MovieChat Forums > Bill Maher Discussion > Another Howard Beale Contrarian Fool; Ju...

Another Howard Beale Contrarian Fool; Just Retire Already

posted 3 years ago by [deleted]
21 replies | jump to latest

Recently, I had an epiphany. I suddenly realized why I've been having such an issue with this entire roster of angry, pompous comics and talk show hosts and their smug, condescending "tell it like it is" monologues. I am talking about everyone from Rightwing jagoffs like Rush Limbaugh on the Right, "atheist prophets" like George Carlin and angry little white millennial "go woke, get broke" dweebs on YouTube like Gavin McInness.

These are all fools who saw Howard Beale from Network and didn't get the joke, that he wasn't supposed to be a role model. The reason why he wasn't one is that Beale wasn't truly this brilliant, enlightened guy speaking truth to power on TV or to American audiences. He was just an angry, deranged crackpot who the executives cleverly marketed as being one. On top of that, part of his "appeal" in the movie was that he was an angry contrarian ranting like a loon, and people find the angry crackpot contrarian infinitely more entertaining than a guy like Dick Cavett or the calm, cool and collected intellectuals who used to appear on that show.

Bill Maher has become the biggest living embodiment of Howard Beale, and he's only gotten worse over time. I've watched him for decades since Politically Incorrect, and he's always rubbed me the wrong way but I kind of let things slide because he had enough humility and self-awareness to step back and let others speak or not talk about things out of his depths. Now he's become insufferable precisely he's forgotten that he has never been or ever will be an intellectual or brilliant social critic on the part of, say, Malcolm X or Noam Chomsky. He's really huffing his own fumes right now, and it's really sad at best and infuriating at worst.

He's also becoming insufferable because as he's begun losing irrelevancy (and viewers to hipper hosts like Trevor Noah, Seth Myers, John Oliver and others), he's only dialed up the contrarian shtick up several dozen notches for negative attention. It's gotten to the point where he's flip-flopping season to season because it's not enough for him to be contrarian about popular opinions. He has to be contrarian about EVERYTHING, even if it means contradicting himself in the same breath.

My favorite flip flop is how on one show he was ranting about how cultural appropriation and woke are b.s. but then later ranted on YouTube during the pandemic that white people need to stop culturally appropriating black causes.

Which is it, Bill? Cultural appropriation is real? Or it's not? Oh, wait--you're Howard Beale. It doesn't matter.

You're not only Howard Beale, you're a worse version of the King of the Howard Beale wannabe crackpots, George Carlin. Carlin was such a contrarian nut job towards the end of his career that he was downplaying Native American genocide, telling people that life wasn't worth it and encouraging everyone to abandon environmentalism so that Planet Earth would get rid of the human race. I'm just waiting for the moment Maher reaches that point. It's going to be hilarious!

[–] BourbonKing (5693) 3 years ago

Bill, along with all of the other contrarian comics out there, speak to the trending topics that are now dictated by social media since conduits like Twitter, Facebook and TikTok now define the attention span of most of the viewers advertisers are trying to reach.

His criticisms carry as much weight as the comics on Fox Noise to the gay crybaby wet nurses on CNN. The goal is to grab eyeballs and continue the discussion of the latest hot topics. Wokeism, GQPism, Trumpism, and Cancel Culture are currently the hot topics.

If you're waiting for an intellectual to break the scene then don't hold your breath. However, there are a shitload of self-described intellectuals who have been mostly on the radio and haven't translated onto TV or social media because they're older and mostly Right-leaning (Prager, Ellison, Peterson, Shapiro) so their pretense of being enlightened and "above it all" is a façade at best and a disingenuous posture at worst.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

If you're waiting for an intellectual to break the scene then don't hold your breath.

I don't expect an intellectual to break the scene but I do hope that someone exposes all of these pseudo-intellectuals for who or what they are. The thing that ticks me so much about screams of "cancel culture" is that the people who keep ranting about it are trying to make it seem as if it's this nationwide epidemic affecting everyone no matter who or where they are. But what it really is are self-absorbed, arrogant elites in the entertainment biz like Bill Maher--who had appointed themselves as gurus, prophets and sages speaking truth to power (in the vein of Howard Beale)--becoming shocked and outraged when the public starts getting tired of their angry contrarian shtick. Now that people are pushing back, they're screaming that they're getting "canceled" and being martyred in the name of truth.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (8890) 3 years ago

> I don't expect an intellectual to break the scene but I do hope that someone exposes all of these pseudo-intellectuals for who or what they are.

Doesn't seem like it is gonna be you.

I can understand being critical of Maher. To me it seems like he is becoming Donald Trump before our eyes as he does not know who he is now that he has to embrace his multi-millionaire celebrity image.

For me the bottom line is that the world doesn't need punch down comedians.

[–] Adam60z (3751) 3 years ago

I love how you lump them all together: Bill Maher, George, Carlin, Howard Beale and Rush Limbaugh. Yup all exactly the same. Thanks for pointing it out.

[–] BourbonKing (5693) 3 years ago

I was never into Carlin but I've noticed a lot of Men's Rights groups highlighting his quotes as if he was a pioneer of that movement. I guess into his final years he did have a meaner streak that was more nihilist in nature so I can see how they gravitated towards his comic insights.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Your sarcasm means absolutely nothing to me, because I can tell from your response that you've never seen Network. I also can tell that don't see the common thread between a fictional character who became hugely popular for confusing the public into thinking that "angry contrarianism=truth" and an entire generation of comics and hosts in radio, TV and podcasting in real life who were clearly inspired by the character.

[–] SandyR (7641) 3 years ago

How do those corporate boots taste?

[–] MartyDeniro (4114) 3 years ago

If you had not included Maher himself, I'd say you sound just like Bill Maher giving one of his closing sermons after "New Rules".

Isn't it easier to say that it's all theater -- i.e., entertainment, first and foremost?

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Word of advice: if you want to actually have a healthy debate, pick up a book on logic. What you've stated isn't an actual argument; it's what's known as a "tu quoque" fallacy.

It doesn't even make sense in this context.

[–] MartyDeniro (4114) 3 years ago

Yes, you are a hypocrite. And more so now that you're acting like someone with a grasp of logic when your post from the headline to finish exhibits ad hominem, begging the question and hasty generalization.

But let's get to the most egregious example that supports my entertainment statement.

You are obviously a fan of Bill Maher and his show. You've watched him forever, and you will next week. So, you don't want him to "retire already" b/c you'd have one less figure to hate watch or write paragraphs about on a movie site. He's locked you in, which is the goal of a show. And the same applies to all those others you mention. How else could you know them so well? Like or hate, you've eaten them up. All of them. From their standpoint, mission accomplished. You're a viewer/listener of their show. Have you had that epiphany yet? That you love to suffer the insufferable? That it's only entertainment designed for you to lap up just as you clearly have?

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Tu quoque fallacy:

Tu quoque , or the appeal to hypocrisy, is an informal fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior as being inconsistent with the argument's conclusion(s).
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

And look what you followed your initial response with:

Yes, you are a hypocrite.

That's it! Own that logical fallacy, LOLOLOL!

[–] MartyDeniro (4114) 3 years ago

I know I owned it. That's what "Yeah" means. Get it? "you are hypocrite" That's acknowledgement. Get it? What made you think I wasn't aware after that line??

And you added that same fallacy to your long list since you just used it to avoid the rest.

Now go write some more about Maher, and tell us how irrelevant he's becoming, like you did TWO YEARS ago. That you're STILL prattling on about him shows he's still as relevant to YOU as ever. He's cleverly and SUCCESSFULLY marketed himself to YOU. So, this "fool" has you engrossed by his every word. What does that make YOU? It's YOU who never got the joke. And the fact that you refer to a movie like Network, yet the idea that it's all a show is lost on you, is astonishing. Get it yet?? Now let's since how much you own.

[–] SandyR (7641) 3 years ago

You know nothing about logic. Please remove the word from your vocabulary until you take a few courses yourself.

[–] SandyR (7641) 3 years ago

I think you set a world record for logical fallacies in a single post!

[–] Satan2016 (23904) 3 years ago

Malcolm X and Noam Chomsky are my favorite talk-show hosts. After Joe Rogan of course.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (8890) 3 years ago

I never heard or saw anything like you are talking about from Carlin? What are you talking about. Downplaying Native American genocide? That sound like some weirdo interpretation of maybe one thing that he that you took personally. Life isn't worth it? Not a huge Carlin follower, but nothing like this did I ever see or hear about.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Oh, dear, another person who thinks that George Carlin was an infallible God. All the more reason why I live to tear him down.

Carlin said that we shouldn't call Native Americans that because they weren't "native" to America, that they came over the Bering straight. He said that to attack liberals and their so-called "political correctness": https://www.cleveland.com/letters/2020/07/stop-using-inaccurate-and-insulting-term-native-american.html

The problem with his statement is that this "Bering strait" thing was a lie that became fashionable on Rightwing talk radio back in the 1980s and 1990s, which used it to argue that Americans never took land from the Indians, because they were never indigenous to the Americas; they were migrants themselves: http://www.nativecircle.com/bering-strait-myth.html.

Everything else that I said Carlin said is not only easily Googled/YouTube'd, your incredulity makes you lack credibility as a "fan". "Life is worth losing" is literally the name of one of his albums and his popular sets, and one of the most famous things he ever said was that environmentalism was stupid because the earth didn't need humans to save it; it would shake the human race off like fleas. People were literally quoting him left and right when the pandemic broke out last year, saying that COVID was proof of what he said.

These are not "obscure" things that he said. These are literally the most famous and most quoted things among his fans, but you're acting "incredulous", which outs you, once again, as someone who doesn't know much about him.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (8890) 3 years ago

> Oh, dear, another person who thinks that George Carlin was an infallible God.

Now that I see you cannot read or comprehend, not gonna read anything from you again ... what a stupid, stupid thing to say about Carlin, he was being ironic. He's a comedian.

[–] MartyDeniro (4114) 3 years ago

"All the more reason why I live to tear him down."

That's the sad mentality. But the irony is that minababe24 is obviously the biggest fan of all these figures, and part of the bedrock that gave them relevancy, by being completely sucked into the hate watch side of fandom. Maher wouldn't be renewed by HBO thru 2022 (his 20th season) without that loyal group of ratings drivers. He has them hook, line and sinker. And like Carlin, Maher will only really fade away once minababe types stop hanging on his every word as they watch every episode.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (8890) 3 years ago

I like Real Time for the most part ... the format of the show, but sometimes Bill's egotism and stupidity really get to me.

[–] MartyDeniro (4114) 3 years ago

Sure, I feel the same for the most part. But the bottom line is that it's just a show, with a certain brand of entertainment developed over years, and conceived each week in a writers room. If you drop that context, you're taking it too seriously. Even Bill tries to remind the audience of that occasionally during the show.