PURELY POLITICAL Trouble

by Jim Buckley

Naomi Wolf and Bill Maher in their earlier years. Source: Wikimedia

The Beginning of the End

Two years ago, longtime talk show host Bill Maher gave himself a little rambling room when he attacked cancel culture. He has tried over the years to represent himself as a clear-thinking, common-sense Democrat, but most viewers saw through that façade. However, he may finally have said to himself that he’s had enough, that he was tired of supporting the increasingly whacked-out beliefs of his politically correct pals.

This is what I wrote then:

“When we look back to the beginning of the end of the era of cancel culture, politically correct boycotts, preferred personal pronouns, hi-tech censorship, safe spaces, snowflakes, trigger words, speech codes, gender dysphoria, micro-aggressions, critical race theory, white fragility, white privilege, the holy trinity of ‘Diversity!,’ ‘Equity!,’ ‘Inclusion!’ along with the belittlement and harassment of everyone and everything conservative, late-night TV host Bill Maher’s polemic against Cancel Culture and Wokeness in general will be seen as, if not the actual turning point, but perhaps as a signal that it’s now time to fight back and to fight back vigorously.”

I do believe I called it precisely.

His show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” airs Friday nights at 10 pm on HBO. He lost his previous talk show, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” (it was anything but) after pontificating on air that the men who flew planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11 were not cowards. He was probably right but said so way too soon. He was back on the air soon enough though and continued to retain his position as a leading spokesman for the politically correct crowd for another two decades.

He now calls cancel culture “insane,” and “Stalinesque,” and rails against the ongoing liberal madness nearly every night.

Has Bill Maher turned into a raging conservative or, gasp, an actual Republican?

Well, no.

But the smug, condescending, arrogant uber-liberal (at least that’s his TV shtick) now regularly pricks the balloon of invincibility that every liberal seems to have around him or her.

Idiotic things such as “gender-affirming” care, transgender surgery for minors (without parental notification, let alone consent), the so-called “Insurrection” of January 6, 2021, female impersonator performances for elementary school kids, graphic sex books for five-, six-, and seven-year-old children, men competing as women in women’s sports, and so much more have been added to the list of insanities.

Maher was the first (that I know of) in the mainstream press to have come around to speaking truthfully, rather than simply parroting what their (in most cases, now former) friends were saying, thinking, or promoting.

This year’s guest list has included former Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr, brilliant writer and acerbic founder of The Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan; ex Wall St. Journal and NY Times op/ed staff editor and founder of The Free Press, Bari Weiss; NY Times and former Wall St. Journal columnist Bret Stephens; actor/comic and radio talk show host Russell Brand; Piers Morgan, Ron DeSantis, Mary Katharine Ham, David Mamet, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and many more common-sense and/or leaning conservative guests. The conversation is lively and contentious, and thankfully Maher seems to have put aside his normal arrogance, engages fully, and will often criticize his liberal guests.

Bill Maher is still full of himself and remains the same kind of insufferable Hollywood liberal we love to hate, and maybe “friend” is too strong a word, but he has given his conservative guests way more leeway than one will find anywhere outside Fox, NewsMax, and the small universe of conservative television.

So good on him.

Who's Afraid of Naomi Wolf?

Naomi Wolf was a political advisor to both Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and you don’t get any higher in the Liberal Democrat hierarchy than that, at least until Barack Obama and his crowd took power. Ms. Wolf’s 1993 best seller, “The Beauty Myth” became a virtual bible for a generation of young women who came of age since its publication.

She was a feminist icon who had been charged with playing fast and loose with facts on occasion, but, hey, what liberal (or, in fact, what politician of any stripe) doesn’t? It’s the “message” that matters, right?

Yes, that is until she began questioning some deeply held liberal beliefs.

“Rather than be shocked at how far afield from reality Wolf has wandered,” writes Liza Featherstone in a recent issue of ultra-liberal The New Republic, “it’s probably time to admit she’s always been wrong.”

Whoa.

“Always been wrong?”

How does that happen?

Probably time to join Alan Dershowitz in his exile from the Martha’s Vineyard summer crowd.

Ouch.

What did she do?

Well, to begin with, she railed publicly at the Covid-19 era mask mandates, comparing the “emergency” measures taken by the Biden administration to Jim Crow laws. A year ago (October 2022) Naomi was on The Mark Steyn Show in England and compared doctors involved in promoting the Covid-19 vaccine, to “pre-Nazi Germany” doctors and claimed that their actions had resulted in “mass murder.”

She said she wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, that she was a journalist, but suggested the vaccines were “bio-weapons, because they are literally sterilizing people; they are poisoning breast milk.”

Uh, oh. No more beach picnics in Malibu with Babs.

She has turned on President Biden and sees evidence of totalitarian tendencies in him and his (formerly her) political party. She seems to have befriended Trump advisor Steve Bannon for gawd’s sake.

Now, she’s even got a gun and has been taking shooting lessons.

Her friends (but “friends” no more) ask loudly, Where did that girl go wrong?

Wolf's next book, she says, will be called Step Ten, based on her contention that America is on the brink of fascism, as a result of responses to Covid. "A much-hyped medical crisis," she claims, "has taken on the role of being used as a pretext to strip us all of core freedoms."

Wait, there’s more.

She is also Jewish and has come out strongly in support of Israel.

She has compared Covid adviser Anthony Fauci to "Satan," described Microsoft founder Bill Gates as "a monster capable of mass experiments on humans" and claimed that children wearing face masks are losing the ability to smile. "I'm seeing kids with their lower faces hanging inertly, absolutely unmoving facial muscles, when they take their masks off," she tweeted.

Her latest book: “Facing the Beast; Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a new Dark Age” is described as “a devastating, detailed account of wrongthink, deplatforming, and an unexpected political, personal, and spiritual transformation that followed during one of the most divisive times in American history.”

The Mises Institute, a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, is the only review I can find online: “In this uncompromising investigation into today’s most urgent issues,” the reviewer writes, “Naomi Wolf uses her own wildly politicized pilgrimage – from New York Times bestselling author and high-level Democratic consultant to a journalist cast out from the elite political and social circles she once moved through – as a stunning narrative framework that is both chilling and incisive.”

Sounds like a great read, right?

Not so fast.

She has written eight books that have made the best-seller list, yet The New York Times, Washington Post, nor any media that I could find has deigned to review her latest.

“Naomi Wolf is one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people I know. The reason you hear the forces of repression so desperately trying to dismiss her is because she is right.” – Tucker Carlson.

I think we can now call her a friend.

•••

More heroes next week.

(Jim is Editor-in-Chief of Santa Barbara Current. He can be reached via jimb.substack.com.)