Ep. #644: Ray Romano, Laura Coates, Walter Kirn

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Merry Christmas.

How are you doing?

Hello down there.

Nice to see everybody.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I know, look at the sets.

What a job they did on the set.

Oh, my gosh.

I tell you, I'm in the mood.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

I know, it's exciting.

It's Christmas time.

I love Christmas in Los Angeles.

Nothing beats the smell of chestnuts roasting on an encampment fire.

Ah, Christmas.

I love any holiday where he gets a lot of kids.

But actually, you know, this week is actually the sweet spot in the holiday season, right?

Like between Thanksgiving and Christmas when there's no relatives in the house.

I hate that.

You sit on the toilet and the seat is the temperature of ass.

Oh, here's a sweet holiday story.

Boston is having a segregated Christmas party.

Did you read about this?

The city council,

it's only 13 people.

Seven white, six people of color, but they had to like uninvite the white people.

This is a scandal now because the mayor sent out a thing.

It said only the electeds of color.

That's the phrase.

Electeds of color.

Sounds like a Marvel movie.

The electeds of color?

I don't know why we have to separate like this, but okay, so they don't want the white folks at the party.

Some people are saying it's racist, some people are saying it's possibly illegal, but you have to admit it makes the DJ's job a lot easier.

And

it's Christmas at the White House.

Biden never knows what to get, Ukraine.

Last year he fucked up and he just did cash and

Ukraine burst into tears and said, you make me feel like a whore.

But you know, I tell you, I don't know how you feel about the Bidens, but that is a family that's made for Christmas.

Come on.

I mean, have you seen the pictures?

Joe wrapping the president, President Jill decorating the tree, Hunter bringing the snow.

Well,

okay, so get this now.

The House, the Republican House, of course,

they have voted to have a formal inquiry now into impeaching Joe Biden.

They said it is a crucial step in pretending to have a reason to impeach him.

But, you know, look,

we all know he he has a troubled son.

Hunter, we've all, we've seen the pictures, the dick, the,

you know,

the hookers, the cocaine.

I mean, you know, it's not pretty.

Here's to the Republicans' theory while they're impeaching him, that Biden,

President Biden, profited off his crackhead son.

Really, that's their thing.

As any parent of an addict will tell you, that's when the cash really starts rolling.

I tell

I thought it was a stretch when they impeached Clinton over a blowjob, but

impeaching a guy over your son's blowjobs,

that seems a stretch.

And of course,

a lot of these younger, dumber Republicans, they don't

know the Constitution.

They don't know anything about impeachment.

Lauren Boebert asked, what did the president know and what's it like to know things?

So,

meanwhile, get this, Trump is selling NFTs

of, guess what, himself.

Oh, wow, what a surprise.

And listen, if you buy enough of them, you get a bonus.

You know what you get?

You get a little swatch of his suit, the suit that he wore when he had his mug shot taken.

That's like a badge of honor, and you can get a little

piece of the shroud of Tubby if you.

George Santos bought 20 of them.

And he sold 30.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Laura Coates and Walter Kearns.

And first up, oh, I wanted this guy here forever.

He's an award-winning actor and comedian, who originally directed, wrote, produced, and starred in the new film Somewhere in Queens.

I saw it.

I loved it.

Available to stream on Hulu.

Ray Romano is over here.

Hey, Pal.

Thank you for being here.

Great.

See you.

I got to tell you, before I forget, I saw your last special.

You're still a great comedian.

You really are.

I mean, and here's the thing, like, the things you talk about I cannot relate to at all.

Well you laugh at them.

Exactly.

That's my point.

That's an artist.

I can't relate to it and yet you make me feel like I can.

Well I don't want to return the

kiss up but

oh go ahead.

It's Christmas.

I'm lucky because I'm saying this genuinely.

I never miss a show.

Never miss a show.

And

I do overtime, too.

Wow.

I do overtime.

Not CNN.

I go to YouTube.

Right, I appreciate it.

All right.

And I'm very

a little bit frightened to be here because you shouldn't be.

I'm such a fan, and I will raise your kiss up

and tell you

a couple of things I really admire about you.

One, you never went for the reboot.

You had one of the most successful sitcoms in television history.

No.

For the kids who don't remember, Seinfeld.

And rebooting is a big thing, but you said, no, let's remember it the way it was, which I think is the way to go.

Yeah, I mean, that started even towards the end of the show.

I mean, they wanted it to go on, of course, for more.

If I'm being honest, the rest of the cast was happy to go on.

Right.

But myself and Phil Rosenthal, who ran the show,

you know, we kind of wanted it to end in season eight because we just felt it.

We felt it's time.

We want to go when we're hitting home run still.

And then

Phil did this.

He said, listen, let's see if we can come up with eight episodes for season nine.

And we did.

We came up with eight ideas.

And he goes, all right, if we can come up with eight, we can come up with 16.

So we agreed to a shortened season, a 16 season in season nine.

And then just get out, just get out while you know, while it's still hitting.

And as far as a reboot, I mean, well, now it's out of the question because unfortunately the parents are gone, the Peter Boyle and Doris Arbits are gone.

But yeah, they're never as good, really.

And we want to leave with our legacy with what it is.

We did.

The other thing you did, Dude, was somehow you did manage to escape typecast jail.

You know, a lot of times you get typecast when you have a show.

It's great to be that big.

But you worked hard, you know, and you took different kinds of roles, and you're not just the guy from the sitcom, which is not easy to do in this town.

Well,

not only it's not easy, I had to do them kind of myself, you know, because when the show ended and I wanted to branch out a little bit,

you're right, it wasn't easy getting getting cast.

People see you, listen, I was guilty of that.

You know, when

we started this show, Men of a Certain Age.

Hey, I love that show.

Yeah, so that's what I had to do.

Myself and one of the writers, Mike Royce, we created a new show, Men of a Certain Age, which was a dramedy, which, if I can pay my respects to Andre Barrau, he lost this week.

He was great.

Yeah.

It was just the best.

But I mean,

you're a director.

I mean, this was this one that I saw.

I mean, if you do one, you're still considered.

It may not be repeat business, but

I think there will be.

I mean, I enjoyed it a lot, and it's funny, you know, it's about this Italian family, but like in the sitcom, you didn't play up the Italian part all that much.

This family,

I mean, dinner at noon, what the fuck is that?

Is that your role?

I think they started intermittent fasting, the Italians, you know?

What is that dinner at noon thing?

And is that what your family was?

Your real family?

Well, here's the thing.

The family that I wrote the movie about is the one I married into.

I married into that part.

I'm Italian.

I grew up in New York.

I see.

My parents are from this, were born here, though, but my wife's parents came right over on the boat and didn't speak English.

And that's the universe I wanted to write about.

And yes, on Sunday, dinner was around noon.

Yes, that's true.

It's a listen, it sounds like a cliche, and some of the characters we thought,

are we stereotyping too much?

But

when I started dating my wife, I know this is going to sound like a stereotype.

Like week two, I called her house up and I said, is Anna home?

It's Ray.

And her mother spoke broken English.

And she said, no, you know, no home.

And I said, you just tell her that Ray called?

And she goes, okay, you hungry?

On the phone.

I know

it sounds like it, but on the phone, she wanted to know if I was hungry.

So that's what I wrote.

I wrote about what I knew.

And I knew, I've known that for 30, I've been married 35 years.

That's a mock cloud.

No, no.

It's just odd to me that two people who are like around the same age, 40,

you and me, me, yeah, of course.

Who had very similar East Coast upbringings.

I mean,

of course, I had a neighborhood, a lot of Italian people, and I didn't really see them that much in the neighborhood at school.

I was a delivery boy for the local liquor and drug store.

There's like three stores in town.

And I delivered for two of them.

And so I would see Italians in their natural habitat at home.

My first girlfriend was Italian.

You grew up in New Jersey.

New Jersey, right?

Oregon County, New Jersey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I mean, look, I used to think.

But how did we become so different with such similar age and background?

Well, we're the same in some ways, right?

We

like to perform and stand up.

You're smarter, you're much smarter.

No, you are.

Well, we'll see who's richer, and then we'll find out who's richer.

I think I win that.

I'm not sure.

I think you probably do.

I'm pretty sure you do.

But neither one of us are complaining.

I don't think that's it.

No, no, no.

But I think it's a testament to you that a guy like me watches your show every week because you, of course, you have the intelligent audience, but you cross over.

You have the dumb audience, too.

Which is.

No one thinks you're dumb.

Why play that game?

I mean, see, this is why Italians get typecast.

Have you seen that guy on the Giants, Tommy DeVito?

Yes, I have.

The Jet Giants, my beloved New York Giants, I've been rooting for since I was on my father's.

I'm a Jet.

I'm a Jet fan.

Oh, me too.

I mean, New York, we both, you know.

But they have this new sensation, Tommy DeVito.

And, like, on TV, they treat it like you couldn't, I don't think you could do this in any other ethnic group.

It's all a meatballs and a pizza.

Did you see his, like, his agent?

His agent was dressed like he's in the godfather.

Right?

And he's living with his mother, right?

He's living in his living at home.

He's living at home.

But didn't you live at home?

I lived at home until I was 29.

Well, there you go.

How about the Italian mother?

They don't want you to leave.

They just don't want you to leave.

Yeah, I got married, and the next day I moved in with my wife.

And yeah.

Wow.

That's what you're supposed to do, right?

You're supposed to do that, right?

Again, it's just all so nuts to me.

But yet we're so similar in so many ways.

You play the Mirage?

You don't play it anymore.

No, I moved over to the MGM Grand.

Yeah, I'm still at the Mirage.

Yeah.

You moved up.

You moved up.

No, I don't think.

I don't know about that.

They're both great.

How big room, right?

How big is it?

But before I run out of time, I just want to plug this movie once more because I think it's really good and it's about something I don't think about a lot, family jealousies.

You know, you think people, you know, in your family, all loving it, your family, and then you think about it a little deeper, and no, actually,

being in the same family does not preclude you from being jealous.

I mean, there are so many people in this,

your brother, everybody, Sebastian, he's shitty to you from the beginning, he's shitty at the end, and he's shitty in the middle.

We gave him a drop of humanity at the very end, you know.

We tried to not make anyone a villain, but you're right.

And we did that in the sitcom, too.

But it was broader, it was bigger, but this was more grounded.

But

you're right, it's like anybody's family.

You know, I wrote it specific to those people, but

I think it's universal just because at the core it's just families.

And it's kind of about similar to your own kid as a basketball player, or was he?

Yes, he was a a high school.

My youngest is 60.

How old are your kids now?

My youngest is 25.

My oldest is 33.

Okay, see, that's the age when I talk to friends like our age and they talk to me about their kids.

They're always bitching that their kids are insufferably woke.

Your kids are not.

No, they're not.

No.

I don't bitch about them.

If you listen to my act, I just bitch about my wife, I guess, but not really, not really.

Not really.

I'm the luck.

Listen,

I've been married 35 years, and I think she's part of the reason for my success.

If you've noticed, I don't know if you've noticed, you haven't been backstage, she's not here.

She's over it, you know?

Well, she's over me.

You know, she keeps me grounded.

No, but that keeps me grounded.

I mean, she's she's.

Why do you want to be grounded?

See, again, I don't understand.

I hear this all the time here.

My wife keeps me grounded.

Yeah, I was doing all that soaring, and then

luckily, I got her to tell me, You're not all that.

Well, because you do, you do hear of people who just get a little bit of fame and it goes away, it goes to the head.

But I've said this before, but I'll quote my wife from a couple weeks ago, and this is word for word.

She said to me,

You don't talk a lot, but when you do, it's too much.

Word for word.

All right.

I gotta go.

Those are the smart people.

All right.

I'm so glad I started to get to know you.

It's odd that you and I have been around for so long.

I mean, our past never really crossed each other.

I think we were on a plane once, going to Vegas once.

Yeah, and we were in New Orleans together once.

There was something down there.

But I know, you know, you started before me, and I remember,

bless me, Father, for I have seen it.

Yes.

I think you know Mr.

Cohen.

Well, let's keep it going.

Our mutual admiration and diety.

Ray Romano.

Thank you.

Me too.

All right.

Let's meet our parents.

Hey.

Hi.

Hey, you guys.

All right.

She is CNN's chief legal analyst.

Wow.

And anchor of Laura Coates Live on CNN.

Laura Coates is back with us.

Okay, and he's the editor-at-large and County Highway novelist and co-host of the America This Week podcast, Walter Kern.

Time he was back with us.

All right, I will get to you two in a second.

I'm sorry, but it's the end of the year.

I have a little house scheme I have to do.

First of all, we will be gone now, less than we usually are, because we never were on in December before.

Thank you.

Okay.

We'll be back January 19th.

Our guests will be Andrew Sullivan, Alex Wagner, and Gavin Newsom.

Our governor is finally coming back to us.

Okay.

The other big announcement we have to make is, it was in the press today, but I haven't done a book in a long time,

but I have one now.

And

it's called What This Community Said Will Shock You.

And we did two new rules books, but people have been saying to me for a long time, you should collect your editorials, what we do at the end of the show, and put them in a book.

And I spent all this time, we were on strike, working on that.

And

it's going to be out in June.

You can pre-order it now.

And

the last thing is I just want to say we had a tough year because we weren't here for a lot of it.

Five months,

and I just want to say I missed coming to work.

I missed the people at work.

I missed you.

I missed a lot of paychecks.

We missed a lot of paychecks.

But I want to say thank you to my brilliant and intrepid staff.

They stayed, they were tough, and they were loyal, and they are loyal, and I love them for it.

And five months off, I got to tell you, it made me think a lot about how lucky I am to have this piece of real estate.

We're going into our 22nd year next year on HBO.

Norman Lear died this week, and I just thought, wow, that really puts it in perspective for me because, I mean, without somebody like that, I couldn't do what I do.

I think he opened a lot of doors, but a lot of those doors have shut.

TV is not what it was in the seminar.

You couldn't do, or let me ask, do you think you could do anything like what he did back then?

Because I don't think you could.

I think a lot of the shows, I mean, first of all, I'm a huge Norman Lear fan.

I'm not going to sing the Maude theme song, although I could about Lady Godive.

I would, I would, but I'm not going to because it's not that time.

But I will tell you, just thinking about how he was able to connect so many different people.

I mean, you know, the Jefferson, you're talking about Good Times, All in the Family, Maude, Facts of Life.

You can go on with all that he was able to do.

But some of the most controversial shows, we look back at the time, I don't know that as much as we've evolved as a society, we would have the same ability to do those shows without ending on the cutting room floor and someone being afraid that too many folks would clutch their pearls.

Oh, we're already there.

Yeah.

So I grew up in a tiny little, very conservative town in Minnesota.

And Norman Lear's All in the Family was the show that taught me what a liberal was.

He was a guy who lived in his father-in-law's house, rent-free.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Because your town was very conservative?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, liberal.

He lived in his father-in-law's house rent-free, and he paid him back by calling him a bigot.

But the great thing about that show was you never knew who the hero and the villain was.

I mean, I had a grandfather from Ohio who thought Archie Bunker was the hero of the show.

And for a while, I thought so too.

I mean, he really held his own.

It seemed like the world revolved around him.

But the show

gave a round portrayal to people of all kinds, and you kind of got the begrudging education of Archie over time.

And

it, I think, gave more credit to kind of characters that are now just dismissed

than is possible now.

Maybe I was in a bubble, but that is not my memory of Archie Bunker.

As a hero?

Exactly.

I don't remember.

Archie Bunker for president, remember?

There were buttons.

There were actual buttons.

I think my grandpa wore one.

I, too, am from Minnesota.

I didn't pick up on that.

Because they were laughing at.

But I'll tell you what, though.

I mean, Archie Bunker is not really in the rearview mirror, right?

Archie Bunker is the bit for the drunk uncle today.

When you're talking about Donald Trump, when you're talking about an SNL, I mean, you're talking about people who feel discounted, who associate liberalism with what you've described.

There is still very much a face of an Archie Bunker, bunker, and people are seeing that more and more.

It's just not non-fiction.

It's not fictionalized.

It's not fictionalized any longer.

You don't think there are less Archie bunkers in America than there were in 1973, 50 years ago?

No.

Really?

You don't think we've made any progress?

We've made progress, but I think Archie Bunker has been for a long time required to be quieter, kind of like Ray Romano said.

They speak very little, but when they do, it's too much to the liberals.

But

they very much exist, I think, to this very day.

And we've come out of the shadows more.

I said how many, though.

That matters.

Size matters.

I mean, Archie Bunker.

I mean,

talk about it.

Talk about it if you like.

Archie Bunker lived in Queens.

He didn't live in Alabama.

And I just think in Queens, New York, in 2023, maybe I'm naive.

naive, I just don't think that's the typical guy.

Whereas you could do that in 71

or whatever, the year the show was on, the 70s, and that was a typical Queens blue-collar guy.

But this speaks to your could you do it today.

Well, the person who was doing the closest thing was probably Roseanne with the Roseanne show, and she got canceled.

But the great thing about Norman Lear was he could broadcast his show to my small little Minnesota town, and I could learn what it was was like to move on up to the big time.

I found out, you know, what Jews were, what black people were.

It was a great education.

And

I found everybody lovable in his shows, and everybody at the same time edgy.

I mean, no one was just a sentimental portrayal.

Everybody still had their edges, including Maude, who scared the dickens out of me.

I do love that Sherman Hemsley is the definition of black people in America.

I love it.

That's not what he said.

He was rich.

I mean,

you know,

he was rich.

That was the first black person I saw, and they were rich.

So, you know, when I got back to the East Coast and went to college.

Were we born in a teepee or something?

It was called...

What town?

It was called Marine, Minnesota.

It had 500 people, one gas station, and a general store.

Garrison Keiller did his whole act act based on that.

Right.

Wow, sounds corny as fuck.

It was.

But can you,

I didn't know that.

Right, exactly.

I didn't know that.

No, I thought I lived at a corny, and I did.

But it's been a voyage of discovery ever since.

Right, okay.

Well,

just to give you an idea of how far we've come from Archie Bunker and what he used to be able to say.

And again,

you know, what he did, Norman Lear was a liberal.

Maybe you people in Minnesota misinterpreted it in your town, but Norman Lear was a little bit more.

But Rob Reiner was.

We knew where,

yeah, but I'm saying Norman, the person who did the show, and Carol O'Connor, these were all Hollywood liberals.

They were making fun of Archie Bunker.

Right.

And sometimes it doesn't get through.

I mean, Rob Reiner made Spinal Tap, and people thought it was a real documentary.

Sometimes

the jokes are flying at 35,000.

Okay.

Well, hello, Cleveland.

Right.

Bill, I knew he was nothing to aspire to, even as a clever.

Okay, all right.

Last year,

there's a show called Station 19.

You watch it?

No, I just wanted to be affirming.

Thank you.

Okay.

So it's a Chandra Rhyme show.

It was a spin-off of Gray's Anatomy, I guess, very successful.

I think it had six or seven seasons.

I only heard of of it because

there was,

again, this is how far we've come from Normal Lear.

It's a show where they were trying to portray a racist character.

Now, for the folks who say, you know, we can't whitewash history, I agree, we can't, but they're always saying we should shine a light.

Okay, so if you're going to depict a racist character,

he can't be politically correct.

This is what Archie Bunker was.

We were depicting it, so you saw it.

Just in an outline of a script, he uses a word,

it's a word you wouldn't, it's not a polite word for people of Hispanic origin.

I won't say it because I don't want to.

But it's because that's how bad it's gotten.

Well, the word has to do with the type of food that you eat.

It's in the Mediterranean diet.

Oh, okay.

It makes you fart.

Uh-uh.

I've got it.

Okay.

I've got it.

The fact that I have to tiptoe around this just shows how insane this world has gotten.

So that's it, but again, trying to depict a racist character, not endorse him.

So they shut down the show.

Hollywood deadline Hollywood said the outline was met with shock and disbelief.

The showrunner said, put out an email, we will not proceed with business as usual until the recent harm and systemic issues have been addressed and healing has begun.

Because they read this word in a script?

I would imagine that was pretty quick healing.

No.

No, they.

No, they brought in an organizational psychology consultant.

I mean,

I can't make this shit up.

I wish I was.

That reminds me of when they would bring in psychologists to convince kids that they'd been abused when they hadn't been, you know.

When did they do that?

Uh-oh, it's happened.

The satanic panic,

it was called.

It happened back in the 80s.

I mean like the McMartin school?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

No, no, here's the deal.

Everybody wants to be traumatized.

They had to really reach for it in this case.

I mean, I know, but, Bill, I know the literary world better than I do the TV world.

And there's a novelist named Bruce Wagner here in LA who a few years ago wrote a novel whose main character was a 500-pound woman.

And she was intentionally 500 pounds.

She wanted to eat and become as big as possible.

And in the first part of the book, he called her fat.

The publisher objected.

He pulled the novel and he published it for free online.

I talked to my friend Brett Eastone Ellis today who wrote American Psycho.

I said, could you have written and published that book?

He could have written it, but could you have published it today?

He said, no way.

Nor could I have pub

nor could the people who wrote the books that I grew up admiring, you know, Gore Vidal's, Myra Breckinridge.

So is this ever going to go back to the way it was where we don't,

we want something in literature that depicts a racist, we can do that and we are sophisticated enough to know it's not endorsing it,

it's in a good cause.

Can we go back to that or is this fever never going to break?

I think that, I think Archie Bunker though, when you're talking about what and how you depict racism beyond,

When I think of Archie Bunker, I don't just think of statements that he's making that might be racist.

I'm talking about somebody who feels that he is frustrated that others he thinks should be doing worse are doing better and blames it on the system of government.

We've got Archie Bunker in a lot of towns in this country.

And it may not be saying the words that have to tiptoe around, but at the core, the idea of somebody believing that I should be better but for you and the boogeymans that there are, that's the crux of I think the Archie Bunker world that we live in still in many respects.

In terms of the world,

like I did, and I'm not talking about my tiny Mayberry 500-person town, but a place like Akron, Ohio, where my relatives are from, and all of a sudden every plant closes within a few years, moves to Mexico or China, and they can't afford the scoreboard at the football field anymore, and your house price drops to a third, you get frustrated.

And you can remember very clearly when it wasn't that way.

And so, I mean, Archie Bunker, to use his name for the last time on this show,

was a bus driver.

Yeah, you know, he was a working-class guy.

And that's what I loved about it.

No, no, no Ralph Crandon was a bus driver.

Oh, that's right.

Did Archie work at the plant or something?

Yes, he liked moved boxes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but you know, Art Bunker.

But he owned a house.

He owned a house and his kid didn't.

I mean, his son-in-law didn't.

And the thing is, when you talk about the sort of the rose-colored glasses in which you think of it wasn't always like this, well, there was a reason it wasn't always like this.

There was a reason that there were people who were doing significantly less because the laws were structured in a way to give an advantage to one.

And so I peel back those layers importantly to acknowledge, yes, there are people who can look fondly on the yesteryears of when they felt that they were

living the life they felt entitled to.

But it came at the expense of a lot of people.

And I think that still very much happens.

We don't want to necessarily endorse it, but it still happens.

But we're talking about two different things.

But

is it helpful to do like what the mayor of Boston did?

I mean, why have a Christmas party?

It accounts as only 13 people.

Seven white, six people of color.

Why?

I don't understand why.

Oh, I understand in the past they did it in reverse.

It was wrong.

If they wanted to do the opposite of what racist white people used to do, they would invite everyone.

But

if they want to do sort of the same thing that racist white people used to do, but in a new way,

then maybe they should just invite one person of non-color.

Yeah, exactly.

And tell them in the middle of the party, you're not like the rest of them.

You're so smart.

Articulate.

You're so articulate.

Articulate.

I kick it.

I feel like

when you read the mayor's comments on this and some of the other people who were for the segregated party, it's just very through the looking glass.

You know, we are still breaking barriers by making them.

We want to be a city where everyone's identity is embraced.

My intention is that we can be a city that creates space for all kinds of communities to come together by saying some don't come.

I feel like there, I don't get it.

This is very, well, first of all,

you both would be invited.

Okay.

Why?

I don't know.

But you'd be invited.

We're not on the council.

I mean, it's not really known to have the New England tan, but that's good.

I would say, look.

This, at that small number of people, take it at a bigger issue.

Somebody wanted to talk smack about someone who didn't come to that party.

That was what happened happened in that particular city council, right?

13 people, someone ticked someone off, they wanted to talk about the person they didn't like.

That was what happened there.

But in a larger issue, the idea that there needs to be safe spaces where people can feel as though they can look and talk about the unique factors that contribute to their lives, their work, that is a very real thing.

How they do it,

this is government.

Yeah, exactly.

How they do it and when they do it, white people used to do that so they could talk about golf.

But

here's the thing, Bill.

Look, fully half that council is people of color and the mayor.

At what point are they going to stop putting themselves in a ghetto and say, you know what, we are?

Really successful politicians.

And

it's just.

I think, you know,

obviously

the way in which it's done, and they must have anticipated that there would be backlash once it's known.

It's been 10 years.

They didn't anticipate that.

It's known.

It was a mistake that they even sent the thing out to the non-people of color.

It's been 10 years, she acknowledged it.

This is the 10th year.

It was her turn to host, apparently.

That's why you knew about it.

Sure.

I don't know how secret it can be with the 13 people.

But the point is, yes.

Could there have been ways to make people feel more inclusive?

And this is something that's going to be a double standard.

And how you look at it, of course, it is to a looking glass.

But it doesn't change the fact that in many workplaces across this country, there is de facto segregation.

Look around when you go to office

parties, happy hours, golf matches, what's happening in the tennis or pickleball these days.

You're not going to see everyone who's included.

And they'll say things like, you know what?

I just relate to certain people differently.

I just feel like we have a special connection, and therefore you're a part of the dinner.

You're a part of the cigar.

You're a part of Red Risk.

Well then, but is that which one is worse?

Well, if you do it in your private life, of course, we all should have the right to be with whoever we want.

But this is a government.

This had the Boston seal on it.

I mean, that's the the thing.

Government is supposed to lead the way.

I mean, there are actual laws again.

Anyway.

All right.

So

before I lose track of time,

it has become a holiday tradition here that we're about to have a month off, which we're about to have,

that we take very seriously our job here, which is to tell you the news and give you the headlines.

So even when we're off,

we are able to do this.

with a department we call future headlines, ladies and gentlemen.

Fortunately, we will tell you what the future headlines are.

All right.

For example, you will see Lauren Boebert caught giving hand job at Christmas Mass.

That's going to happen.

Ozempic Santa disappoints children.

Yes, that's.

You're going to see that one.

Trump now claiming he'll be dictator also on days two and three.

No more than a week talks.

Joe Biden's dog bites Hunter Biden's hooker.

It's sort of inevitable.

College president refuses to condemn group calling for death of college presidents.

Texas charges Fetus as an abortion accomplice.

California Homeless Encampment petitions to become 51st state.

Vivek Ramaswamy comes clean.

I'm a performance artist.

Rockefeller Christmas Tree watches Rudy Giuliani get lit.

And

Taylor Swift single again, new album to be called Fuck Travis Kelsey.

All right, so.

So

you have a small town newspaper, right, that you kind of...

Well, it's called County Highway, and it treats the entire country as a small town.

That's so interesting.

Yeah.

I thought I would bring this up today because it was a big story in the news.

James Bennett, who used to be the editorial page editor, pretty big job at the New York Times, and was famously fired after he printed an op-ed by Tom Cotton, who's a very conservative senator, but a senator, could be president, very ambitious.

And

they canned him.

apropos of our discussion of what you can and can't do anymore.

And so he put out a thing in The Economist this week called

When the New York Times Lost Its Way.

He said, local newspapers used to be the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms.

In other words, a kid would get out of college, go do the local newspaper, and then go on.

If you did well, you got scooped up by the New York Times or some paper like that.

Now you go right from Harvard, which is where, by the way, the Boston Mayor, she went to Harvard.

I think we've looked under the rock at Harvard recently.

But does this make sense to you that you need that training and the local newspaper and when they come right from the Ivy League, that's why we have papers that he thinks lost their way?

Sure.

I mean, I come from a town that had one of the smallest daily local papers.

The population is 7,000.

We had a paper every day.

They would send reporters from, I remember I had a friend from Brown University who came to town.

I said, you know, very sophisticated kid.

I said, what are you doing here?

He says, I'm going to learn to report.

And, you know, he went down to the police station.

He went to the bar.

He met everybody in the town, and he got out his notebook and he learned the human side of things.

And yeah, he moved up.

He ultimately owned a paper.

So that minor league is really important if you want to learn your fundamentals.

And people who think that all reporting is done by Twitter and on Twitter and go straight from the bubble of the Ivy League to the bubble of the New York Times aren't really covering America.

They're covering their friends set.

He says the Times.

He says the Times is becoming the publication through which America's progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.

What does that mean, America that does not really exist?

You know, I think people, and we often hear whenever you hear about issues in this country, someone will stand up and say, well, this is not who we are.

And then if you actually read history, you go, well, actually, this is exactly who we have been.

Who we'd like to be, maybe something different.

But when you think about cutting your teeth at the local level, all you're really saying is you have got to be willing to have an open mind about being intellectually curious enough to ask who, what, when, where, why, and all the detailed questions.

And actually not have already written the answer.

That's the key.

So

when I'm asking someone a question,

The answer is not just to validate what I've already wanted to fit in.

It's not a game of mad libs, right, where I need you to say this and I can add my adjective or adverb here.

You actually have to report it in a way that tells something that is new, that's informative.

But the echo chamber you're talking about, the echo chamber you're talking about, happens because people want to be validated, not educated most times.

And they want to feel like what they're saying is not going to be blamed or undermined or canceled.

They want to know I'm right.

And that's not really consistent with what the news needs to do.

But I know what he means.

The America that doesn't exist

is the America I live in.

I live in Montana.

And last year, the New York Times sent a reporter out who spent as much time there as people do when they visit.

Now you're in Montana.

Yeah,

I live in Montana.

Minnesota was too big for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle.

I like to be surrounded by emptiness.

You're on the right path.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, so they did this story on Montana, how Montana took a hard right turn toward Christian nationalism.

Now, I've lived there for 30 years, and I didn't notice that happening around me.

And in the lead photo, there was a rear view mirror.

It was black and white, the scary black and white they use in campaign ads to make people look like the devil.

And there was a white cross in the mirror, as though Montana was the center of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the story, one of the proofs that it was an ultra-conservative state was they said Native Americans have to drive long distances often to vote.

Well, has anybody been on an Indian reservation?

I mean, they're huge.

Everybody in Montana drives long distances to vote.

And they created this image of a place that was one big militia meeting, you know.

Right.

You know.

And actually, it's a small meeting.

Yeah.

it actually is a very, it's a very small

as a reporter.

I've been to one militia meeting.

It was at a holiday inn, and they could barely fill the room.

But with the Times thing, he also mentions, he said somebody at one point suggested that they put a trigger warning in any op-ed that was written by a conservative.

That to me is a very different paper than the one I grew up with.

That would never have suggested putting it because a conservative viewpoint, you have to be prepared to hear it.

You can't just read it.

That's like the Tipper Gore's sticker that they put on your app albums.

That makes me want to read it.

Margaret Atwood made a comment about how she was so happy that her book was banned because it invited a new generation to say, well, this I've got to read for the very reason.

But the idea of truth being triggering, such that you need to censor it, is such a slippery slope.

To be warned about facts in such a way, I understand graphic images and saying to people, hey, listen, prepare, you're gonna read something very disturbing for the visual.

But the notion that you have to be prepared as if to assume that the audience is only gonna have one point of view, that's really undermining why people should seek out the news.

Because it can't be that I'm writing to one audience.

We talk about the audience of one.

We talked about that being a horrible thing when it came to Donald Trump and anyone who wants to actually have an expansive base of people and try to not only preach the choir, but when you have a trigger warning to suggest that I'm already telling you that what they're saying is going to be disbelieved and ought to be disbelieved, you are not doing the job of a watchdog.

You're doing the job of a parrot.

We don't need those.

I thought New Yorkers were supposed to be tough.

I thought New Yorkers were tough.

I didn't know they needed trigger warnings.

I didn't know.

You know,

a trigger warning is an editorial on the editorial.

It tells you we basically don't approve of this, but we had to publish it for some reason.

All right.

I have a yes or no question just because it's the holiday season and people are with family.

I keep reading about Hunter Biden this week.

How much do we blame Joe Biden's indulgent parenting or do kids just come out as they are?

Listen, Hunter Biden is 53.

He's getting mail from AARP.

All right.

I think you were.

Continually treating him as a teenage runaway, isn't he?

All right.

Thank you very much.

I got to go to New Roll.

Thank you, everybody.

Time for new roles.

Okay.

New role.

Now that Bradley Cooper has surmounted all the criticism he got for wearing a fake nose and maestro by being nominated for a Golden Globe, he has to choose as his next role Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Yes, this Christmas it's Bradley Cooper in Nose Light.

They laughed at his face, but now they're looking up his ass.

New rule panda bears have to try and look less stone.

No wonder you guys never mate in captivity.

You always look like you're saying, you go on to bed, I'll be up after one more law and order.

New world true crime reporters and true crime podcasters must stop describing every female victim as a woman whose smile lit up a room and everyone always loved.

It's impossible.

Not every Brittany or Lacey or Casey that found in the brush on Long Island was an angel.

Just once, I want to hear Keith Morrison say, she wasn't particularly attractive, but what can I say?

The Green River killer wasn't all that picky.

Neurul, if it's true that the NSA is secretly monitoring not only my phone calls, but everything I'm watching on TV,

then the least they could do is tell me exactly which streaming services I'm subscribed to.

Because I have no idea anymore.

All I know is I'm paying a fortune for all these fancy platforms, and every time I turn on the TV, someone is making cake.

New rule diehard should be added to our list list of timeless Christmas movies, even though.

Even though it's a violent action film, because after all, it does take place at Christmas, and also it expresses a timeless Christmas dream, killing everyone at an office party.

And finally, New Rule, I know it's supposed to be that magical time of year, but maybe maybe what we all really need right now is a good dose of realism.

I see a lot of nativity scenes when I'm out, as you always do before Christmas, and I can't help thinking about where that manger really is.

It's in the West Bank, on Palestinian lands, controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

In 1950, the little town of Bethlehem was 86% Christian.

Now, it's overwhelmingly Muslim.

And that's my point tonight.

Things change.

To 2.3 billion Christians, there can be no more sacred site than where their Savior was born, but they don't have it anymore.

And yet no Crusader army has geared up to take it back.

Things change.

Countries, boundaries, empires.

Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, but today an Ottoman is something you put under your feet.

The city of Byzantium became the city of Constantinople, became Istanbul.

Not everybody liked it, but you can't keep arguing the call forever.

The Irish had the entire island to themselves, but the British were starting an empire, and well, the Irish lost their tip.

They blew each other up over it for 30 years, but eventually everybody comes to an accommodation, except the Palestinians.

Was it unjust that even a single Arab family was forced to move upon the founding of the Jewish state?

Yes, but it's also not rare, happening all through history, all over the world, and mostly what people do is make the best of it.

After World War II, 12 million ethnic Germans got shoved out of Russia and Poland and Czechoslovakia because being German had become kind of unpopular.

A million Greeks were shoved out of Turkey in 1923, a million Ghanians out of Nigeria in 1983, almost a million French out of Algeria in 1962, nearly a million Syrian refugees moved to Germany eight years ago.

Was that a perfect fit?

And no one knows more about being pushed off land than the Jews, including being almost wholly kicked out of every Arab country they once lived in.

Yes, TikTok fans,

ethnic cleansing happened both ways.

In Feather on the Roof, the family is always moving to stay one step ahead of the Cossacks, but they deal with it.

When they're leaving Anatevka, they say, hey, it wasn't so great anyway.

Come on, like other countries don't have roofs you could fiddle on.

Now,

now that's not how they really felt, but they were coping.

They coped.

Because sometimes that's all you can do.

History is brutal and humans are not good people.

History is sad and full of wrongs, but you can't make them unhappen because a paraglider isn't a time machine.

People get moved and yes, colonized.

Nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert and took over much of the world in a single century.

And they didn't do it by asking.

There's a reason Saudi Arabia's flag is a sword.

Kosovo was the cradle of Christian Serbia.

Then it became Muslim.

They fought a war about it in the 90s, but stopped.

They didn't keep it going for 75 years.

There were deals on the table to share the land called Palestine in 1947, 93, 95,

98, 2000, 2008, and East Jerusalem could have been the capital of a Palestinian state that today might look more like Dubai than Gaza.

Arafat was offered 95% of the West Bank and said, no.

The Palestinian people should know your leaders and the useful idiots on college campuses who are their allies are not doing you any favors by keeping alive the river to the sea myth.

I mean, where do you think Israel is going?

Spoiler alert: nowhere.

It's one of the most powerful countries in the world with a $500 billion economy, the world's second-largest tech sector after Silicon Valley, and nuclear weapons.

They're here.

They like their bagel with a schmear.

Get used to it.

What's happening to Palestinians today is horrible, and not just in Gaza, in the West Bank, too.

But wars end with negotiation, and what the media glosses over is it's hard to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is, you all die and disappear.

I mean, the chant from the river to the sea, yeah, let's look at the map.

Here's the river, here's the sea.

Oh, I see, it means you get all of it.

Not Not just the West Bank, which was basically the original UN partition deal you rejected because you wanted all of it and always have,

even though it's indisputably also the Jews' ancestral homeland.

And so you attacked and lost, and attacked again and lost, and attacked again and lost.

As my friend Dr.

Phil says, how's that working for you?

Look at what Mexico used to own, all the way up to the top of California.

But no Mexican is out there chanting from the Rio Grande to Portland, Oregon.

Because they chose a different path.

They got real.

and built a country that's the world's 14th biggest economy now because they knew the United States wasn't going to give back Phoenix any more than Hamas will ever be in Tel Aviv.

One of the leaders of Hamas says, save yourselves time and imaginary dreams.

In a few years, Allah willing, you will have to discuss the situation in the region after Israel.

I'm sorry, who's the one with imaginary dreams?

If I give you the benefit of the doubt and say your plan for a completely Jewless Palestine isn't that all the Jews should die,

what is the only other option?

They move.

You move all the Jews.

Okay, I gotta warn you, there's gonna be some ketching.

You move all the Jews.

And we do this with what?

A fleet of trucks called Jew Hall?

and to where are we moving this entire country Texas

sure they have room and I guess we could put the whaling wall on the border and kill two birds with one stone

or we could just get serious all right that's our show we'll be back January 19th and if you miss me Club Random drops a new one every Sunday I'll be at the MGM Grand in Vegas, February 16 and 17, and at the Hobby Center in Houston, March 2nd.

I want to thank my guest, Laura Coach Walter Kurt, and Ray Romano.

Now go watch Overtime on CNN at 11:30.

We're counting Saturday morning on YouTube.

Thank you, everybody.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.