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?