THE LAST LIBERAL

Bill Maher on weed, wokeness, and 30 years of free speech

- MATT WELCH

IN DECEMBER, THE public research firm WPA Intelligence came out with a small survey with potentially huge-and widely ignored-implications for institutional media, entertainment, and government.

Asking 1,000 registered voters which of eight listed media personalities they trusted, the firm found podcast iconoclast Joe Rogan-who has been serially singled out by the Joe Biden White House for COVID-19 "misinformation"-in second place with 36 percent, just edging out former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's 35 percent and Daily Wire impresario Ben Shapiro’s 33, and far ahead of the industry-respected CNN anchor Jake Tapper (23 percent).

In first place, with 40 percent, including the highest ratings of the group among political independents? Comedian Bill Maher.

Maher, whose 22nd season of HBO’s Real Time debuted January 19, the day before his 68th birthday, finds himself in an unusually important position in American discourse as he enters a 30th consecutive year hosting a political talk show on TV. As elite journalists increasingly shy away from “platforming” allegedly dangerous conservatives, Maher eagerly slings the bull with the Steve Bannons and Vivek Ramaswamys of the world. As late-night comedians elicit “clapter” for their dutiful swipes at Donald Trump, the HBO host still aims for actual laughs, in part by making his own political side uncomfortable. And in an era when both left and right are abandoning bedrock Enlightenment values of due process and free speech, Maher has become one of the most insistent (critics would say hectoring) voices for old-school liberalism.

“It’s a small band of us,” Maher says at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s famed Polo Lounge, “but we’re the ones who haven’t gone insane, and people know it.”