Posted on 11/18/2017 7:56:33 AM PST by EdnaMode
UPDATE with video Bill Maher didn’t exactly go easy on his pal Al Franken tonight, spending much of the opening monologue and a big chunk of Real Time’s season finale tossing joke grenades at the Minnesota senator. But the HBO host drew a hard line between the former Saturday Night Live staffer and the ever-growing gang of famous abusers and grabbers.
Maher then described the scandal – the photo of Franken “mock-groping” Leeann Tweeden, then writing and demanding a rehearsal of a sketch calling for a kiss. “Al’s a friend,” Maher said, “but Al I gotta tell you, if you write a comedy sketch where you, Al Franken, kiss a model and the next line of dialogue isn’t ‘Get off of me, creepy,’ it’s not comedy, it’s science fiction.
Jokes out of the way, Maher got to his point: “He did a bad thing and the condemnation has been universal, which he deserves. What he doesn’t deserve is to be lumped in with Roy Moore. Or Kevin Space. Or Harvey Weinstein. Or Donald Trump, who calls his accusers liars, threatens to sue them, did long riffs at his rallies where he said they were too ugly for him to assault.
“Plus, with Al Franken we’re talking about one incident. Trump has 16 accusers. Roy Moore has nine. Roy Moore spent more time chatting up young girls at the mall than Santa Claus.”
Franken came up again later in the show when comedian and activist Chelsea Handler joined the panel and noted that Franken, facing one allegation, took responsibility, while Trump pretends he’s going to sue his accusers.
“I agree with you on Al Franken,” Handler said. “I’m sorry, he’s not a predator. Everybody who’s met him knows that’s not true. He made a mistake. He’s not a predator.”
Maher then challenged this afternoon’s cable news wisdom that Franken should resign, decrying a culture that doesn’t know “the difference between zero tolerance and maximum punishment.”
At which point panelist Rebecca Traister, a writer for New York Magazine and author of All the Single Ladies, took the mic, metaphorically speaking, and dropped it, all in one long, breath-free and beautifully worded speech. Carl Bernstein, environmental activist Bill McKibben and author Max Brooks were also on the show, but Traister deserves all of the last words here:
“To focus on what the punishment is going to be,” she said about the harassers, “is on some level an easier conversation to have, because then we get to fight about it. ‘Should he resign?’ – and then we get to go to our partisan battle stations.
“(That’s easier) than actually looking at the more difficult conversation, which is about the whole culture, a culture that empowers white men to abuse their power in a million ways, from the villainous predators to the fact that there is a sense of humor that we all understand in this country, that if a woman is asleep it’s funny to grab her t*ts. And that a man can gain power and stature and a place in the public sphere by profiting from that comedy.
“That doesn’t make him the same as Harvey Weinstein, but it’s not about him. It’s about reckoning with the fact that we make that culture, we participate in that culture, it’s our good politicians, it’s our friends, it’s our husbands, and it’s ourselves. That is a harder conversation to have and it’s the one we should be having about this moment, not ‘Should he resign…”
Maher is the last person who should be speaking about treating women with respect.
“Plus, with Al Franken we’re talking about one incident.“
Two, in fact. That we know about so far, anyway.
L
Wait. Bill Maher is a comedian? Aren’t they supposed to be funny? I’ve stepping in dog crap that was funnier than Bill Maher.
Well, even as Christians we all sometimes sin, but true Christianity can fix most of this. However, the left will turn over every stone but never see the fix.
Trump has always been the ultimate target.
As Bill Maher lumps President trump in with Weinstein’s and spacey
Hioefully it’s all coming apart
Yeah he definitely is.
He’s only counting the picture assault? It was multiple incidents over several weeks on the USO tour. These dirt bags have no shame.
We are at a place where hitting on someone just once will get you tarred and feathered in the village square.
Has Maher stepped up and acknowledged his share of responsibility in the Sutherland church massacre?
Will he ever?
It wouldn’t take much effort to find far more embarrassing instances at the hands of Bill Maher himself. I believe there may be police reports for a few of them.
Al Franken is in a league of his own. He’s the only one on the list that groped a woman in her sleep and wrote a comedy skit about raping Lesley Stahl. According to Newsweek, he had another comedy skit about child raping Rob Reiner. He obviously thinks victimizing women and children is funny.
And "trans-women." Don't forget those.
Here yah go progressives, have some Moore!
“Trump has always been the ultimate target.”
None of this #me-too-ism happens if Hillary is president. It’s a direct result of Trumps election.
I can’t envision Weinstein being taken down if his pals are in the White House.
It’s okay to sexually assault women as long as you are joking around.
Idiot libs presume to think somebody appointed them arbiter of the entire universe.
I don’t even know who 50% of so-called “celebrities” are these days.
Al Franken is also the only one that is a Democrat senator in danger of being forced out; don’t expect much serious criticism of him...
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