Killer Mike schools Bill Maher for using right-wing talking point to criticize free college

Bill Maher and Killer Mike

Run the Jewels is a hip hop outfit that’s been around for a while. They have always been progressive in their attitude, and Killer Mike, one of the two artists in Run the Jewels, has been a very vocal political voice. He was a big supporter for Bernie Sanders’ run in 2016 and he continues to be a progressive public figure. Bill Maher is a strange bird. Like many comedians, his progressive qualities are frequently filtered through libertarian tendencies reinforced by a standup’s very lonesome life. Maher is also not nearly as smart as he wants everyone to believe—a problem when your brand is being the wittiest guy in the room.

Maher enjoys having Killer Mike on his show for a couple of reasons: 1) Killer Mike also has a show on HBO and I’m sure executives at HBO enjoy pushing cross-promotion, and 2) Killer Mike has his own positions that match up with Maher. For example, Killer Mike is a big Second Amendment proponent, and critical of Reg Flag gun laws that they will be applied the way many gun laws have been applied—by racists. However, this is not a diary about gun laws and gun control. It’s a diary about Bill Maher being kind of a dummy.

Below is a clip from the new season of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. On it Killer Mike comes to discuss progressive ideology. Maher asks him about popular rapper Cardi B’s video interview with Bernie Sanders, where they discussed health care, insurance, private prisons, and college debt. Killer Mike applauds the successful Cardi B for maintaining a more collective moral compass even though she has become individually wealthy:

Killer Mike: Cardi represents a young Afro-Latina woman, from a poor and working-class background, who has now used her platform—when she could have become far more conservative, made her money and walked away—she used it to engage not only for her own self-interest, but the self-interest on behalf for people. She’s now probably in a forty, thirty-five to forty-five percent tax bracket and she said, “I don’t mind paying my money I just would like my money to go other places besides the military. I’d like it to go in education.”

And I think that’s what my grandparents wanted when they moved from the Deep South, it’s what your parents want. So for me seeing her participate in it invigorates me because I know other young women 18-, 19-, 21-years-old, who may not be going to college for four- and six-year degrees, but may be going to beauty school, may be working menial jobs. It makes them active—

Maher cuts Mike off here to interject his right-wing talking point about why should someone not going to college have to pay for someone else’s college by way of taxes. It’s a point that Maher proudly points out he himself makes. It’s the kind of two-inch-deep analysis that makes many roll their eyes when hearing a Maher remark. The talking point is so dumb and infantile that Killer Mike begins giving himself a drumroll because he knows he’s about to absolutely wipe the floor with Maher’s weak sauce criticism.

Maher: You support Bernie and he wants free college. I’ve raised this point before, why should people who don’t go to college be subsidizing the ones who do? Because the people who go to college, you’re gonna make a lot more money. College is not free. Somebody’s going to be paying for that college.

Instead of asking Maher to just repeat what he just said in a conversation about taxes, back to himself, and then to go take a nap, Killer Mike gives a perfect answer. So perfect you can see Maher is annoyed by the end, and reverts to looking to his notes in order to change topics.

Killer Mike: College and trade school. And this is from a dad who has had children who went to both. My oldest son went to Honor Tech trade school and learned computer engineering, things of that nature and he’s a sound engineer. And my daughter did two years—she didn’t do the same two years. … Part of being an American is being a steward for the next generation of Americans. My grandparents worked in fields—my grandmother went to college, my grandfather toiled on a blue-collar job so that my sisters and I could then have post-secondary education. I don’t mind, as an American, now investing in the greater America. If we’re going to build an infrastructure you got to have carpenters and an electrician.

Enjoy.

Ԍεοϝϝ @SpittingBack

Srsly Bill Maher’s an idiot

4,109

11:19 PM – Aug 16, 2019

 

1,172 people are talking about this

And Cardi B with Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders✔@BernieSanders

Cardi B’s nails are juuuust a little different than mine. Our views on the issues are pretty similar.

88.6K

11:46 AM – Aug 15, 2019