Bill Maher’s 2024 presidential race predictions
Mar 21, 2023 18:48:16 GMT -7
JustJohn or JJ likes this
Post by pieter on Mar 21, 2023 18:48:16 GMT -7
Bill Maher
William Maher (born January 20, 1956) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is known for the HBO political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher (2003–present) and the similar late-night show called Politically Incorrect (1993–2002), originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC. In 2022, Maher started the podcast Club Random.
Maher is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary. He targets many topics including religion, political correctness, and the mass media. His critical views of religion were the basis for his 2008 documentary film Religulous. He is a supporter of animal rights, having served on the board of PETA since 1997, and is an advisory board member of Project Reason. Maher supports the legalization of cannabis, serving on the advisory board of NORML.
In 2005, Maher ranked at number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010. Maher has earned 41 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and a win for his work as executive producer for Vice in 2014. He has also received nominations for two Grammy Awards, and a Tony Award.
Early life and education
Maher was born in New York City. His father, William Aloysius Maher Jr., was a network news editor and radio announcer, and his mother, Julie Maher (née Berman), was a nurse. He was raised in his Irish-American father's Roman Catholic religion. Until his early teens, he was unaware that his mother, whose family was from Hungary, was Jewish. Owing to his disagreement with the Catholic Church's doctrine about birth control, Maher's father stopped taking Maher and his sister to Catholic church services when Maher was thirteen.
Maher was raised in River Vale, New Jersey and graduated from Pascack Hills High School in Montvale in 1974. He then attended Cornell University, where he double-majored in English and history, and graduated in 1978. Maher has said, "Selling pot allowed me to get through college and make enough money to start off in comedy."
Comment Pieter: I like Bill Maher as a comedian. Next to Maher I like Lawrence Gene (Larry) David (New York, 2 juli 1947), Jackie Mason, the Israeli American comedian Modi Rosenfeld (known professionally as Modi), I love Steve Martin, the American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and actor Lenny Bruce (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), Sarah Silverman (1 december 1970), Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005), Gene Wilder (Jerome Silberman; June 11, 1933 – August 29, 2016), Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; Yiddish: דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי; January 18, 1911 – March 3, 1987), Edward Regan Murphy (Eddie Murphy; born April 3, 1961), Maziyar Jobrani (Persian: مازیار جبرانی; born February 26, 1972) and the sense of humor in Coen brothers movies (The Big Lebowski). For the rest my knowledge about European comedy and sense of humor is larger than about the American satirists, comedians and cartoonists. But North America has it's own kind of humor and comedy for sure. Europeans who are Anti-American (culture) and dislike Americans don't understand that and mistakenly see their European culture and sense of humor as higher (Superior), older and more multi layered than then American ones. That is nonsense and has no base. Why, because these people look at the USA and say the American culture started in 1607 when English settlement of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony. So American (US) Culture started 416 years ago. That is nonsense, because these English, Scottish, Welsh and later Irish, Italian, Dutch, Germans, Slavic, Baltic, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Portugese, Ashkenazi Jewish settlers and other white settlers did not come from nowere and their life and culture didn't suddenly start in 1607 in Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia. Their ancestors had histories on the British Isles, Ireland and Continental Europe. And the native Europeans, African slaves and the Latino's that came from Southern-America, Central America and Mexico also brought their heritage, traditions, history and own kind of sense of humor and comedy with them. The same counts for the Asians in the USA, the Chinese of the various China towns in different cities, the Japanese Americans, the Korean Americans and the many full blood Vietnamese and the Eurasian Vietnamese people that were the children of American Gi's and Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War and after that. So this is how I debunk the anti-American Yankee Go Home Europeans who believe and are convinced that Americans have no culture, no sense of humor, no civilization and an inferior sort of English, because Europeans had British English as subject in class. You can dislike or like the Nasal flat sounding American or dislike or like the Brtish English version of English, the Australian, New Zealandic, Jamaican, Nigerian, Irish (accent) or South-African forms of English. Fact is that these linguistic varieties exist and enrich the English speaking world in their variety, pluriformity and linguistic and dialect diversity. They are also a source of good sense of humor about the differences and also self mockery (British sense of humor is largely based on self mockery).
You have different continental histories, state histories, regional histories, linguistic histories, migration histories, religious histories, financial and economical histories, Labour (work/labour market) histories, political histories, linguistic histories, sociological histories, societal histories, social class development histories, linguistic histories and dialectal histories. I often have no patience for anti-American Europeans with no knowledge about Amertican civilization, sophistication, Quintessence, history and politics, nor do I have patience or interest in Anti-European Americans with their ingorant and pedantic American superiotity complexes. I enjoy the culture, sense of humor and thus comedies and Stand up Comedy from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I have been to LA, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New York and met real Americans and I met my American family members from Chicago (Illinois) and Milwaukee (Wisconsin). And these people were and are not dumb. Like Dutch people from the Netherlands in Europe and Afrikaander people from South Africa in Africa, the English speaking Americans from North America and the British English speaking people from England in the UK (Great Britain) are very different, but they can easily understand each others languages. Differences, distances, different histories, accents and dialects make it easy to have stereotypical views of the other, because we are different. I will never say that I am an America expert, and I wouldn't be able to make fun of American politics, because I do understand to little about it. That's why Bill Maher is so refreshing for me, next to watching CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, PBS (Newshour and Frontline), NBC, Young Turks, The Problem with Jon Stewart on YouTube, Democracy Now!, a little bit American far-right conspiracy theory lunatic news from hysterical Alex Jones InfoWars, a little bit Breitbart, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Commentary, Foreign Affairs Magazine, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic and other News sources. I miss Life Magazine today and the fact that paper versions of American magazines and Newspapers are not always available over here. My favorite American Newspaper is the New York Times. When I was 12 days in New York in June 2008, I bought 12 New York Times newspapers in Manhattan. Carried the newspaper on my long walks over Broadway and Central Park and read it in my Hotel. It is intgeresting how different and funny Amertican sense of humor, Satire, Stand up Comedy and Comedy tv series (sitcoms) are compared to the European ones. We Europeans love American comedy, satire, political cartoons, Stand Up Comedy and comical movies, because we escape from the European reality, but in the same time understand the American sense of humor and comedy, because it has European lingusitic (Americam English) roots, because most white Americans have European ancestors and in the same time we learned so much about African American culture, native American culture and (tribal) heritage, Asian Americans and latin Americans (Hispanics) in the USA that we get an image of the reality there. A distant one, because 4970 miles and 1706.355 yards of water between us (8n thousand kilomters). But all these decades I enjoyed the dry sense of humor and melancholy of Bill Murray, the hilarious funny sense of humor of Steve Martin, the Bizar self mockery sense of humor of Larry David, the streetwise sense of humor of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and the confrontational humor of Sarah Silverman very much.