Overtime – Episode #590: Brooke Jenkins, John Avlon, Katrina Vanden Heuvel

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, real time with Bill Ma. Okay.
All right, here we are in Overturn.

Got to get to Las Vegas tonight. No.

John, how do you think today's mainstream media would treat Abraham Lincoln if he was our current president?

That's a great question. Well, I mean, it's a great question.
Look, his media hated him. He was disrespected widely.
I don't think he probably would have been elected right now.

He told a lot of jokes jokes that were deeply inappropriate. People got pissed off at him.
But that was a tool, right? He spoke in parables. He was trying to reach people where they were.

You know, Lincoln was a huge consumer of media. He was obsessed with newspapers, but he got a lot of grief, and we forget that.
We forget how many people hated Lincoln at the time.

He did the difficult things, and we could still learn a hell of a lot. How tall was he? 6'4.

In that year, that must have been almost like being a seven-footer. Yeah, right.
And he wore a stovepipe hat to highlight it, too. He hung a lantern on it.
Right.

Yeah.

Well, that probably would have got him elected just that.

Don't they always go for the tall guy? You know what's weird? I kept finding in my book, people kept on commenting when they met Lincoln. They kept saying something, he's the ugliest man I ever met.

They kept saying it. It's terrible.
But then when he started speaking and telling stories and connecting with people emotionally, something beautiful happened. Okay.
Wow.

How has the successful school board recall

bolstered the

Boudin, right? Is that how you pronounce that? Yes.

Chesa. Chasa.
Chesa Boudin. Now that's who we were talking about.
That's the DA in San Francisco.

Oh, okay. So how has the board recall affected that? is I guess the question.
I don't know what this question is. In my view, it's given, it's, you know, we just passed a school board recall.

We recalled three members of the Board of Education in San Francisco, and I think it's shown the prevailing common sense and core values over radicalism.

They were more worried about renaming schools than making sure that the children returned back to in-person learning. And so I think parents and residents of San Francisco have said, Look,

these radical, extreme ideas are not going to work for us anymore. What are you talking about the masks with the kids? I mean,

is it about time to chuck that?

Having a five-year-old in school right now,

I would like to see them go.

But they don't need them.

I mean, kids are the

least vulnerable. And I mean, to make these little children into Howie Mandels is what you're doing.

No, it's true. You're creating a generation of Howie Mandels, of little germ paranoid munchkins.
It's just, it's, it's,

it is, it is, it's so ridiculous. It's been like, it's a huge chunk of their lives.
I mean, we've got young kids,

especially when they are young. I mean, that's the first thing they remember, and it's going to get imprinted on them.
And it's just, I mean, kids are gross to begin with.

You've got to let them be gross.

Why? Right? Maybe they think it's a problem. And they're not getting them.
And germs are not, they need also to get germs in their body. Of course, there are ones you can't get in.

You know, why? Yeah, I mean, that's true. One of the reasons the whole vaccine is.
How you get healthy is you live in the world with the

you can't live in a world by getting rid of all germs or

avoiding them. Of course not.

But it's also the reason we've been giving the vaccine debates are so incredibly dumb because we've been doing mandatory vaccines for public school kids forever. For polio, this is not any different.

It's just what we need to deal with. Well, it could be different if they are less vulnerable to it.

The kids are vulnerable to polio. They're not that vulnerable to this one.
That's been true from the beginning. Of course, anybody can get anything at any time.
That's possible.

But we always have to go by the the numbers.

Okay, moving on, because I've got to leave.

No, Katrina, you mentioned on Twitter that you were interned for PJ Aruq. PJ Arorq, one of my faves,

died this week.

So

frequent guest on this show. P.J.
Arorque. What's one of your most favorite memories? I hope you have great memories.
I do have great memories. No, I'm

hoping. I was me too ten times.
No, no.

Well, no.

But no, no. I mean, I was an intern at National Lampoon.
And they were nice. He was great.

And we did the high school yearbook together, and then we did a mock, you'll like this, we did a mock issue of High Times, which is buried somewhere. I want to find that.
But he was a great idea.

I thought High Times was a mock issue of High Times. He was a very important role, like Higher Times.

But he was a wonderful person. He was great.

He was great. PJ Rock was great.
I mean, I've said this many times publicly on this show and anywhere else to anybody who will listen.

PJ does not get the credit he deserves for establishing an entire brand of humor. It was more than just what he did.

When he edited that National Lampoon, the National Lampoon became Saturday Night Live. It did.
Okay, there's a whole way of doing comedy that really sprung from guys like P.J.

Aruk and prominently P.J. Aruch.
He was one of my faves. Anyway.
Thank you, folks. 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.