Again, Bill Maher is not a warmonger, he's basically an isolationist.

And you are the one that chose to frame your argument as an attack on "stereotypical liberals" (despite the fact they were arguing with two other liberals). You could have said islamophobes or something, but you chose to use the word liberal as a pejorative.

jeez overtime was like 85% Affleck talking at 90 MPH also. he sounds kinda buzzed actually.

Sam Harris tweeted this response to Aslan's recent Maher critique on CNN by two former Muslims. They outline Aslan's misrepresentation of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangledesh and say that Turkey enjoys the society it has today specifically because it is militantly secular. There's a bunch of other accusations of cherry-picking and distortion by Aslan. Pretty good read:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendl...d-this-is-why/

That's a great find Double_A and makes me hugely skeptical of anything Aslan claims from now on.

The “Indonesia, women are absolutely 100 percent equal to men” statement was wtf was he thinking when he said that territory.

Came here to post that.

As for Affleck, it's not that he was incorrect, it was that he was arguing against a point that neither Maher or Harris was making.

Affleck was arguing against having the actions of the lunatic fringe jihadists being unfairly applied to the Muslim world as a whole, but that is not at all what Harris was talking about. If Affleck woulda shut up for a moment, he might have gotten that.

And, ironically, he proved the point that Maher and Harris were trying to make before they got derailed by the discussion of Islam itself, which is that you can't even criticize the unequivocly bad tenets of Islam without being called a racist islamophobe.

Precisely this. The first point Harris made upon being introduced was that criticizing certain ideas and beliefs often gets conflated with bigotry.

Then within the next few minutes Afleck is sarcastically talking about "shifty Jews" and "Blacks who are always shooting each other" while calling both Maher and Harris disgusting racists.

He wasn't even listening to what either of them were saying, he was just reacting in typical knee-jerk fashion. Even if you agree with the overall point Afleck was trying to make, it had little bearing on what was being discussed. He came off as petulant and obtuse.

Ben came off as on cocaine to me.

That said Bill and 4th panel member are clearly over generalizing. Not to mention confusing governmental ideas with the ideas of Muslims living in those countries (I'm Iranian for what it's worth).

Elizabeth Warren's stock went way down for me. Too many fun liberal catch phrases and zero substance. I always worried about how bad she'd be for the economy anyway.

Here's a great piece written by Harris about his thoughts on Friday night's show.


http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/c...ed-from-itself

wow, I don't think you actually watched the episode

As Maher says, "You're not listening to what we are saying!"

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcaria...28-column.html

Berkeley students are trying to banned Bill Maher as a graduation speaker.

So this woman(author of this article) is equating Mormon's stand against gay marriage and Catholic Church against abortion with Sharia Law.

Neither the mormons or catholics believe people should die for leaving their faith. They just believe your going to an extremely hot sauna.

Lets face it religions do not like Bill as he hurts their recruitment into their cults.

That Palestinian lady was feisty and wouldn't let it go Hurt herself when she made the point who raped those farm workers? Not Muslims

Yeah that was a bit desperate.

Because you can't find any examples of Muslims raping women. She didn't really think that one through.

The people arguing against Bill on this issue have absolutely nothing except saying he's generalizing about all Muslims (which of course he's not). They just counter his facts with emotion, which is not the formula for winning a debate.

ugh love Rula Jebreal usually but she was ****ing awful and did not even make her point well at all

she was way too mad/emotional to make much of a point

she was also too sorry

She's hot though.

All in all another really good episode. This shows on a roll.

Agreed. I just wish that at some point when this stuff gets brought up again, Maher would go off on the person with an incredibly concise and scathing response. Maher trying to change the subject and seem uncomfortable and unprepared to respond makes him look wrong on this subject, as if he's been put in his place.

He has a slew of writers and plenty of time during the week. I wish he'd at least come out with a statement or something, like what Sam Harris did after his appearance.

I dont think he needed to. He made a few points and I am sure getting tired of it. He had other topics to discuss and did.

Though I always wonder how any of those very attractive guests Bill has had.

He may argue with his guests but I see him remaining friends

He has said the same things over and over, but I haven't seen him do what Sam Harris did which was to find a more cogent and accurate way to explain his points.

For example, check out this pretty great article:
http://scroll.in/article/685416/Paki...ight-place-but


If Maher were to make some very good points that this piece does, I don't think his guests would have any comebacks.

Yeah, but despite how he may come off sometimes, what many people don't seem to get, and Rula clearly missed when Maher was trying to move on, is that this isn't actually a serious news/discussion program, and Maher isn't actually a scholar, pundit or journalist. It's an entertainment program and Maher is a comedian.

Yes, they talk about serious issues and Maher tries to speak honestly and earnestly about his positions, but the truth is, at it's core, Real Time has more in common with The Jerry Springer Show than with Meet the Press or Face the Nation. The two kinds of shows just have different missions.

Are you kidding me? Quality of the discussion on Real Time is usually higher than Meet the Press. Jerry Springer gtfo.