Last night on Real Time with Bill Maher, after his monologue where he joked about Hunter Biden’s trial* for buying a gun while being a crack user ("He almost had the pipe in his hand!”), marijuana was mentioned four times, which might be a record even for Maher:
- In the lead interview with Sen. John Fetterman, Maher said, "You've been very out front on legalizing weed." "Oh yeah, of course," Fetterman replied, adding, "I've heard that, you too." Laughter and applause ensued.
- On the panel, discussing the overdiagnosing and drugging of adolescents for SAD and depression with author Abigail Shrier, Maher said he was also shy and “bummed out” as an adolescent, which wouldn’t have been helped by prescription drugs. "I discovered pot when I was 19 and that drug helped, organically,” he said. (Panelist Matt Welch of Reason Magazine responded something about motivation, which was lost in crosstalk. Obviously Maher doesn’t have a motivation problem.)
- In the “New Rules” segment under the tag line “Think Splifferent” he put up a New York Post headline about the new study saying MJ use has surpassed alcohol for the first time (actually, it’s only daily or near-daily use). He then asked, “If alcohol use is declining, why is it still not safe to work at a waffle house?” and showed footage of a recent violent brawl there. He added, “Not to always be the marijuana advocate, but do you know what the stoners are doing while the fight is going on? Eating their waffles!”
- In his final editorial, Maher started with the “puzzling paradox” of rape jokes being unacceptable, except for prison rape jokes, and ended up presenting stats about the two million people behind bars, the US’s comparatively high incarceration rate, and the frightening and deplorable conditions in our privately owned prisons, whose owners are incentivized to keep the number of prisoners up in a “taxpayer-funded criminal mentorship program” that leads to more crime and recidivism. It ends, "The more prisoners, the more profit. This why they lobby Congress for three-strikes rules, and keeping weed illegal. They want return customers."
Maher bravely and wisely called for marijuana legalization long before it was popular, and he took a bit of credit for that on his "Splifferent" segment. Every year he wins a "Tokey" award from this blog for something he said, like in 2022 when he joked, "Joe Biden thinks THC is that channel that shows the old movies" and (regarding Gary Chambers), "Do we like the candidates who hold up guns in their ads, or those who hold up weed?" My favorite line from his speech at the 2002 NORML conference is, "I'm getting tired of being treated like a criminal or a second class citizen by people who, through their preference for liquor or pills for mood alteration, show not a superiority of taste but an inferiority."
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| Maher on his "Club Random" podcast. |
Maher's new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You, a collection of 300 of his trenchant last-word editorials over the years, has a chapter on Drugs, packed with funny and farcical jokes like (commenting on former House Speaker John Boehner getting into the cannabis business), “You think Boehner cried a lot before? Wait until he gets stoned and sees a sunset.”
On his book publicity tour, Maher was asked by CNN's Chris Wallace, "What's the deal with you and pot?" Maher replied, unequivocally and unapologetically, “I love it.” Asked what he liked so much about it, he replied, "I smoke situationally, when I want to be at my best at something." He said he wasn't high for the Wallace interview, but that he accidentally got very stoned on some Black Mamba at the West Hollywood dispensary The Woods, which he co-owns, before an interview with Los Angeles Magazine. There he said, "I would never get high to do ‘Real Time.’ I can do stand-up high because I don’t have to worry about a clock. I like it for sex. And I like it for writing.” Speaking about his podcast, "Club Random," he said, “The producer, director and star of that show is marijuana. Marijuana’s going to take me where it’s going to take me." Indeed, he wore a "Thank You for Pot Smoking" T-shirt for his recent chat with Sandra Bernhardt on the show.
Maher isn't exactly a darling of the left right now, as he has skewered the excesses of "woke" progressives, poked fun at Biden, and questioned vaccinations. The right-wing media loves to excise and air anti-Democratic statements he makes on his show, while missing the bigger picture he presents. He's been lambasting the Democrats, in particular Merrick Garland, for not prosecuting Trump for his serious attempts to thwart the 2020 election results, but the Right only picked up when he pointed out that Stormy Daniels wasn't a reliable witness in that less-important trial. Guesting on Fox News's Guttfield! last month, he strongly came out against Trump and talked about how he'd predicted his denial of the election. "Everyone said I was smoking too much pot," he said. "Turns out, I was smoking just the right amount."
Keep on Thinking Splifferent, Bill, and sharing your thought with us. We need them now more than ever.
*On the Biden trial, Pittsburgh NORML chair Patrick Nightingale comments, "Fun fact, the gun charge he's facing has been declared unconstitutional by a federal court in Oklahoma (over a marijuana case). If Biden walks on the 922(g)(3) charge it'll be thanks to Trump's SCOTUS appointees. Kinda ironic, isn't it?"
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