Bill Maher has been one of the most prominent voices in political commentary for my entire adult lifetime, and most of the time I have been defending his positions to the cringed faces that responded to them. He has always championed himself as a ‘classical liberal’ who lives and dies by free speech and the first amendment, and has spearheaded discussion in this country many times for the better. However, over the past year and change he has changed, despite his constant claims that the world has moved and he has been the calm center of it all.

His podcast, ‘club random’, which with his stature gets great guests has become a platforming tool for some of the lunatics he has on it to pander and watch him get fucked up. I’m going to give two examples, Jordan Peterson was the first one that really made me say why is a Cornell educated person giving this idiot time, and him chumming up with Robert F Kennedy Jr on vaccines was the last straw for me. As much as the Seth Macfarlane and Quinten Tarantino episodes were fun, the other two were a disgrace.

This is a guy I lionized as a budding atheist, sprouting from failed catholicism. He was just like me, raised catholic and then said, what the fuck? Just like I did. His 2008 documentary ‘Religulous’ is still candy to me, and a great place to start from for anyone questioning their faith, but he has strayed so far from that ‘seek truth’ mentality that history majors are supposed to live by. He was spot on in so many of those scenes pointing out the absurdities of religion and the American right in this country, and now it appears to me that the rich part of his brain has overtaken the liberal one.

I saw him do stand up at The Palace Theater here in Columbus with my parents and even got a selfie with him. It was a highlight of my year back then, but this is where I am going to put my foot in the ground and make a cut, he is no longer a voice of reason. He will still have a job, and I will still watch, because there is such limited real speech in American political discourse, but he’s officially done to me. Too many weeks of supporting the genocide in Gaza, too many weeks of marginalizing trans people, too many weeks of having fluff guests on like this week where there was no counterpoint to the genocide.

‘Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.’ Bill Maher was that 5 years ago, now he’s just wealthy and bitchy. If I have to hear about his permits for his solar panel on an outhouse in his backyard one more time I’m going to vomit. His panel segments used to be the peak of political talk in this country, and this week it was reduced to pandering on a level I don’t understand unless the goal is attracting bloodthirsty viewers. One history major to another, et tu Bill Maher?

I wanted to take the opportunity to praise 5 people of my lifetime who have made it better. Great people inspire and make the world a better place. Isn’t it amazing that so few of them overall are Republicans? My rebuttal is FDR, Kennedy, Obama, I await your response.

Barack Obama

As the first person to receive my vote for president he was always going to be on this list. Inheriting a financial crisis and 2 wars of his predecessor it was as if the deck was stacked against him like so many African Americans in this country. Hope, the infectious positivity of this eloquent speaker and the healthcare plan that he started made me believe. Yes We Can! I’m waiting with baited breath for the next political figure who can move hearts and minds for the better like he did.

Tiger Woods

I followed him from the early days at Stanford where Arnold Palmer was buying him dinners and it was an NCAA violation, unbelievable in this NIL era. Walking and winning a US Open on a broken leg, there are just sports moments that inspire you to do your regular day job a little better having seen that. Tiger made an entire generation of people love golf who wouldn’t have otherwise, and broke down the racial barriers to the sport in a way that only greatness can. To quote a Nike campaign, ‘I am Tiger Woods.’

LeBron James

The Chosen One. The man who married his high school sweetheart and made 8 straight NBA finals. The man who came back to Cleveland and won a title. The block, the shot, the stop, and that championship comeback from down 3-1 should shut the mouths of every feeble minded asshole that burned his jersey when he went to Miami. In stark contrast to the previous person on this list, no scandals in the social media era should be a lionization in its own respect.

John Mayer

As a guitarist, I had to include one on the list. Most know him as the pop star with the ladies, and most Swifties get this look on their face when you mention his name, but I want to talk about the music. The pop acoustic stuff to start was fantastic, but the Continuum album and the guitar work with the John Mayer Trio during that period was sublime. The gold standard as a guitarist to me is being able to cover Hendrix, and if you look up John’s cover of Voodoo Child, you will have no more questions.

Dee and Jimmy Haslam

I don’t know how the 30 for 30 hasn’t been made yet on ‘Save the Crew.’ But in a miracle that was hard worked for by so many in central Ohio, the Browns ownership struck a deal to keep the Crew in Columbus. Symbolically to right a wrong that had taken place in Ohio within my lifetime, with the Browns moving to Baltimore, they are my Flying J capitalist heroes. It means we get to still have the Nordecke, we get to still have the greatest team the world has ever seen. Glory to Columbus.

I have to begin this by saying how difficult it is to honestly talk about it, but we need to talk about it. I am going to label it as a genocide because that is what it is, and that is what the United Nations has been openly discussing the prevention of. Because of the likelihood that you have already tuned out based on that statement, please allow me to say a couple of true things. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 and it was horrific. The government of Israel does not represent Jewish people as a theocracy, and criticism of the government is not anti-semitic.

Terrorist attacks do not come out of nowhere. With that statement I am in no way justifying the actions of Hamas, merely stating a fact that there are causes. The US support of the Abraham Accords under Trump, the apartheid state that Israel has been responsible for for decades, I know why the caged bird sings. Terrorism is not justifiable in any way, but to deny the causes is to bury one’s head in the sand and prepare for another prolonged Middle Eastern war.

The actions of Benjamin Netanyahu in response to the attack and hostage crisis have been homicidal. The indiscriminate killing of civilians in response is a war crime. The collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population through starvation and bombing is a war crime. There isn’t much coverage of it, but there are significant protests going on in Israel now for a cease fire to get the hostages back. Remember way back when it was about getting the hostages back?

Over 30,000 civilians have been killed in this ‘surgical’ military campaign in Gaza, and the United States is complicit in it. We provide 4 Billion dollars a year in aid to Israel to fund this atrocity. To be clear, I am not against the recent aid package because the aid to Ukraine was absolutely necessary and it had to pass the batshit House of Representatives. That does not mean we can’t move to right our wrong and force a cease fire.

The college kids are saying it for the rest of us that have to work day jobs. The unrest on campuses across the country should be waking up ‘Sleepy Joe’ to his responsibility as our empathizer in chief. I very badly don’t want to see this country turn into a dictatorship, and Biden ignoring this for another week, another month just isn’t going to work. Joe Biden your 4th alarm is going off on your phone this morning, wake the fuck up.