Last week, Bill Maher, the self-described “liberal” comedian who enjoys palling around with members of the alt-right on his program for ratings, unleashed a racist tirade over the novel coronavirus crisis, arguing he should be able to refer to it as the “Chinese virus” if he so pleases, even though there is no established precedent for naming a virus after its entire country of origin (e.g. the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain), and Asian-Americans are facing a surge in hate crimes in the midst of the pandemic, with over 100 reported attacks against them a day.
So, how did he follow that up on Friday night? By blaming the media, of course.
“If this insanity happens again, news sources have to rein it in,” said Maher during his “New Rules” segment. “Everybody knows corona is no walk in the park, because you literally can’t walk in the park, but at some point the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn. Enough with the ‘Life Will Never Be the Same’ headlines.”
Maher then proceeded to downplay the severity of the pandemic, which has resulted in nearly 154,000 deaths worldwide and over 32,000 stateside thus far, while assuming the privileged perspective of a multi-millionaire whose livelihood hasn’t been affected by COVID-19.
“Most of us are sitting at home smoking delivery weed and binge-watching a show about a gay zookeeper,” he said. “Unless you’re a frontline health-care worker, for whom the phrase ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, this is not ‘the apocalypse.’”
He lambasted The New York Times for their headline, “Braced for Apocalyptic Surge, New York Avoids the Worst, So Far.” A bit alarmist? Sure. But the media’s warnings about COVID-19, in the face of dangerous disinformation from the White House and its PR wing Fox News, have been a contributing factor in these lower death tolls that Maher is so pleased with.
“It’s still bad but you don’t have to put hot sauce on a jalapeno,” said Maher. “How about this, just tell me millions are out of work without the flashlight under the chin, and I’ll decide how I feel about it. There was never headlines like this before.” (Hmm...)
The Washington Post was up next. “The media also seems obsessed with finding young people who’ve died of COVID-19. The Washington Post says there are 759 under 50 years old. Horrible, of course,” said Maher. “Then I looked up how many under 50 died of the flu last year: almost 3,000.”
He added, “So all this misery, from distancing, did some good. Can I be happy about that? Death is terrible, of course, no matter how it comes. I’m against it, and I don’t care who knows it. But giving a proper perspective isn’t a cover-up of the truth. It is the truth.”
“We need the news to calm down and treat us like adults. Trump calls you fake news. Don’t make him be right.”
Again, for someone who regularly platforms some of the country’s premier trolls and spreaders of disinformation, from Steve Bannon and Ben Shapiro to anti-vaxxers, Maher is in no position to lecture the media about the responsibility of its coverage.
