Ep. #581: Saru Jayaraman, Andrew Yang, John McWhorter

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

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, people.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I know.

But,

thank you.

Okay,

I know.

Please, I have to live with it every day.

I know.

Thank you so much.

I know it's not me today.

I love you too.

Thank you.

But

I know

it's not me.

It's the fact that it's going to rain here.

It's going to rain.

And they say,

they said it could end our wildfire season.

Oh, my gosh.

But of course, this is California, so it has to turn into a disaster.

They say after that, we're going to get flooding and landslides.

On the plus side, in San Francisco, it'll wash the shit off the street.

So, you know.

Oh, I kid the, I kid the shit on the street.

Also, some pretty great news.

Hawaii, the state just announced they're going to open back up to the fully vaccinated next month.

Yes, finally.

Finally, a governor who is asking the right questions about COVID.

Like, how will my policies affect Bill Maher's New Year's Eve plans?

That's right, our Hawaii gig is back on.

Our 10th anniversary.

Okay, so yes, look, I mean, we're, I think, over the hump here, yet now I read there's a new strain of COVID.

Did you see this?

Delta Plus.

Okay, people, there's always gonna be a new strain.

It's a virus, okay?

It's gonna try to live.

We gotta live.

We gotta try to live.

Yes, thank you.

Because there's so many repercussions.

I mean, Psychiatrists and pediatricians now are saying there's a national mental health emergency with the young, with the youth of America, sullen, withdrawn, full of anxiety.

And then COVID hit.

But they say it's 10 times worse now.

I heard a mother at the dinner table the other night say, honey, are you okay?

You've barely taken a picture of your food.

What was I doing in someone's house observing that?

It's weird.

I just walked into a house and I needed a joke.

I walked in.

But no, there's a shortage of everything now.

Have you seen this?

This is our new crisis in America.

And Biden, he's had it up to here.

No, he lost his temper this week.

I mean, between the reconciliation bill stuck

between the Democrats, isn't even up to the Republicans yet, and all the shortages.

He did.

He lost it.

Biden said, what are we doing?

He said, this is the United States of America, damn it.

And I thought it was kind of sweet.

He's so old.

he remembers when it was weird to think of America as a huge fuck-up.

Republicans now are trying to paint him as Jimmy Carter, 2.0.

Does anybody remember Jimmy Carter?

And they say it's the 70s all over again.

Well, you know, inflation is going up, gas prices, shortages.

Biden would not have any of these.

He said, that is ridiculous.

This is not the 1970s.

And then his mood ring turned black.

That was a bad sign.

The mood ring, I barely do.

But are you excited about Halloween?

This is the great time.

Oh, you are, yeah.

It's the great time of year when you're excited about your costume, but it hasn't gotten you canceled yet.

There are some people out there, celebrities, politicians, some great costumes coming up.

Rudy Giuliani is going as a lawyer.

Yeah,

Tucker Carlson's going as a journalist this year.

So amazing the way.

And Kirsten Sinema is going as a Democrat.

It's going to be a really interesting Halloween.

Now the committee that's looking into the January 6th uprising of the Capitol Hill riot has subpoenaed Steve Bannon, former guest many times here, Steve Bannon.

Great to see you out, Steve.

That's good to see you.

Wearing the three shirts.

Good to have you.

Of course, Bannon told him to piss up a rope.

A subpoena, piss up a rope.

But he said, but not this rope.

This is Mike Pence hanging rope.

Hey, speaking of which, a quick correction.

I mentioned this on our last show, that Steve Bannon was subpoenaed and he said, I'm not coming.

I said, Eric Holder and Janet Reno did that.

Turned out that was wrong.

A correction.

We don't usually do this because we have a crack staff on crack.

But that's not true.

Eric Calder did

justify nine times in the bullshit fest and furious thing.

Anyway, Trump is starting, listen to this, starting his own social media network.

I love the title.

It's called Truth Social.

Apparently, Shit My Dad Says Was Taken.

And I love

I love this.

One of the rules on Truth Social is you can't use Truth Social to make fun of Truth Social.

Because if anything Republicans love, it's free speech.

And if it's anything they hate, it's snowflakes.

Oh, speaking of those things, I hear Dave Chappelle's in hot water, huh?

What the fuck was that reaction?

Everyone needs to Netflix and chill the fuck out on this one, okay?

Thank you.

Really?

Really?

Dave's special was offensive, but not the show where the Koreans murder each other for money?

That was.

You know, I think people are,

they jump to conclusions they haven't seen it.

I know, just just because people call Dave transphobic doesn't mean that he is.

Yeah.

Also, uh

Larry, not a real cable guy.

Well, get used to this because we're going to talk about it a lot here.

So, you know, don't don't be too afraid of it.

We can't be afraid to speak in America.

Speaking of that, not the only media company that's in hot water this week, Facebook is all,

Facebook is literally changing its name.

They announced that this week.

They are to come in in a couple of weeks, but the name, secret, we don't know what's going to be.

I suggest my ass.

Because, well, no.

Because that way, when your right-wing uncle says something about the deep state and you say, where'd you get that from?

He can go, I pulled it right out of my ass.

Now, this is kind of sad, grisly news, but it's have to do this, follow up on a story everyone was, I think, following for a long time.

They found human remains in the woods of Florida.

They're pretty sure it's Brian Laundry.

Right?

Okay, we were looking, see how the resolution of that, and they think it's right.

They're not sure, but the suicide note did end with like, comment, and subscribe.

So they think.

Remember, jokes?

I thought we decided we're

pro-joke, aren't we?

Pro-joke?

Come on, lady, yeah you go.

I'm going to individually shame people who don't like jokes.

How about that?

For those people, here's another one you'll really hate.

Superman this week turned out to be bisexual.

I'm not kidding, they have announced this.

Everything's gonna be the same.

I mean, outside, he's tongue-kissing guys, but

everything's the same, except his weaknesses now are kryptonite and Chick-fil-A.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Andrew Yang and John McWhorter.

And first up, she is the president of One Fair Wage.

His new book, One Fair Wage, Ending Sub-Minimum Pay in America, is out this week.

Saru Jayaraman is over here.

Hey, great to see you.

How are you doing?

Great to see you again.

This is your third time on?

Third or fourth.

Yes, we like you.

And you have, you're the perfect one to talk about, I think, what's going on now because you have been championing workers your whole life.

And now we have something called the Great Resignation.

We've really never seen this.

Just in the month of August, 4.3 million people quit their job.

Like, take this job and shove it kind of thing.

And this is on top of several months before that there were also records.

People are just

not digging work these days.

So what is this all about?

What do you take on that?

Is this because people have more leverage because they have more money coming in from the pandemic relief?

Not necessarily.

You know, I've been working with restaurant workers for 20 years, as you know.

Yes.

That's a huge portion of the folks that have walked away from their jobs.

And these folks had the lowest wages of any industry prior to the pandemic.

You know, there's a sub-minimum wage in the restaurant industry for tipped workers.

It's still $2.13.

Because they figure they'll make it up with tips.

Suppose that.

It's really all tips.

It's all tips.

They get pretty much no wage.

It's a direct legacy of slavery.

It's mostly women working in really casual restaurants, not making ends meet,

struggling with really high rates of sexual harassment.

And it all got really so much worse with the pandemic.

Tips went way down, hostility and harassment went way up, and just like you said, millions of women were like, take this job and shove it because the pay is too low, the health risks and the hostility is too high, and I'm done.

I've reached my breaking point and I'm done.

And by the way, a lot of these workers didn't get unemployment insurance to begin with.

We heard from millions of workers that they were told by states, your sub-minimum wage of $2 is actually too low to qualify for benefits.

So people are walking away from these jobs without necessarily having anything to fall back on, but they're saying, it actually costs me more to get to work in child care and transportation than I get when I get there.

It's not worth it anymore.

And also, just the idea of paying someone almost completely in tips means that they have to sort of like

every moment of their workday, they have to worry about being evaluated.

The rest of us don't have to do that.

That's right, that's right.

You and me, you know, imagine if we got paid based on how much people liked us.

Your audience, or I'm a professor, my students.

Imagine if our entire pay was how well I graded people.

That's what these women are going through.

That's what restaurant workers are going through.

They're constantly being evaluated.

In fact, during the pandemic, a lot of women were told, take off your mask so I can see how cute you are before I decide how much to tip you.

Take off your mask so I can see the pretty face of my server before I decide how much I want to tip.

That made it life-threatening, and women were like, I'm done.

So what

is the long-term prognosis now for restaurants?

I mean, we've seen so many changes.

I mean, a lot of them did close.

I read it something like 14%, which I thought would be actually higher.

So obviously they did better than we thought, which is great.

But it's always been a shit show in a restaurant during the pandemic because it's just a stupid premise.

to have it open at all because you have to expose your pie hole to eat.

Right, exactly.

This nonsense of, you know, you put the mask on when you walk to the bathroom.

Well, I gotta say, Bill, a lot of restaurant workers died during the pandemic because they were exposed, you know, and so they were trying to enforce these rules.

Imagine trying to tell people, they were the ones put in charge, wear your mask, sit six feet apart, let me see your vaccination card, on the same people from whom they had to get tips to make up their wage.

That was an impossible situation.

And that was the point at which people were done.

But the good news, the silver lining is that we have seen thousands of restaurants respond to this by raising their wages.

We have seen now restaurants who were paying two and three dollars now paying $15, $25.

We've even been tracking restaurants paying $50 an hour because they can't get staffed.

Right.

And of course,

everyone is applauding, but the problem is that it's easy to applaud.

What they don't want is when they go to the restaurant for the eggs benedict to go from $8 to $14.

It won't.

It won't.

Well, it will, and it should.

Because if you're eating out at all, when I was a kid, we never ate out.

Never.

That was not a thing.

People didn't.

It was for rich people.

Now everyone eats out all the time.

If you're doing well enough to eat out, then you should pay.

Then you should.

Right.

There will be maybe moderate price increase, but I got to tell you, we are here in California, the wage is 15 bucks an hour, even for servers.

The prices, and I've compared them at Applebee's and IHOP and Denny's are exactly the same here as they are in New Mexico, where it's $2.13 is what they pay their servers.

These companies are making billions of dollars in profit, paying people nothing

and charging the same.

And it's really corporate welfare because when companies don't pay the worker enough, who has to make up the difference?

We do.

It comes out in welfare.

Exactly.

$16 billion a year taxpayers spend subsidizing workers because they can't afford to live.

But now, listen, the point is: if wages are going up, workers are saying we won't work for this anymore, wages are going up, restaurants can't find enough people, we need elected officials to actually raise the frickin' minimum wage.

Because if workers are saying we won't put up with it anymore, and employers are saying, I'm raising my wage, but I can't do it alone, what is wrong with Congress that they can't see the direction the country's moving in?

Well, Congress is half Republican, they're never going to vote for that.

It's not part of their philosophy.

But the Democrats, if they would stop being distracted by all their bullshit issues and just concentrate on the minimum wage,

I could give them like the three issues they could win every year.

That's right, exactly.

It's not that it's not rocket science.

Universally popular.

Minimum wage.

That's right.

Even the Republicans actually support raising the minimum wage.

A lot of them do, yeah.

We were at a rally in Albany on the same day that the MAGA folks were out there fighting the electors submitting Biden in Albany, New York.

And they came over to our rally.

We were fighting for $15 and they said, what are you fighting for?

We said $15.

We thought they were going to attack us.

They joined our rally.

They said, we believe in that.

We believe in $15.

Everybody agrees.

If you work, you should get remunerated for your work.

Yeah.

I don't even know how you'd live on $15.

I know exactly.

Congress can do this.

Governor Hoakland, New York can do this.

DC can do this.

Every state can pay people a full minimum wage with tips on docs.

So what do you make about this giant shortages we're having now?

And like I noticed,

I read that a lot of it is because we have 80,000 trucker jobs that are not fulfilled.

Have you ever looked into that industry?

I've been looking at the whole food system and there's shortages from farm workers to food transportation to retail to restaurants.

People are done with low-wage work across the economy.

We're calling it the end of the year.

But don't truckers.

I'm surprised at that the trucker job because I thought they actually made pretty good money and you get to take speed and you get to.

It's still a pretty tough job.

No, it is a very tough job.

Yeah, yes, but they seem to like it.

You know, good buddy and that whole thing.

And then you're up there and they can look at you, you know.

People want to get paid for for working a tough job.

You know, like, I think, yes, people get paid a little bit better than restaurant workers, but not enough to make it worth staying.

But you have to admit, it does seem like the younger generations just have a different idea about work.

They're not in love with it.

As a concept in general.

I'm talking about the millennials and the Gen Zs.

I mean, like, I see, where do I see people at?

Hotels.

It's just,

they just seem to have an attitude like they kind of resent that they have to have a job at all.

You know, there is a lot of that.

Sort of like, I shouldn't be starting.

This whole starting at the bottom thing, I think they find...

I mean, I don't know which hotels you're going to, Bill, but the

restaurant.

Good ones.

The restaurant workers, I know.

No, restaurants different.

Even hotel workers, they work two and three jobs.

I know millennials that are working two and three jobs, supporting families, supporting their parents, supporting their kids in many cases, because now millennials have kids, and just struggling to make ends meet.

And

I think they are saying, and I think we all should be saying, everybody deserves to work one job and get enough of a wage to feed their family.

One job.

And enjoy life and be a good job.

But a lot of people, I mean, about a third of our economy is gig workers.

Yeah.

Right?

I mean, those are jobs that don't have the support that a regular job has.

I mean, you don't get health benefits or, you know, there's no unions.

They're independent contractors and they're misclassified.

They really are employees.

But these huge companies, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, they're getting away with claiming that they're not employees when in fact they are.

Not paying minimum wage, making them pay for their own costs.

They have to cover their own car, cover their own gas, cover the way they get there, and no benefits and nothing to fall back on.

And gouging us, by the way, you've all seen prices going up during the pandemic.

They have benefited so much during the pandemic.

It's time to regulate these companies and make them actually pay a livable wage to their employers.

Okay.

Thank you for coming by.

You're always great on this topic.

Thank you.

We'll see you for the fifth time.

I guess I've had that long.

Thank you, Pharaoh.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay,

here they are.

He is the founder of the Forward Party, an author of Forward Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.

Andrew Yang is over here.

There's the Yang gang.

Uh-oh.

He's doing its

and he's a newsletter opinion writer for the New York Times and author of Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

John McWhorter is over here, John.

All right, so let me just continue that discussion a little bit with you guys, because certainly this is your wheelhouse.

I heard today that if you want to get your presents for Christmas, you need to shop now.

I mean, that's, it's not even the Halloween part of Thanks Hollow Isthmus, my

triple holiday, I think we should start.

But I mean, stuff is sitting on docks.

I read this, wages are bad, people are fed up.

This is from National Bureau of Economic Research.

Between 50 and 70 percent of changes in the U.S.

wage structure in the last four decades

accounted by the relative wage declines of groups in industries experiencing rapid automation.

In other words, if you're doing something that a robot can take your place, that is what they're saying is the economic problem.

And outside of you talking about it, that is not what you hear.

It's more social justice stuff.

But this is probably the real reason.

Americans can sense that our economy has been transforming before our eyes for a number of years now, and that got accelerated by the pandemic.

The reality is it's hitting every industry, and we're seeing in these supply chain disruptions right now.

We've been pretending it's still the 70s or 80s.

As the economy has evolved, it's left way too many workers behind.

And I agree with a lot of what Saru was saying, that there needs to be a re-evaluation and recognition of what it's going to take to get Americans back to work.

Well, you got to eat.

At some point, you got to eat.

I mean, that'll get people back to work, don't you think?

I mean,

I don't think we can continue on the path we're on where the stock market keeps going up.

Do you?

Do you see good things in our economic future with what's going on with our politics?

And with our deficit,

I read today, just

was like something like 2.7 trillion.

We never had one this high except

last year.

I don't see good things economically on the horizon.

Maybe that's my pessimism.

Well, a lot of it, Bill, is that when you talk about the capital E economy, it's this abstraction and we've been brainwashed into thinking that we're all its inputs are fuel.

It's like as long as the economy is doing well then we should be glad even as our quality of life has degraded for years and years.

If you look at the measurements that we all care about like infant mortality rate or mental health or life expectancy, the basics, access to clean water, we're 28th in the world and declining.

And so we have to get focused on what the economy means for us, our families, our communities, not worship the stock market or GDP growth because those things are going to go to the the moon thanks to technology.

And if we're looking up saying, oh, things are going well, happily now, people can tell the difference.

The only people that haven't really made progress in this direction is the folks in DC because they're having conversations from 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Yes, and they're also having conversations apropos to what your book is about.

You know, I feel like people are getting yelled at in a conference room by Robin DiAngelo

when this report doesn't mention that issue.

You know, this is.

It just says robots.

This is the tragedy.

If you read the civil rights literature from 50 years ago, automation is already something that people were talking about.

The idea was we've gotten rid of legalized segregation and we've got the Voting Rights Act.

Now we need to think about the fact that it's getting harder to have a job that's all about machines, that you can't only have a high school education.

That was something that civil rights leaders, you know, this is way back then.

They're in cat-eyed glasses and they're drinking martinis and they're talking about automation.

And yet today, when we talk about what black people need, when frankly, because black Americans are people just like everybody else, the issue is that you can't get along with just a high school job these days, or you should be able to, because we need to focus on vocational education.

We need to stress that in a way that we haven't

since after World War II when they're settled in this idea that the default way to be a legitimate American American is that after high school, you have to go spend four years living in a dorm and pretending to like Shakespeare.

That never made any sense at all.

And instead,

see, I do pretend to like Shakespeare.

But the point is, these days, what we're told is that the black thing to think about is to defund the police, even though the people who live in the neighborhoods where the police would be defunded don't want that to happen.

You know, that's all very interesting.

Or we're supposed to talk about how there's a rock in Michigan at the University of

University of Wisconsin and somebody called it a really dirty name 100 years ago and now some students say when I walk by it I'm hurt that's civil rights no it should be about automation and preparing people for vocational jobs that require a little bit more training past high school but I guess that's not anti-racism well I want to talk about how this informs our national politics I spent a lot of time in Iowa and Ohio two

states that went for Obama, were quintessential swing states that now are Trump plus eight.

And they have been ground zero for a lot of these economic changes.

We've blasted away a lot of manufacturing jobs, industrial jobs, and agricultural jobs.

And if Democrats don't get in there and say, look, we get it, this is the problem, that's why all of a sudden these states have swung red because Democrats are focusing on a message that does not fly in those areas that tend to be predominantly white.

Yeah.

Did you see that

news about John Shore?

Is that the guy's name?

He was Obama's

David Shore, yeah.

David Schurr, right, analytics guru, and then he got canceled for a while.

And he was just using facts and figures.

He was just using, that's my point.

Just using facts and figures.

He was just, it was after the George Floyd riots, and he was just saying this is the effect of riots on Democratic voters.

Okay.

But now he's back.

He's been rehabilitated.

I see Ezra Klein wrote a great article about him.

One, he has been rehabilitated, just like in the Soviet Union.

That was a good long story.

And this is what he is saying.

He is saying, like, Democrats too often use language that voters don't understand.

You know, as a linguistics professor, I'm sure you understand this better than most of us.

You just have to,

as a comedian also, if you don't have clarity, you don't have anything.

They don't know what you're talking about.

Or also.

If the way you talk about it doesn't taste good to them, then you have to come up with a new way of putting it.

And you can't just think that the way of putting it that is hard, hard, hard left and has a certain noble air about it is the right thing to do as if we're talking about a religion rather than winning elections.

And that is the great theme of your book, yes.

One of Ezra Klein's findings in his book, Why We're Polarized, really hit home around this.

All of our politics is tribal at this point.

And if you sit down with an American, they'll actually agree with you on policy much, much more than you'd imagine if you just

thought that we were in these ideological camps.

The The correlation between your self-identified politics and what you think about policy is quite low.

It's only 0.25.

So a lot of it is that language has been coded in particular ways.

Where if you go to a conservative and say, hey, drug companies, price is too high, they'll say, heck, yes.

And then if you say, hey, socialized medicine, they'll say, heck, no.

It's just like a code switch.

And so what we have to do is just use neutral language to try and get people on board instead of sticking to a message and saying it's your fault for not getting what I'm saying.

Andrew?

Yeah.

I think you're right, but I would also add that to an extent, it's not going to be only about changing the language, although that can help a little bit.

It's also about changing what topics we focus on, because there are certain things that people care about more than they might care about other things.

And to the extent that that'll get their vote, and that then maybe you can come into power and change things about the things people care less about on the side, that might be a more effective strategy for there being a stronger, say, Democratic Party, I hope.

And what I mean by that, I don't mean to sound like I'm talking in code, is that a lot of data is suggesting that the social justice angle doesn't appeal to enough people to get the Democrats into real power.

And that means soft peddling, talking about that sort of thing, despite how good it might make people feel to talk about it.

Yes, you are on the side of the angels if you acknowledge that racism exists.

Yes, but that might not win you elections.

And the second thing is what matters more in our current situation.

I could not agree more

that we should be talking about things that matter to voters.

I was the guy who was trying to give everyone $1,000 a month.

I was like, you know what would make a difference?

You know, having these economic resources.

Which they kind of then did in the pandemic.

I did notice that, Bill.

I noticed that a lot of cash has gone out the door.

Right.

And you ran for mayor in Near.

What do you think about this brouhaha that's in New York right now between the outgoing mayor and the incoming mayor?

The outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, wanted to cancel the gifted program for students.

I mean, I remember when I was in school, they had the Bluebirds and the Redbirds reading groups.

The Bluebirds were the smart ones.

I was not in that group.

I'm still bitter about it, but it didn't hold me back in life.

But, you know, there's always been this accelerated group.

Okay, well, here are the stats.

In New York,

70% of the roughly a million public high school students, and you guys both live in New York, right?

Okay, are black and Latino, 70%.

But about 75% of the 16,000 students who get in the gifted classes are white or Asian.

So

we all have a dog in this fight, huh?

So now the incoming mayor, African-American Eric Adams, who I love, He's going to reinstate, he's not going to get rid of it because his point is let's lift up the people who aren't there instead of getting rid of the whole program because that kind of got to be a whole trend.

Like if a minority group isn't doing as well as other people, get rid of the whole program.

Try to do it with the SATs.

You've written about racist math, I think.

I remember that column.

Math is racist, you know?

That's right.

Oh, wow.

I take that personally, Don.

That's kind of my campaign slogan.

So where are you on this, on the gifted program?

You know, this is where I am on it.

If you see that black and or Latino kids kids are having trouble with, say, standardized tests or with the tests that they give gifted kids, the question that somebody would have asked with the cat-eyed glasses sipping the RV Wallbanger would have been, how do we get the kids better at those

aides?

But somehow today, the idea is, no, let's eliminate the test because the test is racist.

And it comes down to this.

If you decide that it's racist to submit a black kid to a test of cognitive ability, then you are completely out of court to then yell and scream when somebody like Charles Murray says that black people are less intelligent than others.

You can't have both.

And so the idea is to see how you can get black kids better at the test.

I think they can get better.

Lift up, not throw out.

I mean

you down with that?

I agree with Eric Adams that retaining the gifted and talented programs is the right approach and then trying to expand the opportunity set because right now it is a little bit narrow the way one gets into these gifted and talented programs.

I have a public school, I have a son in public school, and the test is administered at age four.

Like, I do think that that's not ideal, and that you should have different entry points.

You should also have it concentrated in various neighborhoods to ensure that the makeup of the people in these programs actually is closer to the composition of the city.

Wasn't there a lawsuit at Harvard?

Because if Harvard had let in students strictly by the test scores, it would be about 50% Asian.

The Asians do it very well.

And they can't do it that way.

I mean, they have been sued.

That was real racism in a way.

Can't have too many Asians, right.

And that certainly was what

Harvard was saying.

We have a quarter.

We have to find a way not to have so many Asians

who actually do better on the test.

And it sounds just like what they said about Jewish people in the past.

And if you confront people like that with that very simple fact, there's this thing people do.

They look over your shoulder, it's always over your shoulder, with this dreamy look in their eyes, and they say, oh, it's complicated.

And then they start talking about succession or something.

They don't want you to think about the issue.

Unfortunately, it's the exact same thing.

We must confront these people about that.

Right.

All right.

Well, listen, because...

I so enjoy your book that has woke in the title, I was looking for any way in the show to bring woke in, so I'm reading this article about woke horror.

It's Halloween time, by the way, my favorite time here.

I love the Halloween time.

And apparently, Halloween kills.

Oh, thank God, our beloved town industry of making movies is doing well.

This was killing at the box office, Halloween kills.

And apparently, it has some things in it that are kind of woke.

And since the movie Get Out was a big hit, it kind of set the bar that you have to, you can't just horrify.

It has to be kind of woke and horrifying.

So we got a hold of some of the new titles coming out.

Would you like to see them?

Because, boy, I'm telling you, there is some.

Oh,

man,

some of these horror movies are so woke.

Like, there's Invasion of the Body Chambers is coming out.

That's

I know what you tweeted last summer.

Yes, that's gonna be it.

Bride of Chucky is paid less than Chucky.

The hills have privilege.

That's going to be a good one.

Dracula has risen through the old boys' network.

Henry, portrait of a serial kidder.

Exactly.

The invisible man splayer.

Oh, that's.

Freddie Misgenders Jason.

And of course, the Texas chainsaw microaggression.

All right.

Well, what a great.

What a great segue now that we've established the woke topic to talk about what has been going on this week that everybody is talking about.

Dave Chappelle's special, the reaction, Netflix, and the trans community.

Now, if we establish right here at the beginning that all three of us are supporters of all laws that protect trans people, that we believe in all the dignity, equality, and respect that can be afforded to trans people, can we have an honest, free discussion about this?

Many people don't think so.

Right.

Many people.

That's what bothers me to begin with.

just, this is what I call the one true opinion.

Very apropos of your religion theme, John, there is the one true opinion, and there isn't.

There isn't just one true opinion.

I'm a free speech guy.

Now, I'm Team Dave, but that doesn't mean I'm anti-trans.

We can have two thoughts in our head at the same time.

Am I right about that?

I hope.

But there's only one truth.

There's a certain kind of person who, and the book that I wrote, I have to mention it explicitly once, it's called Woke Racism.

The book that I

didn't I mentioned?

Yes, you did, I did.

But I have to say it too over my publication.

It's fantastic.

Right.

Thank you very much.

But what a certain kind of person thinks is that what we must hold front and center is battling or striking battle poses against power differentials.

And that must center everything that we do intellectually, artistically, morally.

That is the main thing.

There might be some other things.

You can barbecue now and then, but that is the center.

center.

And if you're not doing that, you're not just somebody who's annoying, you're a moral pervert, and you must be defenestrated and chased out of the public square.

They don't put it in those words, but unfortunately, that's what they mean.

That's what we're up against.

And so that's why there's some people who think that there's one truth.

They think they have found the final solution.

They think they are Kant.

They aren't.

Kant, the philosopher.

See, I dropped some philosophers.

Want to confuse anybody out there and get us in bigger trouble than we always are?

Immanuel Kant, K-A-N-T, the philosopher.

And he was a bitch, that guy.

Let me tell you.

I'm going to lose my job.

No, you're not.

I'm going to lose mine.

Well, we're all going to lose our job.

Okay.

But as a professor, though, of language,

here's what I thought I would get you on, even though that's that's going to be the subject of my editorial next week, because it's, I think, a much bigger subject than just this, but this gets at it.

Words have meaning,

but not anymore.

And when I hear transphobic, phobic has a meaning, fear.

I'm not transphobic if I merely disagree with you.

It's not hate.

I mean, here's what one of the reactions from someone who worked at Netflix said, this is not an argument with two sides.

Well, right away you lost me.

It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don't want us to be.

Well that's just ridiculous.

Dave Chappelle does not want you to not be alive.

Amen.

It's just

and

you know you're not automatically right if you're trans.

You're completely equal.

You're just not automatically right.

And it doesn't behoove everybody to get their mind around very new changes.

I mean

we were boy and girl for a very long time.

It's only been 10 years since how long have we had gay marriage?

You know, I mean talking about the Democratic voter, I'm sure there's a guy in Ohio going, I just got on board with gay marriage.

Could you give me a minute?

This idea that we're not we're not any gender when we're born is very new and very radical, that you're born is just jump ball.

But if you have have a penis, it could mean you're a boy, but that's a, I mean, that's a very new idea, and I'm not sure I'm down with all of it, and I don't have to be.

But Dave wasn't battling power differentials.

He wasn't immediately on board, and that person from Ohio needs to do some learning and some adjustments.

Yes.

But that means that you are a heretic and you have to be pushed out a window because you are not battling the power differentials.

And what you see is that this is, there's one thing this is.

These people, people who do this about about race, who do this about trans, who do this about anything, think of themselves as ahead of the curve.

They think of themselves as indicating some sort of higher wisdom.

Really, it's a very simple way of looking at things.

People like this, no matter what they're arguing on the basis of, are telling us the way you would have thought of it when you were five years old is the proper way to think of it.

That doesn't work.

Never will.

Bill.

You've been a comedian.

Being a comedian seems like a really, really tough job.

I think we can agree that a comedian's primary role is to entertain, and it's sometimes to make us think.

But no one thinks it's a comedian's role to tell us how to think or what to think, and attributing that role to Dave or any other comedian doesn't serve art, the artist, or society at all.

Well,

I mean, I was going to read some of these reviews.

I'm just going to read this one from NPR.

Because the reviews from the critics, so at variance with the audience.

Rotten tomatoes, that's an amalgam of reviews.

I think in this case, seven.

His special got a 43%.

Audience, 95%.

Says a lot about the differentiation between real people and the...

We're seeing this again and again.

Defund the police says and oh, so sophisticated person.

And a person living in a dangerous neighborhood doesn't want it.

And there are more of them than there are of the people, you know, wearing t-shirts saying defund the police.

Or Latinx.

I don't have any problem with Latinx, but it doesn't seem to be making any inroads into the communities where most Latinx people live.

And so you have this sort of educated dialect way of thinking.

And that's the case here, where all of these people, I think, to get back to this simplicity idea, they see that Dave Chappelle is a comedian.

There are layers of wit and irony and attitude going on.

And instead, we're told to just read it as if it was the three bears.

And we're being told that that's sophisticated.

When really that means that these people who are

so annoyed that anybody says some words or expresses some ideas are saying that most of America aren't sophisticated.

And yet, last time I checked, they were arguing on the basis of disempowered people.

Or that there's a connection, that because you don't agree with what he said, which again, I don't think is transphobic, a lot of the special is about how he has this friendship with a trans person who is his opening act.

But that it's going to lead to violence.

Now, there has been an uptick in violence, as there was with Asian Americans in the last couple of years.

Of course, we condemn this.

Of course, we should do everything we can to stop it.

But I don't think Dave Chappelle's special has anything to do with it.

No.

Now, let me read the NPR.

NPR said, it sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his homophobia and transphobia.

Wait, now Dave Chappelle can have white privilege?

I'm really confused now.

Could someone explain that to me?

Because I, what, John, what,

where does this insanity come from?

Where does the special, what I, I've done three editorials on white loathing.

It's like a kink.

white people needing to hate themselves.

It's like the guy who likes to be whipped and told he's a worm by some woman with a

high heel in his neck, isn't it?

I mean, it's just...

It's Dave Chappelle as an Oreo cookie is such a...

Is that what they're saying?

It's such

a

basically,

where this goes is that there is a religion.

And some people tell me I shouldn't call it that, but you know what?

It's a religion.

And the religion is one in which you are supposed to show that you know what racism is.

In this religion, there is an original sin.

There's white privilege.

And you can never get past it.

Even if you are living in a bucket and miserable and have one leg, you still are privileged if you are a white person.

And your job is just to sit in the bathtub and examine yourself for your white privilege until one day you drop dead.

It's original sin.

Look forward to that.

And all of that helps me, you know.

And so so that's what this is.

It's a religious matter that means that things don't always have to make sense.

And so Dave Chappelle has white privilege because he says some things that make some people aware of it.

I also think it's amazing what was lost in this as I read the reports of the last two days about this big walkout at Netflix of the trans workers there.

And nobody mentioned, wow.

Apparently Netflix has a lot of trans people working there.

Enough for a giant walkout.

Isn't that a story in itself?

You know, doesn't that say that this company is pretty enlightened to begin with?

I mean, sometimes you can ask for too much, even if you're a minority.

Crazy thought talk, I know.

It's just window dressing.

Okay.

So, um,

third party, before we run out of time, I have to, why do you want to start a third party?

They've never worked.

Uh Trump and Biden now are at 40-40 in the polls.

So you want to really be Ralph Nader, who throws the election to Donald Trump?

First, let me say I'm focused on what's already working in some parts of the country.

What do I mean?

Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican senator who voted to impeach Donald Trump, who's also up for re-election in 2022.

Her approval rating among Alaskan Republicans now stands at 6%.

That's why so few Republicans are willing to stand up and disagree with Trump.

But Alaska last year changed its process from party primaries, where Senator Murkowski would be subject just to the 10 to 20% most partisan voters in Alaska who would be Republican in this case to open primaries and ranked choice voting which allows the senator to appeal to 50.1 percent of the general public.

But short of that you wouldn't have a third party.

Well, so if the plan is to try and line up our legislators' incentives with us as opposed to the 10 to 20 percent most extreme partisans that right now control the agenda and are leading both polarization to rise and also for compromise to be completely anathema in Congress, you have to make this happen at a a state-by-state level in red, purple, and blue states.

And you can't do that as a member of a current party.

Well, just let me show you.

I have a picture from 2004 of Michael Moore and myself.

We were begging Ralph Nader not to run and throw the election to George W.

Bush.

I just don't want to have to get on my knees and do that for you with Michael Moore.

Well, Bill, first, I'm focused on 2022, because that's where the action is.

That's where we have to do as much work as possible.

But we are at a point in American life where 62% of Americans do want an alternative to the duopoly.

And you say that.

And your argument that you made just a couple weeks ago shows just how subject to authoritarianism our two-party system is because if one party succumbs to bad leadership, there's no safeguard.

It's terrible design.

Our founding fathers would be shocked and horrified that we're dealing with this.

If you look around the world, the UK, five parties, Germany, seven parties, Sweden,

and if you had that system, maybe one party lost its mind, it wouldn't be an existential threat because you'd have to get three other parties.

But we have to change the system to run in that system.

And that is the mission.

We have to actually switch, go back,

and rag to our voting as quickly as possible.

Thank you, guys.

You're a great panel, but it's time for New Rolls, everybody.

New Rolls.

New Roll, if the new Delta variant Delta Plus means we all have to go back into lockdown again, FedEx has to merge with XLACs and become FedExLax.

For when you're so lonely, getting a package makes you shit yourself.

New rule, craft deluxe macaroni and cheese should really be called less terrible craft dinner.

With the velvety, creamy goodness that says, my student loans came in.

Look for it in the box that's just like tampons.

Neural, now that Kanye West has taken to wearing this mask at the airport, someone has to take him aside and explain the purpose of a disguise is to make fewer people look at you.

You don't look like Joe nobody.

You look like Trump before he goes into hair and makeup.

Neural, stop asking me if I want to donate to a charity every time I check out at your store.

I just want to get in and get out of the pets mark without you glaring at me for pressing not today next to the sad puppy.

Thanks, but if I want to help save the puppies, I'll donate to PETA, not the superstore that sells shock collars in Isle 12.

New Rule, now that Chipotle is making cosmetics, including a 12-color eyeshadow palette inspired by rice, guacamole, and salsa, they have to lean into their reputation with the slogan, Chipotle Cosmetics.

Now your face can also have the runs.

And finally, New Rural Americans must answer the question posed on Twitter last week by Representative

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Should America have a national divorce?

Now, I don't think Marjorie Taylor Greene should really be a representative at all.

She's the house you tell your kids to avoid on Halloween.

But her question does represent.

the thinking of a lot of Americans on both sides.

Ben Shapiro floated the idea that our best hope now is a friendly separation of states.

66% of Republicans in the South say they would support secession to join a new Confederacy.

41% of Biden voters want to secede.

I mentioned this in this space in our last editorial, in our last show, about how Trump is right now behind the scenes, spending every waking moment making the changes needed to really steal the election next time, because it's either that or trying to win voters with ideas.

Crazy.

But a lot of people hit me up after that editorial and said, you know what?

You scared the shit out of me.

Good.

Because now the question they're asking is, what can we do about this slow-moving coup?

Great question.

And here's the answer many will not like.

If we want to halt this descent into civil war, we have to stop hating each other.

And the reason I say that many won't like that answer is because the act of hating people you don't exactly agree with has become so ingrained, so routine for so many people, I think if they stopped, they'd miss it.

It's become so normalized now, we don't even notice how often someone online is wishing someone dead.

Anyone we disagree with about anything is evil incarnate, and every argument goes from zero to homicide.

It doesn't even have to be about anything important or consequential.

You insulted gossip girl, prepare to die.

There's a moment in my stand-up act these days where I ask the audience rhetorically, what should happen to all of the people who enabled Trump when he was in office?

And about half the time, someone shouts out, kill them or hang them.

You know, besides the fact that wishing people dead is a terrible place for your mind to be, if you're wishing them dead, you can be sure they're wishing you dead.

You want a real war, liberals?

Really?

You think you're going to win the I Want You Dead war?

You're not.

You're going to lose.

They have way more guns and they know how to use them.

And with all due respect, no one can do hate like a right-wing conservative.

This past Saturday, I was in the great city of Pittsburgh, PA, and the man who drove me in from the airport was from Bosnia.

He was there in Sarajevo in 1984 when they had the Olympics.

And he left sometime after that city became a war-torn hellscape.

And he said to me, What I am seeing happening here now is exactly what I saw in Bosnia.

Next-door neighbors who despise each other.

He was telling me that hate on this level can only be sustained for so long before becoming actual war.

Last year, a warehouse blew up in Beirut, Lebanon.

Everyone agreed it was an accident.

But last week, there was a march calling for the removal of the judge investigating the incident.

And it turned into a street fight with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Over that most emotional of all issues, warehouse safety.

Because when people despise each other, it doesn't matter what the issues are.

When someone hates you, they don't hear what you're saying, let alone want to work with you on an issue.

Today's Republicans don't have issues.

Oh, they have issues.

Just not like the ones they used to have.

Balanced budget.

They care about that about as much as they care about the new season of RuPaul's drag race.

Owning the libs is the only issue.

Obamacare wasn't a horrible or radical policy.

It was desperately needed by many of the people who fought it.

But it came from the people they hated.

Democrats keep thinking they can win over voters who hate them with better policies.

You're dreaming.

Democrats are always asking, why do Republicans vote against their economic interests?

Because they hate you.

Comedians know this syndrome very well.

You can have an act that kills in a good way.

But if you insult the audience, if you make them hate you, dead silence.

They will not give you that laughter.

And if they don't laugh, it's not comedy.

It's alternative comedy.

So, how do we stop Trump and the coup?

Take it down a notch.

Can we start with that?

Is that really so hard?

I know, I know it would be easier if everyone bad would just die.

But that's not a plan and they're not going to.

It's up to all of us, right, left, and center, to fix this by de-escalating.

So here's everybody's first assignment.

Captain Kirk was blasted into space last week.

And yes, you could use that to make a point about how we need to tax the super rich more, or how we still have problems on Earth, or toxic masculinity.

Yeah, you could, but how about this?

Don't.

Just enjoy it.

Just enjoy it that William Shatner, national treasure, spirit animal to virgins.

And I assume reverse mortgage salesman,

went for a rocket ride and came back.

Not everything has to be political.

You want to heal America?

Shut the fuck up for a while.

Facebook went down for six hours a couple of weeks ago.

We need to make that happen more.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Lyric Theater in Baltimore tomorrow at the Hulu Theater in New York City, November 13th, at the Hershey Theater in Hershey, November 14th.

Thank you very much, folks.

Thanks to you, Andrew Yang, John McWhater, and Saro Jaya Robin.

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.