Oil and water. Oscar and Felix. Entering tonight’s Real Time, you’d expect Sen. Ted Cruz and Bill Maher to fit into that “don’t mix” category.
You’d be wrong, for the most part. Although they sparred at times, the two political opposites found that they were often on the same page.
Cruz is out supporting his new book, Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America, and surprisingly admitted his admiration for the “old-school liberal” Maher, who Cruz said was “funny as hell” and “believes in free speech.”
“I actually appreciate what you do,” Cruz said, adding he has retweeted some of Maher’s monologues.
Maher seemed taken aback. “I feel really bad about the jokes I did about you,” he said. He acknowledged he is often accused of slowly getting more conservative, basically because he refuses to “bend the knee” to the more “crazy train” ideas of the left.
Cruz said that the “echo chambers” that people create are troubling. “If you watch Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity,” he said, the result is “not good for America that we don’t talk to each other.”
Maher asked Cruz how he defines “woke.”
“It’s intertwined with cultural Marxism, Cruz said, blaming major institutions that have been captured by the extreme left,” starting with universities.
Cruz then blew a joke about Harvard and screwing in lightbulbs, which Maher teased him about, noting that politicians should not try to be funny.
Cruz countered that “you can’t do this job without laughing or enjoying it. There are too many politicians who act like they got a stick up their ass.”
Maher was impressed. “I never saw this side of you,” he said, adding that Cruz’s reputation is that he is widely disliked.
They did butt heads on whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Cruz admitted Biden was elected, but added that he didn’t think everything was fair. They then went into a finger-pointing back and forth that ranged from Nixon in 1960 to Al Gore to Hilary Clinton.
The night’s panel discussion included Jordan Peterson, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of the bestseller 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos, and and Pamela Paul, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and current opinion columnist for the paper.
After a far-ranging talk about why younger people aren’t having sex, the discussion dove into Joe Biden’s political future and why there’s a mess in the Middle East.
Maher’s “New Rules” editorial lamented the deterioration of discipline in schools, contrasting Britney Spears of 20 years ago dancing in the hall to “Baby One More Time” versus the “Dancing with Knives” version of today. Maher offered his own Bill Maher’s Non-Catholic Catholic school as a possible solution toward restoring order.