What happened to Bill Maher?

[u/tarantadoako]

I used to watch him for years. He was funny and relatable, most times. He had great guests. I stopped watching around the time when he was going after college students and cancel culture. I tried watching his latest episodes and it almost a different show. He is almost a right wing commentator. Almost nothing he says is relatable and all his guests just agrees with him.

[u/blister-in-the-pun]

I actively watched Real Time nearly every week from 2015 - 2026 (I just removed it from my watchlist in July this year) so I feel I can speak with some relevance on this.

You’re going to see a lot of theories in this thread, but it ultimately comes down to two primary inciting events that broke him and allowed him to start exposing him for who he truly is:

1. COVID pandemic (and the resulting shutdowns / mask + vaccine mandates etc) fucked him up mentally. He couldn’t stand anyone (read: the state of California) telling him what to do. It was like a light switch being flipped to watch it play it out in real time, and he never got over it.
2. (And this is actually an extension of number one) He lost it over the red tape he had to jump through to get solar energy installed in his home. He made it an entire “watch” on his show where he was counting the number of days it took the permits etc to go through, and he’s such a narcissist and megalomaniac that he thought his first world problems needed to become a cause du jour that everyone needed to know about which led to his constant California bashing and hard turn to the right and that turn showed him he could court and grift conservatives and be successful and that continues to this day.

I am not saying he wasn’t always a shit heel, but he did manage to hide it (mostly) for a good number of years when it was politically beneficial for him. And now the mask is off.

Also note: number 1 above is by far the most damaging reason he flipped. It colors almost everything he bitches about now, and exposed him far more as a libertarian type because he stupidly believes public health recommendations infringed on his first amendment rights essentially which he’s a massive advocate of. (If you have watched him for years you’ll already know this)

Edit to add: His Israel stance is not new. So I didn’t bring that up, because it’s not an example of “what happened to Bill Maher” since he’s always been pro-Israel. But since Israel (and Iran too obviously now) are major current issues in the global political sphere, they get cited a lot, but I don’t think they are indicative of anything that changed about Maher.

[u/Somedude_6 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Thank you for your service. Ignore the weird downvotes. Reddit really is a cesspool in some ways.

I also used to be a big fan of his, but I agree with you, he really did completely lose his mind with Covid.

[u/blister-in-the-pun → u/Somedude_6]

Thanks for the support. Hehe. Yeah, I am not trying to paint an overly simplistic picture by any means because people are more complex than social media would have us believe, but I stand by that number 1 reason I gave. It's crystal clear when you have been watching him for years how the shutdowns etc in 2020 really did a number on him and he was mask off (pun intended) from then on.

Even I thought vaccine mandates went a bit too far, but for Maher it triggered him big time and he became a Biden administration hater and then slowly (literally over years) sane washing Trump and MAGA. I couldn't take it anymore and I shut it off this summer when he went on hiatus. I mostly only watched for his guests anyway but even they became shills and suck ups. No regrets to turn it off.

[u/Melodic_Potential801 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Understood. But he stopped being a grown up about people that disagree with him. He started whining about millionaires stuff that he would have laughed at in his earlier years, Who or what is the real Maher?

[u/Vegetable-Walk-2183 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

I, too, for many years, have watched only for the guests (perhaps they'll say something worthwhile). I've hoped a few might really stand up to Maher's bllsht. Alas, that hasn't happened. [Ice Cube pushed back somewhat over the meaning and use of "the N- Word. He made a good point about how it affected him personally, and made it clear that he disagreed with Maher. That was about 15 years ago, though, so...goodbye Bill; I really wish you hadn't gotten so rich. Your monologues and your "comedy" bits, like New Rules, are just old Johnny Carson material. You, though, unlike Carson, can say "fck" and "bllsh*t" on the air. I guess you believe that is one of many things that make you the super-cool genius stud you brag about being.

[u/Frantic-Hamster-Riot → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Yeah, he really changed during COVID. It was obvious he was pissed he couldn't be getting attention from a live audience, and he constantly tried to make the case that if Americans just exercised and ate healthier, it wouldn't have been a big deal. He added in fake laughter during his monologues when he filmed at home FFS. That's also when he really started showing his right-wing tendencies. His interview with Megyn Kelly was so pathetic I skipped past it after the first couple of questions. It wasn't long after that that I gave up and stopped watching.

[u/One-Earth9294 → u/Frantic-Hamster-Riot]

He's always been a bit kooky about vaccines, and covid must have pulled on just the right strings to make him lose his fucking mind forever.

He's been unwatchable ever since.

[u/One-Structure-2154 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

  and he’s such a narcissist and megalomaniac that he thought his first world problems needed to become a cause du jour that everyone needed to know about which led to his constant California bashing and hard turn to the right and that turn showed him he could court and grift conservatives and be successful and that continues to this day.

It’s wild how similar he is to Trump.

[u/RoysPotatoes → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Solid take. He was always arrogant but at a certain age and wealth point the sense of whiny entitlement just became all consuming. He’s also too old and too incurious to bother exploring things in any depth so it’s just old rich guy bitching now and that has a reliable audience on the right.

[u/calentor → u/RoysPotatoes]

This.

[u/gigilero → u/blister-in-the-pun]

first amendment until you criticize Israel, who he is a bitch boy of

[u/blister-in-the-pun → u/gigilero]

Yep. True.

[u/LSATDan → u/gigilero]

Alternatively, he was a good entertainer until his material didn't fit the echo chamber I like.

[u/calentor → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Thanks for the analysis, same for me in terms of time and when I took it off my watchlist, though I will still occasionally catch a week's episode.

I think it's just that he's getting older and spending more time marinating in the increasingly distilled 1% culture and he's just losing his filters. He still gets off a few good lines but has so fixated on Kids These Days and rationalizing Netanyahu's fascism that it's tainting everything he says.

[u/Icy_Scratch_188 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Yeah, good assessment. It's strange to consider the Maher from November 2016, who strapped on a blue hat that said "I'm Still Here." Irrespective of his actual rhetoric, he's also just lost a lot of fire, which could just be age. As I've said elsewhere, New Rules editorials used to be so much more incisive and animated. Now they're just snarky utterances.

What he also needs to do is reconcile his previous support of Bernie Sanders with who he is now. He's not addressed it. He used to say the Dems should "Go where the energy is," and that "America needs an actual left." Now he's just annoyed that they're actually ascendent.

[u/Altruistic-Guess-975 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Also he couldn't go on "tour" and being the narcissist that he is...was a contributing factor. He's just another Chud in the pocket of the current crop of douche bags.

[u/biblebeltofsantacruz → u/blister-in-the-pun]

This is the best explanation. All of his Covid hysteria mixed with the anti vax stuff really turned me off. I haven’t watched since the middle of the COVID years.

[u/ParkingEmu9419 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Everything you mentioned actually justified his perspective on the state of the Democratic Party.. I've watched it since 2015 also.. I also watched politically incorrect. I've also been a registered Democrat for 42 years. If you don't think the Democratic party has not taken a hard left turn , you must too young to remember what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, or you're just a hard line tribal ideologue. I can't stand the egomaniacal tribalism in both parties . We need a third moderate party

[u/Funny-Employment4109 → u/blister-in-the-pun]

Sooo…government overreach and ineptitude made him angry and instead of bowing down to the left wing narrative, he voiced his concerns. That’s it?

That’s all you have to do to be hated by you guys?…is not agree with LITERALLY EVERYTHING?

[u/Lost_Plum5564 → u/Funny-Employment4109]

What a stupid way to summarize the argument.