And finally, New Rule, "Okay, Boomer"
isn't an argument. It's actually an admission
you don't have one. Gen Z complains a lot
that I make fun of them, but I don't feel
too bad about it because they never engage
with the idea itself. It's always just, "You're old."
Yeah, that's not an argument. It's a prejudice,
the thing you purport to hate. -I'm sor-- (CHUCKLES)
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) (CLICKS TONGUE) I'm sorry that I can't look at
your Queers 4 Palestine banner and pretend it's not idiotic,
but... (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) ...just because something
is progressive doesn't always make it progress. It's about ideas, not age. And to prove my point, tonight, I'd like to talk about
how mind-blowingly batshit crazy a lot of people my age are. -(CHUCKLES)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) A funny thing is happening
in this election. The younger voters
are liking Trump more and more, and the over-60 crowd,
which normally leans Republican, is this time preferring Biden,
and I think I know why. If you're my age, you've seen friends
and loved ones go down a Facebook rabbit hole.
(CLICKS TONGUE) Or get sucked
into the Fox News vortex and never come back the same, transformed from a normal person
into some lunatic who's hoarding survival seeds,
and... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(CLEARS THROAT, CHUCKLES) ...thinks Jewish space lasers
cause wildfires and chemtrails
are a form of mind control. There's a viral tweet that says, "Fox News and Facebook
did to our parents what they said video games
would do to us." (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) I think the reason Biden
is winning seniors is, we want our friends back. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-We all... (CHUCKLES) We all have that uncle,
or grandparent, or in-law, or favorite TV star. -(CLICKS TONGUE)
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) Or a movie star who...
(CLEARS THROAT) ...used to be
an everyday reasonable citizen, but now forwards emails
in all-caps about... (CLEARS THROAT)
...election conspiracies, and QAnon conspiracies, and what 5G is really going
to be used for, and what's going on
in the basement of Hillary's pizza parlor,
and... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-(CLEARS THROAT) ...how the Reptilian
Shadow Government is threatening
to turn everyone gay by putting fluoride
in the Budweiser. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-(GUESTS CHUCKLING) (CLEARS THROAT) A popular political book
once asked, "What's the matter with Kansas?"
Today we have to ask, "What's the matter
with grandma?" (CLICKS TONGUE) -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-We've watched too many friends disappear into
this weird black hole. Many are married
to Supreme Court justices. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(GUESTS CHUCKLING) (BILL MAHER CLEARS THROAT) (CHUCKLES) (CLICKS TONGUE) Two days
after the 2020 election, Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni,
who met Clarence back in the 1980s
when they did porn together... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-(GUESTS LAUGHING) -(BILL CHUCKLING)
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) Uh, she forwarded a text
to the chief of staff of the president
of the United States, saying that she heard
that the Biden crime family and ballot fraud co-conspirators were going to be taken
to barges off Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals. And then she wrote,
"I hope this is true." Yes, and I hope you get checked
for lead poisoning. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING, LAUGHING)
-(GUESTS LAUGHING) Then there's America's Karen... (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) ...Martha-Ann Alito,
wife of Justice Samuel Alito, who holds a master's degree
in library science and yet has devoted her life
to waging war against neighborhood lawn signs. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) Martha-Ann rants about
getting even with the media, not realizing that now,
kooks like her are the media. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-A re-- A recent study found
that a mere 2,100 people accounted for spreading
80 percent of the fake news on Twitter
during the last election, and most of them were
older White Republican women. We have met
the Russian trollbot army, and it's your Aunt Bonnie. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(CHUCKLES) That's who it is. Yentas who post all day,
and it's always a retweet, and it's always wrong. They watch lies on TV
and believe it because it's TV, and then post it
to their friends who believe it
because it's Facebook. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) And it's not just Facebook,
but also X, formerly known as Twitter,
and Fox News, formerly known as news. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING) A study once found
that using the Fox News website as a news source
made you less informed than watching no news at all. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) It's the Ozempic
of knowing things. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(CHUCKLES) And still not as bad as the "news finds me" people.
Yeah. (CHUCKLES) That's the growing cohort
of Americans who believe that
if a story's important enough, it will find its way
to their social media feed. Yeah, these are people
who trust their Facebook friends to watch Hannity for them. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING) But here's the thing.
(CLICKS TONGUE) With kids, when they get lost
to the insanity of social media, we can, and increasingly, schools,
districts are doing this, taking away their phones,
for at least part of the day. But you can't take away
a 70-year-old's phone. You can just make
the text smaller. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(GUESTS CHUCKLING) BILL: So... So we have to figure out
why so many seniors are so susceptible to fake news. Now, part of it is,
unlike the kids, they didn't grow up
with bullshit media. Corporate-funded,
narrative-driven, and completely partisan. So when that came along,
they had no immunity for it. Boomers. We grew up
with old-school<i> Time</i> magazine and Walter Cronkite. Closest thing to fake news
back then was pretending Liberace
was looking for a woman. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(CHUCKLES, CLEARS THROAT) (GUESTS CHUCKLING) The boomer generation
never developed the antibodies for clickbait. They turned on the TV one day
and Lawrence Welk was gone. And in his place was some guy
named Lou Dobbs who was telling you the reason
you had a good weekend was Donald Trump. Have a great weekend. The president makes such
a thing possible for us all. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) How does this happen?
(CLEARS THROAT) Well, part of it,
the Left has to own. The presence of an aggressively
anti-common-sense agenda on the Far Left
is a powerful magnet pulling people to the right. But also,
old people are just cranky. Which fits very well
with the hating menu prepared at Fox and Facebook. And there's one other reason. Because this is America, where we abandon our elderly
to nursing homes. Because just leaving them
in the forest is illegal. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
-(CLEARS THROAT) So we can't be too surprised when they turn
to the Fox News family as a replacement for their own. We warehouse them in homes,
gouge them on their medications, target them with phone
and internet scams, and force them
to work past retirement age. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING) We treat old people
like children, and children like sages. No nation disrespects
the elderly like America does. Makes them feel invisible,
barely tolerated, and underappreciated
for the wisdom they could offer. And maybe that's what drives
so many to be hateful to anything coming
from younger people who have not been
particularly nice to them. Maybe the generation gap
can't be bridged, but that would be a good place
to start.
