Bill Maher Slams the GOP, the ACLU, MTV, and Tucker Carlson on ‘Real Time’
Bill Maher slammed the GOP, the ACLU, MTV, Tucker Carlson and Playboy magazine in a Real Time segment Friday that took aim at how companies change their brand but keep their name.
Maher opened his nine-minute “New Rule: Stand By Your Brand” by decrying how TLC, a.k.a. The Learning Channel, and A&E, short for Arts & Entertainment, have long deviated from their original mission statement.
After noting how the former lived up to its Learning Channel name, Maher listed some of TLC’s current programming: “Cake Boss, Gypsy Sisters, Toddlers & Tiaras, Extreme Couponing,” etc. The “Arts” in A&E once stood for the symphony, Maher added, and now its synonymous with Hoarders and Ghost Hunters.
“The History Channel has no history, and MTV has no music,” Maher said. He next decried Playboy’s 2016 decision to remove nudity from the magazine. “They took the tits out of Playboy,” Maher complained. “That’s like taking the cat out of Cat Fancy.”
From there, Maher’s rant spun off to object to the Boy Scouts now accepting girls, even though they have their own group — the Girl Scouts — that they can join. “It ignores the very important need for boys to sometimes get together as boys to fart in a sleeping bag and laugh at that, which girls don’t find funny,” he said.
“Can’t anything just be what it is anymore?” Maher asked.
The takedown of TV networks and the Boy Scouts was a roundabout way of Maher settling on his main targets, the ACLU and the GOP. In the case of the American Civil Liberties Union, Maher criticized the organization for abandoning its chief principle — to defend any and all free speech — and instead not align with clients whose “whose values are contrary to our values.”
“Your values are free speech, and the First Amendment. Those are your values. Your whole purpose in life is to not be worried about ‘offense to marginalized groups,’ because we understand that free speech is an even more important value than never being offended,” Maher said. “Because you’re the ACLU, not UCLA.”
The Republican Party, like all those aforementioned, TV channels, have also mightily strayed from their initial agenda. “It used to stand for something, being heartless squares, but something. Oh, and patriotism. They always wanted you to know they loved America more than you,” Maher said.
“But now Tucker Carlson is literally reciting Russian talking points, becoming so valuable to the Kremlin that they put out a memo asking their propaganda outlets to replay as much as Tucker Carlson as possible, in Russia.”
Maher then suggested Republicans rebrand themselves as “The Trump Party.” “You can’t represent a form of government you yourself don’t believe in,” Maher said. “If you do, you have to get yourself another name.”
