Seven hundred episodes of anything is a lot of television. Real Time with Bill Maher reaches that milestone Friday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Crave.
Maher’s first guest this week is a favourite from the past, Dave Barry. The humour columnist and author is promoting a book titled, “The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years without Growing Up.”
Maher himself turns 70 next January, a milestone he does not seem too thrilled about. That he looks and seems younger is some comfort to those of us who are also getting up there. More worth celebrating, however, is that he is still free to speak his mind on television.
New Rule, therefore, and one I’ve invoked here in year’s past: stop being shocked every time Bill Maher says something that skates over the hard line that is cancel culture. That is, after all, his job.
Did Maher temper his tongue in COVID times? At first, perhaps. He seemed more mindful that the world and all of us in it were coming from a more vulnerable place. Then like a lot of us he got fed up and lashed back at masks, booster shots and other restrictions. As comedian Jimmy Carr said when he rhetorically asked his audience if we had over-reactions to COVID: “yeah, a lot of the survivors think so.”
Maher was, regrettably, bang-on about “Ruth Bader Biden.” He saw the sink hole the Democrats were driving straight toward and how that tilted the presidential election Trump’s way last November.
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Don’t forget it was Maher who also once compared Trump to Kiss’s Gene Simmons. As Maher joked, “He puts on the face paint and the wig, and he looks the same as he did in 1978.”
His determination to play if both Left and Right of the political spectrum was called into question earlier this season after he reported that Trump was a good host after accepting an invitation to dinner at the White House. Now, having once interviewed the former host of The Apprentice in his corner office in Manhattan, I have felt Trump’s charm maneuver firsthand. Trump uses flattery like Gordie Howe used elbows. He can knock you off your game.
Maher seemed stung when the Bro-B-Q was roundly mocked post-dinner. By week three, however, he could joke about it himself. He also never took his foot off the gas when it came to savaging the president’s appalling parade of ridiculousness.
There are other shows where you can get stinging rebukes of the Trump administration. Colbert, Kimmel and Seth Meyers all open with ten to 12 minutes of White House wailings. Some weeks, John Oliver gets apoplectic. On CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, opposites yell over each other to no apparent end.
Maher has his format down to a T. He has better guests, including brilliant minds such as Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway (who both now host the podcast Pivot), examples of people with sharp minds and, like Maher, the ability to throw quick, sneaky joke jabs. His two-at-the-table, one early in the chair is the better format. The opening guest bookings have been audacious at times this season; one week it’s Steve Bannon, the next it’s Gavin Newson, and last week it was Democratic senator John Fetterman. The show throws just enough surprises, including booking prime minister candidate Chrystia Freeland — a Maher guest back in the old Politically Incorrect days – to keep viewers on both sides of the border keen.
Maher spent nine seasons hosting Politically Incorrect on ABC. This is his 23rd season hosting Real Time. His 32 years put him in the same conversation as David Letterman and Johnny Carson in terms of longevity. That is Real Time.
