Here's a good clip of Tom Segura basically getting double-teamed by getting ridiculed by Tim Heidecker live in interview, and Redbar (Mike David) adding insult to injury after the fact.

I've never thought of Segura myself as much beyond a very basic bitch.




 

The most important thing is that Bill Maher lost.

Which he then blamed on Hollywood being too 'woke'.  Never mind that half of Gervais' recent schtick is also complaining about 'wokeness'.  Maybe Maher is really just mad that he was never asked to host....any of these award shows ever?  And Maher accentuated his class by laughing about the 'Be Good' pins, honoring Renee Good, because he's just not a political kind of guy.  

Earlier today at the store, I happened to notice Maher's face on the cover of one of those tabloids with the headline "Most hated man in Hollywood?"  I didn't want to embarrass myself by picking up an issue and reading it in the check-out line before it was my turn, but I made a note and when I got home I looked it up online.  Being a tabloid, it's all 'anonymous' sources, but it's still likely accurate that somebody is going through the trouble of spreading the word around.  "Bill’s running out of friends in Hollywood," a source said, which actually dovetails with another rumor I saw a couple of months ago that Maher has been having trouble booking his Club Random.  Could it be that his bullshit is finally catching up to him?  I hope to see some quality tantrums very very soon.

With all the terrible Netflix stand up specials, they can sometimes bury my memory of the good ones. I watched the Robby Hoffman special a few months back and was impressed for someone I had only barely heard of before. I think I saw her once on that John Mulaney show before and had been vaguely intrigued.

Interesting side-note about the above video of the HBO Comedy Hour show which I hadn't initially noticed.  There's an edit early on which obscures a joke about Improv owner Bud Freeman, which involves his habit for administering the Heimlich maneuver to random beautiful women in his club.  The full joke includes the protest, "I'm not choking!  And I don't eat through my breasts!".

This could be a glitch of course, but considering the upload of this video would have been right in the middle of the first flush of the #metoo accusations, I imagine that maybe someone on Bud Freeman's behalf perhaps didn't want the hassle.

Don't worry, Bill Maher is still an asshole.  But rather than use any of the plethera of examples he provides on his shows, a better illustration comes from this recent Atlantic piece.

The long and short of it is that the true motivation for Maher to have his much-self-applauded dinner with Trump was not, as he has self-pityingly claimed, because he feels the need to be open-minded to "both sides", pretending to be so morally superior to those Trump critics who unfortunately happen to have observed his fundamentally transactional nature and realizing that any such tete-a-tete would not be mutually engaged in good faith.  Well, it turns out that Maher is actually mutually transactional himself, and the underlying purpose of his sit-down was more explicitly about securing Trump's approval to award Maher the prestigious Mark Twain Prize For American Humor, given out by the board of the Kennedy Center which Trump has effectively usurped.  Turns out that this is why, on nearly every Club Random I've had the morbid chance of seeing, Maher will usually draw attention to his "prized possession" of a framed Trump signature on his wall, or maybe why he takes such umbrage at those who have called out his obvious hypocrisy and bootlicking and total lack of integrity.  Turns out, this story exposes all of his bullshit excuses as the feeble subterfuge they tried to provide.

And it turns out, unsurprisingly, that it's somewhat well known among those familiar with Maher that the Mark Twain Prize is something he has long felt entitled to, because in Maher's flaccid brain he conceives of himself as a leading contemporary American humorist.  Even though this article is largely based on anonymous sources - including multiple Kennedy Center employees however - I have little doubt of its accuracy.  Apparently, Maher was actually approved for the 2026 award.  Until he wasn't, because the fatally thin-skinned president decided that Maher hasn't been deferential enough to earn it, so this decision was reversed.  (No one has yet been named in his place, and the Kennedy Center where the award ceremony would normally take place is still officially closed for renovations anyway.)  But what matters is that he tried.  Maher embarrassed himself by ignoring Kid Rock's glaring anti-semitism on Club Random (which more and more looks like a dare from Rock who knew he held the key to the dinner invitation), but all for naught.  

And despite what this article describes as Maher being "center-left" (which is the fuzziest euphemism for 'libertarian' that I can imagine), Maher has in fact either supported Trump an alarming amount of time, or ignored an alarming number of issues arising from this second term.  Maher supported the work of DOGE, asking at one point what the point of the Department of Education even was anyway (because libertarians do not value either public education or civil rights enforcement).  Maher has supported the military "excursions" into Venezuela and the unilateral military strikes on Iran.  Maher has largely shrugged off Trump's antagonism towards NATO and his flaunting the UN with his Board of Peace, actively downplayed the significance of the Epstein files, said virtually nothing about the crypto grift which has enriched Trump's family billions of dollars.  And for such an Islamophobe who likes to bring up the treatment of women and sexual minorities in the worst Muslim regimes, Maher has been conspicuously unconcerned with our own Pete Hegseth inviting a Christian Nationalist pastor, who believes that women should not have the right to vote and that slavery was approved by the Bible, to give a speech/prayer at the Pentagon where Hegseth's team has taken to framing these strikes on Iran in blatantly religious terms.  So in addition to Maher's unquestioning support of Israel, of more specifically Netanyahu, Maher continues to be an observable hypocrite on his supposed aversion to theocracy.

More to the point of the issues of women and sexual minorities, it also can't be ignored that frequently on Club Random, Maher undermines any such concern with casual misogynistic (he's a 70 year old man who still calls women "chicks") and homophobic dad jokes (he told Billy Idol that he doesn't care for the harmonica, "It's called a mouth organ...I don't want an organ in my mouth").  It's a stunning feat of douchebaggery to come off as the less emotionally mature person in the room when you're sitting alone with Billy Idol.

Since this isn't technically a political thread as such, I'll move away from typical Trump stuff and instead take an estimate on the history of the Mark Twain Prize over its 28 year history, because, Bill Maher aside, there has always been a slight stink of questionable motives involved, whether financial (not outright bribes, per se, but considerations for ticket sales and TV ratings) or political (from "lobbying" to avoiding controversial figures, even though choosing Twain as the face of the award indicated the intention to celebrate those humorists who were controversial).  Either way, in addition to some inexplicable winners, there are several glaring omissions.

One important standard of the award that needs to be understood is that it is not to be given posthumously - the only posthumous recipient was George Carlin because he died shortly before the ceremony.  This standard is worth keeping in mind when looking at the list of winners.  This standard should compel the prioritization of eligible elders, so that they can be awarded before they die.  Conversely, the list of legendary 20th century humorists who passed away during the time the award was established, some of them well into that time period, should be shocking: Steve Allen, Sid Caesar, Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Don Rickles, Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Rodney Dangerfield, Betty White, Leslie Nielsen.  (I obviously have to respect arguments made for those comedians I'm less fond of like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis.)  And Robin Williams.  Now I understand that sudden deaths complicate the process here (Garry Shandling is another obvious choice), but consider that both of Williams' Comic Relief collegues, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, did manage to win the award during Williams' lifetime, even though (arguably, which I certainly would) Robin Williams was the more accomplished of the three.  Considering that list of eligible contenders who were passed over year after year, it makes you wonder why the likes of Will Farrell or Kevin Hart managed to secure the win (both at the age of 44).  And by the way folks, let me remind you that 100-year old Mel Fucking Brooks is still breathing!

There's some inherent but unspoken criteria which deserves scrutiny.  Even though the award is named after Mark Twain, notice the complete absence of literary humorists, even though in their lifetimes we have had the eligible nominees like Kurt Vonnegut, Art Buchwald, Fran Lebowitz, George Saunders, Molly Ivins, Dave Barry, David Sedaris.  Forget it.  It has already, quietly and inexplicably, been established that this award is not for them.  This award is strictly show business, which is a shame.  Also preemptively exempted are the cartoonist humorists - Charles Shultz, Gary Larson, Garry Trudeau, Bill Watterson, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Berkeley Breathed.  Clearly none worthy of what is ultimately an industry award.

But even in show business we can see the same exclusion.  I might even take umbrage at the award for Lorne Michaels, not because I don't think that he deserves it in some capacity, but because it reveals the glaring omission of other more significant producers like, say, Norman Lear?  (Who just passed away in 2023?)  It seems to be taken for granted that such background ("faceless" to the masses) comedy creators are never up for consideration, like writers such as Jim Downey, Buck Henry, Eric Monte, Rosie Shuster, Carrie Fisher, Carol Leifer, Robert Smigel, Jim Handey, Merrill Markoe.

And such 'behind the camera' figures in film are also shut out, because if we can't consider among our greatest living humorists such writer/directors as the Coen Brothers, Charles Kaufman or Wes Anderson then I honestly don't understand the definition of "humor" being used here.

Now let's go ahead and designate those comedians who will never be eligible for strictly political reasons: Woody Allen, Chevy Chase, Al Franken, roughly in order of deserving worth.

The first questionable choice on the list that sticks out to me is Whoopi Goldberg, the fourth overall recipient.  She was 45.  I admire Goldberg's comedy, which was less stand-up than 'one woman show'-type acts focusing on strong monologue-driven character work.  Which is based on the style of Lily Tomlin.  So it's strange that Tomlin herself would only win two years later.  See what I mean?  And, btw, Whoopi Goldberg has only sporadically been funny since she won.

Maybe the same could be said for Tina Fey, the youngest recipient at 40.  At least Fey does seem to be the rare example of a winner generally being recognized more as a writer than a performer - as a performer, she's a fine dry straight - but while she continues to work, has she really lived up to the legacy set by the award?  Again, consider all of the non-winners above before you answer, and keep in mind that Joan Rivers was still alive at the time.  

I don't hate Ellen DeGeneres, and respect her stand-up work at its peak during the '90s.  I never really watched her TV shows, but I believe that she probably is a horrible boss and a worse person to accidentally say "Hi" to at a bar she clearly doesn't think you should be able to afford.  Some of this is bred in the nature of the comedy scene, especially for women, it can inspire some pretty lacerating elbows.  Did DeGeneres deserve this award five years before Letterman, while Robin Williams and Don Rickles still walked the Earth?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an excellent comic actress, but, to the best of my knowledge, she is not a writer.  Just saying.  Mary Tyler Moore was also a pretty significant comic actress, and she wrote some books too.

I don't even know what to say about Adam Sandler.  This definitely seems like a decision made solely on Sandler's box office than actual humorous merit.  Put all of the truly funny bits from his films in one highlight reel, and it still wouldn't be funnier than Stephen Colbert's 2006 Correspondent's Dinner speech.  Hm, I wonder which one Mark Twain would have preferred?