You know the radical left has gone well and truly off the rails when uber-progressive Bill Maher is among the only consistent voices of reason. Maher is well and truly over the #MeToo movement’s insistence that a comment a woman finds offensive is just as onerous as a violent rape.Disgusted with the #MeToo warlock hunt, Maher recently referred to the movement as #MeMcCarthyism.
As the #MeToo movement faces backlash from the left and backlash to the backlash from other elements of the left, Bill Maher wades into the controversy. Maher, who is unafraid to say things that will be unpopular with his leftist audience, stated that he is “down with #MeToo, I’m not down with #MeCarthyism.”Maher notes that the #MeToo movement has developed into a McCarthy-like witch hunt that does not distinguish between degrees of offense or even between a joke and sexual harassment. He labels them “distinction deniers.”
On Friday, Maher welcomed New York Times Opinion editor and staff writer Bari Weiss to his show to discuss the hysteria fueling the #MeToo movement. Weiss, herself a leftist, has come under fire from the left for being reasonable about the flaws in the #MeToo movement and its inversion of justice that unthinkingly requires the sacrifice of the innocent many to convict the guilty few.
In January, she wrote an opinion piece defending Aziz Ansari and criticizing aspects of the #MeToo movement. In it, Weiss argued that the Babe interview describing a young woman’s bad date with Ansari shouldn’t belong in the #MeToo conversation. Weiss wrote:
“There is a useful term for what this woman experienced on her night with Mr. Ansari. It’s called “bad sex.” It sucks.(…) The insidious attempt by some women to criminalize awkward, gross and entitled sex takes women back to the days of smelling salts and fainting couches. That’s somewhere I, for one, don’t want to go.”
Weiss took flak for her op-ed from Left-leaning publications like Alternet and HuffPost. The Intercept even pulled out the R-words, dismissing Weiss as “reactionary” and her writing as “reductive.”
During the Weiss segment, Maher speculated that there is a generational divide on the left that is fueling irrational #MeMcCarthyism and refers to some millenials as too “f**king fragile” and “emotional hemophiliacs.”
Bill Maher tonight spoke with The New York Times‘ Bari Weiss about their shared concerns about the #MeToo movement.Maher has previously warned about the movement turning McCarthyistic, and tonight he told Weiss he’s concerned about certain behaviors being conflated.Weiss––who recently wrote “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.”––agreed and cited examples of innocuous behavior she feels people are more alarmed about now because of the current cultural climate.Maher cited Matt Damon specifically and how he came under fire for his comments about the “spectrum of behavior,” arguing he said nothing wrong and was getting a lot of undeserved criticism.But he also made a point of saying this is a generational issue:
“I don’t think it’s the majority of them [millennials]. I think it’s the upper-middle-class kids who grew up screaming at their parents and that was okay. And they are just so fucking fragile––excuse me––I think of them as emotional hemophiliacs and the rest of us have to be so careful around them…”
Maher added that he doesn’t like the idea of a “police state” surrounding the idea of love.
Watch:
The video is worth watching because both Weiss and Maher make some interesting points that reach beyond the #MeToo movement.
For example, Maher notes that there’s a problem when “you’re wrong even when you say the right thing.” He’s referring to Matt Damon quite reasonably noting that a pat on the butt is not the same thing as a violent rape . . . and then quickly back-peddling out of the “national discussion” when faced with virulent backlash.
On this topic of being bullied into silence even when one is right, Weiss notes (without irony) that she is being attacked by her fellow leftists as “not a real woman” and expresses concern that men like Damon are choosing to self-censor in the face of leftist rage.
Weiss doesn’t quite make the connection between what is happening to her and Damon and what has been happening for years to right-leaning politicians and ordinary, right-leaning citizens. She is, however, this close to the recognition that her being silenced and shamed by an aggressive, intolerant left is rather like black Republicans being mocked as “Uncle Toms” and not “real black people” and female conservatives being dismissed as “not real women.”
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