Episode #344 (Originally Aired 2/20/2015)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Real time.

Hey!

How you doing, everybody?

Thank you.

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank Thank you very much.

Welcome.

Thank you so much for coming out.

Oh, I know.

You're in a great mood.

Guys,

thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, whoa.

Hey, I know it's Oscar weekend.

Isn't it exciting out here?

We got the Oscars.

Wow.

You know you're here where they do have the Oscars.

Come on, this is a ritual in America.

Every year we gather to celebrate films we haven't seen starring British actors we don't know.

It's.

Unfortunately, of course, this year marred by the controversy that there are really no black nominees, even though Selma was a great movie with a great cast.

It is nominated for Best Picture, but

it's a shame we have to be so tribal, you know, like this.

I mean, the blacks are pulling for Selma, the gays are pulling for Imitation Game, and the Catholic Church is for boyhood.

Not the movie, no.

A lot of great performances this year, you got to say that.

Julianne Moore, who played Sarah Palin, remember in the HBO movie?

She played Sarah Palin.

Well, now she's nominated for playing a woman who's slowly losing her mind.

It's so hard to fight typecasting.

It really sucks.

But it's definitely a great time to be here in Los Angeles.

Not only the Oscars, but the weather.

We are like literally the only place in America where it's nice.

Yeah.

True.

You know that in Miami today, Miami, it was 42 degrees.

For once, the Orthodox Jews with the fur hats were appropriately dressed.

Oh, it's a rough winter out there.

The whole country is just one big white blur.

Just the way Rudy Giuliani likes likes it.

Well, you heard about that.

That's a firestorm.

You heard what Rudy Giuliani said?

Oh my gosh.

He said, I don't believe the president, meaning Obama,

he does concede that.

He said, I don't believe the president loves America.

Wow.

See, nobody loves America like Rudy Giuliani.

He's got a blind, burning, star-spangled boner for this country.

He leaves notes on America's car.

He calls America's voicemail just to hear its voice.

If America were a woman, he'd move her into the mayor's mansion while he was still married to his wife.

He

loves America.

It's very personal.

The full quote actually is: I do not believe the president loves America.

He doesn't love you, and he doesn't love me.

Oh, poor Rudy.

He's got fame, he's got money, but what he's never had is the love of a strong black man.

And

I did not realize how true that was until last night when I went on Amazon and I found out that Rudy has actually written a book called 50 Shades of Black.

Apparently he really craves Obama's love in the rough kind of way.

And would you like to hear an excerpt from the book?

Oh, great.

I have a.

I'm so glad you said that because I did bring it in.

Yeah, this is Rudy Giuliani's Fifty Shades of Black.

Now, this scene takes place in the Oval Office.

Rudy has been.

Rudy has been summoned there by President Obama to give counsel on combating Islamic terrorism.

I'm sorry, I mean violent extremism.

As the scene opens, Rudy sits waiting for the president.

He writes,

I was nervous that day when Obama entered the room.

His skin glistened in the dim glow of the energy-efficient lighting.

What do you want, he demanded.

His eyes were cold and unknowable, like the donor list of a GOP super PAC.

I have some ideas on combating violent extremism, I stammered.

Shut up, Obama snarled.

If I wanted to hear you talk, I'd buy a ticket to one of your bogus motivational seminars.

You miserable hack.

The words stung Rudy like a whip across his withered buttocks.

They stung because they were true.

He was a hack, and he did deserve.

No, he needed to be punished.

You don't love me, Rudy cried out.

You don't love any of us.

I don't have to love you, Obama said.

I've got this.

The president reached into his pants

and pulled out his long, hard, black veto pen.

And I'm going to use it over and over and over.

He waved it tauntingly in the former mayor's face.

Rudy felt a tingling where his prostate used to be.

I'm America's mayor, he whispered, but tonight I'm your bitch.

It's in bookstores, ladies and gentlemen.

All right.

We have a great show.

Rob Reiner, Bill Nye, and Alawi Azade is here.

And a little later to be speaking with Vani Affairs friend Leibowitz is backstage.

But first first up he is a singer-songwriter who was nominated for a Grammy this year for his latest album, Lift Your Spirit.

Please welcome Aloe Black is here.

Hey man.

How you doing?

Great to meet you.

How you doing?

Very good.

Thank you.

I am so glad you're here.

It's Oscar weekend, so we thought we'd talk about the music industry.

Wonderful.

We're a little behind here.

And I mean, one reason I wanted you here is because I read your article in Wired magazine, and you're one of the few musicians who's willing to really speak out about the music industry.

I'm your fan.

I'm also a fan of music in general and I'm a little worried about it because when I turn on the hits station I just want to drive my car into a cement wall

Tell me Al Black, why do I want to drive my car into a wall when I turn on the hits station?

Wow.

Well probably because you're not feeling the music that you're listening to.

True.

And I think you know there's there's a lot of people out there that are forcing hits trying to make things out of nothing.

And that comes from the climate of the music business.

Over the past two decades there's seven billion dollars missing from the music industry and so people are trying to get that money back any way they can.

Well yeah but they don't seem to be succeeding and you know I must say first of all I am not one of those people even though I'm not as young as I once was

I know people my age who are like locked into the era that they started listening.

I love the era of my first music, but I listen to music from every era.

I look for new music.

It's hard to find.

And I think the reason is because, as you point out, the songwriters are starving.

They don't pay for songwriting anymore, right?

It's all gone to the producer and to Spotify.

Yeah, money's missing, especially going to the songwriter.

And a lot of it, I think, largely is because of the laws.

The laws don't really protect songwriters in order to be able to negotiate for them.

Tell them that you met, you wake me up.

Was it one of the biggest, or the biggest hit, I think, of the year?

It was the most streamed song ever on Spotify and at Pandora,

for 168 million streams

to the three writers, we earned a little over $12,000.

So for the biggest hit, VC had the credit on it, even though you wrote it and sang on it.

I don't understand that.

That's fucked up right there.

But,

and you're not the only one.

I mean, happy.

Have you ever heard that song, Happy?

43 million spins, he made 2,700.

And I know people are saying, well, you know, why are we crying for rock stars?

There's ISIS and climate change.

That's true.

But I mean, you know, the world is going to shit, and I don't think we can stop it.

But on the way, I want to listen to good music.

And

I want to be there to give you that good music.

Yeah, well, you do, because you're a songwriter.

But I don't think they prize the songwriting anymore.

And that's why the music, I mean, it just, you wrote in Wired, it has no nutritional value.

Well, there are a few

songwriters that are out there really fighting for change.

And there are a lot of really good songwriters out there that are putting out music.

It may not make it to the mainstream.

The goal here, though, is to incentivize songwriters in a major way by working with Congress, let's say, to change the laws to make sure that they have a say in what the value of their song is worth.

A song like Imagine by John Lennon is worth a statutory rate equal to Who Let the Dogs Out.

I don't think intrinsically that makes any sense.

Yeah, I love Who Let the Dogs Out.

Yeah.

Well, they've raped Imagine before.

I mean, he wrote the lyric, Imagine No Religion.

And after 9-11, they changed it to Imagine One Religion.

Wow.

Yeah.

I like the first version.

But we digress.

So you said $7 billion, right?

That's what the industry is worth.

In 1999, sure, it was worth $14 billion.

Still sounds like a lot of money.

It sounds like there should be enough money to actually pay people.

This is why Taylor Swift got off Spotify, right?

I applaud her for that.

She said, I don't want to go along with this idea, and you hear a lot of musicians say it, that we don't care what we get paid.

We just want people to hear the music.

It's easy to say after you've made it.

Partially, a lot of the reason I think, you know, removing music from Spotify is also about control and having control about your art.

I'm a songwriter.

The songs that I write are dear to me and the message is dear to me.

I wouldn't want for Charles Manson to put out a version of Wake Me Up.

I should have control over who gets to sing that song, but the copyright law for songwriters doesn't allow that.

I actually might want to hear that.

You would, huh?

Wow.

Well,

I would do my best to try to restrict it, but I don't even have the control to restrict it because the law doesn't give me the chance.

And these are because of archaic laws that were written

before the digital era.

Yeah, written in

1909 when mechanical pianos were the musical players of the day.

And in order to control how a copy of

a scroll of music was compensated, somebody could copy that and they just had to pay a nine-cent royalty.

But when artists started covering songs, that law

transferred to them.

So, you know, I think as technology changes, as the system changes, so should the laws.

But I know that to put, I know this because I made a movie called Religilist, and

I had to buy music, thank you.

Those are the people who like the original, Imagine.

And I had to negotiate and buy the music to put in the movie, because I remember I wanted superstition, and Stevie Wonder said, no, I like Be Some Jesus.

You cannot have that.

But Crazy, CeeLo Green, thank you.

Cee-Loe, he said, go right ahead.

So when it comes to songwriting and publishing the one place that songwriters do have control is when it comes to a synchronization with a visual context with film and TV.

Otherwise there is really no control and I think that it should be more of a free market and

more control to the songwriter.

You know a painter or a sculptor gets to choose the context and the situation in which their art is consumed.

And should I want to remove my music like Taylor Swift did from Spotify, anyone else, any Joe Schmo, can cover all of Taylor Swift's songs, put it up on Spotify, and she has no control.

But if the music industry is so shitty, why don't the musicians band together?

It seems like they would have the power by just stop putting out the product.

Musicians are musicians.

We want to be artists, we want to write, we want to play.

We don't want to get caught up in the quagmire of fighting for our rights.

We just don't want to be exploited.

Well, sometimes you have to.

Yeah, well.

Freedom meant free.

Well, here I am to do that for as many people.

Right, you're doing it.

Right.

And how much,

you know,

how much do you blame the consumer?

I mean, I think there's a whole generation that thinks music is supposed to be free.

Well, I think music should be accessibly free.

I don't think it necessarily should be free in terms of compensation.

Everybody should be paying for what they consume.

Yes, it's a product like anything.

It's a product like anything.

And by the way, it's a product that has more longevity than almost any other commodity I could think of.

I'm listening to songs that I bought 40 years ago, and they still give me pleasure.

I can't think of anything else besides my dick

that gave me

pleasure 40 years ago.

What do you have to say about that?

You know what?

I don't want to say anything about you.

All right.

Thank you for doing what you're doing.

Let's get music back on track.

Hello, Black, everybody.

Let's meet our panel.

Hey, how are you, pals?

Great to see you, everybody.

All right, let's meet our panel.

He's the science guy and author of Undeniable Evolution, The Science of Creation.

Go Nye!

Look at that.

He's a folk hero now.

She's a national reporter for the Washington Post.

Allah,

Azai, Day.

I'll give you a pass, though.

Okay.

You say it.

Let's see you.

Azadi.

Yeah, Azadi.

It's not even that hard.

Let's see you butcher my name.

Okay.

Okay.

Rob Reiner is a classic.

There we go.

Is the director of such classics as a few good men stand by me whenever he met salary, misery,

misery, princess bride, American president, what a resume.

I hope you've gotten some oscillos from that.

Rob Reiner is over here.

Thank you.

All right.

Remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and send your overtime questions so we can answer them after the show on HBO.com.

Let's start off with the big summit President Obama had this week.

He invited a lot of Muslim groups to the White House House to say terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.

To which they said, then why are we here?

Why didn't you invite a bunch of Presbyterians?

So there's also this article this week in The Atlantic that got a lot of play.

It's called What ISIS Really Wants by a guy named Graham Wood.

And I want to show the quotes, a few quotes from Obama and a few quotes from this because they're diametrically opposed.

And then you tell me who's right.

Obama, some of the things he said were, no religion is responsible for terrorism.

People are responsible for violence and terrorism.

That sounds a lot like the NRA slogan, by the way.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it's

people killing.

He also said the notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie, even though he's dropping bombs at them all the time.

Now, here's from The Atlantic.

This is from Graham Wood.

He said, The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic.

Yes, it has attracted psychopaths, but the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

So, who's right about this?

You know, I think neither are right, and neither are really hitting the nail on the head.

I wasn't expecting that, Rob.

Well, look at that.

You're triangulating.

No, I'm not triangulating.

I'm trying to get at a truthfulness here, which is if you look at the most violent

Islamic groups, whether it's ISIS or al-Qaeda, these are essentially Sunni-based.

The Muslim world was divided 1,400 years ago between Sia and Sunni, and the Sunnis are exerting their will and their control right now.

And they would not be where they are now, especially in Syria and Iraq, had we not removed Saddam Hussein, which kept that area together with an irony.

He looks better all the time.

Well, no, I'm not saying that.

Because he does.

I'm not saying.

And Gaddafi, too.

Well, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good guy.

He wasn't a good guy, but the world doesn't, you know, it's not about what's the best thing.

I mean, it is about what's the best.

There are sometimes no good answers, it's just the best ones possible.

I agree, and we had them in a box and we had them contained.

And now you have the Sunnis who were basically, you know, pushed aside, are now asserting themselves.

And so basically,

it is a religious war, but it's a religious sectarian war.

And to paint it all as Islamic, I think, is a big mistake.

Well, and the other issue here is Obama is trying to avoid this phrase Islamic extremism.

And this is actually the same kind of challenge that President Bush confronted as well.

He also struggled with how to define this sort of terrorism.

At first he began with the rhetoric of the Crusades and he kind of backed off of that because it played into the whole clash of civilizations and he eventually settled on referring to Islamic radicalism but he always said as well that Islam was the religion of peace.

They both kind of said that.

Well, if you say everybody who's Islamic is a terrorist, you're headed for trouble.

No one is saying that.

Okay, well, we agree then.

By the way, that...

But no one is saying that.

What we got from that article, I think, is he kind of recommended containing things, right?

I don't know that you can contain at this point.

You need to bring the world together to decide what are we going to fight for.

I want to see some Sunni Arab states have a stake in this.

Saudi Arabia needs to have a stake in this.

But this idea that we cannot even call it Islamic terrorism seems Orwellian to me.

It seems like we're paying a very high price for this, which is we can't discuss it even rationally.

Can't we at least say that there are a number of factors that are involved and the religion is certainly one of them?

Absolutely.

He presented this idea that, well, it's poverty and education.

It is poverty and education also.

But why are they impoverished and uneducated?

It's mostly because of the religion.

That's mostly why.

The UN did a study in 2002.

They found out that only only 300 books had been translated into Arabic that year.

In madrasas, they only teach one book.

I don't have to tell you which one.

What do you think about pumping the internet into there somehow so that everybody had access to all of these books in Arabic?

Yeah, that's another thing the religion might be against.

And not to mention the sex part.

They're fucked up about women.

They can't work in it.

Some of them can't go to a workplace because they're dressed like you with, oh my god, your arms are showing.

Well, I will say part of ISIS's strategy is actually employing social media and the use of technology in the U.S.

government

for their own good to push their propaganda.

And that's something that the U.S.

government is realizing that they're really far behind on.

Now they're talking about how do we utilize this technology.

I don't know if Twitter accounts from the United States are really going to be effective in this fight, but they are kind of using this tool of the West to push their agenda.

They're very sophisticated.

I mean, you had all of these Baathists that were basically thrown thrown out of

Saddam's people, or very sophisticated military guys who formed the basis of ISIS.

He and Gaddafi always said to America, you don't understand what I'm dealing with.

Yes, I'm a bad guy, but you have no idea how crazy some of the people in my country are.

I am keeping the shit to shoe level.

You should be thanking me.

Well, and the other issue at play is that during this summit, there were a lot of leaders from these different states who they come from countries where they are committing gross human rights abuses as well.

So there's this kind of conflict, like, do we ask these nations to really get involved in this fight while they're also treating their own citizens poorly?

They don't point the spotlight at us.

Yeah, kind of thing.

But the Iraq war.

I think when we look back, it might be the biggest blunder in American history.

Biggest ever.

Biggest.

Because there would not be an ISIS without it.

Absolutely.

It just the biggest

foreign policy disaster in my lifetime.

And I lived through Vietnam as we have.

And I think Jeb Bush at some point is going to have to answer.

Well, is he?

Say, are you on the same page as your brother with this?

Because

this is a disaster.

Or is it going to be certain he's able to smooth over?

Well, he already answered that.

He kind of answered that already because he gave a speech this week.

And he said that ISIS fighters, I think the figure he had was 200,000.

Yeah, he was off by 180,000.

He's off by 180,000.

And then he was corrected later, said he.

And they, yeah, on Fox News, they were like, it's no big deal.

Really?

You're trying to be the leader of the free world and you're off by a factor of 10?

Yeah.

And you're the smart bush?

Yeah.

But you know what?

Okay, so there's 20,000 ISIS fighters.

Here's what I keep saying every week.

Why can't the people in the region take care of this without us?

I did a little research here.

It's an old question.

Let me tell you, let me give you the numbers of the armed forces of Jordan, 180,000, Turkey, 991,000, Egypt, 1.4 million, Iraq, 800,000, the Kurds have up to 250,000, the Saudis, 250,000, Lebanon, 280,000, Syria, 600,000 there's almost 5 million people without Iran, who might want to kick some Sunni ass.

Why can't they do it?

Why can't they put some boots on the ground if they have 5 million against 20,000?

Well, it's also an issue of how much funding and sophistication those military forces have.

And additionally, there are a lot of voices in the U.S.

government, a lot of politicians who are worried about countries like Iran exerting a lot of influence in that region, because that might not be productive or useful for the United States to have them exerting all that.

Triming choice of words, productive.

Yeah, not productive.

I've always felt that you have to have, yeah, if this is going to be a sectarian war, and it has become one, you're going to need

countries that are basically Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia have a stake in it.

To say,

let's have Iran or any other Shia nations come in there and fight.

Yeah, of course, they're going to fight because they want to fight the Sunnis.

But we need Sunni boots on the ground to basically say, we don't accept this kind of behavior.

Is it going

like Gaddafi

said they were suppressing things, letting keeping it shit at you level.

Are they expecting the U.S.

to be doing the same thing?

Well, I mean, and so as long as the U.S.

is in there, they're expecting us to bail them out.

So, what is it?

Why don't you go to the Middle East and fight ISIS?

ISIS is always attracting other people from other countries to come to the Middle East.

Where are the moderates who want to go fight ISIS if they're so bad, if they hate ISIS so much?

You know, during the Spanish Civil War, Americans went to Spain.

Americans had no immediate fight there, but to stand up for a liberalism, where's that?

Crickets.

But by the way, I want to also say that there is a precedent for Arab armies getting together.

Israel.

When the state of Israel started, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, they all banded together.

They were willing to work for that.

So why not this?

Speaking of which, you know, what about this anti-Semitism that's going on in Europe?

Yeah.

It's never gone away.

That's the thing.

Really?

You know, thousands and thousands of years we've had anti-Semitism.

It's been lowered.

It comes back.

We had it

obviously during the Second World War.

And then all of a sudden, we have Germany emerging, very liberal, and all that.

But this undercurrent of anti-Semitism has always been there, just like racism.

It's always there, and then it just bubbles up to the surface every once in a while.

And it's horrible now.

Netanyahu is asking European Jews to come to Israel.

Come home to Israel.

That's what he said, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, he is the...

But the people have never been there.

They live, grew up in whatever, in Germany or France.

It's a shame that they should have to move.

Well, they probably won't either, because it's not their home.

No, but

you can understand it.

There were German Jews that lived in Germany during the Second World War and that that was their home.

And, you know, at a certain point you know if your life is in danger you want to go to someplace where you're going to be protected.

So what do you do about it?

I think you get to know your neighbors.

That's going to take, what does it take, a century, something like that?

I mean this is a big problem in Europe.

You're also seeing the rise of a lot of right-wing populist political parties in many of these countries.

And they also have, in addition to having anti-Semitic tints to them, they're also very anti-immigrant and have a lot of nasty rhetoric about Muslims as well.

So this is kind of a confluence of factors.

You had last year 7,000 Jews leaving France to Israel, but you also have been seeing a lot of Jews leaving Israel to go move to Berlin.

So there's a lot of migration happening throughout the region.

And to your point, yeah, a lot of European Jewish leaders this week have been saying in response to those comments that Europe is our home and this is the culture we help build.

And the leaders are expressing, the leaders of those countries are expressing support, but what is the next step?

How are they going to combat this in their countries?

Okay,

I want to do a program note here.

We are off next week.

I can't believe this.

No.

Stars.

What am I going to do Friday night?

I understand your plight, Rob.

So many feel the same way.

But I'll tell you, I'm so glad you set me up for this.

I know what you're going to do Friday night.

Vice comes back on Friday night.

Really?

Okay.

All right.

Vice, an amazing show.

And I have to say, the one that they have coming up, I have seen it on Friday,

that's coming up next Friday, is an amazing episode.

I don't want to give too much away, but it is about cancer, and let's just say it's good news.

But to say that people are going to be talking about this episode is an understatement.

Okay, so it is Oscar weekend.

You must be thrilled, Oscar.

And you're a Hollywood royalty.

Beyond belief.

Have you ever gotten a swag bag, Rob?

You know, I haven't.

I've been a couple of times.

I've had some things up for awards and stuff, but I never did get a swag bag.

Well, this was all over CNN today.

The swag swag bag, which is the bag of gifts they give to the presenters, because show business is hard, back-breaking work.

The least they can do is give rich movie stars a bag full of shit.

Valuable shit's first.

$160,000.

No.

Yes, if you're a nominee, you get, because Bradley Cooper, how's he going to?

Okay.

So

we realize that this is the first year where the Daytona 500 is happening on the same day.

More white people giving white people awards.

So we got a hold of the, this is the stuff that's in the, these are real items that are in the Hollywood, the Oscar swag bag.

And then the Dona 500, they give away a swag bucket.

So I'll just show you like the difference.

See, they have, they're giving away this, Rejuval 3D.

It's, I guess, to make your face better.

It's NASA.

It says it's NASA-inspired face cream.

It's $149.

Oh, fuck, now I won't be able to find.

Oh, yeah.

And in the NASCAR one, we have Bubba's face of name.

I think it's just this.

Okay, hydroxycut.

This is a weight loss supplement.

And then NASCAR gives away a bag of meth.

Oh, look at this.

They're giving away, I swear to God, look at this.

The afterglow pulse wave vibrator.

Wait a minute.

They're giving away a vibe.

This is not a joke.

Seriously?

Yes.

This is the real stuff in this way.

Is it rechargeable, USB port and stuff?

It's green.

It's green-friendly.

Always looking for the science.

Make sure it's compatible with other appliances.

This is what they give.

Oh, no, this is what they give.

Free one hour sitting on this Maytag dryer down at the London Map.

Map.

That's what they give there.

What am I up to for?

Okay, the, oh, look at that.

They're also giving away a vaporizer, the Haze Vaporizer, $250.

That's the wrong message to the young people.

I think so.

For the NASCAR, they give away easy widers and a gun light.

They love guns.

Okay.

Where's the...

What do you think?

I know.

It's very hard.

What is this one?

Oh, no, this.

Oh, here we go.

This is, look at this.

They give away Couples Love Shot.

It is a $5,000 injection of blood plasma into the vagina or the penis because it supposedly makes the orgasm feel better.

Honey, let's go to the Oscars.

Please, Michelle.

Help me out.

Over at the Daytona, they give away the sports illustrated swimsuit issue and a body lotion that they stole from a hotel.

But they give away there.

Okay, now,

this is very hard to do today.

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new tires for your house.

All right.

Let's bring out Franz.

Here's a writer and contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

I had Mel Brooks on a few weeks ago.

I said, you know, this is probably the funniest guy in the world.

This person might give Mel Brooks a run for his money.

A legend in her own time.

Friend, Lieber Winz.

Friend, Labor Wentz.

So glad you're in Franz.

Hey, I'm so glad we have you here.

It's been such a long time.

And, you know, the Vanity Fair Oscar Party is not a party without you.

Or you?

Yeah, I go every year too.

I'm very lucky.

You say the same tape?

Do you bet on the Oscars in your own mind?

No.

No, I do.

I always think I can.

Do you win?

Well, I always think I can pick who the winners are because it's so predictable if you do a movie, like last year it was Slaves and AIDS.

A movie about slaves and a guy with AIDS.

Those were definitely.

But not the same person.

No.

A slave with AIDS.

That's it.

During the Holocaust.

Now, that is an absolute.

Especially if he was gay.

Right.

Well, this year there's the imitation game.

There's a scientist.

They love scientists.

He's gay.

And then there's Stephen Hawking.

You know, the.

Perfect.

You know, he's gay with the affliction.

So I would bet on the affliction.

As opposed to the gay spy.

Well, I mean, I just think that the only way you win, especially because movie stars are beautiful.

You've said this yourself.

The only way that...

I'm not the only one who's noticed this.

No, but you've pointed out that they have to actually deform themselves.

Yes.

To win awards.

Right.

They only get, it seems that some of them only get an award if they do something like put a huge nose on or gain 3 million pounds or lose 3 million pounds or shave their hair off.

Right.

Yes.

And that is, I think that really has to do with envy.

Yeah.

Because people really don't...

They, in a way, adore the people who are beautiful.

On the other hand, they're not that happy with it.

Absolutely.

And also, we have this idea that if someone is beautiful, they have to be stupid.

Everyone believes that.

So, we have this idea that if someone is very unattractive, they must be very smart.

Neither thing is true.

Really?

Yes, most people are neither.

Most people are not beautiful, and they're not smart.

So, of course, they're not together.

What would be the chance?

I still cling to the one that the beautiful people are stupid.

That's kind of important to me to hold on to that.

Well, it's not true.

They're no more stupid than the other person.

Name a really beautiful, super smart person.

I could hardly name just a super smart person.

Okay.

Truman Capote once said, and I saw him.

Not a beautiful person.

No.

He once said this on the tonight show.

I'll never forget he said.

All actors.

All actors are duped.

All actors are stupid.

He did say that, right?

He wasn't the smartest man who ever lived.

Right.

He just wasn't beautiful.

Right.

So not enough, just not to be beautiful, to be smart.

So I've read, this amazed me because you're such a did-no-boll New Yorker that you actually kind of are warming up to Los Angeles.

No, that's not exactly what I said.

I said

what I said was I didn't hate LA as much as I used to

and the reason for that was basically cock-eyed optimist.

I'm always looking on the bright side of things friend.

The reason for that was that New York was so much worse than it used to be that the contrast was not so great.

That's all I meant.

So you think New York is worse now?

Oh, I don't think that.

I know that for a fact.

And what has made New York worse?

Well, Giuliani was one of the people who made New York worse.

That was a while ago.

Bloomberg, his 12-year reign.

Yes, New York has gotten more suburban, which was their goal.

Look, I remember the first time Giuliani ran for mayor.

His ads, you know, I hardly know who he was.

I was not alone in that.

He was a prosecutor before that.

His ads basically said, vote for me, and it'll be 1952 again.

Those were his ads for his first term.

You know, he is just soaked in nostalgia.

You know, and that is what he meant when he said, you know, Obama doesn't love us.

You know, he doesn't love the country like we love the country.

Like we, who are his age, he's even older than me.

And

it's a fanciful notion.

What do you think is behind that, that Republicans want to go back to an era,

the 50s, you said that, where America was really ruled by socialism.

We talked about this a few weeks ago in Azure.

You mean the economic policies, because they were left over with the New Deal.

But that's not the part they miss.

Okay, that's not the part they miss.

The part that, you know, what is it behind Giuliani's comments?

And they say,

racism.

You're not allowed to say this.

We now live in a society where it's worse to call someone a racist than to be one.

You call a racist racist.

You go, I'm not a racist.

Oh, you call me a racist?

Right.

And they say the most racist things.

Ben Stein last year during the campaign when it was heating up at the end said, Obama is the most racist president we've ever had.

And I thought, even more than the 11 who actually owned slaves?

I mean,

the most.

Andrew Jackson killed Indians by hand.

Because they were Indian.

Yes, just because it was the thing to do.

It was ethnic lensing.

Well, why do you think that Giuliani said that thing that he said?

I used to, I mean, he was the mayor of a liberal city.

He used to be sort of a moderate Republican.

No, no, no.

When Giuliani was the mayor, every five minutes, an unarmed black guy was shot in the back.

Constantly.

You know, and it was, and it was always a different excuse from the cops.

He had something in his hand.

I thought it was a gun.

It was a candy bar.

Right.

I had something in his hand.

I thought it was a gun.

It was a keychain.

Well, that hasn't changed, and that's not just...

But in the entire time I've lived in New York, which has been many decades, not a single unarmed white person has been shot by the police not one right not one you think the odds would be not one so that is the reason they're shot but couldn't blame that all on Giuliani

I blame under Giuliani I blame the ones that were shot under Giuliani which were the most

by far okay well here's Giuliani's quote about he said today what I said wasn't racism it couldn't be because Obama had a white mother a white grandfather he went to white schools and most of what he learned uh was from whites see this is what the propaganda have against Obama.

He's too white.

He is too white.

This man is a little bit of a bad thing.

This is a big problem for Scott Walker because he said these comments at a dinner where Scott Walker was trying to meet and greet with these potential donors.

And what did Scott Walker do afterward?

He didn't necessarily distance himself all that much.

He was just like, oh, well, Giuliani is free to say how he thinks and what he feels, but I love America.

And this isn't really denouncing what he said, and now you're having other potential GOP candidates kind of towing a similar line.

That's the problem for all of them, really.

I mean, none of them did it.

John McClure

agree with it.

The point is that they agree.

It's not that they are holding back their criticism.

They have no criticisms.

They agree with it.

Well, part of the problem is they also have to get through a primary, but after that, if they do, they have to get through a general election.

So this could be a very important thing.

Which they never knew, and that's why.

Yeah, that's right.

It is why.

That is why they don't get to the general election.

The problem they have is their primary and their general, right?

It's always an issue for the conservatives.

It's because the lunatics vote in the primary, and Americans vote in the general, and that is why we don't have Republican presidents.

It's pretty simple.

And they don't like him because he went to Harvard.

He was the editor of the Harvard Law Arbor.

He is so much like

that that they resent it.

Okay, here's what they resented.

The other thing Giuliani said is that it wasn't racism.

He said it's socialism or possibly anti-colonialism.

Yeah, what is that?

First of all, the colony.

We're the colony.

Yes.

We're against ourselves.

Then count the stars.

Isn't colonialism bad?

I thought we were all kind of on that page.

And now it's bad to be anti-colonial.

I don't understand that.

But you're right.

What was George Washington fighting against?

They're not talking about that colonialism.

What are they talking about?

They're talking about the anti-colonialism of

Africans, Indians,

against the British, that anti-colonialism.

And that's bad?

To them.

I'm explaining them to you, not me to you.

But it was the British.

Oh, I'm not in the Republican primary.

I know.

I understand, but I.

But it was the British with us.

We were the colonies to the British.

He's not thinking back quite that far.

He's stuck in the 50s.

But how does someone get sucked into into this vortex?

I mean, you may think that he was a right-winger, and he was more than most, but he did get elected mayor of New York City.

Not by me.

Twice.

Not by me.

Not by me.

And the Bloomberg, who I had a chance to vote against three times.

Right.

Despite the two-term limits.

Also, a flaming liberal compared to the rest of the Republican Party.

My theory is that Rudy Giuliani has been out on the speaking circuit.

That's how he makes his living.

Okay, that's who you're talking to, is the Republican base.

What gets the applause lines?

Obama's a Kenyan.

Yeah, Red Benny.

That's how you become a crazy person.

I mean, Giuliani, the only time he's really been in the news the past few months is when he said things that were deemed kind of outrageous.

He made that comment, I think it was in December after the Eric Garner grand jury decision, that white cops wouldn't be in black neighborhoods if black people weren't killing each other as much.

And then I think in January, he made some comment about Obama and de Blasio stoking anti-police hatred.

I mean, this is now why he's getting in the news.

It's not so much because he's a big force in Julia.

He also has an infomercial.

Have you seen this?

But I agree with you.

He does.

Giuliani.

He has an infomercial.

For what?

I don't watch the whole thing.

I just see he has an infomercial.

I flip.

Okay.

I agree with Fran that there's an undercurrent of racism that's always horrible.

It's an overcurrent.

It's not an undercurrent.

It's out and out racism.

Well, now it's out there.

There's something about this, I love America in a way that you can't even understand.

I don't know what they want.

Also, this exceptionalism.

I think they're like the Oscar people.

They want a trophy for best country, America, for the millionth year in a row.

You're the best country.

It's

like Ronald Reagan again, which is always troubling for me.

He what?

Giuliani cited Ronald Reagan.

Yes, he made it.

He made Americans optimistic.

He tripled the national debt.

Yes, May Americans optimistic again.

All right.

I want to ask you a question before we run out of time.

I read this week in the paper that there's a mega drought coming.

Yeah,

sounds like a group that opened for Spinal Tap.

Yeah,

mega death and mega drought.

It was really their first album.

Now it's kind of over.

NASA put out this study.

It says it's going to be decades long.

There's an 80% chance of it happening within the next,

by 2050.

Bill,

honey, how old are you?

Don't worry about it.

41.

This is the upside of having no kids.

No, by 2050, it could happen tomorrow.

Did you see Interstellar?

I have a theory.

Everything that happens in movies then happens later in life.

But much later.

This sounds exactly what, like, what happened.

1984 didn't happen.

Doc, this is what?

Well, it didn't happen in 1984.

It's happened since.

Yes.

But not in 1984.

Mega Drought bad.

Okay, so this is what I say to people all the time.

They say,

first of all, we discourage the use of the term skeptic.

When people say, I'm a climate skeptic.

No, you are a climate denier.

You're a climate change denier.

Right.

And that's really important.

And people say, well, what can we do about this?

What can we do about this?

Right now I'm saying talk about climate change.

Just raise the awareness of climate change.

Have you heard this expression, millennial anger?

Do you have this?

Where the millennials are like, You guys have been in charge.

You heard about climate change in 1988.

James Hanson testified in front of Congress.

And you haven't done shit about it.

What's wrong with you people, people our age?

I would say to them, stop taking pictures of your food, and you do something about it.

No.

I've got to disagree with you.

That's not the problem.

I always say the same thing.

You have to care about it more than I do.

I've already had my fun with the planet.

So, okay, so it's a really serious problem.

You have to fix it.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a serious problem, but

I really want to know what's going to happen.

You can't have, when the conservatives go to run for president, you can't have people disagreeing with 97% of the world scientists relentlessly and then claim you want to participate in the most powerful country.

Let me ask you this.

There's a giant storm all over the East Coast now.

They've got more snow.

Boston, they're dumping it in the harbor.

They don't know what to do with it.

They want to build this Keystone pipeline.

Why can't they build a water pipeline?

We have none out here.

Well, this has been discussed.

Why can't we save the snow for when there's no water?

Yes, or save the snow for when there's no water.

It's been discussed, people

are out there.

Probably not.

It's 3,000 miles across the country.

The snow will be melted by then.

You'll have a long time.

That's what we want.

We're still from Boston.

They're planning to go.

If you can find a way to desalinate water using less energy than we use today, you would get rich.

And you would change the world.

And if you could find a better electrical storage system, a better battery, you would change the world.

Now, these are technology.

We're not going to be bad bad news for you.

We're not the people that are going to think of this.

Yeah, but here's the thing.

you have to tell the scientists.

Yeah, no, well, the scientists.

He's the professor.

You're Marianne.

I'm Gilligan.

No, no.

That's the skipper.

No, no.

That's the skipper.

Gilligan.

The technical.

Hang on, you guys.

The technical solutions.

The technical solutions are important, and we are hopeful for those.

But it's going to take a top-down thing as well.

It's going to take regulation.

You know what I worry about is that people just seem to have this unending ability to just, instead of make fundamental changes, adapt.

I see people in Beijing and New Delhi, where they can't breathe, they just wear masks.

It's like, if you can't breathe the fucking air,

wouldn't you want to make a fundamental changes?

So things are going to change.

Their feathers were killing all the fish.

They're just going to eat jellyfish and worms.

How are we going to eat them with those masks on?

With the masks on the bottom.

You can't get it through them.

That's the developing world.

But

people are going to have to leave Florida, leave Louisiana, the Gulf Coast.

People are going to have to to leave.

And this is a developed world.

And this is going to be everybody's problem.

So the sooner we get to work, the better.

Well, and part of the problem with all this, even if you look at the polling, there was a recent New York Times-Stanford University poll that found that actually half of Republicans about believe that climate change is happening.

But if you look at the general polling, it's not a top issue for Democrats or Republicans.

It's not an issue for the same...

feces throwers and flat earthers who you're talking about who vote in the primary.

That's the problem.

It's that steep they have to get

it down.

But you're also here.

There is a plan to pump sulfur dioxide into the air and reflect sunlight into space.

Are you high?

Right.

You can't engineer a plan of that.

I'm so glad you asked me that question.

It's time to go to New Rules.

New rules.

New rules.

New rules, no ruining Anna Winter's fashion week by bringing in a screaming baby.

If she wanted to hear crying children while admiring new clothes, she'd go to the factories where they sew them.

Neruel, stop giving the job of fashion designer to the wrong person.

Can you guess which of these two men is now the hottest designer in America?

Is it the one in the nice tucks?

No, it's the one in the purple velvet pantsuit and baby booties.

Now, where have I seen that look

Troubling, troubling.

New rule, now that those two guys who climbed that mile-high rock wall are down and the hottest thing in sports is the tough mudder, an obstacle course where competitors carry 200-pound logs, swim in ice water, dodge live electrical wires, and crawl through pipes full of mud.

Someone must explain to me, what is wrong with white people?

The role of Google Autocomplete really reflects popular questions previous users have asked.

And when you type, is the moon,

it adds real.

You read the black capsule.

Then I give up because that means the most frequent question people ask Google about the moon is, is it real

also if people have really asked is the moon hollow is the moon a spaceship and is the moon a hologram

then President Rick Perry it's all yours

just take over

doesn't believe in evolution new rule the nose-to-nose face-off at the boxing weigh-in

must be recognized as the most homoerotic moment in all of life.

Fellas, you're buff, you're in your underwear, you're a centimeter away from making out,

and you keep calling each other bitch.

At this point, it would actually be less gay if you put the other guy's penis in your mouth.

And finally, new rule: now that Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz have both admitted to smoking weed as teenagers, I must admit that as a teen, I once tried on a pair of khakis.

It was a mistake.

I didn't like the way it made me feel, and I never did again.

Take it from me, kids.

Khakis are a bad scene, man.

Now, I bring this up because I think it is time to declare that the media ritual of asking presidential candidates if they ever smoke pot can be put to rest because the answer is always yes, and nobody cares.

Everyone from Bill Clinton.

Everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich, Al Gore to Rick Santorum, John Kerry to Sarah Palin, they have all fessed up.

Come on, when even Ted Cruz cops do it, that one surprised me, I must admit.

I thought, who would get high with Ted Cruz?

Well, if you're drunk enough, maybe.

Ted's spokesman said, when Senator Cruz was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana.

It was a mistake, and he's never tried it since.

Oh, please, the mistake was stopping.

Now, of course, I don't have a problem with any of this because when I was younger, I also smoked.

And when I say when I was younger, I mean just before the show.

No.

Now, the problem I have...

is that this is the standard answer we get from all these guys nowadays.

Some form of, hey, when I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid.

It's no big deal.

Which is great.

Except that's not a defense that's really available for most of the 700,000 Americans who get arrested every year.

So if we're going to keep doing that, we should at least be honest with our kids and tell them the truth about drug laws in this country.

Kids, if you're going to experiment, make absolutely certain that beforehand your parents are white and well-connected.

It's a good safety tip.

When Jeb Bush was at prep school, he was apparently not just a pothead, but a dealer.

But he dismisses that by saying, back then I was a cynical little turd at a cynical school.

Okay, but then when you became a governor of a state, you insisted on mandatory sentences for drug crimes and a policy of jail only, no treatment for drug users.

Except when it was your daughter when you made an exception.

Wow, that sounds like something a cynical turd would do.

Do you know that Jeb's father, the first President Bush, was the last president who didn't smoke pot?

You can see the progression.

From Clinton copping to it but still needing to say he didn't inhale, To George W.

Bush, not denying it, just saying he wouldn't answer.

To Obama, who said, Yeah, I smoke weed, I smoked a lot of it, and I look cool doing it.

But don't all these guys, Clinton, Jeb, W., Obama, don't they all owe a debt to the 40,000 unlucky Americans currently in jail for the exact same crime?

In David Axelrod's new book, he confirms that Obama actually was always for gay marriage.

He just couldn't say it for a long time because, well, he was already black and he didn't want to give Bill O'Reilly a heart attack.

So he waited and then made up some shit about evolving.

Isn't it time to do that with Pot?

Come on, man.

You've gone down the list reversing the stupidities of the past.

Health care, torture, gay marriage, immigration, Cuba.

it's pots turn.

And not just legalization.

Obama should acknowledge that putting people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses was a giant mistake in the first place.

And then he should use the power of the presidential pardon and free them all.

Come on.

Come on, you know you want to.

You've been stingy with those pardons.

Here's a great way to make up for it.

And there's plenty of precedent.

Lincoln, a Republican, pardoned the Southern rebels after the Civil War.

Ford, a Republican, pardoned Vietnam draft Dodgers.

Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 2.7 million Mexican illegals.

If Republicans can forgive people for armed insurrection, desertion, and speaking Spanish?

A Democrat can forgive us for getting high.

Thank you very much.

That's our show.

We're off next week.

Watch Vice.

We'll be back March 6th.

I'll be at the Pearl Theater at the Palms in Vegas, March 21st and 22nd.

At the Hope Center in Eugene, Oregon, April 18th, and at the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque, May 2nd.

I want to thank Bill Nye, Alaje Yazade, and Rob Reiner, Fran Leibowitz, and Al Black.

Join us now on Overtime at HBO.com.

Thank you, folks.

Watch 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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