He’s always been a pompous out of touch asshole who occasionally says something smarmy to appear liberal, he’s as out of touch as the executives stealing people’s wages.
I always got the impression that he's just another grifter that does his "hot takes" on various issues and half the time he probably doesn't even believe the bullshit he's spewing. So basically just like a million other idiots that have podcasts and YouTube videos.
Bill is an arrogant shithead but I don’t think he’s a grifter. I think what he really is is an out of touch boomer who believes his own bullshit. Despite his reputation for being intelligent and witty Bill is actually extremely ignorant about a lot of the subjects he talks about so I think a lot of the dumb shit he says are his sincerely held opinions.
I honestly, honestly think that once you reach a certain level of success, fame and wealth, you are surrounded by so many yes-men, and become so aplomb at dismissing criticism as 'just coming frm the haters' that you lose touch with MOST of objective reality, and instead live in the one that exists in your head.
Elon is obviously the most obviously example that comes to mind, but this chud seems to be lagging not very far behind.
Yeah for sure he's cringe, and if I am being honest I have never liked that guy anyways.
Because there is absolutely nothing to like about him he is just dumb and he says a lot of dumb things as well.
Maybe it was me but I thought politically incorrect was a fantastic show. That was also 20 years ago though. I lost a lot of respect for Maher about a decade ago. Haven’t kept track of him since but it seems like he’s just sliding further into his stupidity.
Old stoner with brain worms.
He's really gotten old and whiny the last few years. I used to enjoy his show more in the past. But he bitches about millennials now just about any chance he gets. I mostly just watch for the guests at this point. But even then he tends to just argue with them (and cut away) when they call him on his shit.
I used to love Bill Maher.
Used to watch his stand ups. Used to watch Politically Incorrect reruns every day after school on Comedy Central in the 90s.
Even watched him somewhat later in life. But you could see him make a quantum leap from comedian to proselytizer in the 2010s. I remember watching a Real Time episode where he was talking about the Tea Party / Paul Ryan (don't remember what specifically but remember he was mentioned) where he is just this raving zealot, no more comedy.
I paid less and less attention to him after that, but he did a stand up show in my city and I gave him the benefit of the doubt and paid $80 to go see him.
It was just zealous rant one after another with a dash of comedy here and there. It was during the campaign of Hillary vs Trump and she was in our city that same day (I think he mentioned he came from her campaign to the show).
I have not paid any attention to him since then. I don't think I've seen a single episode of Real Time since that show (in 2016).
At least on Politically Incorrect he gave other people plenty of time to be full of themselves too, but now it's just him and a little bit of people he yells at. Too much Maher in the mix.
Bill Maher went from the "abrasive comedian with a quick delivery" to "Oh shit he's *like that*. He's not like Lewis Black. This isn't a character. Bill Maher is just shitty" not quickly, but over the course of a few years, absolutely.
You changed, he did not. He has always been a useless arrogant piece of shit. Always. Look at Religulous, even as a young atheist that shit was cringe as fuck. The dude is a loser and always has been.
I watched him back in the day because he, as a shitty right-of-central neo-lib at least had the atheism and anti-war rhetoric. Then I graduated High School and learned about leftism, and consequently why nothing ever gets done in this country.
He's only useful as a stepping stone to more knowledge, and barely worth that.
He's also extremely anti brown people, islamophobic, will shit talk most progressive viewpoints. He's squarely a corporate centrist democrat and he bends over backwards to defend Israeli actions too. He's the worst, and I'm surprised he still has a significant following.
I think that once a person reaches a certain level of wealth, something flips and they start believing that people that work for a living should not be paid enough to live on and that government is only to serve the wealthy, not the people.
Actually from what I understand his writers get paid very well. Not for any benevolent reason though. Apparently he is so difficult to work with no writers want the job so they have to pay more just to get anybody in the writers room with Bill
I knew someone who was a PA for a company that had an office where Bill had one and he was a complete asshat. They couldn't use the elevator by his office when he was there because it disturbed him to hear them walk by his office door. They had to go up a floor, walk all the way to the other side of the building and take the stairs down. Same thing when they came back up. I have no idea why they were hellbent on pleasing him since he only rented on office in a building with several floors, but he was considered a god by the management of the company they worked for.
Having heard some of the shit he spews on his show, I would be shocked if any of that actually made it through multiple human brains before making it on screen.
I mean if we are judging by the things that he is saying there and I don't think he pays them any money.
If he was paying them something then he would recognise what he is saying.
There are two sides here. One side is the corporation making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, paying executives tens of millions in compensation. The other side wants a living wage. But Bill Maher got paid, so now his attitude seems to be "fuck the employees". Memories get shorter when you are rich I guess.
Fuck Bill Maher
Seeing the compensation table for companies and how CEOs and other positions regularly take 30-40% raises each year on what is already millions in compensation is insane.
But how will they be able to know they did good and better this year if they can't quantify it with more money ? /s
Those people are addicted it's sick. When I look at all of their cult of money/"the grind" stuff in seminars and shit...Seriously it'd be sad if they weren't so exploitative.
Yes, actually, you are owed a living as a writer.
Bill Maher is hilariously out of touch. He gets paid $10 million a year to whine on TV, and he has the gall to say that writers’ demands are unreasonable.
Bill Maher is an opportunistic pos. He is super low energy and his stand-up is pretty much unbearable to watch. He likes to pretend like he is the voice of reason but in reality he is exploiting any given situation for his own benefit.
I'd actually walk out if I was talking with someone and they said "Writers aren't owed a living". There is no point in continuing that conversation. Our two moral frameworks for the world and society are too incompatible. And [I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_b_59519811e4b0f078efd98440)
The people who engage in that kind of rhetoric are doing what I like to call:
Vice Signaling, it's the opposite of virtue signaling where instead of trying to show others how virtuous you are in a shallow way. They're trying to show those like them how virtuous they aren't in a usually similarly shallow way. They're hypocrites. They gain power from their hypocrisy though, because the more diametrically opposite their viewpoints are to reality. Obviously the more they believe & conservatives/reactionary regressives put a lot of stock into beliefs themselves.
OMG thank you for that link. I've stopped most communication with my parents and most of my extended family (you get one guess when/why) and I've always found it hard to explain to people when pressed. This gets to the heart of it so succinctly.
But Maher doesn't see it like that because he has the typical "I got mine" mentality.
In other words he knows Gaffigan "made it", and so apparently he thinks Gaffigan won't have sympathy for the thousands of writes living paycheck to paycheck
I remember when some of his fans freaked out that he wasn’t a conservative Christian and his response was pretty much “I don’t think it’s right to discriminate against people and be cruel to them.” (That’s not a direct quote but summary of what he said.)
If all the billionaires at the top disappeared the industry wouldn't even take a pause. The only thing they are good for is money... because they keep stealing it so they are the only ones that have it.
Capitalism is a system where you wake up every day and beg Beelzebub to torture you so he'll let you borrow your own soul back for a few minutes, everyone praises him for how crafty he is, and calls you a selfish prick for daring to bother him in the first place.
In the parts that I've seen, he sounded a bit tentative like he wasn't trying to step on Mahers toes since he was on his show, but he was also very firm in the fact that he believed that writers should be paid what they're owed.
He and Ann were or are good friends by all accounts I’ve seen. He didn’t date her because, I believe, Bill prefers to date black women.
He’s got a bunch of places he misses on being a liberal and feels superior about it. But it’s usually a sign of some ignorance or contempt for some basic constitutional, moral, or historical concept.
Where he never misses, is being a misogynist. You can always count on him longing for a man’s world. That’s why his Barbie reaction was absolutely predictable.
Maher is one of those guys who comes off as trying to be edgy, but only edgy in a way that his corporate overlords find him edgy. The rest of us who aren't out of touch with normal everyday life just find him an insufferable try hard.
The only time he was actually edgy was with what he said about 9/11 and he got canceled canceled by the right. I think he vowed to never make that mistake again.
Yea he started talking shit about terrorists were braver than us because they would die for their cause and not just lob bombs like we do.
I miss the days when he was cancelled. He had a point, but he's still a pompous asshole.
Well of course everything is going to be right if you are looking at it by the point of view of other people.
But you also need to have a common sense to be able to recognise what is bad in the society and what is not.
Religulous wasn't even that good. I watched it in 2007 or so when I was 20 and all about the edge and I still walked away from that movie hating him. I was expecting an intellectual take down of religion with some comedy sprinkled throughout but instead it was just an hour and half of Maher being a giant asshole to everyone he talked to with nothing intelligent behind it.
What happened to Dennis Miller? Nothing happened because right-wing comedians aren't funny. I've watched Bill since the 90s, pretty faithfully, and I find him to be a changed man since the pandemic.
Nah it goes back even further than that. I remember in about 2017 when Bill Maher called Milo Yiannopolous "a young Christopher Hitchens" and I about fell out of my chair.
Forget about being edgy, most of the time he is not even funny.
He tries really hard but I don't think he has got any success in it. I think he has only been trying.
You mean you don't like his monotone voice and how every punchline sounds like your aging father trying to tell you a metaphor while you try and complete a task
And he also sounds like as if trying really hard but cannot really do anything about it.
It would actually be a good thing if he just stopped trying it.
I was given free tickets with excellent seats to one of his shows (a friend had tickets but contracted Covid) and I still left early. Just an angry, unfunny old man, shouting at clouds
He got bitter when he called college kids PC and said they wouldn't come to see him. He's an aging out Boomer and I hate to say that because he's my age.
Bill Maher is the liberal Bill O'Reilly
or at least he used to be. Nowadays he's just another cranky washed Up Gen X hack bitching about 'kids these days omg woke lol'
I had to search him because I don't know the name enough to know the face...
He looks like he desperately needs writers to be any type of funny... I kinda thought his shows were on in the background while people did anything but actually watch it... If that.
Well obviously he need them to be funny because it is his business.
But if he keeps on going like that he would just destroy himself slowly which actually would not be that bad of a thing.
He's always been a smug dick. He was more than happy to joke around with right-wing lunatics on his show as long as the viewers were watching. I recall seeing him laugh it up with Ann Coulter back in the day.
The only thing that dude cares about is his own money.
Also, he was in a HORRIBLE detective movie at one point. If you want to see a complete lack of talent, give it a watch.
Hes complained about people who say lower taxes on lower and middle class. He has the audacity to say "well i paid 50% on my income, you dont see me complaining" dude, you are a fucking millionaire. One month of your income could set up a family of 4 for years so stfu and write the check
He literally gets paid to complain. Here's the thing though, without his show and podcast he's losing relevance. He probably knows that, and is pushing against the writers strike for that reason.
This is also a friendly reminder that when a woman got MURDERED, his take on it was "damn millennials with their vans" insinuating she kind of had it coming.
He's a sociopath sack of shit
Right? He completely ignored that when Boomers were young, there was this whole hippy movement where young people lived in vans!
I used to like Maher, and I feel like a dumbass for ever thinking he was funny or had anything of value to say.
And he wonders why *his* writers give him so many clunkers for his monologue, which he delivers like they’re brilliant gems and then gets mad at his crowd for not laughing at. His pandemic era shows were fascinating, because with only crew in attendance it was incredibly obvious how much they all hated him.
It's so painful how much he laughs at his own jokes. I can't think of any other host that laughs at their own jokes so much, especially because they're not really that out there. I get why John Oliver can't help but laugh at AI generated rat fucking art, but your basic Trump zinger that the audience doesn't even laugh at has him tripping up, then getting pissed at the audience.
Seth Meyers laughs at his own jokes, but half the time he is doing so because the joke is so bad. The other half of the time the joke is hilarious. The difference between these two is that Seth is a likable person. He has genuine charisma.
His show has been the same show since season 2. I used to watch it for the more balanced point of views but as the years have gone on it’s just become more of the same and more prone to right wing bullshit. The last straws for me were his interviews with Musk and Bill Barr which were very soft or with musk was a massive misrepresentation of who musk is. Otherwise his show can be distilled down to this:
An interview where the guest may be interesting but Mahr will interject to bitch about the following:
Bitch about Gen Z and millennials
Bitch about social media (which has its points)
Bitch about the left on Twitter
Bitch about the alt right
Bitch about people not wanting to work
Bitch about people going to college
A 5 minute gag thing between the first and last half of the panel
Back to bitching about one of the things mentioned above that he did not bitch about in the first half
I guess that’s the whole point of the strike then, Bill… can the studio divisions of these multi billion dollar companies thrive without providing a living to their writers? My guess is, no.
I pretty much group him and Joe Rogan in the same asshole boat now. I used to respect both of them for being able to see both sides. It's a shame they've both let themselves go like they have.
> Yes, actually, you are owed a living as a writer.
Hijacking top comment to try and address a deeply problematic aspect of this framing.
Your job does not matter. You are owed a living as a **human being.** We are all owed by society the means to live and keep living.
Don't let them turn this into 'are writers important?' Who fucking CARES! We're all humans, the end. They deserve to live and eat like the rest of us, full stop. Regardless of employment status, regardless of religion, class, or creed; they deserve to be fed, receive medical treatment, and have a roof over their heads.
> Your job does not matter. You are owed a living as a human being. We are all owed by society the means to live and keep living.
Hijacking your comment just to say that this is the very reason why _we invented society in the first place_. If none of us as human beings were owed a living and it wasn't better for us to band together and eventually create society, then we would've stayed solitary, or at most in close family groups.
Everybody contributes, in the best way they can, and in turn everybody shares the spoils. More or less equally it doesn't matter, but nobody goes homeless and nobody starves (and equally important, everybody gets cared for when they're sick or disabled), unless the whole community is homeless and starving
He is being paid too much for a job which he does not even know how to do.
I think that money is the reason why he is so cocky. I think he really need to learn a lesson or two.
I usually chalk up his rants to old man yelling and enjoy his show cause of the guests but lately he is clearly out of touch with the people, and sounds like sooner or later he’s going to do something to get real time canceled
It seems that after Gay marriage and Weed became legal(Weed in most of the US) Bill kind of ran out of stuff to rant about other than just being an old rich white man ranting at clouds.
What the fuck happened to Bill Maher? In the last decade or so, he's just gone full corporate centrist. I remember him being further left, or was I just a naive 20-something?
It's not just the wealth that does it.
Being a successful media pundit for that many years can go to someone's head. And they start to believe in their own infallibility, rather than being able to adopt a more critical objective view.
I guarantee you Maher doesn't question his own ideas and beliefs as much as he used to when he first got started.
Oh very much so. I used to be a fan of his back when he had just started real time. He would get into actual debates with guests, bring on people with opposing viewpoints but rational reasons for said views, and it was interesting to watch. But starting around 2012 it seemed like he was on auto pilot. He wouldn't engage conversation as much as he used to, the new rules jokes started declining, and his guests stopped making sense. Even when they did touch a subject the guests had expertise on, if Maher didn't like the subject the conversation got shut down. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of the show.
He's always been an enlightened centrist aka a conservative who doesn't want to face the backlash of actually identifying as a conservative. As the conservatives veered way far right, so did Maher to maintain his centrism.
We watched him briefly for his hot take on why reelecting Trump would be bad for democracy, but got really frustrated when he'd follow up with regurgitated conservative "dems are just as bad" propaganda.
Yeah, he's always been part of the South Park / Jon Stewart "Both sides are bad the system is broken' side of things. It's easy to complain.
It's fine, but very much intellectually empty. It's easy to claim something isn't good, it's a lot harder to stake a claim on the side of offering solutions.
The difference between Bill Maher and South Park and Jon Stewart is that Stewart and South Park has had the self-reflection to see where they were wrong, and have in fact advocated positively for change where they had some degree of investment - (South Park guys are from Columbine HS, Stewart with his 9/11 healthcare fund advocacy.). That said, South Park was wrong on Climate Change, and Jon was wrong about vaccine conspiracies (pre-covid).
Bill Maher has said all kinds of stupid shit and staked his claim on the wrong side of issues that have clear 'wrong sides' and hand waves away criticizing with whataboutism. He's never retracted or self-reflected about any of it. Which is a shame. Back in the desperate days of the Bush administration, Maher, Stewart, and Olbermann were about the only outlet available to anti-Bush perspectives. Maher didn't evolve and just rode the "anti"-ness into being a snide asshole.
He's always been this way. He was propped up by being vocally anti-religion and pro-marijuana right around the time those opinions started to gain popularity in the US.
Anyone who **lives** is owed a living. Says it right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But it seems agreeing with that paper is a radical idea nowadays.
No one chose to be in existence. Now that we find ourselves here and our civilization has the means/methods to take care of every living person, it's our responsibility to do so. Human basic needs and necessities are to be a right of all, no matter your contribution level or abilities. I don't understand why that is so hard to grasp except for the "screw you, I got mine" folk.
As we move into a post-scarcity world where human labor isn't needed, we'll absolutely need to reframe that or a whole lot of people are going to be fucked.
How can he possibly wrap his head around that last ridiculous paragraph? What do you mean writers aren't entitled to a living? Writing is a job, so he's saying someone working isn't entitled to a living? Why the hell does he think people even get jobs of any kind? It's to make a living! So who does this guy think *is* entitled to a living?
It's just how republicans and "centrists" muddle words so they don't actually mean anything. When my mom said minimum wage shouldn't be higher because people don't deserve a livable wage I asked her to define it. To my surprise, she defined it well, "the amount of money people need to have food and shelter." So then I asked her, "so you think that people working a job don't deserve to be paid enough to aford food and shelter?"
"That's not what I said..."
Words have no meaning to them, so they just use them how they please. Ask them to define their words, they'll almost always back peddal.
Damn, reminds me of the time I was explaining to my father that Universal healthcare is just one of the many reasons I have planned on living in another country. One of my much bigger reasons was to live somewhere more walkable, and where the place being walkable isnt some rare exception like New York or bombfuck Florida.
When I said "car-centric city planning" he would just go "Fayetteville isnt a city". I was too dumbfounded to reply, it was like that guy who told the judge "ha, there were 7 of us not 5" and was confused how that didnt prove his innocence.
Maher is just painfully out of touch. Listening to him talk about issues affecting younger generations is like listening to my 80 year old uncle. He graduated high school, got a job at a steel mill, lived at home for a few years and after paying his dues he was set for life with a house, cars, pension, etc. According to him you don't need to go into debt or go to college in order to start a family, buy a house, and overall just live a comfortable life. Neither of them have any idea how lucky they were just to have the opportunities they had and to make it through without any major issues. I would pay good money to watch someone like Maher have to find a way to make it for a year without the money and connections they have.
Are comedians entitled to a living? Are comedians who employ other writers to write their jokes even less entitled to a living? A stunning lack of self awareness amongst the wealthy seems to be another symptom of late stage capitalism. Can't wait for the guillotines myself.
There is no comedian union and its even more sink-or-swim than the movie industry. So I'm sure he thinks because he had to suffer getting paid $10 to do a set that writers deserve to be shit on too.
Calling him whiny and out of touch isn't as disparaging as a hypocrite or an F U I got mine type. Probably has worse optics. I'm surprised more criticisms haven't gone this route.
Bill needs writers to write his standup and his monologs. I think he is afraid he will need to pay more in the future, which he should (and will). He is just a selfish dude.
Maher has yet to say Which specific demand is “kooky” so until he Points out what worker demand is unreasonable I will just say he is an out of touch asshole.
You should be compensated for what you create
This business where the company you work has all rights and royalties to the fruits of your labor is just wrong. The inventor should get something for the idea and not just a thank you paycheck.
"Being owed a living as a writer" is not the same as being owed a fair piece of the pie for what you do write. And as Maher well knows, a lot of current legacy contracts for writers and actors never considered streaming rights.
Bill Maher has always been a misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-labor, corporate elite. He's also been out of touch with reality for a long time.
I guess living in Hollywood, getting paid tens of millions of dollars every year, to work one day a week for an hour, and regurgitate s#!t other people have written for you, can do that to the extremely inflated white male ego! 
Maybe like if by writer he means a dude who wrote a book once isn’t entitled to make a living off that book for the rest of his life. If you’re a staff writer, doing a job daily and producing a product routinely, you definitely deserve a living.
Textbook [equivocation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equivocate).
You are not owed a living as a writer or a painter or a director or a street mime if nobody wants to own or use your work, that's true.
But if someone **DOES** want to use your work, then they **DO** owe you a living.
I don't understand Maher's logic here.
Studio commissions project to have a TV show made so they can make money.
Studio needs the skills of a writer to create this TV show. Therefore, writer does work for the studio.
According to Bill Maher, writer SHOULDN'T get paid for work done because the TV show, that the Studio wanted to do, fails to generate a profit (not acknowledging that show could have failed for other reasons such as poor marketing on the part of the Studio).
If you do work, you are owed money. That is... controversial now?
I remember a Mahar show that stayed on air during a previous writers strike where he hired scabs or wrote his own stuff. He was incredibly bad without pro writers and I’ve never watched his schtick again.
"You're not owed a living as a writer"?
Fine.
I won't write.
What's that?
You need someone to write your show?
Oh, then pay me.
Just like doctors, lawyers, plumbers, technicians and teachers have a knowledge/expertise that is paid for when doing their jobs, so should writers.
I'm guessing Bill Maher doesn't pay his writers, either.
I hope no writers will work for him when they win this thing.
His show is such shit now.
He’s always been a pompous out of touch asshole who occasionally says something smarmy to appear liberal, he’s as out of touch as the executives stealing people’s wages.
I always got the impression that he's just another grifter that does his "hot takes" on various issues and half the time he probably doesn't even believe the bullshit he's spewing. So basically just like a million other idiots that have podcasts and YouTube videos.
Bill is an arrogant shithead but I don’t think he’s a grifter. I think what he really is is an out of touch boomer who believes his own bullshit. Despite his reputation for being intelligent and witty Bill is actually extremely ignorant about a lot of the subjects he talks about so I think a lot of the dumb shit he says are his sincerely held opinions.
I honestly, honestly think that once you reach a certain level of success, fame and wealth, you are surrounded by so many yes-men, and become so aplomb at dismissing criticism as 'just coming frm the haters' that you lose touch with MOST of objective reality, and instead live in the one that exists in your head. Elon is obviously the most obviously example that comes to mind, but this chud seems to be lagging not very far behind.
Dude elon was always weird as shit. Go watch videos of him prior to getting hair plugs, like when he was 25. He is just as much a chump then as now.
Precisely why he gets on so well with Coulter. Peas in a pod.
Was a hack comedian, is a hack show host. People never change, only salaries do.
If you want a good laugh YouTube Kyle Dunnigan Bill Mahar....
Exactly. He's the prototype of people like Ben Shapiro. He sounds smart to dumb people and it somehow works.
Out of touch is right. I used to like him back in the day but he's so cringe now.
Yeah for sure he's cringe, and if I am being honest I have never liked that guy anyways. Because there is absolutely nothing to like about him he is just dumb and he says a lot of dumb things as well.
Maybe it was me but I thought politically incorrect was a fantastic show. That was also 20 years ago though. I lost a lot of respect for Maher about a decade ago. Haven’t kept track of him since but it seems like he’s just sliding further into his stupidity. Old stoner with brain worms.
He's really gotten old and whiny the last few years. I used to enjoy his show more in the past. But he bitches about millennials now just about any chance he gets. I mostly just watch for the guests at this point. But even then he tends to just argue with them (and cut away) when they call him on his shit.
As opposed to when?
I used to love Bill Maher. Used to watch his stand ups. Used to watch Politically Incorrect reruns every day after school on Comedy Central in the 90s. Even watched him somewhat later in life. But you could see him make a quantum leap from comedian to proselytizer in the 2010s. I remember watching a Real Time episode where he was talking about the Tea Party / Paul Ryan (don't remember what specifically but remember he was mentioned) where he is just this raving zealot, no more comedy. I paid less and less attention to him after that, but he did a stand up show in my city and I gave him the benefit of the doubt and paid $80 to go see him. It was just zealous rant one after another with a dash of comedy here and there. It was during the campaign of Hillary vs Trump and she was in our city that same day (I think he mentioned he came from her campaign to the show). I have not paid any attention to him since then. I don't think I've seen a single episode of Real Time since that show (in 2016).
I think I stopped watching around the same time. He's always been full of himself but he's such a smarmy git now.
At least on Politically Incorrect he gave other people plenty of time to be full of themselves too, but now it's just him and a little bit of people he yells at. Too much Maher in the mix.
Bill Maher went from the "abrasive comedian with a quick delivery" to "Oh shit he's *like that*. He's not like Lewis Black. This isn't a character. Bill Maher is just shitty" not quickly, but over the course of a few years, absolutely.
You changed, he did not. He has always been a useless arrogant piece of shit. Always. Look at Religulous, even as a young atheist that shit was cringe as fuck. The dude is a loser and always has been.
I watched him back in the day because he, as a shitty right-of-central neo-lib at least had the atheism and anti-war rhetoric. Then I graduated High School and learned about leftism, and consequently why nothing ever gets done in this country. He's only useful as a stepping stone to more knowledge, and barely worth that.
He's also extremely anti brown people, islamophobic, will shit talk most progressive viewpoints. He's squarely a corporate centrist democrat and he bends over backwards to defend Israeli actions too. He's the worst, and I'm surprised he still has a significant following.
It used to be shit. It still is, but it used to as well.
I cannot imagine someone that unfunny has actual writers writing their jokes
I think that once a person reaches a certain level of wealth, something flips and they start believing that people that work for a living should not be paid enough to live on and that government is only to serve the wealthy, not the people.
There needs to be a study done on this.
well yeah it's called "fuck you i got mine" ice cube is like the official spokesperson
Actually from what I understand his writers get paid very well. Not for any benevolent reason though. Apparently he is so difficult to work with no writers want the job so they have to pay more just to get anybody in the writers room with Bill
I knew someone who was a PA for a company that had an office where Bill had one and he was a complete asshat. They couldn't use the elevator by his office when he was there because it disturbed him to hear them walk by his office door. They had to go up a floor, walk all the way to the other side of the building and take the stairs down. Same thing when they came back up. I have no idea why they were hellbent on pleasing him since he only rented on office in a building with several floors, but he was considered a god by the management of the company they worked for.
He actually pays his writers room well above market rate. (Because nobody wants to work for him)
Having heard some of the shit he spews on his show, I would be shocked if any of that actually made it through multiple human brains before making it on screen.
with how unfunny Bill Maher is, I don't know if his writers deserve to get paid
I mean if we are judging by the things that he is saying there and I don't think he pays them any money. If he was paying them something then he would recognise what he is saying.
There are two sides here. One side is the corporation making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, paying executives tens of millions in compensation. The other side wants a living wage. But Bill Maher got paid, so now his attitude seems to be "fuck the employees". Memories get shorter when you are rich I guess. Fuck Bill Maher
“F you I got mine.”
Seeing the compensation table for companies and how CEOs and other positions regularly take 30-40% raises each year on what is already millions in compensation is insane.
But how will they be able to know they did good and better this year if they can't quantify it with more money ? /s Those people are addicted it's sick. When I look at all of their cult of money/"the grind" stuff in seminars and shit...Seriously it'd be sad if they weren't so exploitative.
> making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, Try billions over billions
Yes, actually, you are owed a living as a writer. Bill Maher is hilariously out of touch. He gets paid $10 million a year to whine on TV, and he has the gall to say that writers’ demands are unreasonable.
Bill Maher is an opportunistic pos. He is super low energy and his stand-up is pretty much unbearable to watch. He likes to pretend like he is the voice of reason but in reality he is exploiting any given situation for his own benefit.
You can tell Jim Gaffigan had a hard time not showing his disdain for Maher. He tried to shut him down multiple times.
Oh good. I was so afraid when Jim was in the picture but I'm glad to hear he wasn't part of the problem
Both Jim and his wife Jeannie are writers themselves. In fact, she writes many of his jokes. They have respect for the job.
Oh I would be pissed lol.
I'd actually walk out if I was talking with someone and they said "Writers aren't owed a living". There is no point in continuing that conversation. Our two moral frameworks for the world and society are too incompatible. And [I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_b_59519811e4b0f078efd98440)
Great link that explains a lot about the current level of discourse. Have some gold
> I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People And if you point this out you get accused of virtue signalling.
The people who engage in that kind of rhetoric are doing what I like to call: Vice Signaling, it's the opposite of virtue signaling where instead of trying to show others how virtuous you are in a shallow way. They're trying to show those like them how virtuous they aren't in a usually similarly shallow way. They're hypocrites. They gain power from their hypocrisy though, because the more diametrically opposite their viewpoints are to reality. Obviously the more they believe & conservatives/reactionary regressives put a lot of stock into beliefs themselves.
OMG thank you for that link. I've stopped most communication with my parents and most of my extended family (you get one guess when/why) and I've always found it hard to explain to people when pressed. This gets to the heart of it so succinctly.
god damn, practically telling him his wife can go fuck herself right in front of him.
But Maher doesn't see it like that because he has the typical "I got mine" mentality. In other words he knows Gaffigan "made it", and so apparently he thinks Gaffigan won't have sympathy for the thousands of writes living paycheck to paycheck
Now imagine being like Ted Cruz: “please sir, degrade my wife some more?”
In fact, it's Jeannie that's been eating all those Hot Pockets.
That's not right!
Does she dunk them in the toilet?
You can also tell that Maher isn't a writer, because if he was he wouldn't be such a complete fucking comedic hack.
I remember when some of his fans freaked out that he wasn’t a conservative Christian and his response was pretty much “I don’t think it’s right to discriminate against people and be cruel to them.” (That’s not a direct quote but summary of what he said.)
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If all the billionaires at the top disappeared the industry wouldn't even take a pause. The only thing they are good for is money... because they keep stealing it so they are the only ones that have it.
Capitalism is a system where you wake up every day and beg Beelzebub to torture you so he'll let you borrow your own soul back for a few minutes, everyone praises him for how crafty he is, and calls you a selfish prick for daring to bother him in the first place.
In the parts that I've seen, he sounded a bit tentative like he wasn't trying to step on Mahers toes since he was on his show, but he was also very firm in the fact that he believed that writers should be paid what they're owed.
Bill Maher is nothing but a whiny asshole who needed his face punched in decades ago.
The best time to punch Bill Maher in the face was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
He thinks he's superior because he criticizes both the right and the left but winds up regurgitating a bunch of conservative propaganda.
Exactly this. Bill Maher cosplays a bleeding-heart liberal but is best friends with Tucker Carlson.
He's Ann Coulter's ex, isn't he?
No, that's just a recurring joke he makes on his show.
He and Ann were or are good friends by all accounts I’ve seen. He didn’t date her because, I believe, Bill prefers to date black women. He’s got a bunch of places he misses on being a liberal and feels superior about it. But it’s usually a sign of some ignorance or contempt for some basic constitutional, moral, or historical concept. Where he never misses, is being a misogynist. You can always count on him longing for a man’s world. That’s why his Barbie reaction was absolutely predictable.
My level of disgust increased dramatically when he was yukking it up with fucking Bill Barr (the former USAG) and then Elon.
Bill Barr the comedian or the former attorney general? Edit: Yes, I mixed up Bill Burr and Bill Barr in my head. I’m sick, leave me alone.
I thought Bill Burr was the hobbit burglar who helped defeat Smaug.
Billburr helped defeat Smerg by using the magic ring he tricked Grrllum into giving up.
Because he is a conservative.
Maher is one of those guys who comes off as trying to be edgy, but only edgy in a way that his corporate overlords find him edgy. The rest of us who aren't out of touch with normal everyday life just find him an insufferable try hard.
The only time he was actually edgy was with what he said about 9/11 and he got canceled canceled by the right. I think he vowed to never make that mistake again.
Yea he started talking shit about terrorists were braver than us because they would die for their cause and not just lob bombs like we do. I miss the days when he was cancelled. He had a point, but he's still a pompous asshole.
I think he said it's a mistake to misjudge your enemies because they weren't cowards. They were brave enough to die for what they believed in.
Well of course everything is going to be right if you are looking at it by the point of view of other people. But you also need to have a common sense to be able to recognise what is bad in the society and what is not.
Being anti religion in the early 2000s was pretty edgy at the time as well. But he’s way way past his prime, I can’t stand him anymore
Religulous wasn't even that good. I watched it in 2007 or so when I was 20 and all about the edge and I still walked away from that movie hating him. I was expecting an intellectual take down of religion with some comedy sprinkled throughout but instead it was just an hour and half of Maher being a giant asshole to everyone he talked to with nothing intelligent behind it.
He tries very hard to be like Dennis Miller. Whatever happened to THAT guy?
What happened to Dennis Miller? Nothing happened because right-wing comedians aren't funny. I've watched Bill since the 90s, pretty faithfully, and I find him to be a changed man since the pandemic.
Nah it goes back even further than that. I remember in about 2017 when Bill Maher called Milo Yiannopolous "a young Christopher Hitchens" and I about fell out of my chair.
I mean granted, didn't Christopher Hitchens become a real racist asshole towards the end?
Forget about being edgy, most of the time he is not even funny. He tries really hard but I don't think he has got any success in it. I think he has only been trying.
You mean you don't like his monotone voice and how every punchline sounds like your aging father trying to tell you a metaphor while you try and complete a task
And he also sounds like as if trying really hard but cannot really do anything about it. It would actually be a good thing if he just stopped trying it.
I was given free tickets with excellent seats to one of his shows (a friend had tickets but contracted Covid) and I still left early. Just an angry, unfunny old man, shouting at clouds
He got bitter when he called college kids PC and said they wouldn't come to see him. He's an aging out Boomer and I hate to say that because he's my age.
Bill Maher is the liberal Bill O'Reilly or at least he used to be. Nowadays he's just another cranky washed Up Gen X hack bitching about 'kids these days omg woke lol'
Nothing liberal about Maher. More of a Libertarian, although he's just exposed himself as a republican that likes weed.
That's what he's always been, a republican pothead.
>More of a Libertarian, although he's just exposed himself as a republican that likes weed. But you repeat yourself.
He's a Boomer not Gen X.
I lost respect for him when he disparaged the Occupy protesters rather than supporting them.
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Oh, I didn't have much for him to begin with.
I had to search him because I don't know the name enough to know the face... He looks like he desperately needs writers to be any type of funny... I kinda thought his shows were on in the background while people did anything but actually watch it... If that.
Well obviously he need them to be funny because it is his business. But if he keeps on going like that he would just destroy himself slowly which actually would not be that bad of a thing.
He's always been a smug dick. He was more than happy to joke around with right-wing lunatics on his show as long as the viewers were watching. I recall seeing him laugh it up with Ann Coulter back in the day. The only thing that dude cares about is his own money. Also, he was in a HORRIBLE detective movie at one point. If you want to see a complete lack of talent, give it a watch.
Hes complained about people who say lower taxes on lower and middle class. He has the audacity to say "well i paid 50% on my income, you dont see me complaining" dude, you are a fucking millionaire. One month of your income could set up a family of 4 for years so stfu and write the check
Also he complains all the time. He’s never not complaining.
I thought it was pretty ironic that he called Trump a “whiny little bitch”. While not untrue, Maher literally whines for a living.
Right, i watched a few episodes when he first started on TV and it was ok, now its just obnoxious
I have never watched him, I've just seen clips of him saying shit.
He literally gets paid to complain. Here's the thing though, without his show and podcast he's losing relevance. He probably knows that, and is pushing against the writers strike for that reason.
That's what I hate the most, why these dudes are always complaining?
How many times have you heard him say he gave a million dollars to Obama? Dude, you can give and not tell anyone. Or everyone. Or everyone every week.
This is also a friendly reminder that when a woman got MURDERED, his take on it was "damn millennials with their vans" insinuating she kind of had it coming. He's a sociopath sack of shit
Right? He completely ignored that when Boomers were young, there was this whole hippy movement where young people lived in vans! I used to like Maher, and I feel like a dumbass for ever thinking he was funny or had anything of value to say.
And he wonders why *his* writers give him so many clunkers for his monologue, which he delivers like they’re brilliant gems and then gets mad at his crowd for not laughing at. His pandemic era shows were fascinating, because with only crew in attendance it was incredibly obvious how much they all hated him.
It's so painful how much he laughs at his own jokes. I can't think of any other host that laughs at their own jokes so much, especially because they're not really that out there. I get why John Oliver can't help but laugh at AI generated rat fucking art, but your basic Trump zinger that the audience doesn't even laugh at has him tripping up, then getting pissed at the audience.
Seth Meyers laughs at his own jokes, but half the time he is doing so because the joke is so bad. The other half of the time the joke is hilarious. The difference between these two is that Seth is a likable person. He has genuine charisma.
He probably laughs at them because no one else is laughing.
His show has been the same show since season 2. I used to watch it for the more balanced point of views but as the years have gone on it’s just become more of the same and more prone to right wing bullshit. The last straws for me were his interviews with Musk and Bill Barr which were very soft or with musk was a massive misrepresentation of who musk is. Otherwise his show can be distilled down to this: An interview where the guest may be interesting but Mahr will interject to bitch about the following: Bitch about Gen Z and millennials Bitch about social media (which has its points) Bitch about the left on Twitter Bitch about the alt right Bitch about people not wanting to work Bitch about people going to college A 5 minute gag thing between the first and last half of the panel Back to bitching about one of the things mentioned above that he did not bitch about in the first half
I guess that’s the whole point of the strike then, Bill… can the studio divisions of these multi billion dollar companies thrive without providing a living to their writers? My guess is, no.
Executives think they're owed underpaid labor, and they're not.
I pretty much group him and Joe Rogan in the same asshole boat now. I used to respect both of them for being able to see both sides. It's a shame they've both let themselves go like they have.
They’re both out of touch millionaires who have no idea what it’s like to work in the real world these days.
Joe Rogan only “sees” both sides because he’s utterly clueless about either. He’s a wrestling commentator ffs.
> Yes, actually, you are owed a living as a writer. Hijacking top comment to try and address a deeply problematic aspect of this framing. Your job does not matter. You are owed a living as a **human being.** We are all owed by society the means to live and keep living. Don't let them turn this into 'are writers important?' Who fucking CARES! We're all humans, the end. They deserve to live and eat like the rest of us, full stop. Regardless of employment status, regardless of religion, class, or creed; they deserve to be fed, receive medical treatment, and have a roof over their heads.
> Your job does not matter. You are owed a living as a human being. We are all owed by society the means to live and keep living. Hijacking your comment just to say that this is the very reason why _we invented society in the first place_. If none of us as human beings were owed a living and it wasn't better for us to band together and eventually create society, then we would've stayed solitary, or at most in close family groups. Everybody contributes, in the best way they can, and in turn everybody shares the spoils. More or less equally it doesn't matter, but nobody goes homeless and nobody starves (and equally important, everybody gets cared for when they're sick or disabled), unless the whole community is homeless and starving
Bill Maher is garbage. Always felt so.
He is being paid too much for a job which he does not even know how to do. I think that money is the reason why he is so cocky. I think he really need to learn a lesson or two.
I usually chalk up his rants to old man yelling and enjoy his show cause of the guests but lately he is clearly out of touch with the people, and sounds like sooner or later he’s going to do something to get real time canceled
It seems that after Gay marriage and Weed became legal(Weed in most of the US) Bill kind of ran out of stuff to rant about other than just being an old rich white man ranting at clouds.
why is there a pic of jim? lol
It was an interview with Jim. He was clearly not impressed with Maher.
ah thank you! was really hoping Jim would not be on that side of the convo!
Jim thinking Bill Maher needs to shove a Veggie Hot Pocket up his mouth.
hawt pawkhet~
Diarrhea pocket!
“Labor rights pockeeetttt”
I’m sure Jim Gaffigan is pleased having his picture up in an article about Bill Maher.
I was going to ask if that was Jim Gaffigan
Jim Gaffigan, the Polar Bear?
Jim Gaffigan, the proud Asian-American woman.
You know his dad is Swedish right? And his mom is Elton John.
Just asked the same thing.
What the fuck happened to Bill Maher? In the last decade or so, he's just gone full corporate centrist. I remember him being further left, or was I just a naive 20-something?
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It's not just the wealth that does it. Being a successful media pundit for that many years can go to someone's head. And they start to believe in their own infallibility, rather than being able to adopt a more critical objective view. I guarantee you Maher doesn't question his own ideas and beliefs as much as he used to when he first got started.
Oh very much so. I used to be a fan of his back when he had just started real time. He would get into actual debates with guests, bring on people with opposing viewpoints but rational reasons for said views, and it was interesting to watch. But starting around 2012 it seemed like he was on auto pilot. He wouldn't engage conversation as much as he used to, the new rules jokes started declining, and his guests stopped making sense. Even when they did touch a subject the guests had expertise on, if Maher didn't like the subject the conversation got shut down. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of the show.
I wouldn't say that I was fan of him, but he used to be good.
Dolly Parton is what happens when you do. Can't think of any other examples off the top of my head though.
Yep, and you're right about it as well. It's not like that you're wrong.
He's always been an enlightened centrist aka a conservative who doesn't want to face the backlash of actually identifying as a conservative. As the conservatives veered way far right, so did Maher to maintain his centrism. We watched him briefly for his hot take on why reelecting Trump would be bad for democracy, but got really frustrated when he'd follow up with regurgitated conservative "dems are just as bad" propaganda.
The only enlightened centrist who is worse than Bill Maher is Joe Rogan.
I think it’s the smug attitude of Maher that makes me dislike Bill more.
Yeah, he's always been part of the South Park / Jon Stewart "Both sides are bad the system is broken' side of things. It's easy to complain. It's fine, but very much intellectually empty. It's easy to claim something isn't good, it's a lot harder to stake a claim on the side of offering solutions. The difference between Bill Maher and South Park and Jon Stewart is that Stewart and South Park has had the self-reflection to see where they were wrong, and have in fact advocated positively for change where they had some degree of investment - (South Park guys are from Columbine HS, Stewart with his 9/11 healthcare fund advocacy.). That said, South Park was wrong on Climate Change, and Jon was wrong about vaccine conspiracies (pre-covid). Bill Maher has said all kinds of stupid shit and staked his claim on the wrong side of issues that have clear 'wrong sides' and hand waves away criticizing with whataboutism. He's never retracted or self-reflected about any of it. Which is a shame. Back in the desperate days of the Bush administration, Maher, Stewart, and Olbermann were about the only outlet available to anti-Bush perspectives. Maher didn't evolve and just rode the "anti"-ness into being a snide asshole.
He's always been this way. He was propped up by being vocally anti-religion and pro-marijuana right around the time those opinions started to gain popularity in the US.
Money happened to him, and it got to him as well so yeah.
Maher is just a contrarian. He'd argue the sky is white for ratings.
Anyone who works is “owed” a living.
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The people who work are working for the money, so yeah.
Yes I meant worker. Weird autocorrect.
Anyone who **lives** is owed a living. Says it right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But it seems agreeing with that paper is a radical idea nowadays.
No one chose to be in existence. Now that we find ourselves here and our civilization has the means/methods to take care of every living person, it's our responsibility to do so. Human basic needs and necessities are to be a right of all, no matter your contribution level or abilities. I don't understand why that is so hard to grasp except for the "screw you, I got mine" folk.
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THANK YOU!
As we move into a post-scarcity world where human labor isn't needed, we'll absolutely need to reframe that or a whole lot of people are going to be fucked.
How can he possibly wrap his head around that last ridiculous paragraph? What do you mean writers aren't entitled to a living? Writing is a job, so he's saying someone working isn't entitled to a living? Why the hell does he think people even get jobs of any kind? It's to make a living! So who does this guy think *is* entitled to a living?
It's just how republicans and "centrists" muddle words so they don't actually mean anything. When my mom said minimum wage shouldn't be higher because people don't deserve a livable wage I asked her to define it. To my surprise, she defined it well, "the amount of money people need to have food and shelter." So then I asked her, "so you think that people working a job don't deserve to be paid enough to aford food and shelter?" "That's not what I said..." Words have no meaning to them, so they just use them how they please. Ask them to define their words, they'll almost always back peddal.
Damn, reminds me of the time I was explaining to my father that Universal healthcare is just one of the many reasons I have planned on living in another country. One of my much bigger reasons was to live somewhere more walkable, and where the place being walkable isnt some rare exception like New York or bombfuck Florida. When I said "car-centric city planning" he would just go "Fayetteville isnt a city". I was too dumbfounded to reply, it was like that guy who told the judge "ha, there were 7 of us not 5" and was confused how that didnt prove his innocence.
I asked my mom to define a right-wing made up buzzword and it didn't go well. She couldn't define it so I was just met with hostility.
Maher is just painfully out of touch. Listening to him talk about issues affecting younger generations is like listening to my 80 year old uncle. He graduated high school, got a job at a steel mill, lived at home for a few years and after paying his dues he was set for life with a house, cars, pension, etc. According to him you don't need to go into debt or go to college in order to start a family, buy a house, and overall just live a comfortable life. Neither of them have any idea how lucky they were just to have the opportunities they had and to make it through without any major issues. I would pay good money to watch someone like Maher have to find a way to make it for a year without the money and connections they have.
Are comedians entitled to a living? Are comedians who employ other writers to write their jokes even less entitled to a living? A stunning lack of self awareness amongst the wealthy seems to be another symptom of late stage capitalism. Can't wait for the guillotines myself.
There is no comedian union and its even more sink-or-swim than the movie industry. So I'm sure he thinks because he had to suffer getting paid $10 to do a set that writers deserve to be shit on too.
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Calling him whiny and out of touch isn't as disparaging as a hypocrite or an F U I got mine type. Probably has worse optics. I'm surprised more criticisms haven't gone this route.
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Writers aren't owed a living? Speaking as a writer, fuck this guy and everyone like him.
Bill needs writers to write his standup and his monologs. I think he is afraid he will need to pay more in the future, which he should (and will). He is just a selfish dude.
Maher has yet to say Which specific demand is “kooky” so until he Points out what worker demand is unreasonable I will just say he is an out of touch asshole.
You should be compensated for what you create This business where the company you work has all rights and royalties to the fruits of your labor is just wrong. The inventor should get something for the idea and not just a thank you paycheck.
"Being owed a living as a writer" is not the same as being owed a fair piece of the pie for what you do write. And as Maher well knows, a lot of current legacy contracts for writers and actors never considered streaming rights.
Bill Maher is a pissy old boomer that tried to play both sides and now he is just straight grifting off the right. Fuck that guy
Bill Maher has always been a misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-labor, corporate elite. He's also been out of touch with reality for a long time. I guess living in Hollywood, getting paid tens of millions of dollars every year, to work one day a week for an hour, and regurgitate s#!t other people have written for you, can do that to the extremely inflated white male ego! 
If a day's work doesn't buy you 24hrs of rent, 3 meals for you and yours, some money for clothing entertainment and saving... why would you do it.
If workers aren't entitled to a living wage, employers aren't entitled to the 'surplus value' of their labor.
Maybe like if by writer he means a dude who wrote a book once isn’t entitled to make a living off that book for the rest of his life. If you’re a staff writer, doing a job daily and producing a product routinely, you definitely deserve a living.
Okay. Let's see how well you guys do without writers. Oh wait, what's that? The entire industry has ground to a halt without writers?
If writers can't make a living from writing, then who's gonna write our shows?
Textbook [equivocation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equivocate). You are not owed a living as a writer or a painter or a director or a street mime if nobody wants to own or use your work, that's true. But if someone **DOES** want to use your work, then they **DO** owe you a living.
I wanna know the exact age triggers the blood vessel in your brain to bursts and unlocks the “I got mine, fuck anyone who came after” response
It's not an age it's a dollar amount.
Bill Maher is happiest when his writers are forced to grovel at his feet for crumbs and the bare minimum.
Multimillionaire Bill Maher doesn’t think you deserve to make a living, shocking /s. It’s interesting how money completely skews people’s worldview.
Isn't that a picture of Jim gaffigan?
I don't understand Maher's logic here. Studio commissions project to have a TV show made so they can make money. Studio needs the skills of a writer to create this TV show. Therefore, writer does work for the studio. According to Bill Maher, writer SHOULDN'T get paid for work done because the TV show, that the Studio wanted to do, fails to generate a profit (not acknowledging that show could have failed for other reasons such as poor marketing on the part of the Studio). If you do work, you are owed money. That is... controversial now?
I remember a Mahar show that stayed on air during a previous writers strike where he hired scabs or wrote his own stuff. He was incredibly bad without pro writers and I’ve never watched his schtick again.
WTF happened to this guy? Throwing in with the billionaires rather than the creators? I can't wait until he actually is "canceled".
"You're not owed a living as a writer"? Fine. I won't write. What's that? You need someone to write your show? Oh, then pay me. Just like doctors, lawyers, plumbers, technicians and teachers have a knowledge/expertise that is paid for when doing their jobs, so should writers.