Bill Maher Schools Kara Swisher, Media on Censorship
Maher won't follow his party's path toward crushing dissent, free speech
Bill Maher fuels mixed emotions on the political Right.
He’s been a megaphone for progressive causes for most of his decades-long career. His HBO showcase allows him to rally the Left against GOP figures, particularly President Donald Trump.
Yet he’s one of the most powerful voices, Left or Right, against the “woke mind virus.”
Lately, he’s equally strong against his party’s push to crush free speech.
When even a liberal Supreme Court Justice can’t acknowledge why we need the First Amendment, that matters.
.@GGreenwald rips apart Ketanji Brown Jackson's concern that the First Amendment could, in fact, limit government power:
"She believes… the free speech guarantee is an impediment to the government being able to to do things it needs to do…
I appreciate Justice Brown Jackson… https://t.co/eEDopbkeDz pic.twitter.com/T5aIgOvDJE
— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) March 19, 2024
Over the weekend, Maher went to bat for free expression once again on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” And he dueled a prototypical journalist in doing so.
Game. Set. Match. Maher.
Maher clashed with “journalist” Kara Swisher, who once attacked a fellow reporter for sharing the truth about Sen. John Fetterman’s cognitive state post-stroke.
Swisher won’t say it aloud, but it appears she craves government censorship if it aligns with her worldview. That explains her lack of outrage over the Biden administration’s censorious ways.
And she’s not alone in the media.
Notorious propaganda outlet smears free speech platform https://t.co/3ySm8Kr58y
— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) March 25, 2024
Maher started by saying what we’ve all realized regarding COVID-19.
“As the years roll by now, we see that the dissenting opinions on a lot of these things were quite the right ones.”
Heck, just the fact that Maher mentioned the current Supreme Court case Murthy V. Missouri dealing with free speech is vital to our free speech debate.
There’s little chance Colbert, Kimmel, Oliver or Meyers will do the same. If they did, they’d likely go to bat against free speech. They do as the government says, by and large.
Swisher defended the media and government. She said it was a confusing time, adding “we’re not going to know perfectly.”
Maher had the perfect answer.
“OK, but we should have been able to argue about whether it came from a lab, which we weren’t. Things like that … Natural immunity — whether it was better to go to the beach and get sun and fresh air, as I would have said, as opposed to sitting home and day-drinking and putting on weight.”
He emphasized the latter point, one of the most shocking deceptions tied to the pandemic.
“They never mentioned that obesity was the biggest factor…They have a lot to answer for.”
Quick, how many times did Dr. Anthony Fauci push losing weight as part of his pandemic rhetoric? That’s rhetorical.
Swisher tried to respond to Maher saying the expects had “a lot to answer for,” but he quickly cut her off.
“They do, but you’re in the middle of a plague and a debate that people don’t know, and so you’re going to… “
“Yes, so you should be able to debate it — this is medicine,” he countered.
It’s also journalism.
Maher, a comic by trade, instinctively knows journalists should have been defending free speech during the pandemic. They also should be holding government officials accountable for stifling debate.
They aren’t. Maher is.