Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #648: Bob Costas, Coleman Hughes, Caitlin Flanagan

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 2/9/24) 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 are at CNN. Here's our final. He is the author of the new book, The End of Race Politics, Arguments for a Colorblind America. Coleman Hughes is over here. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic, Caitlin, Gideon. You all know, CNN contributor in 29-time-winning broadcaster with MLB and TNT Bob Costison over here. Okay.

First one is for you, Bob. With the allegations against Vince McMahon, now he's the head of the... WWE used to be the WWF. World wrestling. Right, world wrestling, entertainment. Entertainment. It better be because it's not real.

Yeah. Well, you know, part of the reason they labeled it that way was so that the various state governments wouldn't subject those athletes or performers to drug testing, to performance-dencing. drug testing. Because they were all on... Yeah, they basically conceded that these are scripted matches.

They don't like to blare that out to their fans, some of whom actually think it's real. But as the long ago wrestling trainer, Bobby the Brain Heenan said to me, there's only two things that concern me about wrestling fans. They can vote and they can breed.

Bob, my core audience is wrestling fans. All right. Well, anyway, the question is, would the allegations against Vince McMahon... Oh, yes. Now, he's... For people who don't know, I read this in the paper, some really...

I mean, like Weinstein-level stuff. Or worse. Worse? Worse than Weinstein? Well, sex trafficking and sexual abuse. We'll see how this plays out. Would they have been overlooked for so long had he been working in an industry like Hollywood instead of sports? Do we have... Well, you just brought up a name that...

would refute that, at least until recently. I think the difference is that if you talk about something like that, it's not covered in the same way as baseball, football, basketball would be covered. You don't have a press corps that's covering them and holding them to account. But Netflix... They operate on their own. Netflix just gave W.W.E. is it now? A $5 billion deal.

Oh, really? It has a television audience. It's one of the few things that breaks through. $5 billion? I would guess so. But knowing Netflix, maybe not. But usually, like a deal like that, usually gets stopped when a guy like this is attached to it. And he's ahead of it? It could be.

Okay. Or someone else takes over and the basic product is appealing to enough of an audience that they roll on. All right. For Coleman, is the woke kindergarten controversy in San Francisco an example of DEI running amok in schools? Well, first of all, we'll have to explain what the woke kindergarten controversy is. Yeah, so the woke kindergarten controversy is at a school in San Francisco that is, majority Hispanic, that is to say, two-thirds of these kids are speaking Spanish at home, they need to be taught the basics, English, math, et cetera.

That school decided, instead of focusing on those things, to hire an organization called Woke Kindergarten, pay them a quarter million dollars over the years. Literally called it. Called it. It's not what, oh, I see. I thought that was the name that the guy who wrote the article gave it. That was their name. They're owning it.

They're owning it. Owning it. Woke kindergarten. Self-awareness is a wonderful thing. It really is. Boy, can't start them too young, huh? And rather predictably, what happened is that their math and reading scores have been declining for several years. And it's become yet another example of precisely the opposite priorities that typical normal Americans want,

which is we want to send our kids to school to learn the basics as a, we decline worldwide not to be taught why math is racist, for instance. And the final thing I'll say, I think... What about six? That number I always say, yeah. A little bit suspicious, right? I think that the basic problem with wokeness, one of the basic problems is that it views kids as somehow inherently racist

and the racism needs to be hammered out of them in some. way when the reality is that among all the kids the problems kids have for instance being selfish and needing to learn to share racism is not one of them so uh really in in the same way we want to protect a child sexual innocence for as long as possible we should want to preserve that racially innocent mindset for as long as possible not hammered me that you're going to thank you uh kaitland as an educator what do you think of Dartmouth announcing it will bring back the SAT as a, oh, yes, as a requirement for all the kids. Now, if people don't know, all eight Ivy Leagues got rid of the SAT in the name of equity about, I don't know, three or four years ago.

And now Dartmouth is saying no, right through the red flag. I can tell you, it's absolutely true, that all over the country, people don't realize this. There are kids who didn't have an access to go to a good secondary school or their parents moved a lot or there's families, chaos. and they'll pop up with these great scores, that individually, and these are the kids that, you know, the old ideas you could test into certain schools. You should be able to test into the University of California. And it was a tremendous benefit to kids who had every disadvantage along the way.

And the other thing is we don't want to admit this, and it's irrelevant for well-off kids, but the SAT truly is the best single predictor of, can the kid get through the school? Is he or she going to show up and say, yeah, I can do this coursework. You know, maybe I'm not as wealthy as the others or gifted in sports or whatever, but I'm not having problems here. I'm moving through the curriculum.

And you can't lie on it. I read that 60% of college applicants admit they lie at some part of their application. Right. You can't lie in the SAT. Well, unless you're Felicity Huffman. But that's not the SAT. Right, okay. It's the ACT, I guess.

All right. For everybody, is there any merit in Tucker Carlson's interview with Blativir Putin? I guess that was today. I read that Putin went on for a half hour, the first question. He just gave him a history lesson and erroneous. It's reprehensible. That he would even do it? Well, I mean, we interviewers have done that. I mean, I remember Mike Wallace with the Ayatollah. Of course. But under the kind of. rules of engagement that that interview was conducted and with a certain acquiescing lens through which Tucker put the answer. Right. I mean, Tucker has already been part of Putin's propaganda apparatus for a few years now. It would have been like if Mike Wallace had been on

an Iran for three years. Right. Right. Right. I mean, that's the difference. I have to imagine if for some reason you, were interviewing Putin and he started going on about how Poland was to blame for World War II you would say hold on a second black

and you would give people Tucker just lets him go on with basic historical facts that... That's what he said that Poland was... Well yeah he held Poland responsible for for being attacked by Hitler? Correct. Yeah. Yeah I would definitely

flag that for whatever it's worth I mean when the Olympics Were they doing this on the ground floor or was it up by a window? But whatever it's worth when the Olympics were in Sochi, Russia in 2014

We requested for many months prior to and during the games whether it would be me or someone from NBC News and Putin turned that down flatly So he wasn't going to sit And gave you pink eye. Yes, he did. A whole, what's right.

A whole cloak and dagger operation that Putin and the KGV obviously undertook just to school me up. I knew it. I knew that. And you know, people to this day, they'll say, conversational icebreaker occasionally. Bob, you remember that time you had pink eye at the Olympics?

No, I don't recall. Refresh my memory. A hundred million people with memes all over the Internet and ridiculous, untrue theories as to how I contracted. I have no idea. Remind me again what that was. But now we can't say it. Yes, yes.

You still don't know why you got it? I don't. I don't. Okay. All right. What do you think? Dirty tricks. What do you think that the government is now banning Eugenia, Tavium, and Extendie Max? Well, I have a lot of feelings about you, Jenny, a tabby, Mendi Max.

What are you talking about? What is that? They're weed killers. Oh. I want to know what they did to us and why they sound like Boner Pills. They do. The last one does. The last one does.

All right. Thank you. We're right out of time. Thank you, CNN. We'll see you next week. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher. or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information,

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