Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #344 (Originally Aired 2/20/2015)

Episode Date: February 23, 2015

Overtime - Episode #344 (Originally Aired 2/20/2015)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And sometimes, a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew, and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at nespresso.com. Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Okay, Rob Reiner, who do you think should win Best Picture?

Who do I think? What are you on the spot right away? Who do I think should win this picture? Yes, who was your choice? I, like others, I was very upset about Selma, not getting that. I mean, because I feel that that was at least an important movie about real subject. You know what I thought? I like boyhood.

I like, you know. You know what I thought was the best one? No nominations. Nightcrawler. Yes. Didn't yet. Yeah. It's creepy.

It's fucking awesome with an awesome performance. And for whatever, what? Jake Gyllenall. And it says a lot about America. It's just, it's,

there's a lot of great performances this year with not great movie. I mean, you know, Eddie Redmayne is sensational in theory of everything, but I didn't think the movie worked as well as it could have, but he was sensational.

Let me ask you about that. I watched that movie. It's terrific about Stephen Hawking. And all I could think, because we were talking about how, recently on the show, about how, like, you know, medical science, still a great mystery. So much is a great mystery in that kind of science, much more than climate science, for example.

And I thought, the whole time, I'm being facetious or flipping about this, but the whole time I'm watching a movie, I'm thinking Stephen Hawking, every day must get up and go, I can figure out the universe, and they can't fix this. That's right. Because they're not him. But he can't even do it.

He's not that kind of doctor. I think it just says a lot of... The doctors were busy and... The human body is... It's a complicated thing. But watch this Vice episode. They got good news about cancer. All right.

All right. In a hundred years, it'll probably all be done. A hundred? I cannot wait that long. No. You've got to do better. You've got the drought happening. I know.

We got to pay it. Hey, seriously, though, if money were thrown at climate change the way money is thrown at cancer, there would be a different outcome. Yeah, look how they cured cancer. Really? Well, but people,

but this you can actually do something. My whole life, they cured one thing, polio. That counts. They didn't even cure it. Nobody's making money off of that anymore. You don't want polio. You can get a vaccine for polio. Right, so we don't get it.

Do you think technology is ruining our culture? No, it was already ruined way before that. What do you mean? The culture was ruined far before this technology. But you're famously anti-technological. I'm not anti-technology. I just don't use it. That's right.

But it's not a political stance. It was just, I never had a typewriter. I didn't have the old machines. It's a machine thing. So you count on somebody else to type your writing, though. This begs the question that there was a culture to begin with. That's what I just said. He didn't understand when I said it.

No, I understand. Where's the culture? What was the culture? I think all of these forms of technology have removed the idea of gatekeepers in a way where there used to be the idea of a public square and it's certain everyone kind of listen to the same songs, watch the same movies, and technology is a tool.

People can use it how they want, right? Yeah, but we've gotten to a point now where everybody knows everything about everybody at all times. And there's a great documentary, if you ever see it, it's called We Live in Public, and it's about the guy who was like, who created before MySpace.

This was even before, you know, Facebook or anything of these things. And he said, Andy Warhol had it wrong. People don't want to be famous for 15 minutes. They want to be famous 50 minutes every day. And so you have all the social media, which basically is all about, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me.

And we are now looking at each other constantly, and you've got people being able to hack into banks and steal a billion dollars or $80 million from ATMs. And everybody has access to everything now, and it's not, to me, not great. You can create the Arab Spring, too, though. Not all. How that worked out.

And look, yeah, what a resounding success. Or you can think of this idea of citizen journalism, too, which has definitely its faults, but this idea that you have a few people who control the narrative completely, whereas you can have people out in the streets contributing and generating something that otherwise wouldn't be out there. So more people can be wrong now. Well, it cuts both ways. It's a tool.

You can use it for good or bad. When you say gatekeepers. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that. What do you mean by that? Like before when everybody wasn't able to weigh in, you think this is better. now? I don't think it's necessarily better. It's different, which means there's going

to be good things that are better now, and there's obviously going to be things that are bad. I mean, I'm a journalist, and all the time I'm trying to figure out whether something that's being perpetuated and swept up in social media is actually true and legitimate. I feel like it's a little like the Saddam Hussein thing. The gatekeepers,

a lot wrong with them, but it's still better than, like, what we have now. But they also might be stifling voices that are very legitimate and aren't being represented of that class. Like, you think of a class of editors, who are the people at the top, for instance, controlling media? Is that mostly well-to-do people? Are those people mostly white?

Are they mostly male? So this is kind of what I'm referring to as well. Well, in the Internet, the skill you have to teach students now is how to sort through more information. But in general, in other words, in the old days, you'd go to the library and look it up, and you would find the atomic number of rubidium, and it would be correct. But now, or you'd look in the history book. And somebody had written the history book, but now there's literally millions of sources of history. And so the student, everybody has to learn to sift through that.

I just think we're living through a transition. People will get used to people. But I think we're less informed now than we were. I believe that. I don't think we've really learned how to use technology to our best advantage as a culture, as a society. I think that's what we're waiting for. As adults, we're still kids with technology. Was the Encyclopedia Britannica better than the...

Wikipedia. I think he's an analysis that... I think so. Yeah. Well, I got to disagree, kids. Really? Really? Wikipedia?

Well, Wikipedia... I'm not saying more accessible. We get it, but Wikipedia's easier. But more accurate? Continually being updated. And a lot more checks and balances. Isn't that true? Certain facts are stable.

There's certain things that are stable. Science, for instance. But science is changing all the time. Of course. Everything can be challenged in real time. And should be. Look, we're on television now, we're on the internet, before we were on television,

and Fran, even though you don't have a cell phone... I've heard of them, though. I know you've heard of them, but a camera is taking our picture at an average of 17 to 18 times a day. What? Yeah, whether it's in a store, or a place you go. You're on camera.

People are seeing you, so... This is one reason why crime is down. They can see you doing everything now. It's in the park. Yes, and they still do it. After every crime, they show you a movie. movie of the crime. Right.

Yeah, but the crime changed. The crime has changed. It's not about going to the store and stealing something. It's about using the tool of the Internet and hacking and stealing stuff. That's why street crime is down. It's so 1998 to rob a bag. With a gun. Right.

You don't need to. All you got to do is hack into the bank account. You got to take Internet security seriously. You can't just use your dog's name for a password. You've got to get in there. You've got to take responsibility. But think about this for second, Bill. You know, all these big multinational corporations, they hire people to hack their systems

so that they can develop software to prevent hacking. And they get the most sophisticated people to do. Who says that those people are not going to be criminals and do things? I mean, how many short stories are written about the safe cracker hired to crack the safe? Yeah. Okay, it's the same. Yeah, but now it's really scary because they have access to everything. Well, still, you've got to be even more careful.

Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it. Change your password, Rob. You have to be sophisticated about it. Will the Republicans' efforts to roll back Obama's executive action on immigration come back to haunt them in the next election? Well, it's probably not going to get them a lot of votes in the Hispanic community. It potentially could come back to get them.

I mean, but if you look at the 2013 government shutdown, when the American public, by a majority, blame that on Republicans, and everyone thought, oh, this is going to be their downfall in the midterm. By the time the midterm rolled around a year later, people kind of forgot. So I don't know if that's still going to play out, but this could be a big problem for them because, you know, after the 2012 election when they had that autopsy, the GOP had the autopsy, went wrong, which is a very lovely thing to call the document. The only policy recommendation within that is that Republicans have to do something on immigration reform.

And this is still a big problem for them and a big issue. Well, they are doing something. They're just doing the opposite. what they should be doing. Correct. Well, and there are people within the GOP who are wanting. They're interested in immigration. They're interested in stopping it.

Well, there are people in the GOP and lawmakers on the Hill who, they want to do something on it. But the problem is when you have a bigger tent of people, you have a lot more diverse opinions, and you have a lot of people on the very far right and also conservatives, hardliners on immigration, who don't want anything to happen that could be perceived as amnesty. We should report those people.

We should deport those people. But you're going to find that the lawsuit that they filed, that federal lawsuit, it was ruled on a procedural issue, and it's going to make its way through the courts, and they're going to lose. I mean, Obama's going to win, I believe, on that, because it's like Obamacare at this point. They're trying to stop Obamacare. They file a lawsuit, and at a certain point, you've got 11 million people signing up. So what's going to happen to those 11 million people?

You're going to just, all of a sudden they're going to lose their health care? It's a practical disaster if the courts rule the other way. And I think it's going to be a disaster for the Republicans if they don't decide that this is something they should be doing. The problem with this, though, is that it's an executive action. It's not a law. So if this gets delayed, and all of these immigrants who are waiting to do this and get this protection

aren't actually able to, this also affects Obama's legacy. And Democrats could take some of the blame as well. Getting to the point we were making before, you said they had an autopsy. They did right after the election. And I remember Bobby Gindle said, the Republican Party has to stop being the party of stupid. I'm not paraphrasing.

Those were his words. There's no volcano. But he doesn't abide by this himself. He ran back to stupid. Yeah. Ran back to stupid. He's comfortable at stupid. Well, the party is comfortable there.

Yeah, they're very comfortable. It's a very nice. So, guys, what if we were able to redistrict voting districts? Well, they will. That's a big thing. In 2020. That's huge. Would that keep absolutely?

Absolutely. Would it change things? Of course. They don't have to cater to minorities because there are no minorities in their discipline. What if Abraham Lincoln had let the Confederacy go? Wow. Because that's the red states. Okay?

When you look at that election map, that's the red states. You know, and who's so eager to keep them? You know what? Go. Jeez, man. I'll try you to the airport. You know, some of my best friends, as they say. Yeah, I'm in the South all the time.

It's not like that in the cities. I mean, No, it's a whole not. I played Birmingham, Alabama last year. I played Mobile Alabama. I was just in, someplace in Georgia. Make in Georgia.

It's not a regional thing. It's a city-country thing. When you're in the cities, they look, at least my crowd, looks like anywhere else in America. But it's a city-country thing in the south, but not, for instance, say, in Connecticut.

Okay, so there's a southern aspect to this. Come on. I know. But, come on. We can't let the South go. We have to bring them along. I admit they are ringing up the rear. I mean,

did you see our basket full of NASCAR? All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, panel. Thanks. Catch all new episodes of real time with Bill Marr every Friday night at 10. Or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information,

log on to HBO.com.