For Maher, this is the ultimate irony of his career. When his first show, Politically Incorrect, debuted in 1993, executives warned that a host who revealed his political opinions would alienate half the country. Maher bet that viewers could disagree with him and keep watching. He was right; three decades later, millions tune in to Real Time every Friday night. Even as America’s monoculture collapses, an invitation to appear on Real Time remains among the most coveted status symbols for America’s commentariat.
Maher helped create the opinionated political host, but by now has lived long enough to resent the purified partisan marketplace that followed. The kind of liberal politics he disdains is now a fast lane to success in late-night comedy, the more sanctimonious the better (just look at Stephen Colbert’s ratings before he got canned). The internet has only exacerbated that trend. In a world run by algorithms, everyone has the pleasure of being served up partisan slop seasoned to their own particular worldview.
Maher is a fan of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, another critic of progressives and supporter of Israel who has found relevance in the Trump era. He recently had dinner with Weiss and asked how she felt about her underlings at the network. “I was curious to just ask her, ‘What’s it like going to work every day there? Are they putting Kick Me signs on your back?’” Weiss, Maher says, told him her internal critics are too cowardly to say anything to her face. Maher says that when he asked her if there are people at CBS who support her vision for the network, Weiss replied that not everyone at the network is crazy—and that some feel liberated.
The night before the Mark Twain Prize ceremony, Maureen Dowd spoke at a dinner celebrating Maher, whom she’s known since the 1990s. “I go to bed every Friday night with Bill Maher,” she said as she opened her speech. “As he performs, I am cringing, bracing for the usual disappointment that washes over me. Because every Friday night, after I file my Sunday column and crawl into bed at 10 o’clock to watch Bill, he always has two or three clever lines about politics that I wish I had thought of; and he talks about two or three incredible stories I haven’t heard of, even though I read newspapers and magazines and websites all day long; and he delivers lacerating, original editorials taking on the right, the left, the media, and the insufferable that make me feel like I should be working harder or thinking better.
“So, Bill, I must say, you’re not any fun in bed!”
The next night, inside the Concert Hall of The Kennedy Center, Maher’s guests occupied an orchestra box that could have been a Real Time greenroom: There was Kaitlan Collins and Woody Harrelson; John Fetterman and his wife, Gisele; Whitney Cummings and Stephen A. Smith. The audience lapped up jabs at crazy liberals and Trump’s excesses alike. “I actually heard Trump may come tonight,” Cummings joked onstage. “He got caught in sex traffic.” (This joke was cut from the ceremony special now airing on Netflix. In a statement, a Netflix spokesperson said, “While it’s our preference not to cut jokes from anyone’s set, The Kennedy Center has the contractual right to do so.”) “Finally, an award for my dear friend—ironically, at The Trump Kennedy Center,” Harrelson said. “Oh right, we fixed that.” Maher had impersonator Matt Friend crash the stage as Trump and demand to know why anyone was honoring “this low-ratings, lightweight jerk.”
