Ep. #558: Annabelle Gurwitch, Scott Galloway, Larry Wilmore

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

How are you?

Ah, look,

we're coming near the end of the terrible corona period.

I feel it.

I feel it.

Thank you.

Yes.

I could see.

I always

say I know why you're happy, but I feel the actual happiness to that.

I do.

Yeah, I know.

Because, well,

President Biden made a speech last night.

Did you watch his speech?

He said, by May 1st, vaccines, everybody, and he says July 4th, we look like we'll be back, hopefully, to normalcy.

Wow.

Yes.

I mean,

it's been a while.

And also looks like the schools will begin reopening.

I know that means a lot to a lot of people.

Yeah.

Teachers around the country are already practicing crying in their car in the morning.

And also they passed the big relief bill, stimulus checks.

This guy needs it tomorrow.

You know, they're going out like

stimulate checks are going out.

It's like reparations for being stuck with your family.

That's what I feel.

All the Republicans, every single one of them, voted against it.

The House,

and the Senate, every one of them.

And of course, now that there's benefits, they're already taking credit for the benefits that are coming.

They're like that guy in the office who forgets your birthday and then somebody gives you a gift and he goes, that's from all of us.

Also, this week, we finally got some clarity on the most pressing issue of our time.

Did Megan make Kate cry, or did Kate make Megan cry?

Tell me now, so I know who we're not talking to at lunch.

I never understood this fixation with the royal family, but boy, this week you're all talking about it.

You can't avoid it.

Oprah did a big interview with Harry and Megan on CBS,

which makes sense because when I turned it on, boy, did I see BS.

Well,

you can hate the racism, but not love them for everything else.

I mean, Megan did claim that before dating Harry, she never Googled him, and she said she didn't know much about the royal family.

Yeah, on the first three dates, she thought it was Ed Sheeran.

That's how much she didn't.

Come on.

Just don't lie to me.

You know,

come on, Megan.

You filmed your television show for years in Toronto.

Every time you bought a moccaccino, you used coins with your mother-in-law's face on it.

I think.

But of course, the big bombshell, not that it's not a big bombshell, that there was horrible racism.

It is terrible in the royal family, and I'm sure it was very painful.

And members of the royal hierarchy, she said, were actually asking her, you know, when she was pregnant, how dark the baby's skin would be.

And the queen said it problematic.

She said, this is why we've always discouraged sex outside the family.

So,

who else is on the shit list this week?

Oh,

Biden's dog,

major, yeah,

major fuck-up.

He's back in Delaware.

He's like, Melania left.

She spent the first six months in New York.

It's a common thing now.

But Biden's dog bit somebody, and the Secret Service says this is the first biting incident they can remember, although they did once have to pull Lindsey Graham off Trump's leg.

That's.

No,

I say it with love.

But I'm so glad you're in a good mood.

This is our coronaversary.

It was almost exactly a year ago that we did our last show here, and you all remember what happened then.

And so we have a lot of interesting stats now about what happened during the last year.

People's weight is up, drinking more, mental health issues, and less sex.

A condition previously known as marriage.

You know, I kid.

Oh, I joke about this.

Also, this, I thought.

I thought that this was interesting also.

Men have developed an inflated sense of how often stepmoms have sex with their stepsons

I think pornhub fans know what that means

but it is amazing when you think about it in just 12 months COVID went around the world touching everyone like Andrew Cuomo

oh he's

He just he's in big trouble.

He's in big trouble last week.

It's one of those stories every week the numbers go up now.

It's six women and it's starting starting to look like the only way we're going to be able to stop him is herd immunity.

The latest is that apparently he called an aide to help.

This is his way of making out with the ladies.

Called an aide to help come into his office privately to help with his cell phone.

This is the second accuser who says that that was, you know, help with my cell phone was the ruse.

Because nothing makes women hotter than an older guy who can't figure out his phone.

Stop it, Governor.

Governor, stop it.

I'm so wet, you're going to have to put me in rice.

All right, we got a great show.

Larry Wilborne and Scott Galloway are here.

And first up, she is a New York Times best-selling author whose latest book is You're Leaving When?

Adventures in Downward Mobility.

He also hosts a new podcast called Tiny Victories.

My friend Annabel Gerwich.

There she is.

Hello.

You look.

You look fantastic.

Thank you.

You look like the day we met on the audition for pizza, man.

And yes, we are both like, you're one of the last boomers, right?

That's your generation.

I really relate to being a, they call us like cusp people.

We're on the cusp between Gen X and boomers.

Boomers have a really different experience than people born in the same year as me.

Do you remember Bonanza?

Barely, Bill.

That's the difference.

That's a big, big difference.

Okay, you got me there.

It was a great show.

That's the cutoff.

That's the cutoff.

But I feel like, you know, people our age are, you know, you're obviously making a point of being younger.

But around our age, I mean, you find out at a certain point that all the sadness and badness in life, not all, I mean, I had shitty times when I was young, that's true, but a lot of it, the real bad stuff, is kind of backloaded toward getting older.

Yes.

You know, you don't look better.

You know, people have less use for you.

This is a country that is shitty to older people.

Look, in my book, I call us the never-tirement generation.

We are never retiring.

No one I know thinks they're going to retire.

We also are not allowed to get tired because we are all working several jobs.

We're all in the gig economy.

Right.

Yes, it's like it's one thing to be in your 20s.

I mean, we all had the shitty apartment.

Right.

You know, with the roaches when you woke up on your face and

eating blimpies.

But when you're in your 20s, you don't give a shit.

And that shit doesn't hurt you.

You can eat blimpies every day, like I did.

But when you're older, you want comfort.

That's the key thing.

And this this is what your book is about.

That's what downward mobility is.

We really fuck the older people.

And not in a good way.

Not in a way that's enjoyable for everyone.

No.

There's not a, you know what?

There's no consent.

And there's no consent in that fucking

that we're getting.

That's right.

No, I mean, and you know, this book was written at a time when there were many destabilizing events in my life, right?

And there are events that have happened to

everyone.

Divorce always.

You got divorced.

My parents died.

Well, I was caretaking for my parents first, and that destabilizes people's economy, and that primarily affects women who are the caretakers.

Right.

Right.

So then, also, the biggest destabilizer of all, besides the fact that I'm now a freelancer, and you know, I've always said, oh my god, you know, if I don't die of a worse disease, you know, it'd just be like death by a thousand invoices.

It's so hard to be a freelancer without benefits.

That's the issue.

And that was the breaking point for me: was health care.

And this gig economy, people doing things.

I mean, I read in the book, it's hysterical.

I see so many movie scenes in this book.

But, you know, you became a landlady.

I did.

You became someone who took in homeless people.

Yes.

So, look.

Or people experiencing homelessness.

People experiencing homelessness.

And there is, yeah, Bill.

So, first of all,

I apologize and resign.

Yeah.

Just get it over.

Let me just tell you this.

So, you know, this thing, I decided that the best way for me to stop hemorrhaging funds, and the real destabilizer was losing my union health insurance and going out into the free market.

You know, and at the same time that happened to me, this time last year, March 2020, 5.4 million Americans lost their employer-sponsored health insurance.

Oh, sure, of course.

Hence, downward mobility, right?

So I became a landlady, started taking in people to help my rent.

And this helped with your, but the homeless people you took and they weren't helping with rent.

Well, that's not exactly true.

So what happened was I lost a tenant at the last minute, right?

And I heard about a program, which is a rapid rehousing program, which is actually going on in 11 cities around the country now,

where you take in people experiencing homelessness, young

people,

and you get a stipend, a small stipend.

I mean, no one's getting rich doing this.

You're not getting to the top 1%

by doing this.

Just

every bit helps.

You know, I thought it would be better than nothing.

And, you know, when I first heard that phrase, I just want to say unhoused or experiencing homelessness.

I thought, okay, is this the new PC thing?

But really, when you look at who is slipping in and out of homelessness in America, it really accurately describes this.

We're talking about teachers

living in their cars.

We're talking about young people, one out of four community college students have housing instability in the whole country.

So this is a condition and yeah and you became kind of close to these people.

I mean at first it seemed like obviously there's a lot of people.

I thought they were going to murder me.

Right.

I was worried they were going to murder me in my sleep.

But that's because I didn't understand who was housing insecure.

So, you know,

they're coming to my house, and I want to be nice and friendly, but I'm hiding my jewelry, my mother's silver in the closet.

And they get to my house, and they just start doing very suspicious things.

They start cooking salads, they start darning socks, they're reading, they're calling their mothers.

And

honestly, Bill, that blew my mind because I didn't imagine.

I had, you know,

they were normal people.

They were normal people.

People were.

And

in fact, I was so convinced that they were sketchy, you know, that I, at some point, I thought, okay, I'm going to put their names into a background search.

And I've never had any experience doing that, so I put my name in too.

And it turned out I was the person who was flagged.

I was the sketchy person in the house.

That's right, yes.

Yeah.

But why?

Why are you sketchy?

Well, because I had unpaid parking bills.

Because I was worried, I mean, this is what happens when you're worried about money.

You start delaying paying your bills.

I wasn't paying attention.

So I had more red flags than they did.

And, you know, the thing is, they had come to Los Angeles to be, you know, artists, right?

And I, I mean, in an entertainment business.

I have a problem with that right there.

I never encourage.

Not that I have a problem with people being artists.

I have a problem with everyone in America needing to be an artist.

Well, yes.

And this is why so many people...

Oh, look.

Oh my god.

Listen, I completely agree.

It's a

hard time.

That's maybe why you're homeless.

Well, no, and yet, and yet,

because, you know, I'm going to unpack this, though, because the thing is,

is that, you know, I thought, okay, first of all, it's a terrible idea to move to Los Angeles to work.

I always tell, don't do it, right?

So as I got to know them, I realized they had saved up money to move to here, almost the same amount as I had saved up, right?

They had done that working in factories.

They had worked menial labor jobs.

Me?

I moved here.

I cashed in stocks I got from my bot mitzvah.

I mean, who is more hardworking, you know?

And then when you look at the difference between what they were facing and what I was facing, right?

I got an apartment for $750 when I moved here.

The same apartment in the same zip code is $2,400 now.

Now, I got a job in a restaurant, right?

What year did you move here?

In 1989.

See, I moved here in 83, and mine was 350.

Wow.

In Boys Town, and it was heaven.

I moved from New York, where I had a bus outside my window every day, and now I had a fucking bird.

I arrived in paradise.

It's all relative.

It is.

Well, but see, now even that's a difference.

That's an age difference, Ross.

But so, look, now, the thing is, if wages had kept pace with housing costs, that would be different.

But so, I got a job in a restaurant when I moved out here.

now that's you can't get those jobs now that job was even though it's not terribly high paid you had shifts you had something dependable you can't count on the money that you're making if you're working for a food delivery app and the bigger issue is you can't expand your social network right if you're if you're like delivering sandwiches from the back of your kia now you're not meeting people who will help you later in your career you know and that's what you do when you're working when when we were starting out.

All right, so your thing is called

in 30 seconds, give me...

Yes.

I love this idea you have for small victories, because I do feel that way.

I mean, maybe it is an age thing, like, oh, I found a roach in my pocket that I didn't know was there.

I'm not even going to smoke it because I got even better stuff at home.

But just the fact that I found it,

that's what I think of when I think of small, and that's your thing, right?

That's the thing.

It's tiny victories, it's a podcast.

I started it after my cat got a podcast.

I'm like, well, I guess I have to too.

Right.

So,

you know, during, I launched this during COVID, and what I felt like was so many big pleasures had been stripped away from everyone.

We just had small mercies.

Right.

So I thought, okay, well, I'll do a show where we celebrate small mercies.

And the whole thing is, I wanted to do a podcast that was the same length as my attention span.

So it's a 15-minute long weekly podcast.

All right.

You're always a pleasure.

So glad I know you.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Annabel Gerwitz, ladies and gentlemen.

That book is funny.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey!

All right, here they are.

He's co-creator of HBO's Insecure and executive producer of the Netflix docuseries, Amend the Fight for America.

Larry Wilmore, my pal, is over here.

Hi, everybody.

Good to see you, Bill.

Good to see you.

Maybe the Mets this year again?

I know.

Yeah, all right, I'll have to pay this time.

He's a professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and author of Post-Corona from Crisis to Opportunity, Scott Galloway.

How are you, Scott?

All right.

So

it is the coronaversary.

It was a year ago, minus two days, where we did our last show here, and

boy, that ended quick.

Biden said, I mean, the whole thing, I mean, I thought I was going to come back next week.

We had a panel book.

May 1st, everybody get a shot.

July 4th, Biden says, Independence Day.

You get it?

We're going to be kind of independent.

So I've been leading, reading, you know, it's the year everybody's writing recaps of this kind of stuff.

The stat I have to start with that I thought was most amazing.

Jeff Bezos

lost $38 million in his divorce, $38 billion in his divorce, and he made it all back in a month.

He made $35 billion in one month.

What does this tell us about America, gentlemen?

It's worse than that.

We've had one individual add the GDP of Hungary to his net worth since the first virus, and that's Elon Musk, just in time for him to peace out and move to Texas so he doesn't have to pay taxes.

We've seen billionaires go from $1.9 trillion in wealth to $4 trillion.

The dirty secret of this pandemic is that the top 10 percent, much less the top 1 percent, are living their best lives.

A virus is,

I mean, we see a lot of the, we actually see places that went out of business, like

some of my favorite restaurants, I drive by and I want to cry because they've been there for a long time.

Ago's gone, it was there forever.

But the people who did,

if you're in the, sit on your ass, look at a screen business, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, right?

They made,

they're now worth 21%

of the whole economy.

We talk about the SP 500, it's the S P 7.

There's now seven companies that have 51 percent of the market cap.

Amazon, since March has added more market capitalization than all of European retail.

We have effectively four companies that are so dominant, there's more, we've been overrun.

There's more

lobbyists, full-time lobbyists in Washington working for Amazon than there are U.S.

senators.

There's more people working in PR and comms at Facebook manicuring in Mark and Cheryl's image than there are journalists at the Washington Post.

We are so beyond any sense of balance in our economy.

The ecosystem is out of control.

We absolutely need to break these companies up.

Yeah, it's almost like we're...

Don't want to step on that, Bill.

I'm old school, Bill.

I'm not stepping on the planet.

No, no.

It's almost like the way that you said that, Bill, it sounded nefarious, almost like they'd planned it or something, you know.

Not that they did, of course, but

they took advantage of it.

But they took advantage of it.

There's almost like an inevitability of this kind of progress, let's call it, you know, where how all that money just starts flowing in these

same directions, you know, no matter what happens to the economy, it all keeps flowing that way.

But can I ask this one question?

When I read this about the Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, 21%, I mean, it was written, I forget where I read it, maybe you.

It was written like, oh my God, 21% in the economy four companies.

And I was like, is that so bad?

I would have thought it was 80,

quite frankly, if I hadn't read that.

I mean, the biggest four companies who really, I mean, this is what's propping up America as the rest of us goes to shit.

Is that such a big thing that those, the four biggest companies are one-fifth of the economy?

Depends on the world of the world.

I'm not that alarmed at that.

Do we want one company deciding 93% of the time when we type in overthrow government, whether you get instructions on how to build a dirty bomb or voter registration, should one company control those decisions 93% of the time?

Should one person control the algorithms that decide the content that the Southern Hemisphere plus India receive?

Should one company effectively control 97% of all increase in value of all retail the third largest employer in America?

I know you think health care is next, right?

Don't you think that Walmart

and is it Amazon who are going to be battling to, of course, why wouldn't they want that?

They own everything else.

Where's all the money going, sick people?

If that's what America does best, make sick people.

Well, look, the fastest, the largest business in the world is U.S.

Healthcare.

It's 17% of GDP.

Its prices keep going up.

Its MPS keeps going down.

That spells, here comes Amazon.

But not only is it bad or morally corrupt for these companies that have so much power, it's dangerous.

The equivalent of the NASDAQ in Israel is down, not up.

They're vaccinating at seven times the rate.

When the most powerful, wealthiest people in the world are living their best lives, we don't show this virus the full-throated capitalist response we are capable of.

If Amazon's stock had declined 70%

instead of risen 70% in the last 10 months, when a van with a smile shows up in my driveway tomorrow morning,

someone would have jumped out in a lab coat and vaccinated us.

We are living our best lives.

This virus has not seen what the U.S.

is capable of because stop, stop, it hurts so good if you're the shareholder class.

But the other point is though.

Every time you want to talk, this guy's getting applause, as usual.

I said everything I wanted to say and his applause break.

You guys missed it.

No, but the other side of it is they're providing a service that people like.

Exactly.

You know, I mean, during the pandemic, you wanted things delivered to you, you know.

So

that's what I mean, the confluence of them being there there at exactly the right time with exactly the right service

was very convenient.

And so I know so many people that have signed up for Amazon Prime over the last five years because

all of the things that they say come with it.

And Amazon is, it is amazing the type of company that Amazon is and how they have positioned themselves to literally Pac-Man every company, every type of industry that is out there.

It really is, but I don't think we've seen anything like that type of company.

No.

And that's, remember, he cornered the diaper market?

Yeah.

He lost like $100 million just, but I don't care.

I want diapers too.

Right.

Something wrong with that guy.

Anyway,

but it's not his bank account.

People are.

But you said living our best lives.

I mean, you have kids, right?

Yes, absolutely.

They're older now.

Older like...

They're like 50.

No, no, they're not 50.

No, but they're probably

on screens more than we are.

Oh, completely.

Well, that's their lives.

Well, that's what I worry about.

Like, as all these screen companies start doing better, I mean, we know it's an addiction already, especially for the younger generation.

But living your best life virtually seems to be what they care more about than reality.

And I feel like that's something the pandemic made worse.

It's more important to look good as you're living on the Instagram picture than you actually are.

Oh, I got one.

Hey!

I mean,

there's always a trade-off, you know.

Some people whose lives maybe they feel maybe their life is kind of shitty, they can represent a little better for themselves.

You know, sometimes people can reach out to people and have more opportunities for connections with people, whereas maybe in their real life they wouldn't have those connections, like the way Annabelle was saying, the type of job they have may not allow them to network the way that the digital life can allow them to network.

So there's pluses and minus with that type of thing.

Okay.

I think it's possible.

I'm not buying.

Is that your kid talking to you?

No, no, it's true.

That's about the way that the world is evolving.

Look, we're just coming to the realization that Facebook is not going to take care of us when we're older or concerned with the condition of our soul.

Teen suicide is skyrocketing because of concierge bulldozer parenting, where we've created this princess in the peace syndrome with our youth.

But we've also addicted them.

We've also addicted them to social media.

There's all this talk about movements among young people, whether it's GameStop or other IGIS movements.

Right, because they wouldn't take away the phone.

But you want a movement.

The parents, right?

You want a movement, acknowledge that the food industrial complex wants to make you fat and vulnerable to viruses.

If you want a movement, realize that every social media platform is trying to divide you and enrage you.

You want a movement,

Instagram is trying to make you feel worse about yourself.

You want a movement than rebel against addiction, divisiveness, and a lack of self-esteem.

And it means going after these companies and holding them accountable for the damage they are doing to the Commonwealth and to our kids.

You have kids, your world of work, your world of friends, your world of kids.

Something comes off the tracks of one of your kids, your whole world shrinks down to those kids.

And a lot of times in COVID, it's because the brain has been rewired because of these goddamn devices.

This guy's a walking applause break.

Tell us how you really feel.

But honestly,

you're a professor who's in a dressing room.

No, but honestly, you can go to any era.

Rock and roll was the double for white kids who were hearing black music.

Television was killing us off socially.

Every era, there's something, you know.

I mean,

but those things really didn't.

TV wasn't addictive like that.

I didn't have to watch Mikhail's Navy.

And

it was on once a week.

It was on once a week.

I'm going to go back to your thing.

You started with crony capitalism.

I mean, you didn't say those words, but that's really what we're talking about.

Okay.

Don't yell at me.

You'll get your applause break in a minute.

I feel a nice barfide break in a minute.

Jesus Christ.

I'm not defending it.

But I would defend capitalism.

I feel like there's a flirtation now on the left because people don't read history.

They don't know what happened before.

They just live by slogans.

And they don't understand

communism.

We tried it.

It wasn't that long ago, just too long ago, if you have that idea in your head, well, I wasn't alive for it, so I shouldn't know about it.

Well, maybe you should, because we did try it.

And it's, I would say, communism is worse than crony capitalism, even crony capitalism better than communism.

Would you agree with that, Professor?

Capitalism is hands down the best system of its kind.

When young people are seeing today, it's not capitalism.

We have rugged individualism on the way up, and then we have we're all in this together on the way down, and we have socialism.

Capitalism on the way up, where five CEOs of airline companies make $150 million, use all their excess cash flow to buy back stocks so they can artificially inflate their own compensation.

And then shit gets real and a pandemic comes and they don't have any money and all of a sudden we're in this together.

When you have capitalism on the way up and you have socialism on the way down, I'm not done yet.

And then you have socialism on the way down.

That's not capitalism or socialism.

It is cronyism.

It is the worst of all worlds.

Capitalism, capitalism is full-body contact violence at a corporate level so we can create prosperity and progress that rests on a bed of empathy.

We have flipped a script here.

We need to be more loving and empathetic with people and more harsh on companies.

Capitalism, we are protecting, we should be protecting people, not companies.

Fucking Delta, burn, baby, burn.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Bill, you got a ringer in here this thing.

I would like to make a prediction right now.

Before this show is over, sir, you will be the governor of New York State, I believe.

I second that prediction, sir.

They're looking for one and we know you got the speech ready.

Bill, I'll just say

my opinion on those things is sometimes we make too much out of definitions, you know, and these things can be debated philosophically and that sort of thing, but in the practical, like, for instance, capitalism isn't even in our Constitution.

That word isn't in the Constitution.

You know, but our country, since I would say Teddy Roosevelt, we've expanded what capitalism and the government's role in trade is.

And during the New Deal, we redefined the government's role with the person,

with Social Security.

The government can intervene directly with people.

And since then,

we've never had a pure form of capitalism for a good 150 years.

But it's always been expanding and redefining itself.

And now, with the payments, with the stimulus payments, once again, we're expanding the role of government and how people feel about that role of the government directly in people's lives.

Okay, but again, just to.

I got my own app.

Just see that, Bill?

I got my own applause.

Thank you, everybody.

Yeah, there you go.

I wish I was right next to you, I know.

Okay, but if I could just reset from where I was starting with, the communism part, this flirtation, and people not really.

Yes, gentlemen, I agree with everything that was said to great applause.

Our capitalism has super big problems.

But communism, we did have this experiment for 70 years.

It's not just bad, it's super bad.

Nobody killed more people than communist leaders.

You know, people wear t-shirts with Castro and Che Guevere.

Not good guys.

Paul Pot, not a good guy.

Stalin.

They killed millions and millions of people, and even the people who lived were living horrible lives because it doesn't work, because it's against human nature.

You have to harness what is, you have to graft institutions on what is real about people.

And what is real about people?

Selfishness.

Absolutely.

We're all selfish.

That's not something to apologize for when we have excesses.

Yes, of course.

But to think we can make the river flow in the opposite direction, we tried it, it didn't work.

Let's reform capitalism and not go to Mars, make Earth work.

My other companion please to that.

Gordon Gecko said greed is good.

I mean, Gordon Gecko.

I just, I want to talk about this just for one second.

This thing bothered me a lot.

There was an ad in, or is it tweet?

I guess both.

Burger King was trying to be funny in an ad, and I think they were funny.

They were talking about a program they have to increase the number of women chefs.

There aren't a comparative number of women chefs in the world.

Maybe they should get more opportunities.

Maybe there's a reason why they don't, and we should address that.

That's what they were trying to say.

So they had an ad, women belong in the kitchen.

Oh, wow, I didn't see it.

And of course, you know, the shit hit the fan.

They're usual suspects.

And I just want to say, this is what's wrong with us.

It's like, if you don't get the joke here,

then you're stupid.

You don't get subtlety, you don't get humor, you don't get perspective.

And if you do, and you're pretending that you don't, just so you can have something to be pissed off at, then you're both ways you're gross.

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to have to call a foul on that play.

I don't think this is a joke that's as good as you're saying that it is.

No, it's an ad.

It's not a monologue joke.

Not my colleague.

No, no, no, I know what you mean, but...

I mean, I hadn't seen that.

If I just saw that, I'm like, what the fuck is Burger King doing?

But then you would read it, and that's the point.

It got your attention.

That's what advertising.

I probably did NYU, I think, has the right take on this, and that gestures should be taken with the intent that they're given.

And this was meant to highlight sexism.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, what we have, and my industry is guilty of this, we've created an industrial shaming culture where there's money.

in dunking on people and saying, making a caricature of comments and then using that to extract to an ugly place so you can get virtue points.

Because the moment you're offended on our country, it means you're right.

And where we have failed at universities is we need to be graduating not woesters, but warriors.

And that is people who are.

Here, Doc.

I'm giving you an applause now.

And we need to look at those ads.

And we need to look at those ads and say, does that humor work?

Why didn't it work?

And have a thoughtful conversation and move on, but not this industrial dunking complex world.

Well, here at Real Time, we thought it did work.

We thought it worked so well that we created some other ones for other companies in the same style.

Would you like to see them?

These are just, yeah, we're just

look,

it gets people's attention, so we thought other companies could use, for example, Oscar Meyer could have nothing says summer like putting a wiener in your bun.

It's provocative, it gets you thinking about it.

Hooters, when you're here, you're looking at tits.

Funny because it's true.

Grape nuts, we have ways of making you shit.

The army, it's not murder if the people you kill are foreign.

Six flags, our roller coasters are great for women with kids and pregnant ladies who don't want want them.

American Airlines, let's get this straight.

You don't like us and we don't like you.

Pfizer, we vaccinated grandpa and made his dick harder.

You're welcome.

We're sorry.

Amen.

I'm in.

And of course, the Republican Party.

No, seriously, a woman's place really is in the kitchen.

All right, so

I do have

breaking news because we always tape Friday.

Now, we used to be exactly live at 7.

Now we're a few hours earlier because of the virus.

I don't understand exactly why that is, but I go along.

Just happy to be here.

Breaking news.

Breaking news of Friday afternoon.

Schumer now and Gillibrand, the two senators from New York, are asking Andrew Cuomo to resign.

We talked about this last week, but it is keep changing.

I said it last week.

For me, these cases are always case by case, but I find all these women credible.

And I just, you know, obviously if he was head of any corporation,

he would be gone.

His argument seems now to be, can we just have the investigation first?

And I think there is merit to that.

It seems like we are in this old West mentality of, you know, just we heard something, let's hang them.

Right.

And can we just, is that wrong, putting aside what he did, can we have the investigation first?

Well, you can if you want to figure out what the criminal liability is, but part of this is a political argument.

What's the right thing to do?

Right.

You know, there's always like the moral argument, political argument, legal argument.

You know, for legal purposes, yeah, stick it out as long as you want, you know, see what happens.

Politically, is it the right thing to do?

I'm not so sure.

You think Trump

being the guy who never backed down changed this dynamic?

People saw that and it was sort of popular.

You do.

Change the dynamic for one party because,

first off, let me acknowledge

We've never, I don't think, I'll say as a 6'2-white male, I've never had to endure the bullshit that women have endured at work for a long time.

Let me just put that out there.

But at the same time, this triggers me because women and people of color lost one of the most powerful advocates when Kristen Gillibrand decided to disappear Al Franken so she could have a seven-minute run for president.

And we're in the midst of a pile on money.

And here's the reality.

He's out.

Voters get to decide in 18 months.

The majority of

49% of white people, 63% of non-whites believe he should not resign.

We as Democrats need to be the party of women, but we also need to be the party of due process.

We need to slow down, let these women be heard, and let due process incur here and not just pile on.

Well,

I think if we're going to be the party of women, too, we can't just blame a woman for Al Franken leaving.

Al Franken decided to do that himself.

She didn't make him leave.

That's right.

That's right.

She asked him to, but he didn't have to.

The supposed things that he did had nothing to do with while he was in the office of being a senator.

But you know that on the Senate floor, no Democrat would talk to him.

Oh, it's ridiculous.

But the thing that was ridiculous with Al Franken.

Really America.

Al Franken's, his transgressions happened in his private life, supposedly, you know, when he was taking pictures and these sorts of things.

You know, he could have stood up and said, look, you know, or whatever, you know, his defense was, I don't think you could have a Senate investigation over those things.

Cuomo is a little different.

These things happen while he's governing, you know, and while he's in office.

Those are sexual discrimination.

Yes,

one of them today sounds very Paula Jones.

Like, you know, he saw someone across the room and called her up the next day and said, hey, you look like someone who would be good to head up my waste management program.

You know,

no, I just meant a government office.

I mean,

there was no reason why he would want.

But they also say he's surrounded by a lot of 20-something women, which, you know, we should be hiring 20-something women, but

if it's not for the right reasons.

Yeah.

Governor Northam, another example like

we had recently, a guy who stuck it out in Virginia, if you don't remember.

Governor Northam was accused of what he blackface, right?

Right,

at a party in the 80s.

Apparently, there are all these blackface parties in the 80s that I was never invited to.

I never knew about it.

They made sure they had them in other places that we couldn't see.

Well, they made movies.

Remember that Soul Man movie?

Yeah.

I mean, they literally, you know.

Billy Kristen on Saturday Night Live.

He used to see Sammy Davis Jr.

all the time.

All the time.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, yes.

I mean, I think.

Different times.

Different times, yes.

And also a specific character.

Exactly.

So it wasn't like that granny blackface, you know, and that type of thing.

No, we lost all sense of nuance, as you were saying before.

But the point is, Governor Northam,

it was sort of a situation.

You heard so many of the leading Democrats at the time, you could go through it.

Bill Clinton, Hillary, they all said Governor Northam should quit.

Yeah, but

go ahead.

The difference was black people said, I ain't mad at you, whatever.

Because they said they liked the programs that he was implementing or that he was there to implement, and they wanted to see that process happen.

They wanted to see those things happen rather than roll the dice over just a couple of pictures that happened years ago.

And I say this all the time, but this is to me the shining shining example of what white privilege is, the ability to be impractical.

There you go.

The privilege to be impractical.

I think the woke people miss that all the time.

You have the luxury to be impractical about things, and this is a pattern we see often.

I mean, 69, then this is March 4th, so this is the dated.

But if we give everyone a time machine, they're now talking about Churchill's statue has to be protected, because he said some very racist things.

And the reality is the most non-racist thing of the 20th century was turning back Hitler.

And we're fond of taking a time machine and

taking today's conventions and norms.

And thank God, people should be held accountable.

But should we put away the time machine?

Because we'd like to travel back and apply today's norms and conventions.

to behavior 50 and 100 years ago.

And I just wonder if that's fair.

At some point, high schools will have JFK and Martin Luther King's names ripped off them because at some point their infidelity will be seen as misogynist.

And at what point do we decide that we need to be accountable?

People need to be held accountable, but we need to put away the time machine and learn from the past as opposed to trying to revisit it and shame people?

I just want Scott to make sure that he knows he's on the record for saying he won't use the time machine to kill baby Hitler.

That's all I'm saying.

I just want him to know he's on the record for saying with me, I'm You're with me?

No time machine, no killing baby Hitler.

Paradise.

No, I mean, there is, I see Turner Classics now has,

they are showing movies from the past that are problematic, which, by the way, is every single movie.

Yes.

Thank you.

If you look, if you're super woke every, I mean, even five years ago, I mean, I watched, especially in the pandemic, I watched a lot of movies probably I've seen before, Tangade Smoke Pots, but I didn't remember I saw them.

And I mean, they're just run-of-the-mill kind of movies.

There are things in it that you would not even.

And so, Turner Classics, they're going to have somebody come on before the movie to explain to you why you're a bad person for watching it, but we're going to show it.

And

why can't people look?

If Harrison Ford looks a lot younger than he does now, there's something in the movie you won't like.

Just go by that.

I don't need to, you don't have to walk me through it.

We seem to have lost all sense of subtlety and perspective, no?

Yeah, look,

There's a culture.

It feels like everyone has bifurcated and then the far left has decided that being the opposite of woke, I think we've created no room for moderates because essentially the far right has, in my opinion, embraced racism and bigotry and found that it has mobilized and weaponized the core base and now they've lost control of it.

Right.

And on the far left,

and on the far left, we have decided that the public has anointed us and said the most important thing you can do is be a self-appointed police force for cultural issues.

And at the same time, we have to find some ground in the middle to join hands and say, look, one out of five households with children is food insecure.

We got bigger fish to fry than trying to create, you know, trying to dunk on each other.

It's just, we totally lost the script.

Yes.

I think,

Bill, I'm with you on this one.

I don't want films like Gone with the Wind, Birth of a Nation, I don't want those to disappear.

Those to me are receipts.

It's like anytime somebody says they didn't act as a say, no, nigga, turn that on.

Turn that on.

Okay, watch that.

Why are those people acting like that?

Because that's how the world was back then.

I mean, it was 1939.

And then when you watch, you, I mean, you've watched through the ages, like you see, you know, I watched Colombo recently, a lot of the old Colombos.

Oh, no, not Colombo.

No, I know I'm not.

There's not one guest, leading guest star who's black.

But it's the 70s.

So black people are in like very supporting roles.

Right.

Hardly any.

You move into the 90s and you, you know, the first kiss, but the black people then are like the friend.

Yeah.

You know?

It's a major role, but not the leader.

You know, I mean,

and of course people are shit, but they get better.

That's my slogan.

You know?

That's all you can.

Sometimes, yes.

You don't think things are getting better?

Yeah, you said people get better.

Sometimes.

Some people get better.

Some people don't.

Some in general.

In general,

the arc moves.

Yes, but the arc moves after pushing, I believe, yes.

Got to push the arc.

Yes, exactly.

I just thought the arc's going to be.

I just want to be clear about that.

You know, these things happen because of the hard work that a lot of people put in to make them happen.

So quickly,

watching the, I just have to say about the Royal thing.

Oh, yeah.

Because

in January of last year,

right before the pandemic, we did an editorial about it because they had just announced they were stepping back.

And I said, why don't you two, just instead of just stepping back, why don't you just renounce the whole bullshit and

rock stock and barrel of it?

You know, just say this, what is this royal bullshit to begin with?

People calling each other Your Highness.

What could be less woke than that?

Where are the woke people on that one?

Your Highness?

How gross.

And then like the next day, show the headline.

I have a headline here that just shows you there.

See?

And then like the next day they did it.

And I thought, oh, well, they heard me.

No.

I see that they're just mad that their family was mean to them.

They don't want to renounce royalty.

And they still act kind of regal.

Yeah, it is interesting that that did come out that way.

And, you know, people were saying, well, did they say that about, you know, the baby and all that, about making sure they didn't want, you know, wanted to know how dark the baby was going to be.

And I'm like, 1,000%,

absolutely.

Right.

Not only did somebody said it, they were all thinking it.

They're the royal family.

It's not Bridgerton, you know.

It's not,

you know,

the tabloid press is going to cover this, not, you know, Lady Whistledown or whoever that is.

Yeah, white guys, the white guys'

hundred-year-old grandparents who travel to hunt stags and range rovers have a racial bias.

That's news.

Right.

And every,

also, you know, but I must say, for everyone who's like,

There's racial bias in the royal family.

There are other royal families in the world.

Americans only seem to be interested in the white one.

All right, I gotta go to New Rules, everybody.

New Rules.

Wait, did so much, America.

No,

no, it's okay.

It's all good.

All right, Neurol, now that Rudy Giuliani's daughter has written a piece about how she loves being the unicorn in Threesomes and it's made her a better person,

Rudy has to call a family meeting where he gets in drag, puts his hand down his pants, and drips dye down his face while screaming, He will not embarrass the Giuliani family.

Neurule, someone must tell me what's up, what lost gold.

There's lost Civil War gold, lost World War II gold, lost gold of the Incas.

Why are people always losing gold?

You don't do that with gold.

You do that with Acapulco gold.

Neural, in today's stressful times, it's more important than ever to focus on good news, like the heartwarming story out of Japan that 118-year-old Kana Tanaka will be a torchbearer in May for this summer's Olympic Games.

What a tribute to the human capacity to...

Never mind.

New rule, Americans must celebrate the one-year anniversary of COVID with a feast made up of the items in your pantry you bought in a panic at the beginning of the lockdown.

And then never touched.

And each year on March 11, this will become our traditional meal.

Sardines, a bag of black beans, Trader Joe's chili, spaghetti from a company you'd never heard of, and your failed attempt at sourdough bread.

New Roll, now that the city of Paris has erected a giant clitoris in front of the Eiffel Tower

to honor Women's Day.

Don't tell your boyfriend to meet you there

because there's a good chance he won't be able to find it.

And finally, new rule, you're not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are a silly people.

And Americans are a silly people.

That's the classic phrase from Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence tells his Bedouin allies that as long as they stay a bunch of squabbling tribes, they will remain a silly people.

Well, we're the silly people now.

Do you know who doesn't care that there's a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr.

Seuss book?

China.

All 1.4 billion of them could give a crouching tiger flying fuck

Because they're not a silly people.

If anything, they are as serious as a prison fight.

Look, we all know China does bad stuff.

They break promises about Hong Kong autonomy, they put Uyghurs in camps and punish dissent, and we don't want to be that.

But it's got to be something between an authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do and a representative government that can't do anything at all.

In two generations, China has built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals.

Oh, and they bought Africa.

Their new Silk Road initiative is the biggest infrastructure project in history, indebting not just that continent, but large parts of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to the people who built their roads, bridges, and ports.

If you want to go anywhere in the world these days, you better have a yen for travel.

Yen for travel.

Oh, stop it.

In China alone, they have 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail.

America has none.

Our fastest train is the train that goes around the zoo.

California wanted to build high-speed rail, connecting the entire state, but alas could not.

We're 6 billion in the hole just trying to finish the track connecting the vital hubs of Bakersfield and Merced.

One small step for nobody, one giant leap if you're a raisin.

On a national level, we've been having infrastructure week every week since 2009, but we never do anything.

Half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr.

Potato Head has a dick.

And the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they're eating babies.

We are a silly people.

Even when we all agree on something, like getting rid of the penny.

No.

The inertia, the ass covering, the graft, the lawyers, the cowardice.

Nothing ever moves in this impacted colon of a country.

We see a problem and we ignore it, lie about it, fight about it, endlessly litigate it, sunset clause it, kick it down the road, and then write a bill where a half-assed solution doesn't kick in for 10 years.

China sees a problem and they fix it.

They build a dam.

We debate what to rename it.

That's why their airports look like this and ours look like this.

In San Francisco, it took 10 years just to get two bus lines through environmental review.

The Big Dig, a tunnel in Boston, took 16 years.

And don't get me started on my solar hookup.

China once put up a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days.

They demolished and rebuilt the San Yuan Bridge in Beijing in 43 hours.

We binge watch, they binge build.

When COVID hit Wuhan, the city built a quarantine center with 4,000 rooms in 10 days, and they barely had to use it because they quickly arrested the spread of the disease.

They were back to throwing rabes in swimming pools while we were stuck at home surfing the dark web for black market charming.

We're not losing to China.

We lost.

The returns just haven't all come in yet.

They made robots that check a kid's temperature and got their asses back in school.

Most of our kids are still pretending to take Zoom classes while they watch TikTok and their brain cells slowly commit ritual suicide.

As George Bush once said, is our children learning?

There is a progressive trend now to sacrifice merit for equity.

Colleges are chucking the SAT and ACT test, and in New York, Mayor de Blasio announced merit would no longer decide who gets into the schools for advanced learners, but rather a lottery system.

You think China's doing that?

letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest?

You think Chinese colleges colleges are offering courses in the philosophy of Star Trek, the sociology of Seinfeld, and surviving the coming zombie apocalypse?

Those are real, and so is China, and they are eating our lunch.

And believe me, in an hour, they'll be hungry again.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Larry Wilmore, Scott Galloway, and Annabel Gerwich.

We'll see you next week.

Thank you.

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

For more information, log on to HBO.com.