Long live the great Hitch.

Tonight’s episode of Real Time was rather dull. Herman Cain’s interview was the only great thing that happened. The panel was quite boring: David Frum, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Pelosi’s daughter.

*YAWN!*

Maher’s audience will “apparently applaud anything.” Well, not everything.the best part was the audience’s lackluster support for religious freedom in the US as opposed to islamic theocracy in the middle east. In their defense, Maher’s audience was confused. Applaud white people who created the best, freest civil society in the world, while at the same time appear to negatively judge brown people. Tough one for em.

Cain may be a fun interview but is one of the dumbest individuals ever to run for president. The other three at least have something to contribute more than talk radio style blather.

He was a man . He died . That’s all .

… except … 

1. he’ll be remembered, & you not 
2. the man put the term “well-read” to a new level  
3. other than (maybe) physicists & natural school philosophers, no one in our time made a better case against religiosity 
4. excluding no one (not physicists, not natural philosophers, not anyone) in our time made a better case FOR atheism  
5. he made debate more interesting than anyone in our time 

with a whole lot of etceras.  

I’ve read two of his books thru, & several others part, abandoning some of them, because, to me, with the exception of those two (One of them everyone knows: God Is Not Great, which is a borderline great book, & the best I’ve read on the non-scientific-method based philosophic attack on religiosity, & again See 4), he didn’t seem to work at all consistently effectively in the long form. But as an essayist, he was very tough to beat, for provoking thought, for moving opinion, for entertainment value, among other things.  

His views on women seem to me confused: he spoke out as strongly as anyone against misogyny, but he never went to the specific & reports on his behavior suggest he failed to adhere to the abuses he argued against & the standards he argued for. 

Plus Iraq; something, probably several things, in that big brain of his collapsed completely around the Bush-Cheney Iraq invasion. Maybe it had something to do with being a naturalized citizen, I don’t know what it was – but he was as wrong on that every bit as much as he was right on religiosity.

“one of the dumbest individuals ever to run for president”
Who do you say was dumber? 

I didn’t mean this as snark; maybe I should have framed it differently.  

As soon as I saw your comment, I started thinking, Yeah, Tom Tancredo was a whole lot dumber than Cain; also, Duncan Hunter. Was/is Cain “dumber” than Bachmann? “Dumber” than Governor Dumbass? Cain was far more accomplished academically than all of those four, & with the obvious social limitation. I think at some point in his adult life tho, Cain’s little brain went rogue & seized power over a goodly portion of his short term decision making & curiosity, &, it appears very likely, never entirely gave that up. “Dumber” than Trump? I think that’s a close call, once you account for the difference in circumstances. Trump is a white guy in a white guys’ world who took his dad’s wealth & did pretty the same thing as his dad, except louder & riskier & more obnoxiously. Cain grew up a black guy in a white guys’ world with no advantages from inheritance & made his fortune as a self-promoter, parodying what white guys’ world occupants fantasize a successful compliant black man should do & act like; in the non-human animal world, that’s adaptation, & that’s way tougher to do than what Trump’s done.I don’t know how one account for crankiness on the “dumb & dumber” scale, but Cain’s no crank like Uncle Paul, indeed, no crank at all. Lazy, yes; unprincipled, sure; but not a crank.

I see you got some “likes” there, & the sentiment’s understandable, but I don’t agree with the analysis. 

The lukewarm applause for Hitch on religiosity & atheism, to me, makes sense as an indication of a consensus among the sorts of folks who spend effort & time as TV talk show audiences to hedge, thinking that applauding Hitch PROBABLY doesn’t offend Jeebus or Gawd, but hey, why take the chance, especially since they mostly don’t give a shit about religion one or the other anyway? 

The underenthusiastic response that predominantly white live-to-video TV show-going audiences show to blacks is, to me anyway, more a reflection of the sort of thing some critic once said about the humor of Richard Pryor: that his act was premised on the notion that the only kind of folks who made no sense was white folks. Now, I saw Pryor live a number of times, & each time it was as a white guy in a predominantly white audience, every time to packed house, & he just KILLED every time, because the kind of white folks who pay money & make the effort to go see Pryor live are very comfortable & willing to have their white world nutsiness pointed out & mocked; we KNOW we’re crazy. But Pryor coming on to TV variety or talk show always toned that down, not for the censors (He got bleeped a lot), but because as an experienced performer he knew he had no ‘permission’ to do that sort of thing, the “white folks is crazy” thing, in front of an audience whose only payment is applause. That is, the sort of audience that Maher gets isn’t invested in hearing reasons to support why they’re uncomfortable with religiosity & why they feel atheism is the non-magic straight goods. And they’re certainly not invested in one of the guests taking them on & challenging them. 

I see you got some “likes” there, & the sentiment’s understandable, but I don’t agree with the analysis. 

The lukewarm applause for Hitch on religiosity & atheism, to me, makes sense as an indication of a consensus among the sorts of folks who spend effort & time as TV talk show audiences to hedge, thinking that applauding Hitch PROBABLY doesn’t offend Jeebus or Gawd, but hey, why take the chance, especially since they mostly don’t give a shit about religion one or the other anyway? 

The underenthusiastic response that predominantly white live-to-video TV show-going audiences show to blacks is, to me anyway, more a reflection of the sort of thing some critic once said about the humor of Richard Pryor: that his act was premised on the notion that the only kind of folks who made no sense was white folks. Now, I saw Pryor live a number of times, & each time it was as a white guy in a predominantly white audience, every time to packed house, & he just KILLED every time, because the kind of white folks who pay money & make the effort to go see Pryor live are very comfortable & willing to have their white world nutsiness pointed out & mocked; we KNOW we’re crazy. But Pryor coming on to TV variety or talk show always toned that down, not for the censors (He got bleeped a lot), but because as an experienced performer he knew he had no ‘permission’ to do that sort of thing, the “white folks is crazy” thing, in front of an audience whose only payment is applause. That is, the sort of audience that Maher gets isn’t invested in hearing reasons to support why they’re uncomfortable with religiosity & why they feel atheism is the non-magic straight goods. And they’re certainly not invested in one of the guests taking them on & challenging them. 

I see you got some “likes” there, & the sentiment’s understandable, but I don’t agree with the analysis. 
The lukewarm applause for Hitch on religiosity & atheism, to me, makes sense as an indication of a consensus among the sorts of folks who spend effort & time as TV talk show audiences to hedge, thinking that applauding Hitch PROBABLY doesn’t offend Jeebus or Gawd, but hey, why take the chance, especially since they mostly don’t give a shit about religion one or the other anyway? 

The underenthusiastic response that predominantly white live-to-video TV show-going audiences show to blacks is, to me anyway, more a reflection of the sort of thing some critic once said about the humor of Richard Pryor: that his act was premised on the notion that the only kind of folks who made no sense was white folks. Now, I saw Pryor live a number of times, & each time it was as a white guy in a predominantly white audience, every time to packed house, & he just KILLED every time, because the kind of white folks who pay money & make the effort to go see Pryor live are very comfortable & willing to have their white world nutsiness pointed out & mocked; we KNOW we’re crazy. But Pryor coming on to TV variety or talk show always toned that down, not for the censors (He got bleeped a lot), but because as an experienced performer he knew he had no ‘permission’ to do that sort of thing, the “white folks is crazy” thing, in front of an audience whose only payment is applause. That is, the sort of audience that Maher gets isn’t invested in hearing reasons to support why they’re uncomfortable with religiosity & why they feel atheism is the non-magic straight goods. And they’re certainly not invested in one of the guests taking them on & challenging them. 

I was excited until I saw the video was only 1:40 :-(

Great . You have your own opinion . Good for you .

1. he’ll be remembered, & you not 

Lols

I’ve never been present at the taping of a typical network TV show,  but I have gone to some “Prairie Home Companion” NPR radio shows done live, and there’s a warm-up period before the show went on-the-air.  I wonder if Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel. David Letterman, Jon Stewart (DEFINITELY Jon Stewart:  he starts out most shows talking to the audience about something that happened during the warmup, and often doesn’t let the TV audience in on the joke)and Stephen Colbert really pump up the studio audience before and DURING their shows by having staff members hold up signs and do semaphore signals.  Maybe Bill Maher declines to do that, and so the audience reaction is more “natural”, like a comedy club.

From a man who drank and smoked himself to death…enlightening.

Mr. Hitchens woke up in hell and thought, dammmmm I was wrong but I was so smart, water anyone?