Bill Maher, Olbermann, and ‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda Bash Trump on Inauguration Night
It was Bill Maher’s birthday, but no one gave him the gift of good jokes when he began his 15th season of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night, just as the Trump inauguration balls were winding down. Sample Maher lines: “We have a new leader … Vladimir Putin!” “Today we inaugurated America’s last president!” “There’s no normal president inside the Trump fat-suit!” It was one groaner after the other.
Having watched hours and hours of the inauguration and the curiously mirthless celebratory entertainment that followed it, I was up for some sharp, barbed humor, but Maher, showcased against a gleaming new set, was the same old obvious jokester. His guests included Jane Fonda, who was billed as “star of Grace & Frankie” and “activist.” I was surprised Maher did not invoke — ironically, of course — Fonda’s nickname during the Vietnam War era as proof of her bona fides as a spokesperson with radical politics. (Yes, kids, that’s what “Hanoi Jane” refers to in my headline.) Fonda’s chief contribution to the proceedings tonight was to declare, “I don’t call [Trump] president; I call him the predator in chief.”
Another guest was Keith Olbermann. You remember Olbermann, and if you don’t, head straight over to GQ.com and fire up one of Keith’s videos — what he calls “The Resistance” — if you want to be bellowed at until you get a headache. “You’re someone liberals look to,” said Maher to Olbermann. (He is?) Olbermann led off with a reference to “this inauguration, or coup d’etat” and by the time he started quoting Monty Python’s John Cleese, I knew I wasn’t going to hear anything new.
As the hour wound down, Maher, Olbermann, and his panel — former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham; Heather McGhee, head of the Demos think tank; and former Labor Secretary Thomas Perez — were reduced to making Apprentice digs. At the dawn of the Trump Era, we need better political humor than this.
Real Time With Bill Maher airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on HBO.
