Including some candid words from Senator John Fetterman.
Bill Maher spoke about prisons on “Real Time” this week.
Some episodes Bill Maher in Real Time It’s a show that rounds up recent news and hot topics. It’s one of the few shows on television where you can see a filmmaker talking about his work and a member of Congress commenting on the recent election in the same hour. This week’s episode features Senator John Fetterman, reasonMatt Welch and Bad therapy Author Abigail Shrier But there was one theme that kept appearing in various forms: mental health.
Still, trying to pull a single underlying message from the episode may be impossible. Fetterman was relatively open about his treatment for depression last year. Maher brought up Fetterman’s notoriously outspoken views and asked if various health scares were to blame. In a very Gen-X way, Fetterman referenced Jack Nicholson’s interpretation of the Joker from the 1989 film “Joker.” Batman“I’ve already died once. It’s very liberating.”
Fetterman also answered a question about whether his mental health comments had hurt his career — “There’s not much political gain from talking about depression,” he said — but he did talk about the satisfaction he gets from knowing his outspokenness has helped others.
“I want to be the person who can say something that will help someone who’s been in the same situation as me,” Fetterman told Maher.
When Welch and Schrier joined Maher for an evening panel, Maher began by talking about the Hunter Biden trial. “Why do political families have such bad families?” he asked Schrier. She responded that many famous people’s children don’t have loving parents, boundaries, or nurturing communities, something she linked to the themes of her book. And from there, she argued that too many children have never been told “no.”
Meanwhile, Welch took a different tack on the generational divide in light of this week’s commemorations of the anniversary of the Normandy landings. “We understood that generation to have a sense of asceticism,” Welch said. It was Welch who took the most nuanced position in the debate. “When you think about the Greatest Generation, they probably needed a little more therapy,” Welch said.
From there, things veer a bit into “get out of my yard” territory, so to speak, with Maher and Shrier becoming skeptical of claims of PTSD in the younger generation: “These kids are behaving like psychopaths,” Shrier says at one point. (It’s worth noting here that Shrier’s previous book faced some pretty intense criticism after it was published.)
This week on New Rules, Maher also touched on mental health from a different angle, exploring the nation’s worrying attitudes towards prisons and the psychological effects of being incarcerated. (It began with the unsettling question of why jokes about prison rape are still considered acceptable.) It’s one of Maher’s better editorials, more focused, less cheaply offensive, and stronger in its overall theme. It’s not without its irony: “We call it a ‘correctional facility,’ but that’s like calling the NFL a ‘brain development program.'”
In the end, Maher’s strongest criticism was directed at for-profit prisons. “They don’t want you to rehabilitate,” he said. “They want you to keep coming back.” It was a solemn closing statement to an asymmetrical episode. And a memorable one.
Other notable moments from this episode:
- “It makes absolutely no sense, but let’s get started,” Maher said of the Hunter Biden trial.
- While the two men were largely in agreement on most issues, Maher grilled Fetterman about his support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on cultured meat.
- He also asked a question commonly asked of senators: “How do you dress?” Fetterman was relatively forthright. “I know I dress sloppily,” he said. He also discussed the practical side of his clothing choice: “I’m comfortable in my clothes. I don’t have to iron them.”
- Fetterman also took a somewhat meta approach to criticism of his attire: “People seemed concerned that I was wearing a hoodie on the Senate floor, as opposed to senators taking bribes.”
- In the end, it seems Schrier and Welch had a lot to say about Caitlin Clark.
- “They’re telling people a confusing story that’s not intuitive,” Welch said of Democrats’ messaging on immigration.
- Early on in The New Rules, Maher suggested pairing an airplane’s plush first-class seats with the economy-class double-decker seats: “Unequal Airlines: There’s something special in the sky. It just isn’t you.”
- Regarding marijuana use outpacing alcohol consumption, Maher said, “If alcohol use is going down, why is it still not safe to eat at a Waffle House?”
- “If this isn’t a Father’s Day gift, I don’t know what is,” Maher said of his new book.
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