As I’ve said, I think Bill is a good comedian, has good things to say about a number of issues, and often has interesting guests.  But he is getting much more conservative – I’m not sure that is the right word – I mean, too often he has what I consider bad politics on many issues, and he needs to be called out on these.  His last several shows demonstrate this in spades.

Let’s start a month ago (his Aug. 27^th show) where Bill closed his show complaining about people who “all they do is bitch about the country.”  They need to “have a little perspective.”  He said immigrants who have been here awhile know how good they have it, “We’re not the bad guys, we are fighting oppression.”  Look at life under the Taliban, Bill says — contrary to “woke ideology,” the U.S. is “Shangri-la” compared to many.  On last Friday’s show (Sept. 24), he said that he got savaged for those remarks but doubled down, saying, “If you think America is bad, try having Boko Haram move in next door.”

There is so much wrong here, it’s hard to know where to start.     But Bill’s whole argument is another straw person (as I have said in previous blogs, Bill often finds extreme views to react to).  No one thinks living under the Taliban or Boko Haram compares favorably with the U.S. It is just a silly, empty argument.  This almost sounds like an “America-love-it-or-leave-it” view, although he didn’t go quite that far.  But the U.S. is far from a Shangri-La and many countries do many things better than we do.  And for Bill of all people to take this view is bizarre – he has made his living criticizing America forever!

Another issue is that most progressives like me recognize that we need to spend much more on public services in the U.S. and that we need to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for it.  Bill isn’t so sure and equivocates.  He went out of his way to point out that we already tax the rich quite a lot and quoted some study that said the richest 65,000 people in New York state pay 51% of the state taxes.  So what?!  The billionaires have been making out like the bandits they are during the pandemic.  We badly need much higher income tax rates, estate tax rates, and a wealth tax!

Bill isn’t so sure about the spending side either.  On various shows, he complained about the Democrats $3.5 trillion spending package which is doing things we desperately need, especially tackling climate catastrophe.  But Bill asks, “What the heck are they going to do with $3.5 trillion” and worries “It won’t be spent wisely” (Sept 10).  Of course, it is reasonable to worry that government expenditures are wisely spent, but the Democrats have answered the first question many times, and Bill knows it.  We have starved government over the past 40 years of neoliberalism, and child care, the environment, education, health care, inequality, poverty, voting rights, and much more need to be addressed.  On last Friday’s show (Sept. 24), he asked the question of why do the Democrats have to do this all at once, can’t they do it in pieces?  How ridiculous!  The Republicans would simply continue to block them on each piece, plus after the 2022 elections, they may not have the votes in Congress to get anything through.

To top it all off, Bill turns into an economics expert (also on Sept. 24), saying we can’t spend that much because the ratio of U.S. debt to GDP is 129%, and why is it so high when it was 114% after our biggest crisis – WWII.  There is no agreement among economists on what is too high – Japan’s is 237% — and progressive economists argue it could go much higher in the U.S.  Plus we wouldn’t need to finance expenditures with debt if we had a fair taxation system.

Bill, looking at more economic data, then went on to complain about the labor force participation rate being about 62%, arguing that 40% of the population are not working.  He said Democrats should remind people that they want people to work and should stop being known as the “party that gives out money.”  First, the labor force participation rate has been around 60% for decades, for lots of reasons.  This is not a Democrat issue, and it is certainly not because there are generous benefits for those not employed!  Bill has no idea what he is talking about here – economic knowledge is problematic, but no knowledge is worse, and Bill has just moved to the right on both taxation and spending, repeating Republican tropes.

Last but far from least, Bill continues to misunderstand racism and its implications for American society (see my previous blogs).  On his most recent show (Sept. 24), he went on and on about the “Black National Anthem” and how there can only be one national anthem, and this is fragmenting by race and “sends the wrong message that we are two nations hopelessly drifting apart.”  First, there is only one National Anthem.  “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a beautiful song written around 1900 that became the official song of the NAACP in 1919.  It has been dubbed the Black national anthem, but, of course, that is not an official title.  It is now being played at some National Football League games before the Star-Spangled Banner.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and like players kneeling down, it signals attention to the plague of racism in our society.

Bill says he was brought up to believe that “segregation by race is bad” – and in many ways I agree.  But that is not an absolute.  Separation by race is sometimes very useful, especially in today’s world, e.g., when Black people want to talk about racism among themselves, or when White allies do as well.  Bill complained that a 2019 survey of college campuses reported that 42% offered racially segregated residences and 46% had segregated orientation programs.  But this doesn’t mean that all students resided in racially segregated housing, just that that choice was available to some.  Black college students shouldn’t be forced to live in integrated residences.  And I bet nearly all those colleges had an overall orientation program for all students, but in addition offered ones to minority students that dealt with issues specific to what they face on campus.  There is nothing wrong with this!  This is not the Balkanization of the nation as Bill claims and is not on the path to the violent divisions of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or Ireland as Bill suggests.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Sometimes separation is necessary to make progress and to heal the continued assault of racism today.

Bill needs to have guests on who understand this and can explain it to him and his audience, but he is not having many of those.  Instead, he has George Will on and hardly challenged him on anything, especially when he complained about the “multimillion dollar industry doing diversity training” and opined that “race relations have never been better.”  What nonsense!  Bill, you need to “woke” up!