Damn the River

 

On the Political Divide

I tried to watch Meghan Kelly interview Bill Maher on YouTube. I didn’t realize it was from 2 months ago, but Bill Maher’s on hiatus right now so I thought I’d watch.

Meghan Kelly used to be one of Fox's news bunnies. A pretty blonde girl who was given a script and told to say stuff in front of a camera so men would watch.

Meghan Kelly wasn’t stupid, so when she asked Donald Trump a hard question he attacked her and eventually Fox dropped her because she wasn’t all in for their presidential candidate.

Meghan Kelly went on to make her own show for something called the Triumph Channel and she has a podcast. (Who doesn’t have a podcast these days?)

During the interview Maher said the peaceful transfer of power is one of the core principles of democracy and that Trump tried to overthrow that principle on January 6, 2021. Trump claimed the election was rigged because he lost.

Maher called Trump an election denier.

What Meghan Kelly said next is typical of how conservatives think about politics. If they feel attacked they don’t analyze what’s being said, they look for what they see as a parallel from the other side. They come back with a ‘whataboutism’.

“And Hillary Clinton is the OG of election deniers,” said Meghan Kelly.

Bill Maher took the bait.

Instead of asking Kelly why she wouldn’t address what he said: try to bring her back to his point, he fought with her, trying to logically compare Clinton’s actions to Trump’s actions.

Meghan Kelly was referring to how Hillary Clinton complained about Donald Trump during his presidency. Kelly’s answer had nothing to do with Maher’s statement. She was attempting to say that democrats do it too. She created a false equivalency.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. Trump was granted the presidency by the electoral college, but before the sun rose the day after the election Clinton called Trump and conceded.

Clinton congratulated Trump for winning the election.

Clinton did not deny that she lost the election. She never said it was rigged. She may have said the electoral college is an antiquated system that denies Americans a direct choice in who gets to be the most powerful person in the world, but she didn’t say republicans stole the election.

Clinton was the most unpopular democratic candidate for the office of the presidency that I’ve ever witnessed. So much so that I can’t name one person who voted for her, including me. I voted 3rd party. Screw the haters, I never thought of her as a democrat in the first place. I never thought Bill Clinton was a democrat either.

Yet Trump lost to her by nearly 3 million votes.

I saw the thumbnail of a clip from that interview with the title of, “Because you’re stupid.” Apparently Bill Maher got tired of Kelly’s tactics and resorted to name calling.

Bill Maher thinks he’s getting through to Megan Kelly’s audience, because they’re only going to get conservative talking points unless someone talks about something other than building the wall that Trump says is already built, but is going to complete it if he gets re-elected.

Jon Stewart saw the trend; the bickering political pundits, and thought it was terrible. Especially when that was the format of the show.

Crossfire was a perfect example of pundits from either side bickering. Jon Stewart went on to the show and told them they’re bad for America and literally asked them to stop.

CNN cancelled Crossfire.

Bill Maher didn’t go on Meghan Kelly’s show and ask her to stop. He didn’t tell her she was bad for America because of her ‘whataboutisms’ and how she plays 3 card monte with the facts. He bickered, she pushed back, he called her stupid, then (I’m guessing) they shook hands and parted as friends.

Bill Maher’s visit to Meghan Kelly’s show was a stick in a river. Few will notice he was there and when he’s gone no one will remember or care.

Rivers are powerful. If you want to use that power for something else you have to build a damn. You have to stop the flow and only let if pass after you taken it’s power.

Or you stop it at the source: money. Overturn Citizens United and a large part of this madness will go away.

Joe Rogan is Weird

Joe Rogan has never been funny. His character on News Radio wasn’t funny. He seemed out of place. I loved News Radio and watched it because I was already a fan of Phil Hartman and Dave Foley.

Joe Rogan’s creation, Fear Factor, was ridiculous. A lot of the challenges were just gross out contests. Eating things that shouldn’t go anywhere near your mouth. In the way a bully might try to force a weak kid to eat a worm. It was juvenile.

Rogan started doing a podcast long before it was popular. He built an audience slowly. Not even on purpose to hear him tell it. Now he’s the richest podcaster in the world.

Full stop.

At least that’s how I would have handled my business, but Joe Rogan likes to think of himself as a comedian. He owns a comedy club. He interviews comedians on his podcast. He is a huge fan of a lot of comedians so it’s fun to watch the clips of him with Dave Chappelle (the best comedian of my lifetime) and Kat Williams, who took a cheap shot at Rogan claiming he only invited his close circle of friends on his popular podcast. Rogan was willing to give Kat a platform even after Kat publicly showed him disrespect.  

Joe Rogan is a great podcaster. He is a record setting podcaster. He got rich doing podcasts. Has anyone else ever done that? I didn’t even think it was possible.

But he’s not funny. And he is weird. He’s always been weird.

His last special just dropped on Netflix yesterday, August 3rd. I fired up the ol’ Netflix machine to watch reruns (does anyone call them that anymore? Reruns?) of The Walking Dead when I saw a live stream of Rogan’s newest special, Burn the Boats. The title was a swing and a miss. It put me off immediately.

If you know anything about the history of this country, Columbus set fire to his boats to get his crew to commit to the place they’d landed . . . somewhere south of here. 

Columbus was a dick. He enslaved the natives and trapped his crew to establish the new world. If that’s what Rogan was referring to he really shit the bed. I couldn’t finish watching his ‘special’. Rogan was a like a toddler ranting over his inability to understand why he couldn’t have a cookie.

So I clicked on it out of curiosity. I’ve seen clips of his specials on YouTube. Though they were engaging they were not funny. Not even smile worthy. 

This last one was no different, just a bit more weird. He seemed to have an ax to grind about homosexual men.

One of his set pieces; I won’t call it a joke, was about being around gay men. 

"I love gay men, but I think about gay men the same way I think about mountain lions. I'm happy they're real, but I don't want to be surrounded by them. They're a bunch of dudes who f*ck dudes, I don't like my chances!"

The implication being that gay men would rape him. It’s fun seeing a self proclaimed macho man be skeered of being raped. I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, it’s just an amusing thought.

Another implication is that he would be attractive to a gay man. The image of Rogan’s boob sweat resulting from his strenuous job of talking . . . yeah, I think most gay men would give him a hard pass. Joe, I think you could go to a gay bar and drink completely unmolested. 

You’re safe.

Dave Chappelle could have used the same scenario to get people to laugh, but he wouldn’t have come off as a homophobe jacked up on steroids who’d rather beat your brains out than entertain the idea of having sex with you. Dave would have been funny.

It’s okay not to wanna have sex with someone who shares your gender, but Rogan pushes the notion that democrats are saying it’s NOT okay to NOT wanna have gay sex. He’s like an old man thinking gay marriage is going to force straight people to marry gay people. 

Rogan’s notions are wildly immature.

Rogan is the perfect example of someone who isn’t getting any information from outside his bubble. The algorithms know what he wants and he can’t think outside of what the internet has chosen for him. 

Rogan gorges on misinformation and regurgitates it to his audience.

On his podcast Rogan pushed a conspiracy about the current president, Sleepy Joe. The story goes that the state of the union address: the one that caused Fox News to say Biden was ‘jacked up’ on something because he did so well, was pre-recorded. The only evidence was a close up of the president’s watch: it showed the wrong time.

The person Rogan said this to immediately asked if that meant hundreds of republican senators and congressmen were in on the cover-up. In other words, how had we not heard from any republicans that the state of the union was pre-recorded? 

Rogan had started his mouth before he put his mind in gear.

Rogan had his assistant dig a little deeper and yes, it had been debunked. The picture was actually of an address of congress at a different time, so the president’s watch wouldn’t have the correct time for the state of the union address.

Joe Rogan telling homophobic jokes on his little podcast is in poor taste but the only people who are going to see or hear it are people who go out of their way to find him on Spotify. I used to watch his YouTube clips if they looked interesting, but I’m not going to Spotify to listen to a 3 hour long podcast hosted by a former MMA fighter while he interviews some whackadoodle who couldn’t get on TV because he thought saltine crackers were actually soylent green and you know what soylent green is.

I’m not saying Netflix shouldn’t have offered his special. I’m saying that Rogan made an enormous mistake airing the special at all. None of his specials are funny, but they’re not as phobic as this last one. This broad shouldered former MMA fighter seems scared shitless of the world.

Joe Rogan got rich so he thinks that means he’s right about everything. In the way that Elon Musk suddenly realized he’s the smartest person in the room and that’s why he’s rich.

I don’t care if Rogan fails as a comedian or succeeds as a podcaster. I’ve enjoyed small slices of his podcast, but I couldn’t care less if it and he disappeared.

Joe Rogan is just a symptom of the weird times in which we live.