I've just finished watching an episode of "Real Time With Bill Maher", and I felt I owed it to myself(And Ash), to write out a couple of thoughts in a full entry here.
If you didn't know, "Real Time" is a show that broadcasts in America on the HBO subscriber network(It works a little like adding Sky Movies or ESPN to your existing package), starring and hosted by American stand-up comedian Bill Maher. If you've not seen and gotten used to Maher's style/schtick, you would be forgiven for turning away from the show very quickly, and even being quite vocal about how much you can't stand him - He comes across pretty slimy, and his jokes are about the most opinionated I can think of. Like Jon Stewart after his life has come crumbling down, and turned into a lascivious addict. But that's his style, and while I've never met the guy, I'm prepared to say that appearances can be deceiving, and I've never felt that because I'm unhappy with style, I'm prepared to forego the substance.
The substance is actually quite astonishing for an American show. While the fact that it is broadcast on HBO might be enough for some to find it better than the quality of other shows on other networks, I'd say even for HBO, the integrity and dedication it has to it's purpose is astounding - not just by American standards, but by any standards. The format is basically a panel discussion show, with a number of selected guests from different backgrounds and opposing views come together to discuss topics of the day. Apart from there being a couple of purely comedy segments, such as the opening "chat-show" style monologue, and "New Rules", where Maher comedically bitchslaps a few people or organisations for being stupid or wrong, you'd think from the sound of it that this sounded similar to maybe the BBC's "Question Time" as presented by let's say Frank Skinner.
But while Question Time often leaves me feeling that half the panel only showed up to show they "care" about the issues being discussed on that night, and some showed up to be a public face for a press release, or maybe just to rebut something in the press - before clamming up for the rest of the show - I always finish watching "Real Time" thinking I'd seen something amazing. And I say amazing, because it's one of only three places I can think of, where people show up to a tv show taping, and do the following;
- They are posed a question.
- They respond with their answer.
- They are then confronted with an opposing view, either from Bill Maher, or another guest on the panel.
- They discuss that.
And somewhere inbetween all of this, you really get the feeling that these people believe what they say, and are capable of arguing the point without simply resorting to "Well, that's what I believe" as some sort of ignorant mannerism to warn people that they're done listening.
True, there's often a few things that the people showing up are trying to sell - Brad Pitt recently appeared on the show around the time that "Inglorious Basterds" opened in cinemas, and people will show up once in a while to shill their book - but by and large, the guests are invited to discuss the issues in a sort of debate format, and are encouraged to do so freely.
The other two shows I was thinking of before, were The Daily Show, and it's sister show, The Colbert Report. And I was left thinking this before; Why is it that only comedians are capable of doing these sorts of shows? I watch a LOT of TV, and often resort to watching things over the internet to view things that don't get shown in this country, and I have to wonder.....is it because the probing questions and the unexpected answers they get, go under the radar of the people they are talking to? I mean, the news is rarely somewhere to go for this sort of program, and I can't help but be fascinated by why.
True, BBC News has "Hard Talk", usually hosted by Stephen Sackur, where hard questions are asked and recorded to tape, out of the context of the live news that dominates that channel. But the answers very rarely involve any insight. FOX News is dominated by several shows where the interviews are the most noteworthy part, mainly because a guest and a host screaming at each other in a confrontation over petty issues makes for a great YouTube clip. The U.S. broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC have Sunday discussion panel shows, including perhaps the most well-known "Meet The Press", but they suffer from the same apathy and inability to get to the meat of issues that the satire or comedy shows get to. Nowhere was this more present, when NBC's Chuck Todd, their senior White House correspondent, appeared on "Real Time" lately - The issue at one point turned to the deplorable state of American news reporting and journalism at large, and the finger was pointed at the on-camera reporters, such as Mr. Todd. The point at hand was about infamous U.S. mercenary group Blackwater, which is one of a large number of corporations that provides guns for hire for America in Iraq and Afghanistan. These organisations are paid reportedly vast sums - immensely more than similar members of the U.S. armed services - and have been implicated in some of the most disgraceful incidents to occur in the allied occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as the slaughter in Fallujah in 2004.
Having already alluded to the current poor state of broadcast journalism as being a fallacy - that it is some kind of nostalgia that people have for a time when journalists asked difficult questions of people, and expected answers, and suggested that was the rosy glow of the past making people like him look bad - He was confronted by author Jeremy Scahill. Scahill, a frequent contributor to "Real Time", wrote a book on Blackwater, and confronted Todd over his blase attitude. Regarding the lack of responsibility to hold the government accountable for things such as Blackwater's abominable record, or Dick Cheney's private assassination squad, or the similar machinations that go on under the current Obama administration, Chuck Todd's response was this:
"Because...what is it gonna get turned into - a political foodfight where you can't get anything done, Congress would not be able to get any prosecutions done, and worse yet, the prosecutions that you [Jeremy Scahill]...would like to see, would end up in a (inaudible), and you don't get it(The prosecutions), and then you find it provides some immunity farther along and you find out you can't try these folks..."
At that point Jeremy Scahill interrupted him and Bill Maher moved the issue on a little, but you get the gist. If we report on this in a vocally disapproving manner, things may get messy.
Let me explain again - the man saying this, is the Senior White House Correspondent, for the National Broadcasting Company(NBC). The man who sits in the White House press room(Not all the time, he'll only show up for the big press conferences or the ones he wants to), asks the questions so that the public can hear the answers, and on the subject of "We're paying mercenaries to fight our wars, they're killing people they shouldn't be - often in massive numbers - we're using secret assassination squads to do things we don't want the public to know about", he thinks it shouldn't be addressed in any real way, because it would get messy for Congress.
So the thing I have to ask about all of this - Are comedy shows capable of being this incisive because they get to slip under the radar by means of low expectations? Or are they noteworthy at being successful, because "journalists" fail so spectacularly at what the public expect them to do, it leaves them to turn to comedians.
I guess that leaves me with an image in my head of the famous symbol that represents theatricality and drama - one the face of comedy, one the face of tragedy.
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The other thing that watching Maher's show leaves me with, regards the latest reason Americans have found to get all apeshit about.
"Healthcare reform".
Actually, to be fair, that's hardly the reason so many Americans have gone quite cuckoo lately. Like a many-headed Hydra, or a loose stool, there are many different parts to why they've gone nuts. I suppose the first would be the view of so many Americans that they don't like government, they don't trust government, and if they could, they'd live their lives without government. Which means when political figures from the conservative side of America start suggesting that this would mean people get less care, or in some cases would be denied care, and would be put to death by the government, something similar to a stench-ridden first burp of the morning goes off in their brains.
Then there's the notion of public healthcare. If you'd listened to an American politician speak about healthcare in America within your lifetime(With a few exceptions), they would in all likelihood used this exact phrase, if not merely the same message.
"America has the best healthcare in the world".
I'm not sure exactly what was being used to qualify "best" in that sentence, or whether there was really any truth in the sentiment at all. From my own perspective, I can only think of one example - that in America, they have some of the most highly-trained, most experienced, most inventive surgeons in the world, doing some of the very best work. I say that, because for so many Premier League footballers and sportsmen of every association to go to see one guy - Dr. Richard Steadman - to save their careers, they must think he's alright at his job. But here's the thing; Dr. Steadman, I'm sure, is expensive. Probably too expensive for any BUPA plan to pay for, and definitely too expensive for any NHS patient to see. In fact, I'm guessing that if these sportsmen weren't paid as much as they are, or weren't seen as so important by their employers, they wouldn't be able to afford the treatment they had. I also hear a lot of people visit America for life-saving cancer treatments, or for similarly important heart operations. But then, they go to other nations for that too - I've known cancer survivors who visited European countries for their treatment.
So I guess the short form of that paragraph would be - maybe they do have the best healthcare in the world. But only, ONLY if you can afford it, and not many can.
Of a nation of some three hundred and thirty million, fifty million or so, have no healthcare of any kind. I'll admit, that some of those will be the kind of person who feels aggrieved that their new car has so many airbags. The person that we've all met at some point, who says "I'll be fine, I'll just be careful.". But I'd guess that the majority of that group divides into two sections - the ones who can't get it because they can't afford any healthcare, and the ones who can't get it because no healthcare company will take them(Either because they have a "pre-existing condition" before they apply, or any healthcare they could get wouldn't cover them for what they need).
Allow me to put that into perspective - if the estimate for the 2009 census of the population of the United Kingdom were a glass, filling it up with the Americans with no healthcare at all would nearly fill it. The UK is estimated to have sixty-one million or so people in it, and estimates for the current total in America, put it around fifty million people with no access to healthcare, other than paying the ER when they need it. And the ER isn't cheap. If it involves a surgical procedure, then the visit would cost an average of $904 dollars by 2003 estimates, and costs have gone up since then. Nearly a thousand dollars for something that doesn't include any kind of ongoing care or pharmacy charges.
As I said, if the Health Insurance company you apply to finds out that you have any kind of pre-existing medical condition, they have grounds to deny you care under their legal powers. If you tell them upfront, they won't insure you. If you don't tell them, and they find out later on, they'll flush you out of the building quickly.
I suppose all of this is by-the-by, because depending on your experiences and your views on the subject, there are any number of reasons why you'd be in favor of such a system or against it. But the nub of it for me, is this. Why is it so distasteful for so many people, for a bureaucrat paid for by a democratically elected government to be managing healthcare, when all that exists for all Americans who are not elderly or ex-service personnel(Who both get socialised medicine and have done for many years), is healthcare being managed by a bureaucrat paid for by a business that only exists to make a profit? I understand that many people don't trust government, but quite frankly, for fuck's sake, why are corporations so much more trustworthy to these people?
Along with being unable to believe that the current, democratically elected 44th President of the United States was born in America, are these people unable to accept that corporations lied about, or even at least kept secret that tobacco is dangerous? That too many cars of the twentieth century were so poorly made that if you were in an accident you wouldn't need an airbag so much as a fireproof asbestos suit? Or that so much of the folksy charm turned on by the officials that they elected is a put up job to convince you to vote for someone you like rather than someone who won't sell out their vote for a holiday home to fuck in Argentina?
But I digress. I've spent a lot of time lately dueling with people who disagree with me on a great many things, on the news aggregate website "The Huffington Post", under my username "CrackerJacker". And something I've come to realise, is that many people feel their democratically elected officials fail them in some regard. I'm not convinced that Democracy is really any better or worse than any other form of governance, such as Communism or Totalitarian Despotism, only that it depends on the people in charge being any good at not fucking up. Right now, in America, the people in charge ARE fucking up. Massive, deadly important issues are being left to die by the roadside, deprived of life-giving attention and debate, aswell as the action needed to save the nation. But it's not the elected officials. They may well spin on a dime(Sixpence over here) and change their opinion at the drop of a hat(Same over here), all for the backing of someone they want to do business with, costing the people much more than mere money, but they are allowed to do so by the biggest fuckups in the country. The people. Members of the Press Corps like Chuck Todd may be disappointments and failures in the eyes of the people, either because of their pandering as seen by the left, or because of their intrusiveness by the right, but they don't work for the public, they work for a corporation with sponsors and shareholders. If waking up in the morning and being offended at their reflection hasn't made them be better journalists, then the public being unhappy with them won't make any difference to them.
Then again, maybe Chuck Todd is right. Maybe it is true, that everyone says that it's always "The Good Old Days", and that the only good newsmen are people who are long-dead and buried. But if that's the case, it's not his fault, or David Gregory's fault, or Brian Williams, Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson's fault. It's the fault of the public. Not for voting someone into office who turned out to be a completely amoral sellout. But because they decide that voting for someone else next time is enough. The news may not be popular today, and that is directly the fault of the people who report the news and put it on TV, because newsmen are like politicians: They run on the basis of being liked by the audience, and not being a bother is a key way to an American's heart. With the apathy that the American public - apart from very vocal tiny minorities - show for politics and the people they elect to serve on their government, what example should the news follow? The newsmen their fathers admired? Or the politicians of the day, who so capably soothe the public into a coma, where they will be without the healthcare that is apparently, "The envy of the world", because apathy is a pre-existing condition.
And the worst of it is, it's becoming a similar story here, too. Do you know why? Because since the second World War, Britain has been part of an obsessive love affair with America. From the GI's with their candy bars and their lovely accents that charmed so many war widows in the thirties and forties, to our ongoing fascination with their music, their technology and their "bling".
America has failed to investigate George W. Bush for the travesties of his time in office, the most conspicuous of which being the ignored intelligence reports that forewarned of 9/11, and the resulting invasion of a supposed terrorist state full of stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons which turned out - oddly enough for a country ruled by Saddam Hussein - to be completely innocent. The people have allowed this to happen. But do you know what is just as shameful? The man who led us - the UK - blindly into the same conflict, not only has thus far not been investigated or indicted by anyone other than parts of the media, not only currently walks freely, but is now a special envoy to the part of the world we complicitly invaded alongside America.
The people get the elected officials they deserve. And the news media to reflect both. Be thankful for the comedians, otherwise all we'd be left with is the tragedy of the reality we've created. Reality like Chuck Todd.
Late Update: I've Tweeted about this, but just after I finished editing this article, I wandered over to HuffPo, and this was the video presented to me in the story. Watch it to the end, and make sure you're paying attention to what they're saying.
