HBO’s Bill Maher is at his best when the USA is at its worst. Last Friday night’s Real Time was particularly trenchant and disturbing. If you missed it, here are the two takeaway clips worth watching:
If you didn’t sit through this, here’s the biggest takeaway for me comes at around the 2:35 mark: “That’s the old America— a nation of laws. We’re living in the new America: Make me. Make me!”
As in a GOP Senator or DOJ chief or, yes, president of the United States, staring down at the opposition and saying, “Go ahead and make me follow the laws. Guess what? You can’t.”
And it’s true. For a few years now I’ve been asking, and I’m not alone, when push comes to shove, who will actually ENFORCE the law? Come November, let’s just assume for the sake of comedy that the Democratic candidate wins the election. What if Donald Trump just flies off and does a 24-city rally between election night and inauguration day and decides that too much of the country wishes him to serve another term? Who exactly is going to roust him from the residence on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? The Supreme Court? The Senate?
In the final minute of the above clip, which is truly worth your while (love the MTV reference; he’s right), Maher references the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar near the end. The film version of Julius Caesar, from 1953, airs at 1:30 a.m. Monday morning on TCM. Here is the Spectrum guide’s synopsis of the film:
“Brutus is convinced by a scheming band of Roman senators, let by Caius Cassius, that his dear friend Julius Caesar intends to dissolve the republic and install himself as monarch, and he joins a conspiracy to assassinate him. Brutus stirringly defends his actions but when Mark Antony responds with a speech that plays upon the crowd’s love to their fallen leader, a battle between the two factions is assured.“
We’re not quite there yet. But it’s a lot more plausible than it has ever been here.
And here’s Maher’s opening monologue on Friday night:
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