Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime - Episode #437: J Edgar Hoover, Chelsea Manning, PC Colleges

Episode Date: September 16, 2017

Bill Maher and his guests - Bret Stephens, Tim Gunn, Fran Lebowitz, and Salman Rushdie - answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 9/15/17) 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. Okay, here we back are. Here we back are. One of you literary lions tell me how to speak English.

Rehearsing for Yoda? Tim Gunn, what was it like for your father working with Jay Edgar Hoover in the FBI? Yes, I read that in your book. Your father worked in the FBI and you have some interesting stories about that. Well, he was there for 26 years. He was an agent, but he was

primarily Hoover's ghost writer. He wrote his books and his speeches. Agent provocateur. Yes. Right? But have you heard my crazy story? Oh, I'd like to tell it to everyone. Well, just briefly. My sister and I were Big I Love Lucy fans,

and we would visit Dad at his office once a year and take the FBI tour. It was a big Washington thing. And one day, we were there, and Dad said, would you like to meet Vivian Vance? Ethel Mertz? Who wouldn't want to meet Vivian Vance? Ethel Mertz. So we went into Hoover's office and met her, and she was gracious and wonderful.

And many years later, and my father was gone, a lot came out about Hoover cross-dressing. A lot. And it was all very interesting. My mother didn't believe any of it and said, rightfully so, this would have killed your father. It probably would have. But when it came out, I said to my sister, don't you think it's a little strange that Mr. Hoover wasn't in the office with Bibby and Vance? I mean, put a fright wig on him. But of all the people, if you weren't cross-dressing,

why would you dress as Vivian Vance? Wouldn't you want to do it to somebody more glad? Well, for size 22, was he? Yeah, I mean, Jay Hover looked a bit like an English bulldog, so, sorry, apologies to Vivian Vance. Right. But what's interesting is, Simon & Schuster's legal team investigated everything on this book,

and they looked into this, and they talked to Vivian Vance's two biologists. who had never heard or knew about a visit to the FBI. Then they checked the visitor logs. No Vivian Vance. Mm-hmm. So, interesting story. Did your father know this or?

You know, Trant, I'll never know. I'll never know. But you have theories that maybe your father was... I think my father was such a homophobe. I'm confident he was a closet case. And I think that may have been true of all the upper echelons of the Bureau. is a very interesting collection of men.

The show has gone so well up to me. Brett Stevens, what do you think of Harvard's decision to hire Chelsea Manning as a visiting fellow and then they withdrew the offer today? Hmm. Yeah. That's a loaded question. A visiting fellow, what?

Look, yeah. They invited her up to talk. Yeah. They invited her up to give a... Oh, just to give her a speech. I don't think the invitation should have been issued, but once it was issued, it certainly shouldn't have been rescinded. I think that...

Because you think Chelsea Manning's a traitor? Well, I think Bradley Manning put a lot of human beings in danger by what he did, by his disclosures. I don't even think that's debatable. But Bradley, Chelsea Manning spent seven years in prison. His sentence was commuted by the president of the United States. He's free. She's free. And she should be able to live for life.

and if Harvard wants to invite her and hear from her? Just not to... They should hear. I mean, I think the whole business of disinvitation is a sickness in this country. I agree. Hearing people is a precondition for being able to disagree with it. And also that everybody has to be fired

the second you don't like one thing they said. Right. They certainly go after me with this. It happened to you when you went to the New York Times. The White House is asking for this ESPN reporter to be fired. Because there's no other problems in the country. Right. Or the world.

The world is a placid Eden. So he can concentrate on this. I know, but it's not just him. I mean, everybody seems to go immediately to you have to disappear altogether. If I don't like one thing you said ever, as opposed to what we used to do, which is just, oh, I didn't like that. What's on the other channel? I had some experience of people wanting me to disappear forever when they had them. And you won.

All right, Fran. So far. So far. Knock on what. Okay. Besides New York, are there any American cities you describe as great? Chicago. Yeah, I love Chicago.

I mean, Chicago is the only other American city that feels really like a city to me. You know, I mean, there are, you know, San Francisco, it's an adorable little town. You know, L.A. is very spread out. It doesn't have any feeling of density. but Chicago really feels like a city I like Chicago But you're not really saying that L.A. is lacking in intellectualism, is it?

Because that is such a... No, I was saying it's not densely populated, it's spread out. That's what we like about it. That's what you like about it. It's what I like, exactly. But it doesn't feel like a city. It's not urban because it's not dense enough.

To me, it's just not normal to live in a building. I don't care how nice your apartment is. I always know there's somebody on the other side of that wall and they're farting and cooking, and fighting, and it's just wrong. I'd rather live in the shittiest little single dwelling house than live in a building.

But in houses, outside ex-murterers. And no doorman. Horrible covenombedo. Sal, what is the antidote to political correctness on college campuses? Ex-mortarers. The antidote is to

ignore it and to speak severely to people who want to propagate it. You know, and I mean, actually, I have to say in my experience of the American Academy, which is now getting on for 20 years, I have never had a student say to me

that he wanted a trigger warning or she wanted a safe space. You know, I've never had... I mean, I hear that it happens around the country. Right. I have no personal experience of it, so I don't know how much of it there is. But, you know, what's missing, I think, is leadership. I think too much of... Too many campus administrators are basically

cowed by small minorities of totalitarian-minded students who just don't want to hear anything except what they're disposed to agree with. Right. And the job of grown-ups is to behave like grown-ups and say, no. Intellectually, a college is not a safe space. Intellectually, a college is going to be a place where your ideas are harmed and perhaps even destroyed, and that's as it should be. I agree.

I agree. The college should be a safe space for thought. Yes. Right. Not a safe space from thought. Right. You know? Yes.

And if you go to college and you never hear anything you haven't thought before, then, you may as well have stayed home. Right. And people who think that they should never hear things that would upset them should go somewhere else and leave that space available to somebody who can benefit from what is called education. And as a teacher, for 29 years, I saw a large part of that solve a large part of my responsibility to be to provoke

and challenge. Absolutely. That's what a teacher does. Okay. Does the backlash against Hillary's book have anything to do with sexist attitudes about women expressing anger? Is she expressing anger? Well, there certainly have been a lot

of men telling her to shut up. Or men explaining what she did wrong. For the first six months, men were constantly saying, here's what Hillary Clinton did wrong. Right. You know, and And it just enraged me, because Donald Trump didn't win because he did something right. He won because he did something wrong. Yes.

I mean, it was, you know, I didn't know there was a big backlash against her book by all that. Well, you know, probably people were right at all. Every politician, winner or loser, writes a damn book. Right, exactly. That gets paid $6 million of the book sell four copies. Yeah. And publishers think this is worth it. Right.

I mean, I want to know how that happens. I'd like to be paid $6 million for books that sell four copies. All right, but I said it last week, I'll say it again. I think future historians will be just so puzzled why so many people in America found Hillary Clinton to be this polarizing. I mean, I could see why you wouldn't vote for her. You wouldn't vote for her unless it was Donald Trump, right? I mean, you wouldn't vote for her.

In a situation, you wouldn't have, you know, McCain. or Mitt Romney. I mean, there's nobody else in the Republican Party, practically, you could probably think. No, on the contrary. Oh, really? I could never have voted for a guy like Mike Pence. Really? Yeah.

You would vote for Hillary over Mike Pence? Yeah, probably. You are my hero. You see, they come out here to California, and we... No, but the problem with... The difference between Trump and Pence is that Trump is an authentic fraud, right? And Pence is, in a sense, exactly the...

opposite. He's a fraudulent, authentic. He don't... You know, and when Pence sort of attests to Donald's goodness as a man, and you know he doesn't believe a word of it. No. But he's saying this with this kind of pious, oliginous fake sincerity. Right.

It's terrible because you know he... With Trump, you never know that he knows that he's lying. Right? Because there's always the interface of of the manic personality disorders. But Pence is a man in his right mind. Yes, and that's why he's preferable.

I've seen Mike Pence before. You're right, he's a typical arch-conservative Christian hypocrite. And we've seen them before, and to use your phrase, it's a survivable event. I could do Mike Pence. Yes, but you asked me whether I would vote for him, whether he's a survivable.

No, I'm very surprised to hear you say that. Is there anybody else who you think I'm on the right who you would prefer Hillary Clinton to? Ben Carson. Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee, wow. I don't like this hyper piousness in Republican politics. I mean, the Republican Party, at its best,

in a dream world, the Republican Party would stand for aspiration, opportunity, and inclusion. That's a Democrat. That's what it should be. That's a Democratic Party. And especially on the aspiration front. It is a right to rise party. Now, we can have an argument perfectly sensible whether their solutions are right, but it's aspirational.

It means going from lower middle class to upper class from Joni Ernst to Senator, for example. Get those bags off her feet. Shoving someone else's Christian piety down my Jewish throat is not kosher. Well, it's not going to happen tonight. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Pam.

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.