New Rules For Friday Night: No More Bill Maher

This popular atheist triggered my Come to Jesus moment

Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash

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When I was attending Ithaca College, a small liberal arts school across Cayuga Lake from Cornell University in Central New York State, I went to a party at Cornell. I don’t remember the name of who I went with; probably a casual acquaintance with a shared interest in smoking weed. I remember this person was female. What did she look like? I don’t have a clue.

We wanted to score some pot and couldn’t find anyone holding at IC. She said there was a party at Cornell that night where we might get some. I happened to have a car, which most students did not, so I frequently found myself giving rides to people I barely knew and never spoke to again.

Suffice it to say, there’s no one to support my theory that I met Bill Maher before he was famous. I don’t even remember what the guy in question looked like. I only suspect it was him because of what the person said to us.

I don’t know where the party was held on campus, who threw it, or what year it was, although it would have had to have been 1977 or 1978 if my theory is correct because Bill is two years older than me and that would have been the only time we would have both been in Ithaca. I spent my freshman year at SUNY New Paltz.

So, that’s my disclaimer. I’ll describe the incident, and you tell me if you think my theory has merit.

Two girls are approached at a Cornell campus party by two guys. A joint is passed around.

“Where are you girls from?” One of them asks.

“Ithaca College,” we reply.

“Oh, Ithaca College, huh?” says Bill Maher Suspect. “Isn’t that the school for girls too stupid to get into Cornell but who still want to marry doctors?”

I was fresh out of witty comebacks. My only defense was that when I applied to Ithaca College, I had no idea Cornell was in the same city. Since that would have done nothing to disabuse him of the notion that I wasn’t too bright, I remained silent.

The joke tanked. It was clear nobody was getting laid that night, so the group quickly broke apart. I do remember we failed to score any weed. (You can see where my priorities were at the time.)

I didn’t suspect the guy at the party may have been Bill Maher until many years later, after watching numerous episodes of his Club Random podcast. More about that later.

Bill Maher’s standup comedy career took off just a few years after his Cornell graduation. I enjoyed his appearances on the late-night TV shows of Johnny Carson and David Letterman. I regularly tuned in to his own talk show, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, which aired on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1997 and ABC from 1997 to 2002.

When he moved to HBO, Real Time with Bill Maher became my go-to on Friday nights. When he began airing his Club Random podcasts in 2022, I watched as many of them as possible. Even though he often had guests with whom I disagreed politically, I saw the wisdom of not shutting those people out and only listening to people with whom one agrees.

Why was I a Bill Maher fan for so many years? I thought he was funny, and I shared most of his political views. I also appreciated his attempts to involve both sides of an issue in the discussions on his show.

In recent years, however, my admiration for him had begun to dim. The COVID-19 pandemic was the beginning of the end. His constant griping about masks and his 20/20 hindsight proclamations that the medical community made mistakes annoyed me. This disease was new. The CDC didn’t know what we should or shouldn’t be doing. They erred on the side of caution. His disparagement of that felt petulant and petty.

I realized that Maher’s biggest problem with how government officials handled the pandemic was how it impacted him personally. He had no live audience to laugh at his jokes, no wife or children to hunker down with, no nightlife, and presumably, his access to casual sex was severely hampered. He was living the life of an incel and he mightily resented it.

Maher’s Club Random podcast provided insight into his personality, which soured me further. The format involves one-on-one conversations with celebrities in his at-home party room; the decor is part eighties VIP lounge, part dorm room. Maher usually consumes marijuana and alcohol throughout the show and encourages his guests to do the same. Most wisely abstain or keep it light: a cocktail or a puff or two to prove they’re cool. I say wisely, because the practice of shooting the shit high for an hour or two tends to reveal more of one’s personality than might be advisable. Here’s what I learned about Bill by watching these sessions:

• His high school girlfriend dumped him, and in so doing, changed the trajectory of his love life forever. He frequently talks about how devastating it was. This topic usually arises when a happily married guest questions his perpetual bachelorhood and aversion to children. I’m not a licensed family therapist, but there may be a connection.

• He admitted to being a real jerk in college and couldn’t get laid.

• He spent much time partying with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion and dated several Playmates. That used to make people sound super cool. I’ve always thought it made them sound a bit skeevy, and many people agree with me in light of what we now know.

• Like me, he went to Catholic school. The nuns were mean to him, and he never got over it. I suspect his film Religulous is one big f-you to Sister Mary Somebody. He was humiliated at First Communion rehearsal in second grade. Guess what? So was I. It didn’t make me an atheist. It just made me realize that nuns were human beings capable of displaying all the attendant faults. What a surprise. I’m over it. Why isn’t he?

What these examples have in common is his attitude towards women. When he talked about his experiences at Cornell, I realized we were in Ithaca at the same time. Then I remembered the jerk at the party who made the insulting remark about Ithaca College “girls.” Could it have been the aspiring comedian trying out material? It’s possible. I’ll never know unless he sees this, remembers the incident, and admits to it. I put the chances of that as slim to none, particularly since it’s not likely he’d be inclined to do me any favors after reading this. It probably wasn’t him anyway, and even if it was, he likely doesn’t remember.

There’s a popular saying about the nature of relationships: they’re for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. The same can be said about celebrities and their fans.

We may have listened to a particular recording artist in high school because it was what everyone else was doing, and being like everyone else is a common desire among adolescents. That is fandom with a reason.

Who hasn’t had a crush on a major movie star at one time or another? We read about them and watch all their films and, if we’re young enough or delusional enough, imagine meeting them and falling in love. Then they do or say something that kills the attraction, or we meet someone in real life who puts all thoughts of our dream lover to sleep forever. That season of fandom has ended.

Then there’s the lifetime fan—the person who first heard the Grateful Dead in 1971 on his tinny AM radio and still attends Dead events today, even though most of the original members are, well, dead. Celebrities crave these fans, who will keep them booking gigs and collecting royalties long after most of the world has forgotten them. A lifetime of love and appreciation is a wonderful thing.

Until now, it looked as if Bill Maher and I were headed for door number three, but recent events have put the brakes on that expectation. Call it a Gray Divorce. As Gordon Lightfoot sang, “the feeling’s gone, and I just can’t get it back.” Unlike Gordon, I do know what went wrong, though, and it was on full display last Friday night when I watched what will be my final episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maher has been cultivating a right-wing audience for some time now. His “good folks on both sides” of the political divide policy has cost him a significant number of his left-wing fanbase. I hung in because I agree that half the country hating the other half is a recipe for disaster, and talking it out with the other side might be productive.

In courting the right, Maher’s given airtime to people like Kid Rock, Matthew Gaetz, Piers Morgan, Jordan Peterson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Steve Bannon. In principle, it makes sense, but the problem is that most of these people behave differently in front of Maher’s audience than they do on Fox News or at right-wing political events. They don’t seem so bad. I’m not saying that Steve Bannon is the Great Satan, but he’s an evil man and a persistent threat to our democracy. These appearances are deceptive. They show despicable people in a better light than they deserve.

Recently, Kid Rock set up a dinner at the White House so that Bill Maher and Donald J. Trump could meet and talk things over. I wasn’ t crazy about the idea, but I decided to reserve judgment until I heard Bill’s report on Real Time. Here it is:

After watching this, I decided I’d seen and heard enough. Just like the other right-wing guests on Bill’s show and podcasts, Donald was on his best behavior. Bill assures us that “A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there.” To his credit, Maher says he thinks this is f — ed up, but adds that it’s “not as f — ed up as I thought it was.” I disagree.

There is no justification for encouraging people to calm down about the fact that Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. Maher kids himself that he’s doing a good thing. Good for him, maybe, but not for the rest of us already suffering under this administration’s reckless and self-serving approach to running this country.

The balance of power between the three branches of government is in tatters. Due process is no longer ensured. Trump and his administration are axing laws and regulations that protect our rights, our health, and the environment daily. Our president continues to cozy up to dictators and sneer at the rule of law.

Our place on the world stage is increasingly precarious, and our economy is teetering on the brink of disaster. This is no time to make nice with the man behind the curtain. Just like the Wizard of Oz, he’ll eventually sail off into the sunset and leave us with the task of finding our way home. I fear there won’t be enough ruby slippers for everybody. I know there won’t.

So, aloha on the steel guitar, Mr. Maher. It was fun while it lasted.