Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #627: David Byrne, John McWhorter, Josh Tyrangiel

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

Bill’s guests are David Byrne, John McWhorter, and Josh Tyrangiel  (Originally aired 03/10/23)  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Start the clock. Oh, how you doing?

You came out in the rain. Thank you very much. I thought you'd stiff us because it was raining. Thank you. I appreciate it. Wow. Thank you very much. Great to see you.

I know the rain is bad, but hey, we're excited because it's Hollywood. and this is Oscar weekend. This is our big... Oh, I know. Yeah, oh, I don't know if this is good with the Oscars, but it's going to be an interesting show. A little different this year.

This year on the red carpet, they're asking, who are you slapping? No, actually, you know what? No red carpet. For the first time in 60 years, they're changing. It's going to be a white carpet. Yes, because that was the problem with the Oscars, the rug.

I mean, we... I love it, but we make such a big... I'll be in San Francisco performing that night. I'm not even watching that fucking thing. And it'll be a better show. But, but honestly, we make such a big deal, and could you even name

what was Best Picture last year? You know, you win, and it's a big deal, and then you disappear. Like Kamala Harris. We kid in a good way. But I, I'll be honest with you. There's one person I am rooting for. Tom Cruise.

Maverick is up for Best Picture. I wasn't crazy about the movie, but I want to see a guy get up there and go, I want to thank Zinu. All possible. Show business is... It's very strange. Did you see this today? Disneyland.

I'm not making this up. Disneyland now is dropping Zippity Duda. It was a song, I guess, they used in their parade. No, has racist origins. Okay, Zippity Duda is offensive, but the seven dwarves can still... They're okay, and they can say to Snow White, hi-ho. I mean, I think Disney has to get with the times, you know.

I mean, in Disney movies, kids hate their stepmom. But kids don't watch Disney movies. They watch porn where they fuck their stepmom. So here's a first that was in the news. Have you been following the story about the Mexican drug cartel that kidnapped four Americans? and killed two of them. Well, today, the cartel, this is a real first, issued an apology letter. Wow, I guess they want to be the cartel that cares. When they dump, when they dump your little things, when they dump your body now,

they put it in one of those tinfoil swans, you know. And now the State Department is warning all Americans not to travel to areas with violent gangs roaming the streets. And the people in Chicago said, but we live here. And another first, apparently in some Republicans, Arkansas, I love Arkansas. I do, I love Arkansas, but really, Arkansas, the governor there, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now going the other way that we used to go with child labor law is making it easy for children to work. Republicans are like, if a kid is going to transition, it'd better be to the workforce. And I guess, I guess, just maybe.

be a related story? Trump is on the warpath about he wants to now, his big thing now is he wants to pay people to have babies. And Nick Cannon said, I'm listening. Speaking of having babies, did you see the week Lauren Bobert had? You know Lauren Bobert? She's the firebrand, a gun-toter from Colorado. And she was railing against sex education in school this week and then had to reveal that her 17-year-old son knocked up his girlfriend and they're going to have a child. She was 18 when she had him. She's going to be a grandmother at 36. My friends, this is how

trailer park stay in business. I can say it. Between Arkansas and this, Republicans are always for kids going into labor. All right, we've got a great show. We have John McWhorter and Josh Tearingale are here, but first up, he's the Oscar Grammy and Tony Award-winning musician

who recently co-wrote and recorded the Oscar-nominated song, This Is Life, for the film everything everywhere all at once. David Burns. Okay. Great to meet you. Thank you.

I'm always happy to meet someone who's a little older than me. Just a little. Who's still so relevant, so busy. I mean, you've got your American Utopia Musical with all the Talking Heads. Songs, it's fantastic.

You've got a show coming to Broadway. We'll get to that. You have the Oscar-nominated song. I guess you, I see you as someone who only looks forward. Is that right? Yeah, so far. Yeah. I'm not very nostalgic.

No, you're not the guy who does the talking heads reunion. No. I'm not very nostalgic, and I feel like, oh, the next thing I do is the thing I'm really excited about. And that's what I think would keep you young. I'm exactly the same way. I don't want, I could be sentimental. I don't want to, because it would remind me I'm closer to dead than

I don't want to unless I listen to 144 or something but I saw you on 60 Minutes and you said something else I very much relate to you. You said you're a such a different person than you were when you were younger and you're nicer and I would say the same. Now maybe we're just flattering ourselves that we're nicer.

Do these people backstage say you're nicer? No. Yes, but they have to, or I'll fire them. Well, I wonder the same thing. I mean, it's just me telling myself. It's not. Really? We're old enough to know the difference.

And we know ourselves. And also, it is what people say about us. And you could just feel it. So why is it the... Let me hear your theory. Why do you think we do get nicer? Wow. There's a little bit of...

Whatever the thing you're working on isn't like the end of the world. It's just not going to cure cancer, not likely. Right. And so it's like, take it easy, chill out. The people you're working with are trying to help you do what you want to do. You don't have to yell at them. If you go the nice way, they might actually help you out.

So there will be a talking heads reunion. Well, but don't you all pretty good terms, though. I'm glad. I mean, because you should be. I mean, to have created that amazing music, it's still a heavy rotation in my iPod. But, yes, I still use the iPod. It's a superior form of...

I'm not going to get into it here. We don't know in the time, but it is superior to streaming. Anyway, but, you know, you're doing a musical about Imelda Marcos. Here Lies Love, right? I'm so curious as to why... I mean, you're such a creative guy. the whole world is open for you.

You could have chosen any subject. Amel de Marcos, now for the young people who don't remember, she was the first lady of the Philippines. She was overthrown in 86, kind of a popular uprising. She was known as a... I mean, maybe she was a nice lady,

but she did have 3,000 pair of shoes. 3,000 pair of shoes, yes. She was known as the Iron Butterfly. Right. Why Melda Marcos? I'm old enough to remember when she was an item. going to going out with socialites and everything else in New York being in the news and kind of slightly

outrageous. I remember that. She was page six fodder, yes. Yeah, yeah. And then, and I thought, oh, this is a, she's a fascinating character. Later on, I heard that she loved going to discos. Studio 54, she turned the roof of the palace in Manila into a disco. I did a little research and I found a video of her dancing under a mirror ball in her New York townhouse with an arms dealer. And I thought, I think, I'm not going to say which arms dealer, but a very well-known arms dealer. And I thought, I think we have something here. Right. She inhabits this fantasy world and the soundtrack comes up.

with it. I love dance music, and I thought, let's see if there's a story here. Well, as soon as you said disco, all I can hear is, you see no party, the scene no disco, casino fooling around.

And, you know, you say you're not political, but, I mean, that song, Life and War Time, one of my all-time favorites of any band ever. And I just, it seems very political to me,

and very, very, funny because you know this life in war time but you're really talking about America I was talking about America I was an imaginary situation it all sounds like somewhere overseas it could be at some place overseas and we know quite well happening right now right and the other song that I have to bring up before we run out of time is Road to Nowhere because you sold it to me not yes yes not the whole song yeah the whole song but not for ever we still never we but I needed a man we have to ask you again

making my movie religious. Oh, thank you. I'm glad people still remember that one. And I needed a song for the end. I mean, we had a lot of great songs throughout it. Pete Townsend sold me The Seeker. Narls Barkley sold me crazy. Stevie Wonder would not sell me superstition.

Wow. Oh, yeah. He was like, Bill Maher, I know what you're up to. I'm not supporting that. But you, God bless you. He sold me Road to Nowhere. It is the perfect song, in that movie. It starts with the choir.

And, I mean, I always thought it was about religion. Was I always wrong? It's about, yeah. Well, it's about The inevitability of death. Right. But that

it, musically, it's kind of uplifting. Very. That's why I loved it. It's cheery. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the lyrics are like, they can tell you what to do and they'll make a fool of you. Yes. And you mentioned paradise. You mentioned a city in my mind,

which is something we hear a lot in religion. I just hope I got near it. There's some of those lines borrowed directly from kind of church songs and things like that. And what about the song that you're nominated for Sunday? This is Life from everything else. I take it to mean that we should have the freedom to choose as we all want to choose to live.

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's, well, if anyone's familiar with the movie, the movie is really a lot of craziness and multi-dimensions and all kinds of stuff going on. Your kind of film, I thought. But in the end, I thought, this is a movie about a family reconciling

and kind of coming back together after squabbling and through multiple dimensions for the last couple of hours. And in the end, they kind of reconcile. They come back together. There's forgiveness. And I thought, that's what it's about. And I talked with the other guys that were working on the music and said, we have to put a pin in that rather than all the craziness.

That we move along despite all the stuff that's going on. So you're optimistic about the future? It's hard to be, but yes. Okay. Thank you so much for everything you've ever done. From my iPod. And all the other stuff. David Byrne, everybody.

Let's meet our panel. Thank you. Okay. There they are. He is the author of the New York Times newsletter and contributor to the Glenn Show podcast. John McWhorter is back with us. John.

And he's the Emmy Award-winning producer and journalist and creator of Vice News tonight, Josh Tierngel. Josh, great to have you with us. Okay. I pledge many times. that I wouldn't keep talking about Donald Trump, but he pulls me back in.

It's just like Godfather three. And, I mean, what can I tell you? I always said, you know, he's the shark that went out to sea, but we didn't kill it. He's coming back to the shore. And now, I mean, so many people have said to me this week, I thought this was over. I thought he was...

Desantis is the guy. Now, the polls came out. He's killing it. He's got a 41-point lead. I mean, not close. Killing DeSantis, even in New Hampshire. The word was always, oh, Desantis in New Hampshire, kind of an independent state. No, losing up they're big.

Trump is a great politician. Am I wrong? He's just a great politician. So was Hitler. I'm not saying he's like Hitler. I'm not saying he's Hitler. I'm saying in that one way they're very alike. Not workers, but politicians.

The people who hate Trump focus on the idiot part, right? And what they tend to overlook is the savant part. And the fact is he means... It gets it. Right. Interesting. And, you know, we have a linguist here, which is great. His great gift is for both language and gesture, right?

So he said this... Well, unintentionally language. Well, it is improvised. But I would say, just because it's improvised doesn't mean he's not good at it. He's never thought about it once. That's what works for him. No.

He's as smart as a box of hair. He doesn't know what he's doing. No. No. No. But what he does is very effective, and one does have to be afraid. I'm not that afraid, actually, though,

because what it does come down to is charisma. And the truth is, the people running against him mostly don't have that magic charisma that he has. Nikki Haley, it's like talking to a spoon. Glenn... Glenn Yonkin, to me, I always have to remember that he wasn't the father on family ties. He's not somebody who you...

want. Think about it. Wasn't it him? I never even saw the show, and it's hysterically funny. Descentus has something. Now, I know that people say that in person, one-on-one, it's like talking to a kitchen cabinet, but actually, he can fill a room.

There's something about him, and so he's got the charisma, and also he's got the magaism with a certain substance, which Trump doesn't have. Well, I would disagree with that. First of all, everything I hear about DeSantis is that he's dull. He doesn't have any charisma. And also, I think liberals

they just, they make a real effort not to understand the Trump voter. And you know, it's like, oh, Desantis is going to be great because it's Trumpism without Trump. And I think they're like, why would we want a tribute band

when the actual band is still playing? I agree 100%. Yes, DeSantis can fill a room, but he can fill it with the kind of energy you want to then leave the room. Like, he does not have the warmth. But on top of it, the thing that, so I went back a couple weeks ago. Do you guys remember the first debate in 2015? It's August 2015, right?

And so the Republic, everybody's like, what the hell is about to happen? So they did the junior debate first. It was the seven Republicans who didn't get to like 5%. Then they bring them all out. It's 10 guys. The first question to all 10 of them, was, who will raise their hand and say that they won't support the nominee, no matter who it is? Trump raises his hand, and the crowd boos.

I mean, a lusty boo. And it's like watching the five seconds before Pompeii goes off. Because what then happens is they're booing, and Trump, not a word, gives a gesture. He gives the Trump face, which is like, are you fucking kidding me, these jokers around me? And you can actually hear the crowd turn from a boo-doo. to a shriek of joy because he's the transgressor. He's Johnny Rotten of the Republican Party.

You will not find anybody who delivers for those guys better than him. He's why there's a certain click in high school, and you're not interested. Why are they the cool kids? They have confidence, and the rest of us are insecure. I don't think that's going to work again. That worked for a long time. He's got an amazing

charisma, that kind of towel-snapping business that he does. But I have a hard time believing that there isn't a critical mass of people who wouldn't go for somebody who believes in the sorts of things that he unfortunately believes in, but also seems like he would rule as a grown-up. And by dissent is filling a room, I mean that some people have said to me that he actually gives a good speech. Now, I don't think he'll ever light up a room the way Trump did, but wouldn't people maybe prefer the tribute ban

rather than somebody who's going to blow up the world? No. I hope so. No, I hope so, too, but it's... I was even more on the side of what I'm saying now, this question. week when we found out how much Fox news has been lying. And I thought see, my liberal mind went to, oh my God, you Fox News viewers,

all you care about is fake news. And now we have you caught red-handed that you are getting fake news. We have this evidence. They're caught red-handed talking. We have the transcripts, the emails, the text. They're saying they hate Trump. He's bad for the country. They know he lost the

country, and they're telling you the exact opposite. Aren't you dumb asses? Understand? And they're going, yeah, we know. But it just feels right. It feels good, and I need to feel good. And it doesn't matter if it's factually right. It's like, you know what? Remember the OJ trial?

Like, black folks knew that OJ killed that girl. To a man. Right. But it just felt right. And I don't blame them. For once, a black guy beat the justice system after a zillion times the other way around. So you think people are going to watch Tucker Carlson

and Laura Ingram lying to them, but figure, well, that's okay, because we want to get back at people who look down. Yes, absolutely. Yes. That's exactly it. And the idea that people want, oh, but he has some of the policies that we love so much about Trump, they don't care about the policies. They care about the guy who's going to broke his finger.

They don't even care about the lying. I mean, Tucker Carlson is now caught saying, I hate Trump passionately. And I thought, when I always, they got you. And then I realized, and I've quoted this before, some conservative guy I know said to me some time ago, what you people don't get about the MAGA crowd is we don't like him either. And then I read this other thing Trump said a couple of weeks ago where he said, they're not out to get me. They're out to get you.

They're coming for you. They just got to get through me. That's what they like about him. He's a warrior. You know what I don't get, and I'm going to look stupid on television saying this, but I haven't gotten this for the past five or six years. Is it really true that there are these people, quote, unquote, sitting in diners with their hats on, et cetera,

who are existentially upset that people like us in Blue America look down on them. It seems to me most people are not thinking about what the wider world thinks about them. They're buying their groceries. I have never seen any convincing evidence that there are enough of those people to actually turn an election for that reason, and I'm willing to be... Then why did he win the first time? Because he's charismatic. It's fun to watch him. That's why most people vote for people.

But it's not that those people don't like us. I don't think they think about us. But there's still a core. And remember, we're talking about the nominee. There's still a core of 45%. It is unshakable. They will not be told by Fox News not to vote for him. They will not be told by anyone else.

They are with him because he represents them. And that includes some of the evangelicals. It is unshakable. And so anybody go... I don't think they're going to budge. Because I think they found in him the first person who's willing to just air their grievance in a way that's relatable to them.

And they got a great gift this week, although, of course, in the media it was portrayed as a terrible thing, that Trump's about to be indicted in two states. If you haven't... See?

Wow. Enjoy your applause break because it's going to be good for him. Really good for him. He could not have ordered up a better foe than Alvin Bragg, the Attorney General. For people who don't know.

Okay, the one is Georgia, where again, caught red-handed. He's on the phone, on tape, saying, Find me 11,000 votes. I can't think of a more smoky or gun than that. And the other one is New York. It's the Stormy Daniels case.

That would be the trial of the century. Two blondes with big tits. But it's just not one person on the right is going to think that they're going to, oh, there they go. Just trying to get them. It's always, we've got to get them. We'll find something. And that's kind of what I mean by the gift, right? Is that he can be whatever you want it to be.

So he said this week at CPAC, he said, I am your retribution, right? Right. And so to the MAGA crowd, they take that literally. To the Republicans trying to whistle past Trump, it's like, ha ha, ha, it's a joke. And then to the Democrats, it's infuriating, right? Well, he said, he did.

We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. We will drive out the globalists, cast out the communist, we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all. The tribute band just is not going to sound like that. It's the real thing. It gets to a deeper in your nags.

It just does. No. No? And I am willing, it's going to be on YouTube, me saying something that didn't work. I cannot believe that people would actually end up electing somebody who's running on the negative on personal resentments like that. Lyndon Johnson had class-based resentments against what people thought of him and dropped it when he started running the country.

Bill Clinton had the same thing. Here is somebody who's running on having been kicked in the sandbox and feeling that people look down on him and wanting to bring this with other people. And I guess what you're saying is that in the world of Twitter, that could actually work in that even these MAGA fans would be numb to something with more substance that's kind of Trump Jr., that makes a certain sense. I know that a lot of people don't make sense, but that many, I just can't see it. I don't want to be alive. All I can think of is, if I was watching this clip of you, I would think, oh, this must be 2015.

No. Because it already happens. But it happened, and we saw what happened. But this is like, I mean, and in the clip, I'm going to say, this is 2023. It happened before. But we tend to think, oh, well, if we, you know, from the left in particular,

people vote against their own self-interest. We should just explain it to them. Why it's in their self-interest. That never works. It never works. And so this is the same version of that, which is like, don't you understand, Desantis might actually be able to advance these policies

in a methodical, disciplined way, that Trump cannot. No, the self-interest is in Trump's performance of their... Well, as long as we're talking about what's going on on the right and Fox News and that kind of stuff, I want to talk about Tucker Carlson for a minute because he was big in the news this week. I don't know if you saw this,

but he blew the lid. on what happened on January 6th, 2021, for real. No, really. This was his big thing. Trump tweeted about it. You know, the unpleasantness at the Capitol that happened that day. Well, according to Tucker, you heard it wrong.

The unpleasantness. Well, it was actually not unpleasant, is what Tucker's thesis is. And he showed footage of people, and it's real footage from that day. You can't deny that. But there's a lot of footage from that day. and it's people, well, I'm not going to show that footage,

but I'm going to read exactly what he said. This is what Tucker said, and he showed his footage from January 6th. I'm going to read his words under the footage we chose from January 6th. It is the... I want to stress to you, both those footages are real, and these are exactly the words he said. He said, we're going to begin tonight with footage

that shows you exactly what was happening. inside the Capitol. The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress. Instead, it shows police escorting protesters through the building. They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not

insurrectionists. They were sightseers. Protesters queue up in neat little lines. They give each other tours outside the speaker's office. They take cheerful selfies and they smile. They're not destroying the Capitol.

They obviously revere the Capitol. Okay, so everyone is coming down on Tucker Carlson. I just want to defend him and say, I think this is an exciting new way to teach history. You teach the things that didn't happen. The things that didn't go on. If you're a history buff like I am, you'll want to see more of this. So we are partnering with Fox News to bring you a set of gold coins.

It's called the Tucker Carls. Carlson collection of non-evance. And here are some of the ones you'll get. You'll get JFK's uneventful flight to Dallas. Uh, the Sears Tower on 9-11. Kanye on his men's. Uh, contained viruses from the Wuhan lab. You'll get Bob Weinstein.

You'll get Jeffrey Dahmer eats his salad. You'll get Hitler petting his dog. and the time George Santos said something true. Okay, so I'm a question for you. Bernie Sanders was here last week. He was on overtime, which we'd... Yeah, I love Bernie. I have to say...

I get emails from conservatives to say, I love Bernie Sanders. I don't agree with anything he says, but he's so authentic. And he is. He was on overtime. I asked him, you know, the Senate is working on this bill

to change daylight saving times. It's in the Senate. Are you involved in that? No. I don't give a shit about daylight saving. No, he didn't say that. But I did, it made a little news. I asked him, somebody asked one of the questions that we get sent for this.

I'm just reading people's questions. The difference between equity and equality, because we have heard that, I mean, I never heard equity that word a lot before a few years ago. And now I think it sounds like equality, but it seems to be a very different thing. And it's in a lot of federal legislation now, equity. So I said, what's the difference? And God bless him. So, Anna, I'm not sure I know.

And Bernie, you're not alone. I can't find anybody who actually knows or people. They have a different view of it. So I just thought I'd ask you two bright guys, what is the difference between equity and equality in your view? Oh, the difference is a truly sneaky, terrible thing. Equity. Equity is this, this wormy word.

The idea is that you're going to have equality by, forcing the issue by bringing people into positions that they're not qualified for yet so that everything looks quote unquote like America. So it sounds like equality and you say equity and you figure it's the same thing. But it's a euphemism. They're trying to slip in without letting you know that it's going to be equality accomplished in a way that you probably wouldn't like. It's like if you say to somebody, well, before I let you go and you say that to them when they didn't say that they want to be like that. Really, you just want to get rid of them. Or if you talk about diversity, well, imagine talking to Franklin D. Roosevelt about diversity. When we say diversity, what we mean

is changing standards for various reasons for black and Latino and sometimes Native American people. That's what diversity means. You just don't want to say it. Equity means that you force equality, and you kind of weasel your way through it. And so it's like you take the word equality and you kind of knock the AL out of it. It's like, bam, bam. It's like, bam, bam. And you knock it out and you've got equity. And the people who do this think that that's the right thing because

they are on the side of the angels and they have to have this fake equality. And what it means is this. This is DEI. It's not an accident that DEI is the first three letters of deity. These people think of themselves as gods. None of this

is an accident. So that's what equity means, whether Bernie Sanders knows or not. It's a weasel. Okay, so in terms of numbers, though, right? Can I... To answer me this, is this equity, because this is something that is

very close to us here, we tape at CBS. I know it's confusing. We're on HBO. Don't ask. It just happens to be that way. CBS, writers' rooms for CBS shows must be staffed with a minimum of 50%

bypac that's A disease. Sounds like it. Sorry. It stands for bisexual. Bisexual Indian people of color. Close enough.

What is by? Black, it's not bisexual. Black indigenous people of color. So 50% of every writer's room, which is that to me sounds like that's more equity than equality. They're saying like, well, these aren't the best people

perhaps to write this show. What if it's a show about a polka band in a ski town? But their color is what makes it... Right. We're just saying it has every writer's room. That would be equity, right? As opposed to equality? Yeah. I mean, I'm going to offer

a slight defense here. Because I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying. At the same time, if you're one of those people who has been trying to crack a writer's room, it's hard. It's really hard. Because Historically, in this town, writer's rooms, I say this as a Jew. It's like, diversity was like one member of each of the 12 tribes. Right. It was like, there's a lot of Jews in those rooms.

And that's great. Jews are funny. We are generally pretty funny. I mean, that's one reason why. Exactly. You know the old story about Red Fox? No. When he was doing, what show was that when?

Sanford and Son. Every episode. I recommend it, though. He went more this other route, and then apparently the next week he said, Get me by the Jews. And listen There's lots of funny black guys, obviously, too, and of every... But organizations are filled with entropy, right?

And there's always a challenge. You've got to get it out. We've got to go to the people we know. And so, while I wouldn't say, hey, it's got to be 50%, it's got to be tomorrow, I think the impulse here is not something that we should make fun of, even as we make fun of the ways in which it might be implemented, because ultimately, without a forcing mechanism, change doesn't happen very much. So I don't think it's a bad thing to say, we need to strive to get this done.

Not at all. And we may need to put some pressure. Not at all. No. As always, it's where do you draw the line? You have to do something different, but if you force it to that extent that you say that next week, everything has to be equal,

what it comes down to is this. What that does to, for example, black people is that you go through an entire life knowing that nothing that you've been asked to do, Nothing that you've been granted can be completely separated from the fact that somebody wasn't thinking about the fact that you were a pretty

color and it would make them look good to bring you in. You spend your whole life that way? Yes, that does include me. That is something that we have to think about with these sorts of policies where you force it really quickly and you drag people in to be what used to be called. What happened to the term

token black? Remember we used to say that? Yeah. Now it's called diversity and equity. It won't it won't do. So yes, but you can't do it too much, too fast, or you're dehumanizing everybody but white people. Okay, so equity itself is kind of an example of the practice we do now of changing language to change the way people think, which is something that's gone on for a long time. I mean, certainly George Orwell wrote about that, and it's gone on in many countries, and it seems

to be going on here more than it used to in this country. I mean, we just mentioned which is a term I hadn't heard. I mean, George Packer wrote about this. It's changing a lot. Recently. And he mentioned, I think, felon is now justice-involved person. And there's many others like that. And I think his point was it's one thing for language to change organically, which it should and does.

And you can't stop it. You know, most of Shakespeare is indecipherable because it's 400 years ago. We don't use those words anymore. And the dictionary every year puts out an addition with these are new words. But there are new words because people just organically started using new words. It's not like the dictionary says, here's a bunch of words we're commanding you to use now. And I think what Packer was saying is that's what's going on now. There's an order that comes from a small group of people.

We don't know who they are. We can't ask. It comes on from high. And they're saying, you need to say Latinx now. And you need to say, you know, a person experiencing homelessness. And I feel like this is why woke becomes a joke, because you'd rather rename it than solve it. I mean, those codes that come down, you know, again,

they come from a place of trying to be more respectful of people. Right. But ultimately, they fail twice, right? The first time is that they treat prejudice as a form of language or etiquette. And we all know that is not what prejudice is really about. That's not the way you fix it. And the second is that, you know, John has written as expertly about the same human world. Language comes up.

So those organizations end up looking stupid twice, right? They're clueless twice when they issue these things. The one thing I would say, though, is like it is easy to get that pinata of, like, sincerity and go whack at it and say, you know, oh, the language police are upon us. The woke left is trying to change the way. And the truth is a lot of these organizations, I've been inside of a big company. big companies don't need to collude to be dumb. They can be dumb all by themselves.

And so the fact that these individual, you know, these individual companies are putting out language, like only big companies and big organizations know how to waste that much time and money to put out these things. So I don't think there's some vast conspiracy on the left. I just think people are trying through their general counsels and others to prevent bad things from happening.

And, of course, it looks ridiculous. You know, a lot of those, all of that is true. True. A lot of what those people are doing involves not knowing how language works. Now, of course, chairperson rather than chairman. Sure. Yes. Saying hero instead of heroin, fine, because things like that can actually help to shape how younger people perceive things. But when you're going to talk about a lot of these other things, it's kind of like if I say, well, now I'm going to head out. The way people say that.

I'm going to head out. Okay. You're going to head out. Now, were you thinking about the head? What did it have to do with head? You use words in many ways. Think about that sucks. What does it mean? And frankly, we've gotten way past that.

But with these people, the idea is that anything that you say, every third thing that you say, is triggering because it might remind you of something else. So somebody says, I'm going to shoot the moon. And somebody says, that reminds me of shooting a gun. And the thing is, no, it doesn't. A lot of it is performative. What all these people are doing is not saying I'm her.

they're saying, I'm hurt. And it's not meaningful. And I was just going to say very quickly, that's not what civil rights ever was. You know, Martin Luther King wasn't telling us to change words. He was trying to change the world. It's just people. They're so right. I totally agree.

I think there's another function, too, which is they're signaling stuff to each other, right? So, you know, one of the examples in that Atlantic story is, I think, the Sierra Club, right? Nobody's... Who is the neocon at the Sierra Club who's being iced by the... these guidelines, right? No, what they're doing is saying, I hear you, I agree with you, let's maybe use this language. The sad

thing for these organizations is that the right has always been way better at this. They're just better at figuring out what words work. So, you know, the obvious example is pro-life. Oh, yeah. Like, that's not a thing people were until someone coined the first. Or the death

tax. It used to be called the estate tax, and then it was the death tax. We're taxing death. Yeah, those sorts of things. And again, it's not organic. You know, there are organic changes in language. I think the biggest one, you're the perfect person to answer this, but that I've seen in my lifetime is the word like.

Oh, yeah. We decided somehow just organically as a society that we don't say he said anymore. He was like. When I first heard it, I objected because like, this is Valley Girl talk. Why are we trying to be Valley Girls? But when it's organic, you can't find it. It just sounds more immediate to people. But I said, I was like, and then you put it in the present tense.

And it's somehow more vital. It happens in about 1979, and it just takes over the world, and there's nothing you can do about it. And now people pushing 60 who use it that way. And it's just there. But the question always is, to look at how words can shape thought and decide that you're going to come up with 300 that are going to shape thought, leads to a question, if we could go back in the day

and deal with, say, W.E.B. Du Bois or Lorraine Hansberry, and suppose we told them, you need to be really concerned with how people use words. What would they have gained? Would fewer people be poor today? Would the police be nicer today? If they had been walking around telling people what words to use?

And the answer is clearly no, and that answer applies directly to today. These word directives must stop. Okay. So one final issue. We finally have a whistleblower in the world of TikTok. Well, I've been waiting for this. I mean, we saw them in Instagram and Twitter.

Okay, Facebook. Now a formal employee came forward. Responsible, he said. The manager's there. He worked on the inside. Responsible for internal fraud. He said they were intentionally lying to the U.S. government. He says basically that what's going on,

there's a, well, this is Bernstein research. It says, sensory rush. This sounds to me like the stuff we heard about Instagram, as the algorithm pushes the most viral content directly to the user delivering endorphin hit after endorphin hit. So I guess this is why people want to ban TikTok, or at least restricted in a way we have never really restricted a media company before. Look, I can't really answer this adequately because I have TikTok,

but I've never once liked anything. The only thing that ever comes up are dogs doing mischievous things. I don't... It must be very frustrating for their algorithm, because I don't give them anything. But somehow they got it, and I do like watching dogs doing mischievous things.

How did they know that without me doing anything ever? It's a really good algorithm. I mean, it just is. That's scary, though. It's scary, and you know how you know it's scary? Because the people I know at Instagram and Google and elsewhere are like, it's a really good algorithm. They're freaked out at how good it is.

But the ban is... But is it dangerous? So to me, what's dangerous and what's coming out with this whistleblower is TikTok, obviously, is a Chinese own company. And so it had said, on the one hand, we're always going to keep Americans' data away from the Chinese government. That's what we're going to do. And what the whistleblower is saying is like, no-uh.

Yes. That's not happening. Right. And so I can see on one, hand now maybe, and there are people in security protocols who say, you know, maybe we can get to a place where you can actually sequester that data. But that is a minor issue compared to ownership. So TikTok is owned by a company called ByteDance, and the Chinese government has special management shares, which is they own a percentage of ByteDance. BightDance has three members of its board,

one of whom is a Chinese communist minister. This is not something they are trying to cover up. In fact, they're very open about it. I'm surprised it's not all three. It's only one for now. But we know things that the Chinese government, look, what they love is to use technology to affect social control with a big piece of ideology across hundreds of millions of people. I have no doubt they're doing that.

My question is, okay, they've got like 100 million Americans using this. What practically did they get from knowing how we dance, what we like to dance to, what we're buying, what we're eating, you know, that kind of stuff, and don't they know it already without having... Don't they know who the American people are?

We're not a big secret. Yeah, and it's a totally... We're not a deep people. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're a thing. It's a totally fair point. You can get medical information. I'm sure they can get everything.

Look, it's a totally fair... But they know we're unhealthy. I have a teenage daughter, and I sort of feel like on the one hand, I know all this stuff about bite dancing. scary. And on the other, if the Chinese government would like to influence the way my teenage daughter thinks about democracy, good luck, China. Call me when you're done. Let me know how it went. I don't think, the pivot that platform has to

make. So I'm with you too. It's like, what are they doing with this? Why is the conversation only about TikTok, though? I mean, aren't we worried about all the other ways that the Chinese could be doing this? Isn't TikTok kind of a sensationalist? thing because it's about, you know, teenage girls dancing and it's a toy? Why TikTok in particular? Because it's more successful. Because it's killing all the other platforms

and all the other platforms are imitating it. Instagram used to be pictures of your lunch and hot chicks and now it's just the same I mean, at my phone it was. All right. Anyway, we've got to go to new rules. Thank you, everybody. Okay.

New rule. People who say, that never gets old, have to admit, that's getting pretty old. Stop doing it, with one exception. When Trump brags about crowd size, like this week when he posted, CPAC was packed for my speech, you couldn't get in the building. And then we see the pictures of a sea of empty seats. That never gets old. New Rule, someone has to tell these captured El Salvadorian gang members

who can't figure out why they're always so easily rounded up and imprisoned. and maybe it has something to do with the tattoos. New Rule, now that... Can't all be gems. New Rule, now that the Gen Z trend of quiet quitting has expanded to an even newer trend called Bare Minimum Mondays. Maybe you kids should just head on home

and call us when you feel like doing anything. You do know, I can't even, it's just a saying, right? Oh, and if you think your anxiety is through the roof now, just wait until you'll get a load of fuck you, you're fired, Friday. New Rule, I don't need to read any more

news articles about Jeopardy. Here's a Jeopardy answer for you. Zero. And the question, what is how many fucks I give about what's happening over a Jeopardy? New Rule, someone has to mark the amount of time between when this guy

told the Uber conservative audience at the CPAC convention that transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely and when we find him in a public restroom-sucking dick. And, sir, when you want to change your name from Mike to Monique, we'll still

love you. And it won't be the end of your speaking career either. Oh, at CPAC, yes, but they're going to love you at next year's Democratic National Convention. And finally, new rule in honor of the Academy Award show this Sunday. Tonight, I would like to commemorate

the moment 50 years ago that transformed the Oscar telecast into what it is today. A four-hour lecture on how bad most people have it by the people who have it the best. But 50 years ago, an activist for Native American causes named Sashin Littlefeather was the first person in Oscar history to walk on that stage and say, I know this award is for acting,

but I'm going to bore you with my politics anyway. You see, 1973 was the year Marlon Brando, won best actor for the Godfather. And a little late, but... And instead of accepting the... award himself, he sent Ms. Littlefeather on stage in his place to voice what was

truly and is an important cause. Now, for you young people watching, Marlon Brando was an actor. Native Americans were the first people here. And the Godfather was a long TikTok featuring the Horse Head in the Bed

Challenge. Now, a little context. Brando had just made one of the all-time great comebacks by playing the Godfather and anyone else would have eagerly shown up to the ceremony for their victory lap. But Brando chose to stay home for two reasons, to draw attention

to Native American rights and because, like this year's Oscar favorite, the whale, he was stuck in his chair. But it is how Ms. Little Feather was greeted by the Hollywood crowd that night that interests me. And the picture of liberal

Hollywood on that night may surprise Here's how the New York Times described it in Sashene Little Feathers' obituary from last October. At the podium, she endured a chorus of booze, drawing jeers on stage. She said that some audience members did the tomahawk chop. A producer for the Oscars told her that she would be arrested if her comments lasted more than 60 seconds. The actor John Wayne was so unsettled that a show producer said security guards had to restrain him so that he wouldn't not storm the stage. This was back when storming the stage

was not allowed. The obituary also said that Little Feather recalled that while she was giving the speech she had focused in on the mouths and jaws that were dropping open in the audience and there were quite a few. Now come on. If Sashin Little Feather made that

same speech at this year's Oscars, there'd be cheers and there would be no shocked looks on faces and that is because of progress. And also Bo Tateau. But let's talk about the progress part, because people today don't seem to have a realistic view of how progress works. For example, do you know who Time Magazine's Man of the Year was in that year of 1973? Me neither, because who cares? The point is Time Magazine was still calling the reward the man of the year.

Time Magazine, another pillar of liberal enlightenment, like the Oscars, but it only changed the name to Person of the Year in 1999. In the Bible, no one, no one, not God, not Jesus, even considers the possibility that slavery is wrong. There are lots of rules about it, but no one ever says, hey, maybe we just shouldn't do it at all. What? Not at all? Who would schlep those giant rocks? We need to make that awesome religion stride we're making. That's where people were, all people. And looking back, we always wish our forebearers. would have come to progress sooner. Ronald Reagan was very late on doing something about AIDS.

But the liberals aren't on time either. Obama was late on gay marriage. JFK was late on civil rights. Bill Clinton was late on not having the interns blow you. I don't know if everything happens everywhere all at once. But I do know that everyone is late on everything, because that's what it is to be human. Biden is currently, as we speak, late on pot.

And it's going to look bad in the future. The difference is the next Democrat will legalize pot. Yeah. The liberals are late, like all people are. But they do tend to keep going until we get there. I'm constantly amazed when I rewatch movies from only a decade or so ago. And they were made in a way that today would get you burned at the Twitter state. It's complicated.

From 2009, to name just one of many I Could Choose, was made by a who's who of the most blue-ribbon certified Hollywood liberals, woke-approved, and Democratic Party contributing from the stars to the producers to the director. But it apparently occurred to none of them to have any kind of minority in the cast. You would need a divining rod to find a person of color within 500 feet of this movie set. But if they made it today, they'd do better. When it comes to social justice, liberals are still the tip of the spear, but even the spear comes up short a lot.

They were dicks to an Indian in 1973. And they were still blind to diversity in 2009. But along the way, Hollywood also moved the country forward by opening people's eyes to racism and anti-Semitism, to AIDS and interracism. racial couples and disabilities and environmental issues and addiction and LGBT rights. And yes, the plight of the American Indian. So thank you, Hollywood.

Have fun at the Oscars. That's our show. I'll be at MGM National, Harvard, Washington, D.C., April 22nd, the Durham Arch Center in Durham, April 23rd, and MGM Northfield Park in Cleveland, May 20th. I want to thank John McWhorter, Josh Terengel, and David Byrne. Now go watch overtime on CNN. tonight at 11.30, we'll catch it Saturday morning on YouTube. Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch them anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.