I thought his smugness worked… for a while. He’s been right on a great many things across his career, and was able to frame his scathing critiques in fairly unique, clever ways. (and/or his writers were) Indeed, at one time I admired his ability to look at things from pretty daring angles, even if he was sometimes way off.

Problem is, he’s not the same anymore. Sort of like Joe Rogan, who at least started out with honest, interesting, amusing takes in a sort of ‘college student+’ kind of way. But something seems to have happened to these guys across the years. Not just the wealth, but the growing insulation from reality and… the normalisation of right-wing extremism. Something like that, anyway.

Still, I can’t just forget that Maher was killing it for plenty of years, there, even if he did rub people the wrong way.