Ep. #627: David Byrne, John McWhorter, Josh Tyrangiel

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Today albener para sabermás.

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

Start the clock.

Hey, everybody.

How are you?

Thank you, people.

How you doing?

Wow, you came out in the rain.

Thank you very much.

I thought you'd stiff us because it was raining.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Wow.

Thank you very much.

Great to see you.

I know the rain is bad, but hey, we're excited because it's Hollywood and this is Oscar weekend.

This is our big...

Oh, I know.

Yeah,

I don't know if this is good with the Oscars, but it's going to be an interesting show.

A little different this year.

This year on the red carpet, they're asking, who are you slapping?

No, actually, you know what?

No red carpet.

For the first time in 60 years, they're changing.

It's going to be a white carpet.

Yes, because that was the problem with the Oscars, the rug.

I mean, we.

I love it, but we make such a big, I'll be in San Francisco performing that night.

I'm not even watching that fucking thing.

It'll be a better show.

But honestly, we make such a big deal.

And could you even name what was Best Picture last year?

You know, you win, and it's a big deal, and then you disappear, like Kamala Harris.

We kid in a good way.

But I'll be honest with you, there's one person I am rooting for, Tom Cruise.

Maverick is up for best picture.

I wasn't crazy about the movie, but I want to see a guy get up there and go, I want to thank Xenu

who made it all possible.

Show businesses.

It's very strange.

Did you see this today?

Disneyland.

I'm not making this up.

Disneyland now is dropping zippity doo-dah.

It was a song I guess they used in their parade.

No, it has racist origins.

Okay, zippity doo-dah is offensive, but the seven dwarves can still...

They're okay.

And they can say to Snow White, hi-ho.

I mean.

I think Disney has to get with the times, you know.

I mean, in Disney movies, kids hate their stepmom.

But kids don't watch Disney movies, they watch porn where they fuck their stepmoms.

So

here's a first that was in the news.

Have you been following the story about the Mexican drug cartel that kidnapped four Americans and killed two of them?

Well, today, the cartel, this is a real first, issued an apology letter.

Wow, I guess they want to be the cartel that cares.

Now, when they dump,

when they dump you, it's the little things, when they dump your body now, they put it in one of those tinfoil swans, you know?

And

now the State Department is warning all Americans not to travel to areas with violent gangs roaming the streets.

And the people in Chicago said, but we live here.

And another first, apparently some Republicans say Arkansas, I love Arkansas.

I do.

I love Arkansas.

But really, Arkansas, the governor there, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,

now going the other way that we used to go with child labor laws, making it easy for children to work.

Republicans are like, if a kid is going to transition, it better be to the workforce.

And I guess,

this may be a related story, Trump is on the warpath about, he wants to now, his big thing now is he wants to pay people to have babies.

And Nick Cannon said, I'm listening.

Speaking of having babies, did you see the week Lauren Boebert had?

You know Lauren Boebert?

She's the firebrand gun toter from Colorado.

And she was railing against sex education in school this week and then had to reveal that her 17-year-old son knocked up his girlfriend and they're going to have a child.

She was 18 when she had him.

She's going to be a grandmother at 36.

My friends, this is how trailer parks stay in business.

That's what I can say.

I tell you.

Between Arkansas and this, Republicans are always for kids going into labor.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have John McWhorter and Josh Tirngel

are here.

But first up, he's the Oscar Grammy and Tony Award-winning musician who originally co-wrote and recorded the Oscar-nominated song This Is Life for the film Everything Everywhere All At Once.

David Burns.

Sir.

Thank you very much.

Great pleasure to meet you.

Big to me.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Great to meet you.

Thank you.

I'm always happy to meet someone who's a little older than me.

Just a little, who's still so relevant, so busy.

I mean, you've got your American Utopia musical with all the talking heads, songs.

It's fantastic.

You got a show coming to Broadway.

We'll get to that.

You have the Oscar-nominated song.

I guess I see you as someone who only looks forward.

Is that right?

Yeah, so far.

Yeah.

I'm not very nostalgic.

No, you're not the guy who does the talking heads reunion.

No.

I'm not very nostalgic.

And I feel like, oh, the next thing I do is the thing I'm going to be excited about.

And that's what I think would keep you young.

I'm exactly the same way.

I could be sentimental.

I don't want to, because it would remind me I'm closer to dead than girl.

And I don't want to,

unless I listen to 144 or something.

But I saw you in 60 Minutes, and you said something else I very much relate to.

You said you're such a different person than you were when you were younger, and you're nicer.

And I would say the same.

Now, maybe we're just flattering ourselves that we're nicer.

Do these people backstage say you're nicer?

Well.

Sorry.

Yes.

Yes, but they have to or I'll fire them.

But I wonder the same thing.

I mean, is it just me telling myself?

It's not.

Really.

We're old enough to know the difference.

And we know ourselves.

And also it is what people say about us.

And you could just feel it.

So why is it that you let me hear your theory.

Why do you think we do get nicer?

Wow

there's a little bit of

the whatever the thing you're working on isn't like the end of the world.

It's just not going to cure cancer, not likely.

And so it's like take it easy, chill out.

The people you're working with

are trying to help you do what you want to do.

You don't have to yell at them.

If you go the nice way, they might actually help you out.

So there will be a talking heads reunion.

No.

Well, but don't you...

You're on pretty good terms, though.

I'm glad.

I mean, because you should be.

I mean, to have created that amazing music, it's still a heavy rotation in my iPod, but yes, I still use the iPod.

It's a superior form of...

I'm not going to get into it here.

We don't have the time, but it is.

It's superior to streaming.

Anyway, but, you know,

you're doing a musical about Emelda Marcos.

Here Lies Love, right?

I'm so curious as to why, I mean, you're such a creative guy.

The whole world is open for you.

You could have chosen any subject.

Emel de Marcos, now for the young people who don't remember, she was the first lady of the Philippines.

She was overthrown in 86, kind of a popular uprising.

She was known as a,

not a, I mean, maybe she was a nice lady, but she did have 3,000 pair of shoes.

3,000 pairs of shoes?

Yes.

And she was known as the iron butterfly.

Right.

Why a Melda Marcos?

I'm old enough to remember when she was an item going to...

going out with socialites and everything else in New York being in the news and kind of slightly outrageous.

I remember that.

She was paid six fodder, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And

then,

and I thought, oh, this is, she's a fascinating character.

Later on, I heard that she loved going to discos.

Studio 54, she turned the roof of the palace in Manila into a disco.

I did a little research, and I found a video of her dancing under a mirror ball in her New York townhouse with an arms dealer.

And And I thought,

I'm not going to say witch arms dealer, but a very well-known arms dealer.

And I thought, I think we have something here.

She inhabits this fantasy world, and the soundtrack comes with it.

I love dance music, and I thought,

Let's see if there's a story here.

Well, as soon as as you said disco,

all I could hear is the C no Party, the C no Disco, the See No Fooling Around.

And, you know, you say you're not political, but I mean, that song, Life in Wartime, one of my all-time favorites of any band.

Thank you.

And

I just,

it seems very political to me.

And very funny because, you know, this Life in Wartime, but you're really talking about America.

I was talking about America.

I was an imaginary situation.

Which all sounds like somewhere overseas.

It could be some place overseas that we know quite well happening right now.

Right.

And the other song that I have to bring up before we run out of time is Road to Nowhere, because you sold it to me.

Not permanently, yes.

Not the whole song.

Yeah, the whole song.

But not for America.

But I needed a song.

Making my movie Religilous.

Oh, thank you.

I'm glad people still remember that one.

And

I needed a song for the end.

I mean, we had a lot of great songs throughout it.

Pete Townsend sold me The Seeker.

Narls Barkley sold me Crazy.

Stevie Wonder would not sell me Superstition.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

He was like, Bill Maher, I know what you're up to.

Not supporting that.

But you, God bless you.

You sold me Road to Nowhere.

It is the perfect song to end that movie.

It starts with a choir.

And I mean, I always thought it was about religion.

Was I always wrong?

It's about, yeah, well, it's about

the inevitability of death.

Right.

Right.

But that it,

musically, it's kind of uplifting.

Very.

That's why I loved it.

It's cheery.

It's like...

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the lyrics are like they can tell you what to do.

and they'll make a fool of you.

Yes.

And you mentioned paradise.

You mentioned a city in my mind, which is something we hear a lot in religion.

I just hope I got clear it.

Yeah.

There's some of those lines borrowed directly from kind of church songs and things like that.

And what about the song that you're nominated for Sunday, This Is Life, from everything else?

I take it to mean that we should have the freedom to choose as we all want to choose to live, is that right?

Yeah, and it's, well, if anyone's familiar with the movie, the movie is really a lot of craziness and multi-dimensions and all kinds of

movie.

But in the end, I thought, this is a movie about a family reconciling and kind of coming back together after squabbling and through multiple dimensions for the last couple of hours.

And in the end, they kind of reconcile.

They come back together.

There's forgiveness.

And I thought, that's what it's about.

And I talked with the other guys that were working on the music and said, we have to put a pin in that rather than all the craziness.

That

we kind of move along despite all the stuff that's going on.

So you're optimistic about the future?

It's hard to be, but yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much for everything you've ever done for my iPod

and all the other stuff.

David Byrne, everybody, let's meet our panel.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

There they are.

He is the author of the New York Times newsletter and contributor to the Glen Show podcast.

John McWhorter is back with us.

John?

And he's the Emmy Award-winning producer and journalist and creator of Vice News Tonight.

Josh Tirangel.

Josh, great to have you with us.

Okay,

I pledged many times that I wouldn't keep talking about Donald Trump, but he pulls me back in.

It's just like Godfather III.

And I mean, what can I tell you?

I always said, you know, he's the shark that went out to sea, but we didn't kill it.

He's coming back to the shore.

And now,

I mean, so many people have said to me this week, I thought this was over.

I thought he was...

DeSantis is the guy.

Now, the polls came out.

He's killing it.

He's got a 41-point lead.

I mean, not close.

Killing DeSantis, even in New Hampshire.

The word was always, oh, DeSantis, New Hampshire, kind of an independent state.

No, losing losing up there big.

Trump is a great politician.

Am I wrong?

He's just a great politician.

So was Hitler.

I'm not saying he's like Hitler.

I'm not saying he's Hitler.

I'm saying in that one way, they're very alike.

Yeah, and those.

Not workers, but politicians.

The people who hate Trump focus on the idiot part, right?

And what they tend to overlook is the savant part.

And the fact is, he is

gifted.

Right.

Interesting.

And, you know, we have a linguist here, which is great.

His great gift is for both language and gesture, right?

So he said that.

Well, unintentionally language.

Well, it is improvised.

But I would say it's just because it's improvised doesn't mean he's not good at it.

He's never thought about it once.

That's what works for him.

No,

he's as smart as a box of hair.

He doesn't know

what he's doing.

No.

No.

But

what he does is very effective, and one does have to be afraid.

I'm not that afraid, actually, though, because what it does come down to is charisma.

And the truth is, the people running against him mostly don't have that magic charisma that he has.

Nikki Haley,

it's like talking to a spoon.

Glenn.

Glenn Youngkin, to me, I always have to remember that he wasn't the father on family ties.

He's not somebody who you want.

But

think about it.

Wasn't it him?

I never even saw the show, and it's hysterically funny.

I can tell.

But DeSantis has something.

Now, I know that people say that in person, one-on-one, it's like talking to a kitchen cabinet.

But actually,

he can fill a room.

There is something about him.

And so he's got the charisma, and also he's got the MAGAism with a certain substance, which Trump doesn't.

Well, I would disagree with that.

First of all, everything I hear about DeSantis is that he's dull.

He doesn't have any charisma.

And also,

I think liberals, liberals, they just, they make a real effort not to understand the Trump voter.

And,

you know, it's like, oh, DeSantis is going to be great because it's Trumpism without Trump.

And I think they're like, why would we want a tribute band

when the actual band is still playing?

I agree 100%.

Yes, DeSantis can fill a room, but he can fill it with the kind of energy you want to then leave the room.

Like, he does not have the warmth.

But on top of it, the thing that, so I went back a couple weeks ago, do you guys remember the first debate in 2015?

It's August 2015, right?

And so the Republic, everybody's like, what the hell is about to happen?

So they did the junior debate first.

It was the seven Republicans who didn't get to like 5%.

Then they bring them all out.

It's 10 guys.

The first question.

to all 10 of them was, who will raise their hand and say that they won't support the nominee, no matter who it is?

Trump raises his hand and the crowd boos.

I mean a lusty boo.

And it's like watching the five seconds before Pompeii goes off.

Because what then happens is they're booing and Trump, not a word, gives a gesture.

He gives the Trump face, which is like, are you fucking kidding me?

These jokers around me?

And you can actually hear...

The crowd turn from a boo to it to a shriek of joy because he's the transgressor.

He's Johnny Rotten of the Republican Party.

You will not find anybody who delivers for those kids better than him.

He's why there's a certain click in high school and you don't understand why are they the cool kids?

They have confidence and the rest of us are insecure.

I don't think that's going to work again.

That worked for a long time.

He's got an amazing charisma, that kind of towel snapping business that he does.

But

I have a hard time believing that there isn't a critical mass of people who wouldn't go for somebody who believes in the sorts of things that he unfortunately believes in, but also seems like he would rule as a grown-up.

And by dissent is filling a room, I mean that some people have said to me that he actually gives a good speech.

Now, I don't think he'll ever light up a room the way Trump did, but wouldn't people maybe prefer the tribute ban rather than somebody who's going to blow up the world?

No, I hope so.

I hope so too, but it's

I was even more on the side of what I'm saying now this week when we found out how much Fox News has been lying.

And I thought, see, my liberal mind went to, to, oh my God, you Fox News viewers, all you care about is fake news.

And now we have you caught red-handed that you are getting fake news.

We have this evidence.

They're caught red-handed talking.

We have the transcripts, the emails, the texts.

They're saying they hate Trump.

He's bad for the country.

They know he lost the country.

And they're telling you the exact opposite.

Aren't you dumbasses understand?

And they're just going, yeah, we know, but it just feels right.

It feels good, and I need to feel good.

And it doesn't matter if it's factually right.

It's like, you know what?

Remember the OJ trial?

Like, black folks knew that OJ killed that girl.

To a man.

Right.

But it just felt right.

And I don't blame them.

For once, a black guy beat the justice system after a zillion times the other way around.

So you think people are going to watch Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram lying to them but figure, well, that's okay because we want to get back at people who look down.

Absolutely.

That's exactly it.

And the idea that people want, oh, but he has some of the

policies that we love so much about Trump.

they don't care about the policies they care about the guys

they don't even care about the lying I mean Tucker Carlson is now caught saying I hate Trump passionately and I thought when I always this

you got they got you and then I realized and I've quoted this before some conservative guy I know said to me some time ago what you people don't get about the MAGA crowd is we don't like him either.

And then I read this other thing Trump said a couple of weeks ago where he said, they're not out to get me.

They're out to get you.

They're coming for you.

They just got to get through me.

That's what they like about him.

He's a warrior.

You know what I don't get?

And I'm going to look stupid on television saying this, but I haven't gotten this for the past five or six years.

Is it really true that there are these people, quote unquote, sitting in diners with their hats on, et cetera, who are existentially upset that people like us in blue America look down on them?

It seems to me most people, most people are not thinking about what the wider world thinks about.

They're buying their groceries.

I have never seen any convincing evidence that there are enough of those people to actually turn an election for that reason, and I'm willing to be putting it.

Then, why did he win the first time?

Because he's charismatic.

It's fun to watch him.

That's why most people vote for people.

But it's not that those people don't like us.

I don't think they think about us.

But there's still a core.

And remember, we're talking about the nominee.

There's still a core of 45%.

It is unshakable.

They will not be told by Fox News not to vote for him.

They will not be told by anyone else.

They are with him because he represents them.

And that includes some of the evangelicals.

It is unshakable.

And so, anybody goes to budge, I don't think they're going to budge because I think they found in him the first person who's willing to just air their grievance in a way that's relatable to them.

And they got a great gift this week, although, of course, in the media, it was portrayed as a terrible thing that Trump's about to be indicted in two states.

If you haven't.

See?

Wow.

Enjoy your applause break because it's going to be good for him.

Yeah, Alvin Bragg.

Really good.

Alvin Bragg, he could not have ordered up a better foe than Alvin Bragg, the Attorney General.

For people who don't know, okay, one is Georgia, where again, caught red-handed.

He's on the phone on tape saying, find me 11,000 votes.

I can't think of a more smokier gun than that.

And the other one is New York, the Stormy Daniels case, which that would be the trial of the century.

Two blondes with big tits.

But it's just,

not one person

on the right is going to think that they're going to say, oh, there they go.

Just trying to get him.

It's always, we've got to get them.

We'll find something.

And that's kind of what I mean by the gift, right?

Is that he can be whatever you want it to be.

So he said this week at CPAC, he said, I am your retribution, right?

Right.

And so to the MAGA crowd, they take that literally.

To the Republicans trying to whistle past Trump, it's like, ha-ha-ha, it's a joke.

And then to the Democrats, it's infuriating, right?

Well, he said, he did, we will demolish the deep state.

We will expel the warmongers.

We will drive out the globalists, cast out the communists.

We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.

The tribute ban just is not going to sound like that.

It's the real thing.

It gets to a deeper in your nags.

It just does.

No.

No.

No.

And I am willing, it's going to be on YouTube, me saying something that didn't work.

I cannot believe that people would actually end up electing somebody who's running on the negative on personal resentments like that.

Lyndon Johnson had class-based resentments against what people thought of him and dropped it when he started running running the country.

Bill Clinton had the same thing.

Here is somebody who's running on having been kicked in the sandbox and feeling that people look down on him and wanting to bring this with other people.

And I guess what you're saying is that in the world of Twitter, that could actually work, and that even these MAGA fans would be numb to something with more substance that's kind of Trump Jr.

that makes a certain sense.

I know that a lot of people don't make sense, but that many, I just can't see it.

I don't want to be alive.

All I can think of is:

if I I was watching this clip of you, I would think, oh, this must be 2015.

No.

Because it already happens.

But it happened and we saw what happened.

But this is like, I mean, and in the clip, I'm going to say this is 2023.

It happened before.

But we tend to think, oh, well, if we, you know, from the left in particular, people vote against their own self-interest.

We should just explain it to them.

Why?

It's in their self-interest.

That never works.

It never works.

And so this is the same version of that, which is like, don't you understand DeSantis might actually be able to advance these policies in a methodical, disciplined way that Trump cannot?

No.

The self-interest is in Trump's performance of America.

Well, as long as we're talking about what's going on on the right and Fox News and that kind of stuff, I want to talk about Tucker Carlson for a minute because he was big in the news this week.

I don't know if you saw this, but he blew the lid on what happened on January 6, 2021 for real.

No, really.

This was his big thing.

Trump tweeted about it.

You know, the unpleasantness at the Capitol that happened that day.

Well, according to Tucker, you heard it wrong.

The unpleasantness.

Well,

it was actually not unpleasant, is what Tucker's thesis is.

And he showed footage of people, and it's real footage from that day.

You can't deny that.

But there's a lot of footage from that day.

And it's people, well, I'm not going to show that footage, but I'm going to read exactly what he said.

This is what Tucker said, and he showed his footage from January 6th.

I'm going to read read his words under the footage we chose from January 6th.

I want to stress to you,

both those footages are real, and these are exactly the words he said.

He said, we're going to begin tonight with footage that shows you exactly what was happening inside the Capitol.

The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress.

Instead, it shows police escorting protesters through the building.

They were peaceful.

They were orderly and meek.

These were not insurrectionists.

They were sightseers.

Protesters queue up in neat little lines.

They give each other tours outside the speaker's office.

They take cheerful selfies and they smile.

They're not destroying the Capitol.

They obviously revere the Capitol.

Okay, so everyone is

coming down on Chucker Carlson.

I just want to defend him and say I think this is an exciting new way to teach history.

You teach the things that didn't happen,

the things that didn't go on.

If you're a history buff like I am, you'll want to see more of this.

So we are partnering with Fox News to bring you a set of gold coins.

It's called the Tucker Carlson Collection of Non-Events.

And here are some of the ones you'll get.

You'll get JFK's uneventful flight to Dallas,

the Sears Tower on 9-11,

Kanye on his meds,

contained viruses from the Wuhan Lab.

You'll get Bob Weinstein.

You'll get Jeffrey Dahmer eats a salad.

You'll get Hitler petting his dog.

And the time George Santos said something true.

Okay, so.

All right.

So, I have a question for you.

Bernie Sanders was here last week.

He was on overtime, which we...

Yeah, I love Bernie.

I have to say,

I get emails from conservatives who say, I love Bernie Sanders.

I don't agree with anything he says, but he's so authentic.

And he is.

He was on Overtime.

I asked him, you know, the Senate is working on this bill to change daylight saving times.

It's the Senate.

Are you involved in that?

No.

I don't give a shit about daylight saving.

He didn't say that.

But I did made a little news.

I asked him, somebody asked one of the questions that we get sent for this.

I'm just reading people's questions, the difference between equity and equality, because we have heard that, I mean, I never heard equity, that word a lot before a few years ago.

And now I think it sounds like equality, but it seems to be a very different thing.

And it's in a lot of federal legislation now, equity.

So I said, what's the difference?

And God bless him.

I'm not sure I know.

And Bernie, you're not alone.

I can't find anybody who actually knows or people, they have a different view of it.

So I just thought I'd ask YouTube bright guys, what is the difference between equity and equality in your view?

Oh, the difference is a truly sneaky, terrible thing.

Equity.

Equity is this wormy word.

The idea is that you're going to have equality by forcing the issue, by bringing people into positions that they're not qualified for yet so that everything looks, quote unquote, like America.

So it sounds like equality and you say equity and you figure it's the same thing, but it's a euphemism.

They're trying to slip in without letting you know that it's going to be equality accomplished in a way that you probably wouldn't like.

It's like if you say to somebody, well, before I let you go, and you say that to them, and they didn't say that they wanted to be like a, really you just want to get rid of it.

Or if you talk about diversity, well, imagine talking to Franklin D.

Roosevelt about diversity.

When we say diversity, what we mean is changing standards for various reasons for black and Latino and sometimes Native American people.

That's what diversity means.

You just don't want to say it.

Equity means that you force equality and you kind of weasel your way through it.

And so it's like you take the word equality and you kind of knock the AL out of it.

It's like bam, bam.

It's like bam, bam.

And you knock it out and you've got equity.

And the people who do this think that that's the right thing because they are on the side of the angels and we have to have this fake equality.

And

what it means is this, this DEI,

it's not an accident that DEI is the first three letters of deity.

These people think of themselves as gods.

None of this is an accident.

So that's what equity means, whether Bernie Sanders knows it or not.

It's a weasel word.

Okay, so in terms of numbers though, right, can I

answer me this: is this equity?

Because this is something that is very close to us here.

We tape at CBS.

I know it's confusing, we're on HBO.

Don't ask.

It just happens to be that.

CBS

writers' rooms for CBS shows must be staffed with a minimum of 50%

BIPOC.

That's a disease.

Sounds like it.

Sorry.

No, it stands for

bisexual.

Bisexual Indian people of color.

Yeah, no.

Close enough.

It's what is bi?

No, it's

bisexual.

Black

indigenous people of color.

Personally,

50%

of every

writer's room, which is, that to me sounds like that's more equity than equality.

They're saying like, well, these aren't the best people perhaps to write this show.

What if it's a show about a polka band in a ski town?

But their color is what makes it.

Right, we're just

saying it has to, every writer's room, that would be equity, right?

As opposed to equality?

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to offer a slight defense here.

Because I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying.

At the same time, if you're one of those people who has been trying to crack a writer's room, it's hard.

It's really hard.

Because historically in this town, writer's rooms, I say this as a Jew.

It's like diversity was like one member of each of the 12 tribes.

It was like there's a lot of Jews in those rooms.

And that's great.

Jews are funny.

We are generally pretty funny.

I mean, that's one reason why.

Exactly.

You know the old story about Red Fox?

No.

When he was doing, what show was that?

Sanford and Sun.

Sanford and Sun.

Every episode.

Right.

I recommend it, folks.

He went more this other route, and then apparently the next week he said, get me back to Jews.

And listen.

I mean,

all on.

There's lots of funny black guys, obviously, too.

But organizations are filled with entropy, right?

There's always a challenge.

We've got to get it out.

We've got to go to the people we know.

And so while I wouldn't say, hey, it's got to be 50%, it's got to be tomorrow, I think the impulse here is not something that we should make fun of, even as we make fun of the ways in which it might be implemented, because ultimately, without a forcing mechanism, change doesn't happen very much.

So I don't think it's a bad thing to say we need to strive to get this done.

Not at all.

And we may need to put some pressure on it.

Not at all.

No.

As always, it's where do you draw the line?

You have to do something different, but if you force it to that extent that you say that next week everything has to be equal, what it comes down to is this.

What that does to, for example, black people is that you go through an entire life knowing that nothing that you've been asked to do, nothing that you've been granted, can be completely separated from the fact that somebody wasn't thinking about the fact that you were a pretty color and it would make them look good to bring you in.

You spend your whole life that way?

Yes, that does include me.

That is something that we have to think about with these sorts of policies where you force it really quickly and you drag people in to be what used to be called, what happened to the term toke and black?

Remember we used to say that?

Yeah.

Now it's called diversity and equity.

It won't do.

So yes, but you can't do it too much too fast or you're dehumanizing everybody but white people.

Okay, so

equity itself is kind of an example of the practice we do now of changing language to change the way people think, which is something that's gone on for a long time.

I mean, certainly George Orwell wrote about that, and it's gone on in many countries, and it seems to be going on here more than it used to in this country.

I mean, we just mentioned BIPOC, which is a...

term I hadn't heard.

I mean, George Packer wrote about this.

It's changing a lot recently.

And he mentioned, I think, felon is now justice-involved person.

And there's many others like that.

And

I think his point was, it's one thing for language to change organically, which it should and does, and you can't stop it.

You know, most of Shakespeare is indecipherable because it's 400 years ago.

We don't use those words anymore.

And the dictionary every year puts out an edition with these are new words.

But they're new words because people just organically started using new words.

It's not like the dictionary says, here's a bunch of words we're commanding you to use now.

And I think what Packer was saying is, that's what's going on now.

There's an order that comes from a small group of people, we don't know who they are, we can't ask.

It comes on from high, and they're saying, You need to say Latinx now,

and you need to say, you know, a person experiencing homelessness.

And I feel like this is why woke becomes a joke, because you'd rather rename it than solve it.

I mean,

those codes that come down, you know, again, they come from a place of trying to be more respectful of people.

Right.

But ultimately, they fail twice, right?

The first time is that they treat prejudice as a form of language or etiquette.

And we all know that is not what prejudice is really about.

That's not the way you fix it.

And the second is that, you know, John has written as expertly about this as anyone in the world.

Language comes up.

So those organizations end up looking stupid twice, right?

They're clueless twice when they issue these things.

The one thing I would say, though, is like, it is easy to get that piñata of like sincerity and don't whack at it and say, you know, oh, the language police are upon us.

The woke left is trying to change the way we, and the truth is, a lot of these organizations, I've been inside of a big company.

Big companies don't need to collude to be dumb.

They can be dumb all by themselves.

And so the fact that these individual,

you know, these individual companies are putting out language, like

only big companies and big organizations know how to waste that much time and money to put out these things.

So I don't think there's some vast conspiracy on the left.

I just think people are trying, through their general counsels and others, to prevent bad things from happening.

And of course, it looks ridiculous.

You know, a lot of those.

All of that is true.

And a lot of what those people are doing involves not knowing how language works.

Now, of course, chairperson rather than chairman,

Yes.

Right.

Saying hero instead of heroine, fine, because things like that can actually help to shape how younger people perceive things.

But when you're going to talk about a lot of these other things, it's kind of like if I say, well, now I'm going to head out, the way people say that.

Oh, you get the jaw.

I'm going to head out.

Okay.

You're going to head out.

Now, were you thinking about the head?

What did it have to do with head?

You use words in many ways.

Think about that sucks.

What does it mean?

And frankly, we've gotten way past that.

But with these people, the idea is that anything that you say, every third thing that you say, is triggering because it might remind you of something else.

So somebody says, I'm going to shoot the moon.

And somebody says, that reminds me of shooting a gun.

And the thing is, no, it doesn't.

A lot of it is performative.

What all these people are doing is not saying, I'm hurt.

They're saying, I'm hurt.

And it's not meaningful.

And I was just going to say very quickly, that's not what civil rights ever was.

You know, Martin Luther King wasn't telling us to change words.

He was trying to change the world.

It's just people

real.

I totally agree.

I think there's another function too, which is they're signaling stuff to each other, right?

So

one of the examples in that Atlantic story is I think the Sierra Club, right?

Nobody's, who is the neocon at the Sierra Club who's being iced by these guidelines, right?

What they're doing is saying, I hear you, I agree with you, let's maybe use this language.

The sad thing for these organizations is that the right has always been way better at this.

They're just better at figuring out what words work.

So

the obvious example is pro-life.

Oh, yeah.

Like, that's not a thing people were until someone coined the full example.

Or the death tax.

Yep.

The death tax.

It used to be called the estate tax, and then it was the death tax.

We're taxing death.

Yeah, right.

And again, it's not organic.

There are organic changes in language.

I think the biggest one, you're the perfect person to answer this, but that I've seen in my lifetime is the word like.

Oh, yeah.

We decided somehow just organically as a society that we don't say he said anymore.

He said he was like.

When I first heard it, I objected because like this is valley girl talk.

Why are we trying to be valley girls?

But when it's organic, you can't fight it.

It just sounds more immediate to people.

But I said, I was like, and then you put it in the present tense.

And it's somehow more right.

It's not like, it happens in about 1979, and it just takes over the world, and there's nothing you can do about it, and there are now people pushing 60 who use it that way, and it's just there.

But the question always is, to look at how words can shape thought and decide that you're going to come up with 300 that are going to shape thought, leads to a question.

If we could go back in the day and deal with, say, W.E.B.

Du Bois or Lorraine Hansberry, and suppose we told them, you need to be really concerned with how people use words.

What would they have gained?

Would fewer people be poor today?

Would the police be nicer today if they had been walking around telling people what words to use?

And the answer is clearly no, and that answer applies directly to today.

These word directives must stop.

Okay.

So one final issue.

We finally have a whistleblower in the world of TikTok.

Wow, I've been waiting for this.

I mean, we have them, we saw them in Instagram and Twitter and okay, Facebook.

Now, a formal employee came forward, responsible, he said.

The manager's there, he worked on the inside, responsible for internal fraud.

He said they were intentionally lying to the U.S.

government.

He says basically that what's going on, there's a

well, this is Bernstein research.

There's a sensory rush.

This sounds to me like the stuff we heard about Instagram.

As the algorithm pushes the most viral content directly to the user, delivering endorphin hit after endorphin hit.

So I guess this is why people want to ban TikTok or at least restrict it in a way we have never really restricted a media company before.

Look, I can't really answer this adequately because I have TikTok, but I've never once

liked anything.

The only thing that ever comes up are dogs doing mischievous things.

It must be very frustrating for their algorithm, me, because I don't give them anything.

But somehow they got it.

And I do like watching dogs doing mysterious things.

How did they know that without me doing anything?

It's a really good algorithm.

I mean, it just is.

That's scary.

It's scary.

And you know how you know it's scary?

Because the people I know at Instagram and Google and elsewhere are like, it's a really good algorithm.

They're freaked out at how good it is.

But the ban is.

But is it dangerous?

So to me, what's dangerous and what's coming out with this whistleblower is TikTok obviously is a Chinese-owned company.

And so, it had said, on the one hand, we're always going to keep Americans' data away from the Chinese government.

That's what we're going to do.

And what the whistleblower is saying is like, nu-uh, that's not happening.

Right.

And so, I can see on one hand how maybe, and there are people in security protocols who say, you know, maybe we can get to a place where you can actually sequester that data.

But that is a minor issue compared to ownership.

So, TikTok is owned by a company called ByteDance, and the Chinese government has special management shares, which is they own a percentage of ByteDance.

ByteDance has three members of its board, one of whom is a Chinese communist minister.

This is not something they are trying to cover up.

In fact, they're very open about it.

I'm surprised it's not all three.

It's only one for now.

But we know things

that the Chinese government, look, what they love is to use technology to affect social control with a big piece of ideology across hundreds of millions of people.

I have no doubt they're doing that.

My question is: okay, they've got like 100 million Americans using this.

What practically do they get from knowing how we dance, what we like to dance to, what we're buying, what we're eating, you know, that kind of stuff.

And don't they know it already without having,

don't they know who the American people are?

We're not a big secret.

And it's a total, it's a total.

We're not a deep people.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe they're a thing.

It's a totally deep.

I mean, you can get medical information.

I'm sure they can get everything.

They know we're unhealthy.

I have a teenage daughter, and I sort of feel like, on the one hand, I know all this stuff about bite dance, and it's scary.

And on the other, if the Chinese government would like to influence the way my teenage daughter thinks about democracy, good luck, China.

Call me when you're done.

Let me know how it went.

I don't think, the pivot that platform has to make, so I'm with you too.

It's like, what are they doing with this?

Why is the conversation only about TikTok, though?

I mean, aren't we worried about all the other ways that the Chinese could be doing this?

Isn't TikTok kind of a sensationalist thing because it's about, you know, teenage girls dancing and it's a toy?

Why TikTok in particular?

Because it's more successful, because it's killing all the other platforms.

And all the other platforms are imitating it.

Instagram used to be pictures of your lunch and hot chicks and now

it's just the same.

I mean at my phone it was.

All right.

Anyway, we got to go to New Rules.

Thank you everybody.

Okay.

New rules, people who say that never gets old have to admit that's getting pretty old.

Stop doing it.

With one exception.

When Trump brags about crowd size, like this week when he posted, CPAC was packed for my speech.

You couldn't get in the building.

And then we see the pictures of a sea of empty seats.

That never gets old.

Neural, someone has to tell these captured El Salvadorian gang members who can't figure out why they're always so easily rounded up and imprisoned.

Maybe it has something to do with the tattoos.

New rules, that

the Gen Z trend of quiet quitting has expanded to an even newer trend called bare minimum Mondays,

maybe you kids should just head on home and call us when you feel like doing anything.

You do know I can't even is just a saying, right?

Oh, and if you think your anxiety is through the roof now, just wait till you'll get a load of fuck you, you're fired Friday.

New rule, I don't need to read any more news articles about Jeopardy.

Here's a Jeopardy answer for you.

Zero.

And the question, what is how many fucks I give about what's happening over at Jeopardy?

Neural, someone has to mark the amount of time between when this guy told the uber-conservative audience at the CPAC convention that transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, and when we find him in a public restroom sucking dick.

And sir, when you want to change your name from Mike to Monique, we'll still love you.

And it won't be the end of your speaking career either.

Oh, at CPAC, yes, but they're going to love you at next year's Democratic National Convention.

And finally, new rule in honor of the Academy Award Show this Sunday.

Tonight, I would like to commemorate the moment 50 years ago that transformed the Oscar telecast into what it is today.

A four-hour lecture on how bad most people have it by the people who have it the best.

But 50 years ago, an activist for Native American causes named Sachin Littlefeather was the first person in Oscar history to walk on that stage and say, I know this award is for acting, but I'm going to bore you with my politics anyway.

You see, 1973 was the year Marlon Brando won Best Actor for the Godfather.

And

a little late, but

instead of accepting the award himself, he sent Ms.

Littlefeather on stage in his place to voice what was truly and is an important cause.

Now, for you young people watching, Marlon Brando was an actor.

Native Americans were the first people here.

And The Godfather was a long TikTok

featuring the horsehead in the bed challenge.

Now, a little context.

Brando had just made one of the all-time great comebacks by playing the godfather, and anyone else would have eagerly shown up to the ceremony for their victory lap.

But Brando chose to stay home for two reasons, to draw attention to Native American rights, and because, like this year's Oscar favorite, the whale, he was stuck in his chair.

But it is how Ms.

Littlefeather was greeted by the Hollywood crowd that night that interests me.

And the picture of liberal Hollywood on that night may surprise you.

Here's how the New York Times described it in Sachin Littlefeather's obituary from last October.

At the podium, she endured a chorus of booze, drawing jeers on stage.

She said that some audience members did the tomahawk chop.

A producer for the Oscars told her that she would be arrested.

if her comments lasted more than 60 seconds.

The actor John Wayne was so unsettled that a show producer said security guards had to restrain him so that he would not storm the stage.

This was back when storming the stage was not allowed.

The obituary also said that Littlefeather recalled that while she was giving the speech, she had focused in on the mouths and jaws that were dropping open in the audience, and there were quite a few.

Now, come on.

If Sachine Littlefeather made that same speech at this year's Oscars, there'd be cheers, and there would be no shocked looks on faces, and that is because of progress.

And also Botox.

But let's talk about the progress part because people today don't seem to have a realistic view of how progress works.

For example, do you know who Time Magazine's man of the year was in that year of 1973?

Me neither, because who cares?

The point is, Time Magazine was still calling their award the man of the year, Time Magazine, another pillar of liberal enlightenment like the Oscars, but it only changed the name to person of the year in 1999.

In the Bible, no one, no one, not God, not Jesus, even considers the possibility that slavery is wrong.

There are lots of rules about it, but no one ever says, hey, maybe we just shouldn't do it at all.

What?

Not at all?

Who would schlep those giant rocks we need to make that awesome religious shrine we're making?

That's where people were.

All people.

And looking back, we always wish our forebearers would have come to progress sooner.

Ronald Reagan was very late on doing something about AIDS.

But the liberals aren't on time either.

Obama was late on gay marriage.

JFK was late on civil rights.

Bill Clinton was late on not having the interns blow you.

I don't know if everything happens everywhere all at once.

But I do know that everyone is late on everything, because that's what it is to be human.

Biden is currently, as we speak, late on pot.

And it's going to look bad in the future.

The difference is the next Democrat will legalize pot.

Yeah, the liberals are late, like all people are, but they do tend to keep going until we get there.

I'm constantly amazed when I re-watch movies from only a decade or so ago, and they were made in a way that today would get you burned at the Twitter stake.

It's complicated.

From 2009, to name just one of many I could choose, was made by a who's who of the most blue-ribbon-certified Hollywood liberals, woke-approved and Democratic Party contributing, from the stars to the producers to the director, but it apparently occurred to none of them to have any kind of minority in the cast.

You would need a divining rod to find a person of color within 500 feet of this movie set.

But if they made it today, they'd do better.

When it comes to social justice, liberals are still the tip of the spear, but even the spear comes up short a lot.

They were dicks to an Indian in 1973,

and they were still blind to diversity in 2009.

But along the way,

Hollywood also moved the country forward by opening people's eyes to racism and anti-Semitism, to AIDS and interracial couples and disabilities and environmental issues and addiction and LGBT rights, and yes, the plight of the American Indian.

So, thank you, Hollywood.

Have fun at the Oscars.

That's our show.

Be at MGM National Harvard, Washington, D.C., April 22nd, the Durham Arts Center in Durham, April 23rd, and MGM Northfield Park in Cleveland, May 20th.

I want to thank John McWhorter, Josh Terengel, and David Byrne.

Now, go watch overtime on CNN tonight at 11:30 for Catch It Saturday morning on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

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.