Left has not “lost” Bill Maher because you can’t lose something that was never yours in the first place. Maher started out as a contrarian Libertarian on Politically Incorrect. 

The title of the vehicle that made Maher rich, famous and powerful betrayed the decidedly non-Progressive nature of his politics and persona. After all, “political correctness” was the original “woke”, a straw man term used by the right, and only the right, to mock the idea that people should be considerate and sensitive in how they talk about, and interact with, different groups of people. 

they have fun!

Maher moved to the left following the show’s cancellation but #MeToo and the rise of “Wokeness” as a preeminent, ubiquitous bogeyman have pushed him further and further to the right, to the point where it’s now a stretch to call him a leftist of any sort, let alone a Liberal or a Progressive. 

As an arrogant, powerful straight white man, Maher has a vested interest in fighting an ideology intent on holding arrogant, powerful straight white man accountable for their actions. It’s all too understandable why he would be angry about a movement that challenges his power and requires him to change and evolve and grow with the culture at large and not double down on his reactionary anger. 

We don’t want Bill Maher! He’s not one of us! He’s not a real Leftist or Liberal or Progressive. We don’t want someone who is Islamophobic, racist, sexist and transphobic on our side. That’s more of a Conservative thing. 

The same is true of Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey. At the risk of stating the obvious, if you seemingly spend all of your time complaining on social media and your television show and Tucker Carlon’s show about how out of control and wrong everyone on the left is then you’re not actually a leftist. 

Conservatives, you can have Bill Maher. We never wanted him anyway. 

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