Ep. #536: Kerry Washington, Jim Carrey

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 Ma.

Start the clock.

Hey, thank you.

So great to be back.

Thank you so much.

I've missed our studio audience.

Anyway, we've been off for a month.

I,

gosh, I was hoping when I got back, I'd be able to report better news.

But no, actually, California is pretty much shut down again.

The only thing open here now are beaches, grocery stores, and Will Smith's marriage.

Oh, yeah, a lot has happened in the last month since we've been off.

The Russians put bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Trump didn't say anything.

And Trump aced his dementia test.

Oh, and we're at war with Portland.

Oh, yeah, no biggie now, but if you protest against the American government, masked guys throw you in a van.

It's all explained in Trump's new hat, make South America great again.

But yeah, I mean,

who is doing this with federal office federal troops with this mystery police Trump he likes creating these armies remember a couple of years ago space force?

Yeah, now he's got race force

I thought this was really an incredible part of the story.

It got so ugly up there the protesters moms at one point formed a human shield.

They call it the wall of moms and we're doing a similar thing here in LA when we have a protest called the wall of MILFs.

It's LA.

Oh, yeah.

And

the head of the Portland NAACP, get this?

He said that white people are co-opting the whole movement.

He said it's being co-opted by privileged white people.

And I think that's true.

Ivanka Trump today, she threw away her jar of caviar and took a selfie with a brick.

Look, I tell you, the left, you know, you motherfuckers better start uniting because there's 100 days left until the election.

Listen to this.

Barry,

Bernie Sanders, co-chair of his campaign, said the other day, he said, voting for Biden is like eating half a bowl of shit.

What Chipotle calls the kids' menu.

No, that's so not fair to Chipotle.

Chipotle is healthier than fast food, even though I just said you eat bowls of shit, but you don't.

We're mean to Chipotle.

They shouldn't be.

But yeah, I mean, look, things were going great in America, as we know.

And then this week, Trump had to find a new favorite doctor, Dr.

Stella Emmanuel.

Have you seen her?

Yeah, he saw her on YouTube.

She was saying that medicines contain alien DNA

and that disease is caused by having sex with a demon while you're asleep.

But she...

I'll give you a minute to absorb that one.

But she likes hydroxychloroquine.

So Trump said, I thought her voice,

he said, I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her.

A lot of people are saying she owns a lab coat.

I mean, just remember this about when you hear somebody, well, he's a doctor.

Yes, a lot of people could be a doctor.

She's a licensed pediatrician.

She is a real doctor.

In fact, she's in my network, Kanye Permanente.

And the good news is they're accepting new patients.

But that's where we are in America.

The president, this is the president of the United States, endorses this cranked doctor who says that the devil fucks people in their sleep.

And my first thought is, well, it sounds better than reheating that meatloaf.

And I'm telling you, this doctor,

doctor, whatever her name, Dr.

Crazy Person, she's not backing down.

Today she tweeted, yes, America, some need deliverance from demon sperm.

I'm not kidding.

She tweeted that.

And that's when Alex Jones went, I'll have what she's having.

But of course, the big political issue these days is that the two parties are trying to hammer out another bill for COVID relief.

And Trump, get this, insists that it include, this is COVID relief.

He says it

insists that it includes money for a new FBI headquarters.

Which, I mean, he does have a point about that we do need that.

I mean, all the agents at the J.

Edgar Hoover building say it's a real drag.

And the most important issue, or at least it should be, is that Trump tweeted today,

or I guess it was yesterday, right?

Okay, yesterday, he tweeted that 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election.

And then he posed a question: delay the election until people can safely vote?

Okay, for everyone who has called me crazy the last three years because I was asking this question and saying he would do exactly that, I will accept your apology in weed.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Jim Carrey, Carrie Washington, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Barry Weiss.

I spoke to them all yesterday, today, but that was yesterday.

Let's get to it.

Okay, she is the Emmy-nominated actor who produced the ACLU documentary, The Fight, which you can see in select cinemas, on video, and on demand, starting Friday, July 31st.

That's tonight for those watching tonight.

Kerry Washington.

Kerry, thank you so much

for doing this.

My first question to you is, did you feel the earthquake today?

And I don't mean the thing that got me out of bed.

I mean that

Trump said, he tweeted that he wants to delay the election.

You're a thought leader in this country now.

What is your reaction to that?

You know, not to jump right into the film, but I do have to jump right into the film because one of the things that happened for me, you know, I've always had such a great deal of respect for the ACLU and have always, you know, had a really good working relationship with them.

But what I came to realize is every single thing that we are worried about right now, LGBTQ rights, women's right to choose, police brutality on black bodies, immigrants' rights, voting rights, when you read something horrible happening in the paper, you can be guaranteed that the ACLU is on it.

They are at the forefront of this fight of battling the attack on civil rights and civil liberties.

So, my first response, honestly, when I read it, was like, oh, I bet that Dale Ho, who runs the voting rights division at the ACLU, is going to drop out of some of our interviews for the movie today because he has work to do.

And I'm grateful that he's on the ground doing that work.

Right.

Well, they sure need defending the ACLU because they also

defend people who are abhorrent.

And

I think a lot of times on the left, we forget about free speech in the interest of

not being offended.

And I think it's great that someone like you gets out there and says, yes, the ACLU is our friend, even though they defended the Nazis in Skokie.

They defended people at Charlottesville.

They defended the Westboro Baptist Church.

I mean, they walk the walk.

They really do.

You know, people, I try to remind people that there hasn't ever been a president since the inception of the ACLU 100 years ago.

There's never been a president who hasn't been sued.

They've sued every president, Republican or Democrat,

because they really aren't invested in the rights of all people.

But I'm also, I'm very proud of how we deal with the whole Charlottesville situation in the film.

We really

we ask them about it.

We are invited into their introspection.

And they're doing a lot of conversations within the organization right now around where where they stand and making sure that they're also factoring in access to power when they choose their clients.

You know, they believe in free speech, but when they decide which clients they will work with,

they're having really complicated, nuanced conversations about that.

And we were able to capture some of that for the film, which I'm really proud of.

Yeah, well, you should be.

It's a great film, and I hope everybody gets a chance to see it in some platform.

And we have lots of time to do that.

So you should see that.

That's right.

That's right.

I know everybody's watching Black is King this weekend.

I am too.

But when you're done with Black is King, then you can watch the fight.

Okay, so it was John Lewis's funeral today.

This show airs tomorrow, but it was today, and I know you knew him.

You must have had a lot of thoughts and emotions.

And

President Obama spoke, of course, to no one's surprise, he was great.

Bill Clinton spoke.

George Bush spoke.

Not someone you'd expect, but to me, I thought that was a good sign in America.

We have to.

I did too.

You did too?

I did.

I really did.

I felt like,

you know, this idea of being able to have conversation across the aisle, the idea of respect and civility,

we are talking at each other and not with and to each other.

And

that is not how we're going to get to real change in this country.

But you know, there are people who will say, well, it's not right because George Bush's father did the Willie Horton ad and George Bush, you know, was not a great friend of the African-American.

What do you say to that?

I get it.

I get it.

But I think that

it's funny, like, it's funny how, you know, things can seem rosy when you're faced with with new circumstances when it comes to presidents.

But I marched, you know, I protested Bush's presidency.

I protested the war.

I protested the cuts to federal funding for the arts.

I still think that when a great civil rights leader passes and somebody from the other side of the aisle says, I want to come and show respect, that that is something that I welcome.

And I welcome it because we have to restore the Voting Rights Act.

And I want to be in conversation with legislative officials, with elected officials who are willing to step outside their comfort zone to do what is right for all people.

And just staying away and keeping this huge divide is not how you guarantee rights for all Americans.

Yeah, I think that's a great point also about we with Trump, we have perspective now, you know, about people we don't agree with fully, but you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really help anything to point fingers and say, you're not, you're not nearly as good as me, so, you you have to just be banished.

But okay.

So Joe Biden, he says, announced the other day that he is going to choose his vice president in the coming week, and we may find out who that is very soon after.

Any thoughts on that?

Who was your brother's choice?

Who do you think it's going to be?

I think it's going to be Kamala Harris.

You do?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, she I mean, for a number I I would bet any money I have left, which is very little now after they took away half my way to make a living.

And, oh, you don't even want to know the stories.

But,

yeah,

I think it's going to be Kamala Harris.

I mean, she's a law and order prosecutor.

That answers a lot of what Trump is trying to sell on his side about unrest in the streets.

And she's a black woman.

And I just think she's, and I like her.

I think she's good.

I mean, she made some mistakes in the campaign, but i think she's good yeah i agree i think that would be an excellent choice i think kamala would be an excellent choice i think stacey abrams would be an excellent susan rice was on our show she'd be great yeah i love her yeah i love her these are really really powerful strong women.

Well, we love you.

As I said to you before we started, you keep getting to be a bigger star, but you keep doing our show, which I can't say for all the big stars out there.

Like Joe Biden used to do our show, then he became vice president, and he he forgot all about us.

But you are true blue.

I thank you so much.

Congratulations on your 10 ME nominations yesterday.

And good luck with the film.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Okay, here's our panel.

He is a columnist at Harper's Magazine, an author of Self-Portrait in Black and White, Unlearning Race, which will be available in paperback on September 15th.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, who I call Sir Thomas Chatterton Williams, because it just fits.

And she's a journalist and author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism, our friend Barry Weiss.

Hey guys, how you doing?

Good.

Good.

You two troublemakers, you two are troublemakers, and we're going to talk about the two letters.

This is a tale of two letters.

We'll start with them in chronological order.

The first one was the one that came out in Harper's, caused a big stir.

Barry, you signed it and helped shape it.

Thomas, you were, I think, the ringleader.

And it was signed by, oh, like a who's who of intellectuals around the world.

And it's basically a pushback on cancel culture.

And as a guy who did a show called Politically Incorrect and another one called Real Time, thank you, because we need a pushback on cancel culture.

But to people who are coming to this for the first time and don't know all the details,

just tell them briefly, you know, what's your gripe?

Isn't this just a bunch of elites whining, Sir Thomas?

No, I don't think it is.

Basically, I was having a conversation with a couple other writers who along with me organized this letter, George Packer, Mark Lilla, Robert Wirth, and David Greenberg.

And with Mark Lilla and George Packer, for a couple of years, we've been talking about a climate of censoriousness and illiberalism that's been setting in in our nation's cultural and media institutions.

And in the past few months, it seemed to really

be something that we couldn't ignore.

And so we started talking about putting together a letter and seeing if anyone would sign it and it was kind of catch as catch can and as we started getting more and more names we realized that maybe it would get some attention but none of us expected it would be talked about for most of the month of July the way it has been and internationally I mean I've been taking interviews from Chile to to Spain to Canada to the UK you name it well there's very little else going on that's why it got all the attention but um I want to read some of the names, other names on the list, because what strikes me about it is, of course, the pushback is coming from liberals.

And almost everyone who signs this letter is a liberal.

Margaret Atwood, Martin Amos, Wynton Marsalis, Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, J.K.

Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill T.

Jones, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Matul Gawande.

I mean, these are liberal.

This is what amazes me about this.

Barry, I mean, the fact that you, they call you a centrist or a right-winger.

I mean, if a hip, millennial, Jewish, bisexual girl who's living in San Francisco is not a liberal, and you, Sir Thomas, who is these days?

Right?

I love that I get to be hip.

Only on this show, am I hip?

Oh, you're hip.

I think what's critical about the letter is the letter is a warning cry from inside of the institutions.

Meaning, what we're trying to say with the letter and what Thomas, I think, did in informing it was saying what's happening now with this growing culture of illiberalism is different from criticism.

Thomas and I and you, Bill, we're used to criticism.

Criticism is kosher in the work that we do.

Criticism's great.

What cancel culture is about is not criticism.

It is about punishment.

It is about making a person radioactive.

It is about taking away their job.

The writer Jonathan Rausch has called it something like social murder.

And I think that's right.

And I think a critical part of it, if you look at a bunch of the instances that I hope we'll get into, it's not just about punishing the sinner.

It's not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure.

It's about a sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person.

And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us.

If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict?

And not disagree with

violence.

And not disagree with that much.

Again, this is

intro liberal.

This is the critical thing.

As politics in this country has come to supplant religion, and I believe it has for many people, politics has come to be people's almost religious identity.

And so you see it on the right with the kind of worship of Trump as a deity, you can do nothing wrong.

And you see it on the left where to be anything less than defunding the police or abolish the police to choose the issue of the day makes you something like a heretic.

And that's an enormous problem because what it's meant is the collapse of moderates.

It's meant the collapse of the center and the re-tribalization of this country and the whole deal with this country.

The reason that it's exceptional with all of its flaws is that we depart from history.

We say clannishness, tribalism, that we can overcome that, that there's something bigger than lineage or kin or the political tribe you belong to.

And I think what we're seeing right now, and it's a very scary moment, is a kind of return to the mean of history.

And I think it's up to us to defend the ideas that have made this country unique and a departure from history.

And it makes people inauthentic.

For those who think that this is just, again, celebrities whining or elites or something, there was a survey recently and 62% of people, people,

you know, regular people,

say they're afraid to share what they truly believe.

And we become, I used to call them avatars.

There's your real self who talks around the kitchen or in a bar or with very close friends who you trust.

And then there's this public person, which is even if you have 100 followers on Twitter or whatever, at the office, sometimes even at the drunken clan when you're with friends, you can't trust.

They might tattle on you at work if you say a bad joke or something.

And people don't like walking around on eggshells.

So I just want to read, so put some meat on this.

Part of this is exactly from your letter.

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces.

Journalists are barred for writing certain topics.

Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class.

A researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed study.

You know,

when you go, when the science has to come second to the political correctness, we're in trouble.

Am I right, Sir Thomas?

This is more about just elites.

Oh, absolutely.

And, you know, the Cato Institute study that you cite,

it states also that moderates, liberals, and conservatives are all afraid to say what they think.

The only group that says that they don't feel this fear is staunch progressives.

So that's most of the country,

the 62% is an ideologically diverse assortment of people.

And the reason why this critique that this letter was in defense of elites who don't like taking criticism on social media, the reason why that doesn't ring true is because so many people have been emailing all of us to let us know.

They're editorial assistants, they're associate professors, they're people in law firms that don't feel comfortable saying what they actually think.

And it's actually an act of generosity when you have someone like Malcolm Gladwell or someone like J.K.

Rowling sign a letter like this and make it so that these people feel less alone and let them know that there is some support for the views that they have.

The cancellation is not about bringing down elites back to earth.

It only takes a few cases actually to have an enormous onlooker effect that has a chilling and stifling and narrowing

influence on all of our behaviors.

The onlooker effect is really what we're taking a stand against.

All right, let's go to Barry's letter.

Now you resigned from the New York Times.

It was read in Congress today, part of it, because

the four heads of the big tech companies were testifying before Congress and Jim Jordan, who I don't like at all, but you know, this is the thing, that you make this a conservative issue.

That's good for conservatives because He's not wrong to quote this, and it's not wrong.

He quoted from your letter, Barry, saying, Everyone lives in fear of the digital thunderdome.

Online venom is excused so long as it's directed at the proper targets.

And Zuckerberg agreed.

Bezos agreed.

Bezos said social media is a nuanced destroying machine.

And I agree.

And I don't want to live in that world.

And Barry, you also said Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

What do you mean by that?

Well, first of all, I'm gratified that the heads of those big tech companies agree with me, but I think they need to look inside their own houses.

The fact is, is that the reason that the New York Times and all of these other newspapers around the world have been decimated is because of the products that they sit on top of.

The reason that Twitter is the assigning editor of the New York Times is because the printing press isn't the printing press anymore.

It's because the publishing, the printing press is in each one of our pockets.

These technologies have severed our relationships with the

editors and the newspapers we used to rely on.

What I meant in that letter when I wrote that Twitter's the assigning editor, what I mean by that is that in order to do our job well, Writers and editors, we need to have a level of bravery and thick skin and fearlessness.

And when you are living in fear of an online mob, you know, all it takes is a dozen people to repeat a lie about you, that you're a racist, that you're a transphobe, that that you're a bigot, for that lie to become true.

And that's extremely dangerous.

Now, the thing that insulates it is that when you have leaders at the top who say, we don't care about that outside noise, we're gonna stand by you and the truth that you're pursuing no matter what.

The problem that happened at the Times, and that's referenced in the letter, the Harper's letter that Thomas helped shape, is that My boss got fired for running an op-ed by a sitting U.S.

senator.

Now, you might say that Tom Cotton is detestable, that you disagree with him, but I don't want to live in a world where the views of half of the country can't be heard in the paper of record.

And that's, I fear, where we're headed.

Right.

Well,

you are, I don't know if you are going to sue, but that's part of what was talked about.

You said it was an unlawful, you talked about unlawful discrimination in a hostile workplace environment.

Let me ask this about the link between this issue

of

canceling and race, because it seems like that's the ultimate issue with the cancellation culture, if you're on the wrong side of what that is now.

And of course, Sir Thomas, this is one of your big themes, and it's a theme that goes back to the 19th century in American history.

Should we integrate?

Should we become a people who don't see race at all?

Or as the current vogue seems to be gathering, should we be a people who see it everywhere?

So why don't you give us your major theme on that?

Sure.

Well, you know, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

We have a long and tortured history of believing in what

biologically is not real, racial differences between groups of people.

By leaning into this fiction

and reinvesting in the racial idea as a way of making a a healthier society, that seems totally wrongheaded to me.

The two voices that dominate the conversation on race right now in America are Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X.

Kendi, both of whom are absolutely uncompromising in their views of racial difference.

To paraphrase James Baldwin, they both insist that man's categorization is the only thing that's real and that cannot be transcended.

So that means white individuals are irredeemably members of

an oppressive and privileged group.

And black individuals are inescapably members of a group upon whom white people act, either for good or for ill.

But blacks are not agents in this.

And then Asians and so many other people who don't neatly slot into this racial binary, we don't know what to say about them.

But for D'Angelo, there's a kind of circular logic that's very devastating.

If you're white, you're inherently racist.

To deny that is to prove your racism, and to admit that is to prove your racism.

For Kendi, every single aspect of our lived reality, every idea, every action, every policy is either racist or anti-racist with no gray in between.

What other aspect of our lived and shared reality is so neatly bifurcated and oversimplified as that?

We don't even accept any longer, and for good reason, that even sexual difference is so either or a matter.

And we are accepting that now in our understanding of race and racism.

And it's also just, it's an unbelievably flattening category.

Is the person whose grandparents crawled out of the death camps of Europe the same as, do they have the same lived experience as a person whose grandparents came to this, sorry, whose ancestors came to this country on the Mayflower?

Is a Nigerian immigrant to America different from a person, their lived experience than a person whose father grew up in the Jim Crow South.

That's ridiculous on its face, even if those people have the same amount of melanin in their skin.

Right.

And

I find that everyone is always having a, certainly on the far liberal left, a contest about

who's better on this issue.

And,

you know, somebody was saying to me the other day about there's, you know, there's never been a black woman governor.

And I was like, yeah, that's bad.

That's terrible.

We should elect one and or more.

And then it would just become a contest of who hates that more?

Who is more pissed off about that?

And that's not what really is going to move us forward.

I feel like the view of Obama and Martin Luther King is being lost.

Do you feel that way?

Yes, I think that we're in danger of really reinvesting in the idea that race is real and that it cannot be escaped, that it is the fundamental category that defines us, that white people are essentially different from black people.

And we're in danger of making people living today, we're creating a world where everybody alive today is a representative of the thoughts, misdeeds, and circumstances of their ancestors.

And that's not a world that I want to create.

I want to connect what Thomas just said, the idea that

people are guilty because of the sins of their ancestors.

There's a really relevant case that connects to cancel culture, which is what we were talking about before.

You know, the letter was signed by luminaries, but there are lots of people in this country who are feeling the sting and the amiseration of cancel culture who aren't famous.

I spoke to one of them last night.

His name is Majdi Wadi.

He's a Palestinian refugee who built an unbelievably successful business called Holy Land in Minneapolis.

He has 200 employees.

They make kumas.

They have a bakery.

They have a restaurant.

Someone discovered the tweets of his daughter that she wrote when she was between the ages of 14 and 16 years old.

Immediately, when those tweets were discovered, they were horrible tweets.

They were racist.

They were anti-Semitic.

All of his accounts were canceled from places like Costco and Sam's.

The lease owner of his bakery kicked him, is kicking him out of the building, and he's scared he's going to go bankrupt.

He fired his daughter.

He apologized.

He agreed to have anti-racism training.

None of it was enough.

And he said to me,

I've lived the American dream, but is this America?

Is it America to hold a person, a business owner, liable for the sins of their child when they were a teenager?

That seems deeply un-American.

Well, I mean, that's an extreme example, but there are lots of extreme examples.

And examples that aren't extreme, but also makes me always want to go, who are these perfect people?

out there in the world today who have never made any mistake of any kind and don't they think it's going to come back and bite them in the ass?

Well, that's the whole point.

There's also an argument from self-interest that should be more prominent in the debate around cancellation.

To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens,

when you violate someone's free speech or you propose to violate their free speech, you are in effect also making the rod for your own back.

The rod of illiberalism can be picked up and used by anyone.

And we all seem to think that it's just our side who will always get to the side.

But of course, that's not true.

And of course,

it's like

Robespierre couldn't escape the guillotine.

Like, we should learn a lesson from that.

And the fact is that cancel culture can come for any of us, which is why we have to resist it.

Right.

And I want to make one,

in this week, when we think about an extraordinary life like John Lewis, I want to make the point that

his was a view.

His was a point of view that was divergent from the consensus at the time that he was alive.

Things look so clear to us now, but back then at the time, he was was defying consensus.

Minorities and the powerless and the oppressed do the best in societies and spaces that are open, that are maximally open, that are maximally tolerant of divergent and even heretical points of view.

And we need to have all the points of view that we can have because we don't know what the truth is actually going to shake out to be.

10, 20, 50 years down the road.

We need to challenge our consensus views.

And when we think about John Lewis, we should think about that was a guy who saw something wrong and stood up and spoke up for it.

And he didn't just adhere to the prevailing consensus at the time.

Right.

He did it.

Sorry.

I was just going to add that he did it at unbelievable personal cost.

And when we're thinking about the cultural problems we face, and Bill, you referenced this before, where there's, you know, people have avatars.

They have a public persona and they have a private persona.

And too many people right now do not want to speak up because they are afraid of the consequences and the ramifications.

The only way this stops is if people start to speak up.

Well, that's a great question.

If most people don't like this, and there have been a number of surveys about this, like something like 80%, including most liberals, do not like this atmosphere.

Why does it retain the power that it does?

Who has this power

and how can they exert it so fully?

Is it just because people are too afraid when someone sticks a microphone in your face, I think this is what it is a lot, and they say, this person said this.

Even you, if you really think, again, your real person thinks that wasn't so bad.

It's just much safer to go, yes, what a terrible thing they said.

Now I'm on the safe side of the debate and the Twitter mob doesn't come after me.

How do you get back at the Twitter mob?

How do you take down the mean girls?

Thomas, you want to go first?

Sure.

Well, I think that, you know, we're in uncharted territory.

I think that we can't really have a conversation about what is new and different and why people are so timid now without talking about technology and about the fact that people aren't really accustomed to or built for other than some celebrities aren't really built for a hundred a thousand in the case of someone like Justine Sacco a million or more people criticizing you and calling you names and coming at your job all at once.

I mean when you have a big enough quantitative change, it makes a qualitative change.

We're in a new territory.

And I think that the onlooker effect, it cannot be overestimated.

People see what happens to somebody like Justine Sacco.

They even can see what happens to somebody who's strong enough to survive it, like Kevin Hart or J.K.

Rowling.

And they know that they don't want to come anywhere close to that.

And so we all keep our heads that much lower and we all adjust our views

to not stick out, to not ruffle any feathers.

And it has a devastating effect on the free exchange of ideas.

And

something that we haven't tackled yet.

We're participating in a mass psychological experiment with these technology companies and we don't know where we're headed with it.

I agree.

And I think that one very obvious way that this stops is by, you know, it's one thing for individuals to stand up.

It's another thing for companies and corporations to stand up.

Trader Joe's today, I recommend everyone goes and find it.

finds it, put out an amazing statement.

They were criticized because they have different ethnic names on various food.

It's kind of kitchen and fun, you know, Trader Jose is on their beer.

And they were criticized by a very strong online boycott that said this is racism.

And they said, no, it's not.

It's fun.

Our customers enjoy it.

We enjoy it.

Sorry, we're not changing it.

That kind of thing right now is sort of like a profile in courage, which says something about our moment, but that's really what's required.

Right, you're right.

That's what we need more of, because being able to speak freely, for those who say, well, sure, this is an issue, but you know, in the age of Trump, it's really just a small, it's not a small thing.

Being able to speak freely is the lifeblood, not only of democracy, of really just our very way of life.

So, yeah, okay, Trader Joe's.

They've got to do something about the parking lot, but I agree with you that that's a good thing.

But I got to go.

You were great.

Thank you for coming on and

keep at it because, you know,

we need to keep at it.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you so much, Bill.

Well, in a week of bad news, I guess the most chilling came from Trump himself.

He tweeted that he was thinking about delaying the election

and I knew it was going to happen, but you can tell he's serious about being president for life because he's talking about a book.

We got an advanced copy of it because that's what people do when they want to burnish their credentials to be president for life.

They put out a book and his is called

People Don't Know That because that's his big claim to fame.

He's always telling you things nobody else knew.

Remember, healthcare is complicated.

Nobody knew that.

Lincoln was a Republican.

People don't know that.

So this is his book.

And look at some of of the things in this book.

Babe Ruth was a fantastic baseball player.

People don't know that.

Most people do not.

When you look in a mirror, everything is backwards.

People.

When doctors say stool, they're talking about your poop.

Nobody knows that.

But

when a woman gives birth, the baby comes out with a cord attached.

Most people don't know that.

Pizza is made from cheese, tomatoes, and dough.

People do not know this.

Eminem is a rapper, but also a white guy.

Most people don't know that.

In The Wizard of Oz, the whole thing turns out to be a dream.

People

and

women can have orgasms, just like a man.

People don't know that.

All right, he is an actor, a great actor, and a comedian, to say the least.

Who wrote this?

Who's a New York Times best-selling novel written with Dana Vashon, or Vashon?

I'm sorry.

It's called Memoirs and Misinformation.

I read it.

I loved it.

He's a national treasure, a national icon.

I'm sure he'll be a national monument someday.

Jim Carrey is.

We've had enough of these crazy monuments.

We will not be tearing yours down.

You're not one of me, damn it.

I'll make you proud.

So I wish we could be together in person because you have such electric energy.

It's almost a value.

I love to touch on you.

I love to touch on you.

Exactly.

That too.

It's almost a sin that we have to do it by Zoom.

It's very difficult.

I was thinking about you, and like you're such a hard guy to predict.

I don't know if being home alone,

by the way, you would have been great in that movie.

I think you, even as an adult, I think you could have done the movie as the child.

The burglars are imaginary in my movie.

In your mind, yeah.

They never existed.

So,

you home alone all day, like the rest of us have to do.

Quarantining, is that a good thing for you?

Do you love that or do you hate that?

I could see it either way.

It's great and it's horrifying, you know, because I need to be encouraged to be social.

You know, I need social encouragement.

I need a reason to go out.

And even when they tell you you can wear a mask and you can do this and you can do that, I say, what of flatulence?

Well, wear the mask on your ass.

What a man's talking about.

Fauci says nothing on the subject of flatulence.

And what about these days you have a reason to be angry when you smelt something.

What about painting?

I have this in my home, and I'm going to hold it up to the Zoom camera.

I bought this at your, you had a gallery showing, and this is your music.

This is my picture of baby dum-dum.

You have many.

I mean, you're so political with your painting.

I love that I bought this, and it's going to get me a lot of money someday.

I mean,

it's an amazing, it's really

an accurate depiction of the political record of this.

It's called The Wicked Witch of the West Wing.

And

it's called The Wicked Witch of the West Wing.

And

I fucking love it.

And

they'd have to come up with a pretty penny to get me to part with this.

But if Trump does go away.

There's so many I can't put out there, Bill.

There's so many I can't put out there.

If Trump does go away.

There's the Lincoln Monument with a shotgun shooting himself, you know, that kind of thing.

You know, but you'll

You're kind of losing your muse, you know.

I mean,

what will you paint if he goes away?

Oh my gosh, there's so many things.

There's really so many things, but that's the crazy thing about this era, you know, that this one megalomaniacal lunatic traitor is able to capture

the zeitgeist entirely almost, you know, and everything else is just second tier as far as our interest goes because we're in actual mortal danger, you know.

So, um,

yeah, it's uh, it's on our minds, and he gets our attention, and he gets too much attention.

And uh, you know, basically, I look, I sit back and I look at Trump and I go, for God's sakes, can't we see this for what it is?

It's a heist, man.

It's Nakatomi Plaza, okay?

Only Bruce Willis is on the wrong side.

It's like it's a guy who's literally his entire life is focused towards creating chaos.

Yeah, And that's an agenda set by someone else, by a foreign power.

And he's doing quite well with that agenda.

And if you look at everything through that prism that Trump is doing, it's the only prism with which you can look at it and it makes sense.

It makes sense as total chaos and destruction meant to

like the oligarchs plan to, you know, divide and conquer, get us fighting with each other, fighting with ourselves, and then they can steal whatever they want to steal.

They can turn the world upside down and shake it till the money falls out.

Well, as someone who played Andy Kaufman once,

it must strike you as it strikes me that really a lot of what he does looks like performance art.

Well, exactly.

I don't think he's smart enough to do performance art, but I honestly, I just think he's...

He's a wounded, wounded being, you know, and that is the difference.

You know, we talk about, I talk about that, Dana and I talk about it in the the book is the difference between

that's not like Donald Trump hijack all your time here when it's really about your book, which I have here.

I wrote you after I read it.

I loved it.

How did it happen?

How did nine years of conversation and friendship turn into three years of insane work and something so what I think is beautiful?

And I can say that because I'm only responsible for half of it.

Well, it really, you know,

it's just an incredible gift.

I I don't know what else.

I'm almost embarrassed about it.

Well, let me tell you the bestsellers list.

I was just shocked in the best possible way.

But at this point, people are going to go like, Jesus.

I mean, what is this dude?

I mean, that's

a thesis about.

Let me tell them what the book is.

Let me describe a little for people who might want to get this.

You're fucking up your own plug, Jim.

I don't care.

I know you don't.

I can't fit in in this format man there's the jim carry some people are just too big for it

just me and all of us can't do it we can't do it uh hey man you gotta

can you move back a bit it's the pictures that got little you gotta see the karate you gotta see my karate move man

it's so but what what i immediately was grabbed by was the fact that it's a book where jim carry is a character much the way in a sitcom you know that became the the the template now Larry David started it with Curb Your Enthusiasm, or maybe Jerry Seinfeld, really, but that was Larry half-larry show, too.

But where, you know, Jerry was Jerry Seinfeld, Larry is Larry David.

So is it really that person?

And, like, is it that person or is it not?

And of course, the answer is both.

It is and it isn't.

And that's what you do in a novel.

You are Jim Carrey.

Right.

But I am a character named Jim Carrey.

You're a carry.

Represents

me making fun of my own ego, my own, you know, very much

reality and my own everything, and my hunger for specialness.

And at the same time, it also makes fun of the perceptions people have about Hollywood that you know, that this is what fame is like.

Well, you know, fame is a very bizarre thing.

You can't understand unless you get it.

You know,

you can want to walk on the moon all you want when you're a little kid, but then when you walk, when you go there, you got to have a suit and you got to have air pumped in and everything like that.

It's no place to live.

And

that's what Elon Musk is trying to prove.

It struck me that this is a book.

Find other places that are no place to live.

Well, yeah,

I love him, but I'm against going to Mars.

To me, it's like Vegas.

Going to Mars is like Vegas, man.

They're going to shut you in a room and control the climate.

I can't take it.

Already, I'm out.

It's like Vegas these days.

But, Jim,

once again, let me plug your book.

Let me take it

one more step because it strikes me as a book that could only have been written by a Canadian.

Because, you know, you Canadians, you know, you look at America and it's like you want to be part of it and you don't.

You know, you want to be at the party, but you're very ambivalent about it.

And you're a fountain of talent.

All the people have come out of Canada.

I want to be in the party.

I'm at the party.

I'm, you know, I'm watching the door.

I'm making sure there's an exit for everybody.

I'm trying everything I can to let people know that it's not normal to sit and watch a president of the the United States

obsessively spew out purulent discharges on Twitter all day long.

You know, you have a question.

You're back to Trump.

Does he believe or not if he loses?

But you're obsessed.

I asked you a question about your book, and we're talking about Trump.

And Trump really isn't a big part of the book.

No.

No, okay.

No, but tyranny is.

But tyranny is.

Yes.

Well, that's a great.

That's the other side of celebrity.

It's a great, great theme.

And also, you have a lot of other celebrities by their real names who you put words in their mouth i'm sure some of them are mad at you and i just have to read no i have no idea but but i i can tell you this so far i've uh you know nick cage loves it he's out of his mind over it he thought it was awesome he's like throw it forward you know uh immediately he was honored by the whole process um joan dangerfield sent me lovely emails about how much she loved it and how much rodney dangerfield would have loved it and uh and how i dealt with that that character and kind of the the fear of the future loss of AI and all that stuff.

And that we're actually going to be talking to dead people and stuff soon, having relationships with them.

I just want to read one little quote here because I thought it was so funny, pointing to the fact that it's so hard nowadays to actually do parody.

You cannot stay ahead of how weird shit is.

And at the end, I don't want to give too much away, but during the alien invasion, Kanye West says, you need not be afraid.

They speak to me in supernatural verses.

I am one with their jam.

And I'm not so sure he didn't say that this week.

Yeah, I know.

It's a very strange thing where parody becomes very parallel with reality.

But we got to mark these things.

You know, he's one of the great characters of our zeitgeist at this moment.

And I wanted him to have a place in it.

No matter what he's doing, I can figure it out.

Well,

I'm not a.

For me, it was a real gift in this time.

I was home, you know, we had a month off last month.

And to have this this book really gave me a few days of, I read it very fast, great pleasure.

I recommend it.

It's so great, man.

Love to see you.

I love to hear that from you.

I admire you so much and your opinion.

I'll finish your thought.

I love that.

And

we're just very, very lucky.

Yeah.

Yeah, we both are.

All right.

Let's hope we have luck in person soon.

And I will see you soon, Jim Carrey.

Absolutely.

Great to see you, Bill.

Thank you.

Okay, time for new rules.

New rules.

Boy, the squirrels here have missed.

New rules.

All the woodland creatures are...

New rules.

Okay, new rules.

Someone has to pull Trump aside and explain to him that when you brag about acing your dementia test, you're also admitting that it was recommended you take a dementia test.

It's embarrassing you had to do it in the first place.

It's like boasting that you change your own diapers.

New rule, if in February you tweet, keep America great,

and then in July you tweet, make America great again,

you have to admit that between February and July, you ruined America.

New rules, someone has to remind the Czech engine light, what country this is.

Ooh, there's something wrong.

And if we don't deal with it now, it's going to grow into an even bigger problem.

Come on, Czech Engine Light.

This is America.

Call us when the car's a fireball.

New Rule the woman in a panera who protested wearing a mask by yelling you fart out your ass you can smell it out your ass you think that a mask is going to protect you

has to admit one thing if someone farted on you wouldn't you rather they were wearing pants

New rule, don't be stupider than your spouse.

Here's a real quote on Facebook from a woman in South Carolina who hates wearing a mask.

Quote, my husband had to wear a mask on a business trip and now he has chlamydia.

And she believed him, that he got chlamydia from a mask.

And it was a strange coincidence because while he was away, her underwear gave her herpes.

And finally, new rule, America's top health officials have to find the courage to do what the health officials in Huntington, New York did.

They told the entire town of 200,000 to go on a diet because as the head of the program put it, with COVID-19, you're twice as likely to have a poor outcome if you're obese.

Actually, it's worse than that.

Public Health England found that people with a body mass index of 35 to 40 have a 40% greater risk of dying from COVID.

And over 40, it's a 90% greater risk.

Even being mildly obese makes it five times more likely that catching the virus will land you in the ICU.

And now people are gaining even more weight.

They call it the quarantine-15.

Geez, I remember when plagues had a slimming effect on people.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the countries with the lowest rates of obesity have had the fewest COVID deaths.

Maybe China isn't hiding all their COVID deaths.

Maybe their secret is is that their obesity rate is 6%

and ours is 42%.

And pointing all this out doesn't make me a dick.

In fact, the shame is on everyone in media and government who is too cowardly to emphasize how important an issue this is.

Because the virus made it an issue.

Obesity was already killing us slowly, but you mix it with COVID and it kills you fast.

You can scream all you want at me me for saying that, but it won't change the scientific truth of it.

Look, no one deserves to die because of their weight.

And we should spare no expense protecting vulnerable people no matter why they're vulnerable.

But make no mistake, America fighting COVID is like a boxer who went into the ring out of shape and is taking a beating for it.

Every day we hear the same warnings about fighting the virus, wear a mask, wash your hands, have sex through a glory hole.

But the people in charge of health during a health crisis, Dr.

Fauci, Dr.

Burks, Surgeon General Adams, head of the CDC, Dr.

Redfield, National Institutes of Health Director, Dr.

Francis Collins.

They never really mentioned the one major thing most people could do to ensure a better outcome should they get it.

To me, it's such a scandal.

These doctors won't look straight in the camera and say, the number one thing you can do to improve your chances is to be in better general health.

And the number one route to that is an improved diet.

To be a doctor right now and not discuss diet?

It's like being a clown who won't do balloon animals.

Why not?

an all-out campaign to educate the public on the dangers of a diet of sugary, chemical-laden crap.

Krispy Kreme honored

our frontline doctors and nurses in April by giving them 18 million doughnuts, which is like honoring firemen with napalm.

And why not a campaign to make it a priority to get decent food into poor neighborhoods?

Why not for every PSA about a mask?

a PSA with a recipe for a healthy meal.

I think so many lives could have been saved if at the very beginning of this crisis, the medical establishment had made a more concerted effort to tell Americans, while you're in lockdown, getting free money for not working, you need to do something too.

Even the poorest person could switch out soda at meals for water.

It'll save you money, too.

The national campaign to get in shape would have dramatically improved our chances against this disease and made us feel better about ourselves to boot, but it was never even mentioned.

Even in a country that loves challenges, the ice bucket challenge, planking,

all the this will make you puke challenges,

condoms up your nose,

the mannequin challenge.

Quite a challenge, that one.

Why couldn't they have gotten behind a real challenge like, oh, I don't know, getting healthy so the virus doesn't kill you challenge?

But as Michelle Obama found out, just trying to give sound nutritional advice gets you vilified in America.

You're a health nut.

Yeah, that's what they say about people who just eat right.

They're nuts into weird hippie shit like vegetables.

No,

no, we need to stop glamorizing gluttony.

Diabetes isn't just a theory.

And with this virus now,

enablers and glorifiers,

you're playing with people's lives.

If you're always on about how this is a life and death issue, and it is,

we can't have body positivity be a third rail anymore.

Political correctness can kill.

I've seen it before.

This issue is too fundamental to who lives and who dies.

and to how successful America is going to be in getting out of this crisis.

All right, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Kerry Washington, Sir Thomas Chatterton Williams, Barry Weiss, and Jim Carrey.

We'll be back next week, probably in my backyard.

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

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