Real Time with Bill Maher guests - Friday, March 11, 2022

[Rhiannon12866]

Real Time with Bill Maher continues its 20th season Friday, March 11 (10:00-11:00 p.m. live ET/tape-delayed PT), with a replay at 11:25 p.m., exclusively on HBO.

This week features a one-on-one interview with Kenneth Branagh, writer, director, and producer of the semi-biographical film Belfast, nominated for seven Academy Awards.

This week's in-studio panel discussion will include Frank Bruni, professor of public policy at Duke University and author of The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found; and Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and author of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.

[Jim__]

1. Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy

From Amazon:

Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before “fake news” became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore. That’s because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it’s woke. Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including “antiracism,” intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be?

It all has to do with who our news media is written by―and who it is written for. In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century―from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America’s elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists’ worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.

The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.

Any bets as to where Bill Maher comes down on this?

[UTUSN]

3. My bet: On airing out inconvenient ideas for provocative discussion.

The rap on him here is when he criticizes Dems for being soft, street un-smart, and when we go out of touch.

Also that he hosts wingnuts. I say he almost always tears them down. Different from Jon STEWART who played up to O'Reilly and Beckkk.

The old saw is that wingnuts look outward for boogies to blame and Libs look inward for root causes, identifying glitches to fix.

We need constructive analysis.

[AZProgressive]

4. I don't find the book to be constructive

The word Woke is now being used as a dog whistle by the right. Even Ukraine was accused of pushing “woke ideologies” by Madison Cawthorne and what DeSantis and other Republicans are doing to education.

I don’t find millionaire bill Maher to be a champion of the working class, I think the W word in the title attracted Maher.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. You've read the book?

What areas were most problematic?

[AZProgressive]

6. Not reading a book on "Woke media"

I don’t buy that there is this anti racist media taking away concerns from the working class. Not surprised Maher has the author as a guest.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Then you can't claim the book is not constructive.

Are you even familiar with the author at all?

[AZProgressive]

8. I read the Amazon description

Not interested in a book with woke in a title. I don’t believe there is a woke media or that anti racist concerns take things away from the working class.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. That's fine. You made a decision based on a review, not actually reading the book.

Your initial comment made it seem otherwise. That's fine. I often don't choose to read books based on cursory reviews I read, but it doesn't mean the book isn't good or constructive, just not to my liking. Again, in case you missed the question, are you familiar with the author at all?

[UTUSN]

10. I was referring to MAHER. And words like "woke" can be abused by nutcases like Cawthorn.

"Woke" might be criticized as "EXCESSIVE p. c."

I don't think MAHER was born a millionaire.

[AZProgressive]

11. It is a dog whistle these days by the right

‘WOKE WITH A HARD R’: HOW THE RIGHT CREATED A NEW DOG WHISTLE

Woke is no longer a Black word. In a matter of a few short years, it went from a soulful signifier of Black consciousness, to a sneering dog whistle of anti-Blackness used against anyone who might argue for a world where Black lives do, indeed, matter.
The word first blossomed in pop culture in an Erykah Badu track back in 2008. On “Master Teacher,” she breathily whispers about how she’s trying to find her way to a beautiful world (and herself). As the afro-crowned crooner goes on to dream about this world, she poses and answers a question: “What if it were no niggas / Only master teachers? / I stay woke.”

(Snip)

Then, Ferguson happened. After Michael Brown’s murder, the BLM movement leapt into the national consciousness. With it came wokeness, a culture unto itself. “Woke” soon started to serve as a shorthand among people calling for the world to wake up to the systemic racism that was causing Black men and women to become hashtags at an alarming rate. Next, as often happens, white people seized on woke as a handy catchall. As such, woke morphed into an online signifier, but one generally used by young, well-meaning white people who were urging others to become aware of the racist agendas operating against Black life. Woke became a semi-hip racist critique.

Quickly, though, woke also became the opposite. It became a polite slur, a dog whistle used to mock anyone who dares to suggest that American history and culture is racist, and argues that life in America should radically change based on that understanding. This new cultural meaning for “woke” helps to explain why, when Senator Josh Hawley recently lost a big book deal, he didn’t pause to reflect on the fact that he’d incited a riot in the nation’s capitol that claimed five lives; instead, he blamed “woke culture.”

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/woke-with-a-hard-r-how-the-right-created-a-new-dogwhistle

Woke is an AAVE word that is now mainly used by white people such as Maher. Besides I don’t believe we have a “woke” media.

[UTUSN]

12. By "some". & when the basis is about " beliefs" the discussion is over.

[UTUSN]

2. K&R

[question everything]

13. Judge by the discussion on this thread alone, should be interesting

Thanks, again, for keeping up with him.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. Thanks!

I just put this out there for those that are interested. Those who aren't can just skip over it, isn't that what most of us do?