Walt Kelly cartoon character Pogo is best remembered for his line, “We met the enemy, and he is us.”
That sentiment was the underlying theme of Bill Maher’s Real Time on Friday, as the comedian and his guests explored the various ways America remains divided, often through our own hands.
The Office’s BJ Novak was up first. His new comedy film Vengeance has undertones of the social struggles dividing America. Maher played up this angle, asking about the divide between the red state and the blue state and how it is possible to love those who don’t share your views.
What separates us, Novak said, are more emotions than arguments. He suggested that we should stop “picking the scabs” about the things we don’t agree on and focus on comedy, sports, art, “or sit down at dinner. That’s a start.” He added, “There is no separation. We’re stuck.”
Gatekeepers worry too much about hurting audiences with controversial points of view, Novak said. “You can trust the audience,” he later added, “people worry that other people are too sensitive.”
This week’s panel featured Catherine Rampell, Washington Post columnist and political and economic commentator for CNN, and Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary Magazine and author of The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives War on Fun.
Maher posited to his panel that the left seems to be hammering on the sorts of things that used to be right-wing bugbears.
Rothman agreed, saying it had been “right wing for most of our lives.” But now the left “wants to emphasize its own moral code. “
Rampell didn’t entirely believe it, noting, “We only had one vice president who couldn’t be alone with a woman.” She said she was “more concerned about the original recipe than progressives.”
The people with the power to control the culture now are “not the right thing,” Rothman countered.
Maher claimed that “it’s not the government that is Big Brother. It’s social media.” He later added that a “silent resentment” is brewing, caused by people afraid to speak out in times of cancel culture.
He brought up the recent closure of a Shonda Rimes production over a word in the script. “It was like a reactor leak,” Maher said.
Such actions, Rampell said, are “currency to show they are offended.” Maher agreed. “The only reaction allowed now is overreaction.”
Rothman added that such actions “how you communicate your zeal for the cause by contorting yourself most keen for the cause. It gets you a lot of points… but robs us of something nice.”
In his New Rules editorial, Maher proposed making America great again, reduced to a more humble goal: “Let’s make the mall great again.”
Online shopping, according to Maher, “kills us psychologically.” In the golden age of shopping, it was dubbed “America’s Marketplace.”
Online shopping not only exacerbates loneliness and isolation, it’s also an environmental nightmare, with over-packaging and the notion of making people chauffeur their pants across town, wasting resources.
Only 14% of packaging is recycled, Maher said. So his message to the under-30s was simple. Just because an app on the phone makes ordering easy doesn’t make it “cool”.
“There was a cost involved,” Maher said, citing child labor, wasted fuel and other downsides. “I hear a lot about my generation ruining the environment,” Maher said. “I don’t think it’s my generation.”
“Go out and play,” Maher concluded. “Going to the mall. Our social skills atrophy. Amazon is in its prime, but you’re not.”