When WaPo and Bill Maher Agree With PurpleAmerica...

Recent Statements on Real Time and in Post Editorials Agree with PurpleAmerica

I know a lot of people don’t like Bill Maher. I do for a number of reasons:

• His is one of the few shows that regularly has left and right on in a conversation and discussing without the typical canned responses.

• It often criticizes both left and right.

• It unabashedly platforms individuals who regularly go outside the typical left/right, democrat/republican dichotomy.

• It exposes me to alternative viewpoints I often don’t hear or even consider.¹

• It’s also funny (from time to time).

Sure, the schtick and format can be tedious (I’m pretty tired of the mid-panel “trying to be funny for funny’s sake but really not” gag—it breaks up the discussion, often at a point where it is getting interesting). But it’s still a thoughtful program. I wish there were more shows like Maher’s, something I posted about here.

So it made me smile ear to ear this past week when in his “New Rules” segment, he largely reiterated my posts about Toxic Activism, which I posted here and more recently discussing Erwin Chemerinsky and the Gaza/Israeli conflict here. Maher’s whole piece, centered on many of the arguments I’ve been saying for a long time, and covered much of the same ground, coming to the same conclusions.

It’s another in a long line of indirect criticisms not about the topic itself, which is indeed an important issue, but of just the desire to protest for protests’ sake; and has largely spiraled out of control to the point you could ask one of the Columbia protesters why they are protesting against Columbia University and they would respond with platitudes and generalizations about the Gaza/Israeli conflict generally. Sure, they may say something about the need for Columbia to divest from Israel, but even student protest leaders don’t know what that means or how much Columbia has “invested” in Israeli businesses. It’s not advocating for change of a concrete policy, which in reality is only secondary to the feeling of doing “something”; you know how you can tell? if Columbia gave in and did everything the protesters wanted, that wouldn’t end the protests, only embolden them.

In many ways, these Ivy League, privileged protesters are entirely the wrong messengers for this issue. It’s something Megan McArdle from the Washington Post wrote about here:

The pertinent lines, which I fully agree with are these:

By now, this pattern is familiar; on the left, issue after issue has been filtered through the prism of the campuses where so many activists are concentrated. Concerns about sexual assault frequently ended up centered on the campaign against campus rape; concerns about economic insecurity became demands for student loan forgiveness; concerns over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza have become arguments about elite university endowments.

To some extent, this is natural. Universities have concentrated populations of progressive students whose flexible schedules that can be organized around political action, and of progressive administrators who can be expected to smile on these efforts. But it’s also costly, because 20-year-olds don’t necessarily make the best ambassadors for a cause. The most passionate, possibly, but not the most strategic.

And that’s why the perception of campus activism skews what Americans think of causes. Last week, the Harvard Youth Public Opinion poll came out. This annual poll spans the nations college aged population and asks them for their opinions on a wide array of topics. Out of all the political issues out there, which issues were at the top? Inflation, guns and employment. What two issues were at the bottom? Gaza/Israel and Student Loan Forgiveness.

So as we sit here and watch the protests grow louder and get covered more often, and as people scream about anti-semitism, anti-zionism, genocide, divestment, 10/7, HAMAS, Netanyahu and a whole host of other factors, issues and slanders that go back centuries, just remember that the only ones who can truly solve this problem are the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, and that seems unlikely until they BOTH get new leadership.

PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

On Threads, Palestinian American Mohammed Hosseini posted a 55 piece thread regarding his thoughts on the whole ordeal, the protests and the situation generally. It is worth your time to read the whole thing and is one of the more eloquent things I’ve read about the conflict. You can read it here. But the one part of it I want to repost here, is the most important point, and one that seems to be getting lost in the protests.

A salaam alaikum friend, and peace be onto you.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

When you’ve gone too far to the left or too far to the right, you know where you’ve gone? You’ve gone too far.”

—Comedian Richard Jeni

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. For example, he had an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this weekend. I don’t agree with Kennedy and wouldn’t vote for him if you paid me, but it was interesting to hear him talk about issues and respond to being confronted with particular topics. The conversation only re-affirmed my beliefs he’s not a good candidate in any way, but it was still worthwhile to have him on and hear him state his case.