In his opening monologue, Bill Maher opted for understatement, noting that it’s been “a somewhat difficult week.” The murder of Charlie Kirk, who had appeared on both Real Time and Maher’s podcast Club Random, was a subject that (understandably) came up multiple times in this week’s episode. But there was a big tonal shift during this week’s interview segment; you see, Charlie Sheen was there.
Sheen was there to promote his new memoir and a Netflix documentary on his life. (Quoth Sheen, “I went into some areas that I’ve been keeping back here.”) Maher seemed surprised that things had reached that point, saying, “I had you in the dead pool, like so many people.”
Maher’s tone throughout the interview could be described as gently sarcastic. “Your excess is our entertainment,” he said at one point; of the memoir, Maher observed, “You can tell it’s your voice. And your spelling.” This, in turn, led Sheen to explain the, shall we say, distinctive way he spells certain words.
The interview was tonally odd in places. Maher and Sheen have clearly known one another for years, and there was a sense of old friends reconnecting there; at the same time, their conversation treaded the line between celebrating some of Sheen’s more unpleasant behavior and treating it as a cautionary tale. “I don’t recommend it,” Sheen said at one point, “but I highly recommend it.” Later, at a more candid moment, he reflected, “It was to a level of stuff that shouldn’t be survived.”
Maher also took a retrospective approach, reflecting on making jokes about Sheen during his “winning” era. “I hoped you would be doing jokes about that,” Sheen replied..” It was a mess.” Maher then mentioned that Sheen’s tour during that era had played to sold-out crowds, which got applause. Sheen was frank: “There was nothing about that tour worth applauding.”
The interview also addressed some of the aftereffects of Sheen’s hard-living years. Maher pointed out that certain drugs can give a user “diminishing returns.” Sheen was more concise, noting, “There were no consequences for a while, and then there were.”
The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta and The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro joined Maher for the evening’s panel. Both men were very concerned about the rise of violence in American society right now; each of them also opened with fairly straightforward reflections on the dangers it poses. Unfortunately, the argument took a frustrating turn from there.
Specifically, it involved Shapiro moving from an uncontroversial opinion — that political extremism and murder are bad and should be avoided — to one where he tried to score partisan points in the most egregious way possible. “If it’s a shooting of a Republican politician, it’s very likely to be a trans antifa Marxist shooter,” Shapiro said.
A clearly annoyed Maher immediately jumped in. “That is just not true,” he said. Shortly thereafter, it was Maher’s turn to make what should be an uncontroversial statement: that it makes sense to wait for more details about an act of violence to emerge. “It’s two days out,” Maher said. “They don’t know shit, Ben. They never do.”
Alberta, meanwhile, made the case for expanding the definition of political violence. Both Shapiro and Alberta were appalled that videos of Kirk’s murder could be easily seen on social media, which is entirely understandable; Rebecca Jennings recently wrote an excellent article for Vulture on this very subject.
Bill Maher and Guests Talked Ivy League Drama and Economic Distress
A wide range of guests made for a solid “Real Time”In the episode’s final segment, Maher returned to a familiar subject, defending free speech against critiques from both right and left. He also brought up the case of Graham Linehan, who Maher described as “a crank who spends way too much time online ranting about ‘gender ideology.’” It was familiar territory for Maher — including a defense of J.K. Rowling — even if the circumstances that prompted Maher’s reflections were relatively recent.
Other notable moments from this week’s episode:
- Maher on the first Millennial saint: “It’s an attempt by the church to bring young people back into the fold. Another option? Stop molesting them.”
- Maher on the father at the center of a Phillies-related controversy: “This guy is my hero this week. De-escalating! He de-escalated something.” (Alberta had some choice words about Philadelphia sports fans.)
- Maher on a certain presidential meme: “Someone needs to tell [Trump] that ‘Chipocalypse Now’ sounds like a high-end cookie store.”
- In technology news, Maher pointed out that the person whose job involves sexually stimulating an orca is unlikely to have AI come for their job.
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