Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #596: David Mamet, Nancy MacLean, David Leonhardt

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Bill’s guests are David Mamet, Nancy MacLean, and David Leonhardt (Originally aired 4/08/22) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Look at these happy people. Thank you very much. You're very kind. I appreciate that. Thank you.

I'm humbled by your applause. As much as I can be. Thank you. I know why you're happy. It's baseball season. Opening today in last... There's something magical about L.A. baseball.

The sun on your face. smell a sushi. It's a weird town. It really is. I mean, they have to do things, the promotions here at the ball game. You know, everybody has the bat day, ball day. Here we have Cuck Day. You know,

come out to the ballpark and watch your wife gobble a weiner. What kind of a weird promotion is that? Of course, the other big local story that's actually a huge story everywhere is the Oscars. You heard it today. Will Smith has been thrown out for the next 10 years.

They were trying to figure out some appropriate punishment. They were going to take away the trophy itself. Have you seen the trophy? You know, he's got the Oscar. They said, Will, what about if we just take away your bald trophy? He said, I can't. I've got a pre-nup. But, you know, we can't.

We make little jokes here. Yeah, they're big news. Big news here. Katanji Brown Jackson is now on the Supreme. Court, that passed. When it was announced in the Senate, all the Republicans headed for the exits. Really? Nice, huh?

It looked like one of those oldies concerts when the band says, we're going to play some songs from our new album. I mean, come on, Gary. The only one who I saw was stayed and applaud was Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney. I got to say, for a cult, the Mormons are

very polite. But, I mean, this is the new thing with the Republican Party, is they call anybody who they don't like a pedophile, Marjorie Taylor Green, called Mitt Romney. Because he voted for the new Supreme Court just called, and the other two Republicans who voted for pedophiles. Should they're pro-petit-pro-petify? Mitt Romney is pro-petophile? Would you think for a second about leaving your kids?

with Mitt Romney for an hour. Seriously. He might baptize them. Although, the Mormons, I got to say, their big college is called Brigham Young. I don't know about... I don't know.

It's wicked. But this is... This is... This is the new talking point in magnation. That, you know, don't say gay and grooming. That's their big new word. grooming. Everybody's grooming.

And if you've ever seen a Trump rally, one thing these people will not stand for is grooming. We should. But I don't... No, this is... I think this is all coming from QAnon, right? I mean, I'm going to ask the panel.

Maybe they know. Well, I don't mean, personally. But I think it is, because Q&N were the ones who were talking about, remember, their Democrats eat babies? They eat babies, and they have sex with children. First of all, how does that work? How could you do both? If you're eating babies,

aren't you devouring your future dating pool? But yeah, I mean, I thought we were done with these gay issues, but then, you know, Florida passed that don't say gay bill. And now the other states, of course, copycat states are, and making it more severe. Alabama is having a don't say gay bill that's more severe, which is going to ruin their reputation as a homosexual utopia. And, of course, yeah, they all have to go further than the next.

Louisiana has one now. They're going to vote on, which says you can't talk about gender identity from kindergarten through 12th grade, 12th grade. They're like, look, if you're a high school senior and you don't know that the drama teacher and the woman's basketball coach or gay, that's on you. All right. We've got a great show.

We have Nancy McLean. David Leonhard are here. But first up, he is the Pulitzer Prize would include an author of the new book, Recessional, The Death of Free Speech, and the Cost of a Free Lunch. David Mamet is here. David Mamet is here.

What a pleasure. It's been a long time. You too. Good to see you. Good to see you. Great to see. Some cartoons. These are cartoons?

All right. You want me to show them now? It's up to you. You talk. It's your show. No, no. I really want you to talk, and we're going to both talk. Look, I was going through your list of

plays, movies, books. The output is just amazing. It's prodigious. I mean, just the ones that are like household names and plays, which Americans don't even see anymore, from Glenn Glorrie, Grand Ross, to Speed the Plow,

O'Leano, American Buffalo, sexual perversity in Chicago, and then you go through the movies that you've either written or directed or both. I'm not even going to list that people would know 20 of them. So my question is, you're 74 now. This is important to me because I'll be 74 in eight years. So I want, I mean, this amazing energy you've had to produce at this rate. You still have it?

Oh, yeah, absolutely so. You look the same. Oh, thanks, you too. Would I see you last, like 10 years ago? Yeah, something like that. Long time ago. Well, you know what? I used to go to, every morning I get up, I go to the,

the office like six days a week and I spend all the time in the office. So one day I'm talking to my daughter, Zasha, who's everybody knows from flight attendant. Girls. Girls, of course. Yeah. And she was like five and she says, Daddy, where are you going? I say, I'm going to the office. She says, nighty night. Because it seems to me

that's all I do all day is they take a nap. Really? So, when you get an idea for something, how do you decide, I mean, you've written like 25 books or something plus all these movies, and plays, how do you decide what is the right format for it? Do you put it in the voice of a character, in a play, in a movie, or in your own voice in a book?

That's a good, that's a very good question. And sometimes I try to write something for a long time as a film doesn't work. Maybe I'll try it as a play, it doesn't work, try it as a cartoon, try it as. So I have all of this stuff, and so when I run out of stuff to do, people talk about writers' block, which I'm sure it's a lot of fun, but I can never afford it, right? pay the rent. So if I say, oh, I'm out of ideas, I'm out of ideas, I'll pick up something I wrote

20, 30, 80 years ago. I say, oh, let me try that again. So I remember seeing November on Broadway with Nathan Lane. He was nice enough to see me after. It was thrilled. I was thrilled to meet him. Impressed my date. We got to go backstage.

But I don't know if people understand how just out and out funny you are and can be. the new book had me laughing. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, literally funny. And November was like, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. I don't know if that is your reputation.

I mean, it was like Neil Simon if he was funny. You know, like a play where you go and it's just like... Yeah. Well, you know, November was this play by a guy who's the worst president of the world and he's about to run for office and he says to his aide, how am I doing? The guy says, your numbers are lower than Gandhi's cholesterol. Okay.

It was like a laugh like that every minute. Well, but the main gag is they say, sell a few pardons on the way out the door. Oh, by the way, it's November. You generally get $50,000 to pardon two turkeys. You know, the president always pardons some of the turkeys. So he thinks about it a second. He says, get the guy at the head of the turkey people in there.

Turkey manufacturers, guy comes in. He says, I want $300 million on my desk by noon. I'm going to pardon every effing turkey in the United States of America. So that's the play. I think of all people on HBO, you can say fucking. Thank you, dear. That's quite talking about. But, I mean, there's a part in the book where you're so funny talking about Broadway.

I mean, you basically say it's become Disneyland. It's tourists. It's not people who are looking to be challenged, which really was the intent of theater. So what does that say about your future writing for the theater? Well, I actually have a play on Broadway right now. It's American Buffalo. It's play I wrote about... Sorry, and five. Thank you. Yeah. It's a spectacular cast that's Darren Chris and Sam Rockwell and Lawrence Fishburn, a wonderful cast.

And the problem is that the middle class left New York. So that's how you, the only way you can have a vibrant theater is people say, yeah, I live here. It's not going to cost me anything to go downtown and blah, blah, blah, blah. But the middle class leaves and 75% of the audience is tourists, they legitimately want to, they don't want to be challenged. Right. Right. They want a spectacle. That's understandable. Yeah.

I mean, we face sometimes the same problem in comedy. And I remember around that time that I was watching November, that's when you wrote that article that said you don't want to anymore be a brain dead liberal. Well, that's actually not what I said. I thought that was the title. I understand. But here's what happened. that I was at that time asked consistently when I was doing a play to be on NPR to be on Terry Gross to write something for the New York Times, to write something for New York Magazine,

to write something for a Village Voice. So I said, sure. So I did all that stuff. So I was very concerned at that time with political civility. So I wrote an article for the Village Voice. I said, here's a traditional Jewish understanding of political civility. I have to be able to state your position so that you say, yes, that's right. And you have to be able to state my position.

I say, yes, that's right. Now we understand where we are. Now we adduce facts. You say X is a fact. I say, I disagree. It's off the table. We only adduce those facts upon which we can both agree, right? Now we've agreed that we're going to, we can state each other's position.

We can only have these facts we agree upon. And now we're going to proceed from there to premises. where do these facts lead? That's political civility, right? So I said, I've even been on civil to myself because for 50 years I've referred to myself as a brain-dead liberal.

That's not civil. Doesn't lead to anything. So the village voice comes out on one day, the whole front page, Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal. By Dave Mammon. But, I mean, a lot of your new book, look, we're on the same page here.

I mean, like, I get booed all the time by not so much anymore. but the audience, when I call out the left of this country, because they have gone places, people say, you've changed, I haven't changed. I say, things have changed. Yes, the right has changed, too. But five years ago, no one was talking about abolishing the police.

Looting wasn't legal. Indeed. The penis still meant something. You know what I'm just? I'm joking somewhat. But like, so I mean, let's be honest, a lot of your book is calling out the left for their goofiness. Yeah, that's right.

So what my book is about, I don't want to, I'm not here to flog the book, Ha-ha, which is called Recessional on the Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch, people. But the point is we have to have, we have to have free speech. If free speech is when we have nothing, because if one group takes the high road, it doesn't matter which group it is,

if they're in power along and off, we're going to have a police state. So when it's, not acceptable to have an opposing view when people who stayed an opposing view are not disagreed with, but marginalized and canceled, we're going to end up with a totalitarian state

because that's the way human nature works. Well, and I'm glad you brought that up because, trust me, I love this book. There's so much to love in this book. There's so much wisdom, you know, and the way you go, I mean, your breadth of knowledge, Very few things you mentioned are things I'm totally unfamiliar with, but there's always something new you bring to them that are like,

oh, I didn't know about that, about that. But there is a big bombshell on page two. Oh, good. What is it? There's anybody who gets that far, right? I mean, I got through the whole thing twice. Because I loved it. But on page two, it says right there, should the left be allowed to steal another election? And I'm like, wait, what?

And then you really don't go there for the rest of the book. I mean, we see in the book that you do like Trump, which is fine. We're not there together on that one. But I've said many times on this show, you can hate Trump. You cannot hate everyone who likes him. It's half the country. And I understand why people are driven into his arms because of the goofiness. Well, God bless you, by the way.

Okay. Seriously. Well, thank you. Because if we don't have free speech, what are we got? No, I agree. It's the end of my show tonight. It's all about defending free speech. I do it all the time.

And at the end of the book, the only time I this saw in the book where you're kind of direct on this is you talk about attempted coup. And I know when you say that, you mean you think the attempted coup was from the left. I think it was from the right. Just tell me, look, you're David fucking Mamet.

You don't have to tell me shit. I just want to know how the premier person of letters in this country, can believe something that 63 courts have laughed out of their courtroom, that even Bill Barr, Mike Pence, and Mitch McConnell say it's bullshit. Well, listen, a lot of people thought Red Skelton was funny. Never me. He was on my never funny list.

No, you're absolutely right. I misspoke on page two, so I would ask everybody who reads the book, who I hope is everybody to skip page stay. Is that right? Yes, I do. So you don't think the election would. No, let me rephrase it. Oh, thank you.

Because, I mean, it was like finding out that Oscar Wilde thinks the sun revolves around the earth. Well, here's the thing. That the more important point, as I think about it, was that a lot of the information which might have influenced the election was suppressed. And that's true. For example, the New York Post came out with an article about the Hunter Biden laptops. two weeks before the election and Twitter shut them down. Which was way wrong. I mentioned that

on the show last week. Absolutely. So I got a little bit ahead of myself. I'm absolutely correct. But on the other hand, what happened in Bush v. Gore? On Bush v. Gore, everybody on the left, including me at the time, said, wait a second, they stole the election. Wait a second, they stole the election.

And perhaps they did. I don't know. But this is not unknown in American politics. Right. But this one was looked at by everybody, including Trump's own people. Okay. Okay. All right. Great.

I'm glad we're there. So you also say, again, sort of a funny line about how you don't understand when people do renewal of vows in a marriage, which I would agree with. I mean, you're married. What the fuck more do you want? I've never. If you're married, like, come on. But you say, we do need a renewal of vows in this. country between citizens. So how do we get there from where this horrible place we are now?

That I'm a Jew, right? My people have only been Jews about 6,000 years, and we have yet to get used to it, okay? But America's a Christian country. America was founded on Christian principles. Now we have all different sorts of religions here, but it was founded on Christian principles, which come out of the Bible, which is an expression of Christian principles. And the people who wrote the Constitution based it on Christian principles, they say that we are endowed by our creator with certain

inalienable rights. Among those are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And to ensure those rights, only to ensure those rights, are governments instituted among men. So... Men and women. Well, now we... That was understood then to mean men

and women, although it wasn't practiced that way, but it is now. Right. And there's nothing wrong with atheism. Although those people expressed, a lot of the people who signed the declaration were atheists, but they said were endowed by our career. Well, deists. What? Deists.

Yeah, deists. That's different than atheists. I'm sure it is, but I have no idea. It's like naturalism and realism. People say everyone, right, in the theater, I don't know. A deist would say, a tree, that's God. And I would say, really? But listen, I remember in 1993, I moved to New York to do a,

new show called Politically Incorrect. And then I saw the show on Broadway called O'Leon. Oh, yeah. And I thought, wow, I'm not the only one on this tip. Say what? I'm not the only one on this theme. Yeah. When I saw O'Leon.

And I'm not even a real Broadway person. It was off Broadway, but it just changed my life. Oh, thank you. It's great to see you again. David Mamick. What a question. Thank you so much. I hope you do it again for less than 15 years. Thank you.

And none of it. You can take off. I'll take your cartoon. All right, let's meet our panel. Okay. Hello. How you doing? Great, see, yeah. All right, she is historian at Duke University and author of the best-selling book,

Democracy and Change, the Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America. Nancy McLean, back with us, Nancy. Thank you. And he is the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and writer for the New York Times Daily newsletter of the morning. David Leonhard is over here. David, great to welcome you to the show. All right, so I want to pick up on something I was talking about in the monologue.

Maybe this is not the most important issue in America. I don't know. But I can't take my eyes off at like a car accident. It seems like in a very short time, the Republicans have become obsessed with pedophilia. And I remember when pedophilia was like the worst thing you could ever call somebody a pedophile. And now it's like casually thrown up by senators. What happened to my good friend from across the president?

the aisle. You know, I mean, now it's my pedophile. This is coming from QAnon, right? I mean, oh, it's only a couple of years ago. We were making fun of Q&N like it was such a fringe thing. I pretended I was Q&I mean, I really am. Does this mean it's mainstream Republicanism now? Absolutely. I mean, I think what we've seen is the Republican Party go off the rails to the MAGA faction. And they're making a cap. The, Make America Great American. right again faction, which is now dominating the party ranks, but also the party's elected officials. And, you know, you see this also. I think it's very important to point out this is coming from very smart people, some of them in office. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, between them, they have degrees

from four of the most elite universities in America, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and what's the other one, Harvard. And yet they are engaging in this absurdity. Why? Because they're playing to this Q&OND base for voters, but also, and I think this is crucial, they understand that their party has no popular policy positions. So they, you know, Democrats are for reducing prescription drug costs, thank you. Democrats are for reducing the crazy cost of prescription drugs. They're for living wages. They're for action on the climate. All these things that are tremendously popular. So perversely, I think that this focus on pedophiles is a way of recognizing that they've left the normal constitutional and policy universe.

to play to these voters because they have nothing else to offer them, except fear. Well, yeah. I mean, you were joking about it. You were sort of apologizing for bringing it up, right? Saying it can't be the most important thing. But I actually think it is really important because it is this sign of how radicalized

the Republican Party has become and how disconnected from truth it's become in some big ways. I mean, when I hear a political argument, whether it's from the right or the left, I always look for what's the grain of truth here? What's the part that's right? And like on the pedophilia argument, the answer is nothing, right?

I mean, these are just lies about Katanji Brown Jackson, about that, yes. About that, yes. About that Romney, about all this stuff. Well, about that part of it. But look, Jeffrey Epstein, okay, Saxe Island, I'm just saying,

by running a pedophile ring for the world's elite, it just looked bad to the people who think that maybe the world's elite are running a pedophile ring. I'm not saying that's really what was going on. I mean, it was going on look who was on Zach's Island.

Like a lot of... Yeah. A lot of... Okay, so I'm not saying... It was bipartisan. And also, I would like to... Yes. Yeah, it was bipartisan. Men, yes. Well...

We don't know what... I don't know what party Prince Andrew's in. We had Bill Clinton. We had Alan Dershowitz, George Mitchell. I mean, there was a lot of people there. Look, there's George Mitchell. I mean, this guy, why is this guy on Sex Island? I mean...

I mean, look, there are people who do horrible things, including powerful people, right? John Chade in New York Magazine did the list of Republicans who have done things like this, right? I mean, Donald Trump has been accused of walking in on underage people in their dressing room. There was a Republican Speaker of the House who did all kinds of horrible things to these children. And so there are powerful people that do horrible things. But this notion that, like, the Democratic Party is grueling. No, that's crazy. It's crazy.

But let's not forget, this idea about raising the issue of pedophilia and saying it's rampant in America was for a long time a liberal cause. And there weren't wrong. I remember the first person to do it was Roseanne in the 90s was talking about pedophilia. And I remember, including myself, was like, oh, really? It's that widespread.

And then we all got the hint. And then the movie Dolores Claiborne came out. And then we got, oh, yeah. you know what? This is kind of rampant in America. Now, how it migrated to a conspiracy is a different story. I think it's because people were like,

you know what, it can't be just my stepdad. It has to be George Mitchell. But it is rampant. It is a big problem in America. Child fucking. Let's get real. It goes on way too much in way too many places. It just

is not a political issue. It's a family issue, right? No? Sorry, I'm a little bit in shock. Because, I don't know, somebody who kind of believes in facts and numbers, and you love to do statistics. So I'm kind of thinking, you know, what do we mean by phrases like this? And I come to this also as someone who wrote a book about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, when you wouldn't believe it, you'd think that they'd campaign on racism and lynching and all these things.

No, moral panics. They were after the kids who were necking and the mommy and daddy's car at the park at night, after the bootleggers, after the dance loss. No, but I'm saying everything has escalated, everything has changed, and I think the right has always been more sophisticated about going for the absolute most powerful place, parents' concerns about their kids, and weaponizing that to move a crazy agenda.

So I'm a little bit, Leary, like I know obviously the Catholic Church offenses, there's all kinds of sexual assault in America, but at this moment, I would want to put this in relationship to other things, like car crashes or COVID transmission or other such things. All right, so let's move back. one subway stop to just the don't say gay bill in Florida. Now, I would say that that is an overreaction, right? But is it a completely unjustified reaction?

In other words, aren't things going on in schools that parents are rightly concerned about? There are serious policy issues around a lot of these issues that deserve discussion, right? What should happen if a child is using one gender identity at school that the parents don't know it? Don't know about. That's a serious issue that's worth discussing, right?

These sports issues, although they're extremely rare, I think this is really important to know. I mean, we're talking about single digits, numbers of kids in entire states. But that's still, that's a real issue, right? The Leah Thomas swimming issue, that's a real issue where people of good faith can disagree. And those issues are hard. Sometimes they involve conflicting rights, like in the case of swimming, sort of the right for Leah Thomas to swim in the race she wants to. versus the right of the other female swimmers in those race.

Those races are in conflict. What I find so hard about this is it's so hard to move from what are these crazy lies and conspiracies about pedophilia that are really, really, they are damaging and they are gross, right, to suggest that gay people are somehow more likely to do horrible things to children than straight people, right? You would think we have centuries of evidence of straight people. And they're not. No, we have centuries of evidence of straight people doing horrible things to children. And so what's so hard about this is, yes, those are real issues. It's not just like the liberals are right and the conservatives are wrong about all these issues,

but it's just so difficult to move from this craziness and this bigotry and then to kind of go to the underlying policy stuff because it seems to justify the bigot. I'd like to add a little larger context here too, which is that, yes, there are these individual issues to be discussed and worked out. We could do in nice, sane school boards as some things you. used to be. But as someone who studies, a historian who studies the radical right, I have a lot of trouble taking the discussion of what's been going on in the attacks on school boards over the last year out of the context of a radical donor-funded right that has been funding these parents' groups, that has been driving the attacks on school boards that sees in parents'

anxiety after COVID and, you know, in the current moment, is something that they can leverage to get turnout in the 22 midterms. And also, to privatize schools. And Laura Ingram has said it on Fox News. Why would you send your kids to public schools? That's where they're groomed for these things. I mean, it all sort of comes together. And if you start to follow the money, you start to see a much larger agenda that isn't just about parents being concerned about other kids in their kids' classes. And maybe this is my desperate attempt to move it into policy areas. But look, the left has created an opportunity for the right for privatizing schools by closing schools for months on end, right? That's a huge opportunity.

And this stuff then plays into that. Okay. So Ukraine, it's hard to talk about because it's so awful. And it's not changing noticeably from week to week. I mean, there are horrible stories, even more horrible every week, because this is what happens in a war. You know, you send your troops in, and then the soldiers see their buddy gets killed, and then they have nothing but hate for the people who killed their buddy,

and then the atrocities start. And this is what we're seeing in Ukraine now. So Zelensky made a speech this week, and he was basically saying a question that a lot of people have asked, what is the UN for? What is the point if they can't stop this? Because Russia is on the Security Council.

They have one of the five permanent seats, which is created in 1945. And, of course, they're always going to veto any action. What is the point of this giant building in New York and all its free parking bureaucrats if they can't do anything about this? this. He's asking the right question. I mean, he is asking the right question, right? Clearly, there is a function for a body like the UN to deal with certain set of problems, right? Like climate

change. Yeah. We need the UN to deal with climate change. But in a case like the war in Ukraine, it, we just have to have extremely low expectations for what the UN can do, something close to zero, right? People say, should we try Putin for war crimes? You can't try Putin for war crimes, right? That's a completely irrelevant question. The thing is the thing. that has to happen. Well, they did it with the guys in Yugoslavia. Right, but that comes after winning the war, right? What has to happen first is you win the war, then you can figure out what to do with the people who committed warrants. Until you've won the war, it's sort of an irrelevant discussion. And so Zelensky's asking the right question. He's just been this incredible

heroic figure during this entire time. But there are other international organizations that can play a much bigger role in this war than the UN, where Russia doesn't. have a veto, like NATO, like, you know, the informal alliances of the West. The Hague? Yes, but like Japan and South Korea and the United States and England. And so just because the UN is completely ineffectual doesn't mean that the international community has to be ineffectual in confronting Putin here. Okay.

So apropos what you were saying a minute ago, it's so interesting to me that, you know, the far right-wingers, they seem to be so skeptical. of everything media, journalists, everything is fake news. And yet, if you put it in a meme, it's like it came from God himself. I don't understand it. And I saw this that last week on my feed there,

Ricky Schroeder, remember him from Silber Spoons? He's now a very hard right winger. He put this up, a picture of John F. Kennedy with the quote, there's a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child before I leave this high and noble office. I intend to expose this plot. Of course, Kennedy never said that, and yet they believe it. And we found some other Ricky Schroeder memes.

Would you like to see some of the... This guy. Look at this one. Without a strong southern border, one day will awaken to the sound of a million car horns playing Lacucaraja. Abraham Lincoln. Did not say that. We're only one generation away from men being forced to turn their Pee-Ps into wee-wees.

John Adams. Not true. I've been sleeping on my pillows for some time. I love them. Use the promo called Rip Van Buren to receive the next order, Martin Van Buren. That's ridiculous. Jews will not replace this. George Washington did not say it. The greatest mistake Hitler made was to expel the very

physicists who could have built him a space laser. Albert, you know? No? Donald Trump is not just an American treasure. He's also a friend. Frederick Douglass did not say that. I pray to me that they never take away the right to say Merry Christmas. Jesus Christ did not say that. I'm not bald. This is alopecia. Benjamin Franklin, no matter what anyone says about me after I die, remember I'm not black and I definitely can't rap. Alexander Hamilton. Never got a dinner. Okay. So I'm going to quote you a couple of times now. Is that okay? Thank you. You know, I, because like I've read so much bullshit about COVID, but when I read you, I feel like, oh, there's a guy who's actually saying things that don't have to be approved by the usual sources. He's just going to tell me the truth. So there's a new variant. So we're going to have to talk about it again. I want to talk about this even less than Ukraine, but we're going to have to. You wrote, millions of Democrats

have decided that organizing their lives around COVID is core to their identity as progressives. Is that healthy? That I said it or that they're doing it? It is not healthy. I hope it's not unhealthy for me for saying it. You know, it's funny, I was talking with my sister, and she was reminding me that before the vaccines came, that I was sort of the COVID not in our family? I was like, eh, I'm not sure we should do that. Let's be careful around the older people in our family. And then the vaccines came and the vaccines work. They work incredibly well. They work, well, not in what they said they would work for. Half. They stop you from dying. Yes. Let's be happy about that.

Yes. But let's not get it wrong. They were telling us they would stop infection and they would stop transmission and they didn't do that. They didn't do that. Delta changed that. So, you know, this is always my thing, and I'm going to read another quote from you that I think backs that up, that they're wrong a lot. They have not earned monopoly power to just say to me, just do what we say, when have we ever been wrong?

A lot. Yes, yes. No, so what's really hard here is they have been wrong, right? I'm sure you remember when they told us, don't wear masks because we need to keep them for the people who are in hospitals, right? I remember when they drilled mercury into my teeth. So they've been wrong a lot. I think what's really hard is how do you avoid both thinking

that whatever the CDC says in a given moment is what you must go run out and do that second, right? Remember, the CDC also discourages us from eating medium-rare burgers, right? But how do you also avoid the neelist position of, eh, maybe the CDC knows what they're talking about or maybe some random thing that I saw on Facebook knows just as well? And that's a hard balance.

Yeah, please. So, very interesting. I would come at this a little differently because I don't know Democrats or liberals who are organizing their identities around COVID in the way that you describe. What I see as people who are thinking about people who are immunocompromise,

people who are trying to be considered of their neighbors, people have seen people who seem to be healthy, get the virus, and transmit it to others. I work with a lot of nurses. Nurses have been through hell in this pandemic. They have. Everybody was cheering on the nurses, oh, don't we love the frontline health care workers before there was a vaccine? After the vaccine, we forgot about them. They have been devastated. The profession is hemorrhaging people.

At least one of five nurses has quit. They have dealt with patients who have been disinformed by Fox News and other sources, particularly in the South, the region where I live and other parts of the country where Fox is big. And they have been abused by patients. They have suffered moral injury because they have patients who are dying and they cannot do any thing and those patients were misinformed. So I agree. I am so happy to go out to restaurants now. I've gone to a movie theater. I've done a lot of things. But I don't feel

impatient with putting on a mask. When I think someone else is vulnerable, like my simple act of a little bit of discomfort, big deal. I'd rather save lives. Depending on the situation. So, I think the problem... That doesn't mean

five-year-old should do it. Right. I don't know. I live with some five-year-old this summer who had a father who had kidney trouble and was getting dialysis, and they all had to wear a mask. And so we wore masks because we wanted these kids to have a daddy. I'm just saying, I think we can go too far in the other direction. Yes, you can be fanatical about care and protection. But I see a lot more COVID minimization now. And hey, Nancy Pelosi got COVID. Do you want Nancy Pelosi out of the game? Adam Schiff got COVID at the grid iron dinner. Merrick Garland,

who hasn't done much for a year now, it seems, is out of the game. the game. Now, granted, I don't think they're serious cases because they got vaccinated, but I'm just saying, like, there's a way of every time we've said, oh, it's great, things are fine, a new variant comes along. So let's just like relax, exhale, see what we do.

But not, not people who are taking it seriously. I'd like you go. And, you know, go ahead. So it is absolutely the case that there are many millions of Americans who are taking COVID not seriously enough, right? They're not getting vaccinated. That's absolutely the case. But the question is, what does it mean to take it seriously

enough? Does it mean to keep kids out of school for months at a time, which we did, even though they were at very low risk? I don't think it does. Does it mean to wear masks, even though if you're not wearing a KN95 or an N95, they have vanishingly little effect. Having kids in masks almost certainly does virtually nothing to protect people, right? We've now seen this. And messes up the kids. We've sort of run an... But we also saw schools that didn't have proper ventilation. We have teachers who have immunocompromised relatives. I mean, I think we just need to balance it.

And so to go full on in a kind of minimizing... And again, it depends where you live. If you live in a state that voted strongly for Donald Trump, you're four more times likely to die now than a Democrat who lives in a place where you write. Oh, no, no. So that's a few point, right?

That's important. And more hospitals are getting shut down. I'm not sure that's true. It was in Washington Post. Not your favorite. But... I remember reading the COVID deaths by state on this show a few months ago, and Florida was 17, New York and New Jersey were four and five. Now, there's varying factors. West Virginia and Massachusetts, which are about as different at two states can get, were 10 and 11. I read in the Washington Post that in states that voted strongly for Donald Trump versus strongly for Joe Biden.

Look, we know what kills people with COVID. I mean, obesity is by far the biggest factor. That's just a fact. You're a big bad fact. That's a fact, right? Like 78% of the people who are hospital... No? I don't have the data at my fingertips, but... Shouldn't you if you have all this? Here's what I'm saying. I worry a little bit about this.

I do have the data. 78% of the people who are hospitalized or died had rubies. I mean, it's just it was killing most people before COVID, just slowly. And then it was, of course, elderly. 75% were over 65. And then it's unvaccinated. So, yes, if you're one of those Red State Trumpers, who's a moron

who thinks that Bill Gates put a chip in the vaccine, and you just want to own the libs by not getting vaccinated and you're old and obese, you're going to die. From this, you're going to get it and you're going to die. Because everyone's going to get it. The new one is more transmissible. It gets more transmissible, basically,

and less severe. When you look across the country at counties, which I think is sort of a better way to do it, because obviously New York State has a lot of conservative counties and Florida has some liberal county. Sure. What you see is huge difference in deaths, right? Huge difference. Red counties have much, much higher death rates because they're not taking the vaccine. And you can see virtually no difference in case rates during Omicron.

Even though when you look at things like restaurant reservations, mask wearing, in liberal communities, people aren't going out to eat. been for months, much, much lower restaurant things, and they're wearing masks. They're not wearing them that well. You put those two things together. What it tells me is there are all kinds of things that liberal America is doing at a very good instinct that make very little difference and that the vaccines really work and save lives. And by not taking them, conservatives or damaging themselves and damaging the country. And the word you use balance, I think is perfect. I think conservatives haven't taken COVID nearly seriously enough. And I think liberals, if we're being honest about this, have some

performative aspects of the COVID response, wearing masks because it feels like a badge of, I'm a progressive. Even though a lot of those masks, particularly with Omicron, which is so contagious, are doing very little to protect people. I'm not anti-mask. Wear one.

If you go into a nursing home, if you go into a hospital, wear a KN95, or an N95. But don't think that these mask mandates, where you wear some cloth mask into a restaurant, and then you take it off so you can eat, is doing anything. I'm going to court you one more talk. Thank you. I love this one. Many people have come to believe that expert opinion is a unitary,

oh, there it is, omniscient force. That's the assumption behind the phrases, follow the science and what the science says, and imagine science almost as a god, science who could solve our dilemmas if we only listened. And this is sort of the case I've been making. Like, who's science? Like, of course, the chip and the vaccine is insane. But, you know, the FDA's two top vaccine experts resigned because they said, you're not following what we found out about boosters. You're recommending them, and we told you not to. It looks politicized. It looks like we have our science and anybody else can just, you know, we just pretend that they're a quack. And these aren't quacks. These are other doctors. Science is hard. Especially medical science. We don't know shit.

It involves debates. And I would just encourage people to really. realize that, like, some of these things are hard scientific questions where we don't have the data or we're still emerging. And, you know, others of them are question of values and questions of trade-offs. If we kept every kid in America home for the next month from school, would we reduce COVID cases? Yes, we would. I think. Would that be a good trade-off? If we all stayed home and just stayed perfectly still in our room. Right. And so that's not science. That's not science. That's not life. We have to make hard, decisions about values and trade-offs.

Right. All right. There will be the piece. Thank you, panel. Time for New rules. New rule, someone has to tell me why Amazon's toilet-shaped novelty coffee cup only gets four and a half stars. Dear Amazon, I really love this product. It arrived on time and worked as promised. Sadly, I had to duck half a star because it made me think about drinking shit. New rule, now that scientists in the journal's Sexual Medicine Reviews say the Jesus, spot is not one spot, but a zone made up of five separate regions.

They need to keep this to themselves. Men have enough trouble finding one spot. Now we have to find five? That's not sex. That's geography. Most of us can't even locate Ukraine on a map. Now we've got to pinpoint

your disputed Donbos region. New rule, you can post the link for the story. Dog pretends she's asleep to get out of being in trouble in hilarious video, but it can't take you to a magazine called Newsweek. Sorry Newsweek, you're supposed to be a news magazine. It's right in your title.

Which means you're not in the adorable dog videos business. You're in the put Jesus on the cover every week and pray someone buys it business. New Rule now the 24-year-old Taylor Clement, the New Zealand woman who has a rare condition that leaves her unable to smile, has been signed to an international modeling contract, the rest of the world's models have to tell us, what's your excuse?

New Rule, if you graduated from high school with Lenny Kravitz in 1982, don't go to the reunion. Because he's going to show up like this, and you're going to feel like shit for the rest of the night. And for our final rule tonight, it's time for another edition of one of our favorite departments here on real time, explaining jokes to idiots. whereas the public service, I break down jokes for the humor impaired. Not that I have anyone particular in mind. Now, I know we're all sick of talking about the slap, but I'm sorry, one more thing needs to be said.

Comedians have been under attack for quite some time, and I need to stick up from my tribe. This war on jokes must end. So tonight, let's deprude a film this thing once and for all and explain jokes to idiots. Now, at the Oscars, Chris Rock came out to present a boring award and first did what he is supposed to do, get some laughs doing what we comics call crowdwork.

Denzel and Javier Bardem each got spritz. And then Chris made what in the business is known as a some shit is like some other shit joke. He said to Jada Smith, Jada can't wait for G.I.J. Jane 2. recalling the late 90s movie starring to me more. That's it. That's the joke.

You remind me of some other beautiful, buzz-cutted movie star. It wasn't an alopecia joke any more than the one about the chicken-crusting. The road is about bird flu. Not an insult. Although insult humor is also a staple of comedy.

And in fact, an example of insulting someone's looks was on display that night when Regina Hall said, we've been dealing with COVID for two years. It's been really hard. on people, and Amy Schumer said, yeah, just look at Timothy Shalame and they cut to J.K. Simmons. Who made a face a lot

like the one Jada would make later on. But that's where it ended. It's called being a good sport, especially when you're a rich celebrity. Let the common people take the piss out of you for one stinking minute. And importantly, Chris's joke was

received as funny. As evidenced by the audience and Will Smith, laughing. And this is the moment where we got to see a live action real-time encapsulation of how cancel culture works. Look at what happens next. Jada shoots her husband a look. Let's slow the tape down to capture this moment. There. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Before this moment, Will is laughing because he hasn't yet found out that his original genuine reaction is wrong and that he should conform

to a different view. And he's the one who's being manly? I've seen the same syndrome happen in comedy clubs. Woke hecklers who literally have to wait for the laughter to die down before they yell, that's not funny. This war on jokes must end. Will Smith didn't get kicked out of the Oscars for going Ike Turner on Chris, but Kevin Hart got kicked out of hosting it for a joke.

Who are these people who say cancel culture isn't a real thing? Just among comedians who've gotten fired and lost gigs for exercising their freedom of expression, the toll is high. Gilbert Godfried and Kathy Griffin were tasteless. So what? That's why we like them. Comedians are the ones testing where the line is. We can't always be perfect any more than,

Tom Brady will never throw an interception. Dave Chappelle lost distribution for his documentary and Sarah Silverman was fired from a film over an old sketch where she wore blackface to make fun of racism. Roseanne lost the TV show she created with her name on it over tweets that were very offensive, but not at all clear Roseanne knew them to be. She is crazy, and I say that as a friend.

All comedians are a little crazy, and you need crazy on that wall. Will Smith wasn't pulled off stage, but comedian Nemesh Patel was literally pulled off stage during a performance at Columbia for a joke about how hard it is to be gay and black. Not an anti-gay joke, mind you, a pro-gay joke. But one of the event organizers walked on stage and said, I don't think you're entitled to certain jokes you're making. Well, a sense of entitlement certainly is a big part of the problem here. but not on the part of the comedian.

And that's the thing. The people who can't take a joke now aren't old ladies in the Bible Belt. They're Gen Z at elite colleges. Colleges where comedy goes to die. Kids used to go to college and lose their virginity. Now they go to lose their sense of humor. Vice recently interviewed college bookers

who revealed that before a comedian even takes the stage, they're asked to edit out anything from their own. act that may cause offense, leaving a world where more and more topics are off limits, and soon there'll be nothing left to joke about except airline food and Starbucks getting your name wrong.

Jud Appetow has an awesome new documentary coming here to HBO about George Carlin, owner of the most famous 180 in comedy history when he turned his back on a lucrative career in nightclubs in order to let his hair down and be himself in front of a younger

crowd who welcomed irreverence. in 1970, George said, I got to go to colleges. I belong with people who are open and will let me be myself an experiment. Oh, George, it's a good thing you're dead. Because today, the seven words you can't say on TV or Jada can't wait for G.I. Jane, too.

For all those who are constantly demanding an apology for jokes, maybe it's you who should apologize to us. For all the great jokes that we never got to hear, the brilliant thoughts that were never uttered, those are the invisible scars of cancel culture. Let's have a moment of silence for that and a spot in the in-memorium package for all the viable jokes that could have lived but were aborted

because a voice in someone's head said, are you sure you want to risk saying that? That's self-censorship, the worst kind of all. But you will get none of that on my new HBO special. It's called Adulting. And it premieres in this time slot a week from tonight. As the kids say, it's fire. All right, that's our show.

We're off next week so I can have my special here. We're back on the 22nd. I'll be at the Smart Financial Center in Sugar Land, Texas tomorrow at the Tulsa Theater in Tulsa April 10th at the MGM National Harbor in D.C. May 1st. Thank you, Nancy McLean, David Leonhardt, and David Mavitt.

Now go to YouTube. And join us on overtime. Thank you. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Mar every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.