LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST:
by Micah J. Fleck
This week’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher was a treat to behold, as infamous provocateur and free speech champion Milo Yiannopoulos made is first appearance on the show. He hit the stage twice– once for a one-on-one sit down with the host himself, which went swimmingly, and a second time to take on the panel of guests later on in the show and into the post-show segment “Overtime,” which airs exclusively online.
The interview wit Maher was very civil, enlightening, and entertaining, and Milo himself made some very good points, The stand out line from that exchange was when Milo said the following: “the one thing that authoritarians hate is the sound of laughter.” Maher concurred, and both men were able to rally together around the larger point that modern liberals are prone to “take the bait” more than they are to be thoughtful and willing to agree to disagree.
Milo’s initial appearance on the show can be seen below:
During Milo’s second sitting on the show with the “Overtime” sequence, Maher confronted him about the report of him supposedly outing a trans student at one of his college talks. Milo clarified that the student was already outwardly identifying as trans, and had already left the school and was therefore not in danger of being singled out on campus at the time the speech was given. While Milo did give his opinion that he feels trans women are merely “confused” men (I have written myself as to why that is in fact not the case), he was quick to admit afterwards that he is “just a pop star,” and that he “doesn’t really know anything” about the topic. In other words, like always, he is doing what he does to get rises out of people.
That clarification did not stop comedian Larry Wilmore from accusing Milo of hate speech, however, and drawing comparisons between Milo’s views on trans people and the attitude the public at large once had of gays.
U.S. Counterintelligence Officer Malcom Nance, another panelist, then started degrading Yiannopoulos and accusing him of being “confused” about “who and what” he is (the common criticism liberals hurl at Milo suggesting that he is a self-hating gay man).
Milo’s response to this criticism was to call the panel members “awful people,” to which Wilmore retorted, “go fuck yourself.”
You can watch that high-minded exchange in the following video:
WATCH TLR’S LATEST VIDEO:
