Last night on Bill Maher’s HBO show, his viewers were once again subjected to his rants regarding leftist political identity and his excoriation of young people. Fortunately for the viewers, Charles Blow was there and pushed back effectively against Maher and his disparagement of social justice warriors. The problem with Maher and his ridiculous stance, is that it ignores the greatest purveyor and longest running political identity show in the United States-that of the GOP. Nixon trotted out the war on drugs which was aimed at minority populations. Reagan followed by launching his 1980 presidential campaign from Coritnth, Mississippi, the place where young Freedom Riders were murdered. Of course, the GOP would claim that this is not an overt racist idea, but to those who know better, it was a great big neon sign with an arrow pointing down at Reagan stating white people, I’m your guy. Reagan followed this up with his welfare queen distortions with regard to poor people, which, in Republican political identity speak is black people and other minorities. Of course, we cannot forget George H.W. Bush and the Willie Horton ads. We have now been inflicted with Donald Trump and his continual promotion of white nationalism, which seems to be to be the culmination of these many years of GOP politics. As evidenced by a piece in today’s New York Times, “The making of a YouTube Radical”, Maher’s statements are playing into the hands of the right wing. As the article points out in the following quote, the right wing makes political hay by criticizing social justice warriors and other elements of the left who are trying to make the world a better place.
“Few of them had over ties to establish the conservative groups, and there was little talk about tax cuts or trade policy on their channels. Instead, they rallied around issues like free speech and anti-feminism, per train themselves as truth telling rebels doing battle against humorless “social justice warriors.” Their videos felt like episodes in a long-running soap opera with a constant stream of new heroes and villains.”
Maher continues to paint “social justice warriors” with a negative broad brush stroke that undermines the great work, as Blow pointed out, of people who are on the front lines fighting against racial discrimination and other types of discrimination. In my opinion, these are people who are not trying to foist political correctness upon the rest of us, they’re just trying to make all of us better citizens and the U.S. a better place for all people to live.
As far as the young people coming up, as a Boomer, I’m very proud of them. The young people from Parkland should be an inspiration to all of us, and clearly their efforts should be lauded. Unfortunately, Maher’s strawman attacks, and his booking of authors who give an authoritative imprimatur for his criticisms, actually give a big boost to right-wing radicals. It’s too bad, because I believe Maher has a lot of good ideas and he generally brings in conservatives onto his program and they are rightfully criticized by him and other members of his panel. However, on these points, he’s beginning to sound more like the proverbial old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.