Welcome to the nonprofits. The culture wars sometimes make for strange bedfellows, as
we will see in our next story this week. This is an op ed
that discusses comedian Bill Maher's shift from critiquing religion in the nineties and the two
thousands, notably through his film Religious, to focusing on opposing wokeism in recent
years. The author, Bishop Robert Baron of Rochester, Minnesota, initially irritated
by mars simplistic take on religion, finds unexpected alignment with mars recent criticism of
woke culture. He notes mars defense of free speech and civil discourse, contrasting
it with what he says is quote divisive nature of wokeism and cancel culture.
Despite their differences, the author appreciates Mar's efforts to promote respectful dialogue and challenge
contemporary societal issues. Is the enemy of my enemy, my friend. This
story is from CNN by Bishop Robert Baron. I don't know why do I
always want to say Robert barn there by Bishop Robert Baron, And this was
published on May twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. And you know they say
the the only constant was his Heraclitus I think the only constant in life is
change. And so I used to be a big Bill Maher fan, but
I, you know, he just I don't know, I don't know.
He veered off the tracks at some point. It's it's, uh, you
know, he used to be kind of witty and clever, but now it's
all comes across as like, at least in my opinion, as whining and
complaining. Cindy, let's go to you first. What do you think of
the bishop's new romance with Bill Maher. So? I don't really know a
lot about about Bill Maher. I never never watched him. I didn't see
him on TV, obviously because I didn't grow up in the in the US.
But this, this entire article was, uh, it sounded very childish
to me. Uh and and kind of pathetic because I saw an old man
just being happy that another old man agreed with him. And then that's basically
the article. And obviously that work is bad, which is something we can
hear very often lately. But the Bishop he contradicted himself a lot in this
article. He complains about people using bad arguments, but the only evidence he
gives about why the woke movement is bad is, and I quote, perhaps
the most signaling feature of the recent fiasco surrounded Kansas City Chiefs Kicker but Ker's
commencement address at Benedictine College was a post on Twitter by a social media manager
for the Kansas City specifying the suburbs where Butker lives. So, doxing is
bad regardless of who does it, but having one person doing that and extending
this to the entire UH woke movement, that that's kind of stupid, especially
when his side basically is doing that all the time. There. They've been
doing this for uh the jurors on on Term's latest convictions, they've been doing
it for years as as a as a tool of restribution and and to scare
people. And now he's just complaining because someone just said the suburb where a
guy lives. Do you think that the bishop and Bill Maher are like finding
some serious grounds for like brotherhood here. Do you think that this is a
real connection or do you think it's something else? No, I think it's
just I don't think Bill Maher will uh now appreciate this priest. I don't
think uh the priest wrote this because he wanted to start the Romans with UH
I don't think he's trying to woo Bill Maher into his camp. He's too
old. Yeah, I just think he was just giddy when he discovered that
his nemesis was citing in his camp, and so he's just lating that.
That's all. That's okay, that's what I say. It's it's all right.
It's particularly childish to me. Jason. Let's jump over to you.
Now you're an atheist. Well, we're all atheists, of course, but
how did this op ed color your opinion of the bishop or or men of
his position. Look, I'm more or less can just only echo with Cindy
saying I totally agree. It's like, hey, look at this guy.
He grews me. I'm a man, he's a man. It's man's world.
I just I can't. I can't fucking do it with this guy.
You know, whole article is like this like false pluralism thing that's like built
on this like baby Boomer found the foundation rhetoric thing. He got this whole
male fragility thing kind of mixed in there. Then there's like this fear of
being held accountable for their sins. You know. Having watched enough Bill Maher,
I've always seen his approach is highly problematic. It's kind of that same
arrogant, I'm educated, privileged approach and delivery that's typical of like male talking
heads of that you know era demographic slash demographic. You see the same delivery
from guys like Carlin and Dawkins, you know, and those guys are I
mean, they did some, but they're problematic, right, you know.
So, so this vicious opinion of a guy like Bill Maher honestly means about
as much to me as some random guy's opinion about another guy's opinion about shit
that isn't relative to their life, because they're privileged enough to not have to
give a fuck about those things, like I don't care. It's in a
sense they get to minimize people's experiences, label them as over emotional, who
blah blah blah. The whole thing is just like, well, they're woke
and well, and to me, woke is like a dog whistle term for
like social justice, equal opportunity, queer rye, civil rights. These are
the same guys that are like, I'm colorblind, you know. It's it's
this whole thing that I saw all He'll smile when I said that you'll know
what I'm saying when I say that it's it's gross. I don't know,
it's just all you know. Zacho with Sindy was saying, Man, so
let's go to Kara next. Here, Kara Jason was talking about these different
interpretations of woke. In the article, Baron said, quote the classical liberalism
espoused by everyone from former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy to Martin
Luther King Junior called for the fixing of our social problems through reason and political
action, whereas many on today's Wolcus left embraced the rhetoric of victimization and complaint.
Do you think that was a fair assessment or what is your take on
the way that he's presenting woke in this in this circumstances here? No,
I don't think that's a fair or accurate assessment. I think it's really interesting
that he chose to mention people like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Junior as
under examples, because I'm pretty sure we can all agree that both of them
had some things to say that were complaints about people being victimized by an unjust
social and political system. I'm pretty sure that was kind of their whole thing
they were talking about, And in fact, Jefferson specifically wrote about this,
and he said that people, by which he apparently meant property white men,
had the right to even rebel against a government that they felt was not affording
them the rights that they should have, and was indeed a leading figure in
a revolution. And I'm not advocating for that. Certainly, that seems to
be the kind of thing that people who are on the opposite end of the
woke spectrum are talking about doing these days. But I think that if you're
going to be throwing around the term wokeism as if there's some disturbing, new
radical way to complain about victimization and stir up trouble, we should really be
thoughtful about the compare sins that we're making, because that one didn't make sense.
And I think in addition to that, yes, it is true what
you said about woke having different meanings to different people. There's sort of the
general meaning of woke referring to kind of being aware of and fighting against systemic
injustice, and then there's the more pejorative usage of it that is being employed
here in this article. That's sort of the suggestion that, well, these
ideas are extreme and unreasonable and comically outrageous. And that's obviously the way he's
describing it here, but the way he writes about it, he kind of
just boils down wokeism to basically saying, well, it's violent and anti democratic
and it's attacking people who deserve to be in power, rather than having reasons
debate and discourse, you know, amongst sensible people, and kind of sets
up this dichotomy where he's saying, the woke people are not reasonable, they're
violent and outrageous and absurd, as compared to this list of powerful, wealthy
white men who he's describing as very reasonable and intellectual, and why can't we
just go back to having discourse like that. And it's kind of hard for
me to hear that and not think that he means, well, I just
want to hear from powerful, wealthy white men such as myself. And he
kind of slips back and forth in between criticizing wokeism for any real reason that
has to do with what people are actually doing, and instead criticizing it as
oh, well, wokeism is just a stand in in his mind for you
know, not having rational debate. Well, that's not true. It sounds
like what he's saying is people are criticizing people like me, and I don't
like that and I want them to stop. And that sounds very hypocritical to
me, when his criticism of the woke people is that they're trying to silence
other voices that dissent, when really the whole point of the concept of being
woke is recognizing that some people have been cut out of the conversation historically and
are not being allowed to speak, and we do want to hear other voices,
and we're hearing this kind of response from this person saying no, no,
I want my voice and voices like mine to be the ones we hear.
We can't hear from these other people. They're not part of rational debate,
and that is just completely hypocritical in my view. So you said you
said a lot about wokeism there, and about woke and about different definitions of
the term, and and you know, we can see that. I mean,
to me, it seems like the liberal view of what it means to
be woke is different than the way uh conservatives will characterize what they call wokeism,
right, And so let's start with Cindy with this question here. Do
you think that now I'm playing a little devil's advocate here, do you think
there's in Do you think that what they're saying holds water at all? Do
you think that there are people on the left, either individuals or groups of
people that that take things too far? Do you think that that there's anything
there there right? Is there? Or do you think it's just fear mongering
and boogeyman? I mean, do you think that there is any legitimate claim
against quote unquote wokeism like we're hearing Bishop Barron here. I think we could
point out some some instances where social awareness uh silenced in a way uh,
some the express the expression of some some speech like UH. For example,
a couple of years ago, there was a play UH that was supposed to
to be UH happening in in in Canada, and it was about how the
natives have been treated uh in this country and the the the idea that there
was no natives in the actors. UH. That raised some complaints and because
of that, the play was canceled. And I thought at the time,
and I still think that it was a shame that even though there was no
natives in among the actors. Well, I think it was still better to
have this display seen and heard by a lot of people rather than the opposite.
So I think that there are a few examples like this, but because
there there are extreme people on on every side. And but I think what
what they what they complain about is is based on projection because they they they
see in in in what they're suffering a lot of what they've been imposing on
other people, and they don't like it, so they tried not to change
it, and so we see it a lot. Do you think it's so
when they cry wokeism, do you think they're actually telling us a little bit
about what's going on in their own minds. Okay, all right, let's
jump over to Jason before we do. Jason, you had to bring you
had to drag George Carlin into this, and and you know, the night
wouldn't be complete if there wasn't something that we could disagree on. So maybe
we can draw the line in the sand here. I'll just you know,
I was I've been a Carlon fan for most of my life. But you
know, that's a little rabbit hole. We don't need to go on I
just want to stay for the record, I disagree with your take on George
Carlin. Maybe we can bring it up some other time, But Jason,
I did want to ask you, so, building on what Cindy was saying,
do you think that the so we we've talked about on the nonprofits before,
how conservatism, especially extreme conservatism, is tied to authoritarianism and you're monitoring
and that kind of thing. Do you think that the existence of that extreme
far right position demands an aggressive far left response to that. I don't know
if I can actually give an honest answer here what I think it really calls
for, but yes, I do think it needs, uh, probably more
extreme answer than maybe what you're hinting at so. So the so the are
you saying that the response to a hard punch is going to be a harder
punch on the other side, or of course, I mean, what am
I going to do to sit there and get beaten? Well, I don't
know. I mean one of one of the themes of this article was,
or at least one of the the way that they're presenting it. One of
the proposed themes is that this idea of coming together and you know that that
idea is as an atheist activist, that's something that personally is is important to
me, is that the idea of of forming, of reaching out to engage
in communication with people who disagree with me. Our own fellow nonprofit secularity,
I know in his own state he's involved with an organization that specifically pairs up
believers and non believers and involves them in conversations. So do you think that
this kind of thing can happen? Do you think that that kind of thing
is important? Do you think that that? And also do you think that
this article addresses that even though it claims to address that idea of finding common
ground? But do you think it really does? And do you think that's
important? He threw a couple things of me, so of course this article
does not. Because this article is just old men bitching about being told to
shut the fuck up. That's all really is. I want to say this
thing and they're telling me not to say this thing. Yeah, shut the
fuck up, Like, seriously, shut the fuck you. Don't say that
fucking thing anymore. Don't act that way. This is stupid. You're able
to say it because you're privileged. Nobody challenges you. If a woman was
acting this way, or if a fin person was acting this way, they'd
be labeled borderline. But if you're acting this way, it's considered normal because
you have the privilege of being hyper emotional and fucking angry and acting like an
asshole and nobody calls you out for it. So now you're being called out
for being a fuckhead, and now they're just crying about it. Is the
solidarity was fucking solidarity of Yeah, of course we need solidarity, But solidarity
over being a piece of shit that's whinding about being told to shut the fuck
up doesn't really to me, doesn't really mean anything. So think, oh,
we need to stand together, is no just shut literally shut the fuck
up? You know? So yeah, I mean, and you mentioned,
like, you know, we had the idea of atheists coming together changing things,
or not even atheists, more left leaning, more progressive people whatever you
want to call the people who aren't crying about this stuff. Yeah, this
in order. So would you say that that it's a worthy goal and that
they're just doing it wrong, or do you think that it's not a worthy
goal? Clarify where you're at. What was what a worthy goal? The
idea, the idea of coming together. Right. You were pointing out that
in this article it has like a veneer of finding common ground and coming together,
when really it's just a couple of guys whining about being you know,
oh yeah, okay, sorry giving them Well, of course it's important for
people to like be together. I mean, my own personal example I give
a lot is like the guys that I train with are primarily religious. Tomorrow
morning, I'm gonna do a boxing private with a Muslim guy after Trump finished
sparring a Jewish guy, right, who are both very active in their beliefs
and in their faiths and their their respective places of worship and you know community.
So yeah, these are my friends. But like, if I couldn't
have conversations with them about this shit and then be able to hit to at
least one of them in the face, I probably wouldn't be good with it.
You know. I just think that human contact is great. You hold
each other responsible and accountable. Right, People have to be responsible for how
they treat you when they're looking at you face to face, right, you
know, so I think communion with people in general is important. I'm a
that's the thing. I'm I'm a pluralist. You know, I don't give
a fuck what you believe as long as you're not try to harm me in
my own but you know me, whatever, I don't really care. So
I would also that I would even take it a step further and say that
and say that holding somebody accountable for the for for the words that they say
and for the things that they do, and calling their calling their bullshit out,
I think that's part of respecting them as a human being, and it's
something that I would expect as well. If you know, if I'm if
I'm doing something wrong, I would expect somebody to call me out on that.
Kara, I want to give you the the last word on here.
I wanted to ask you, do you think that this that this article offers
a glimmer of hope for the future. Do you think that there's room for
optimism within the context of of this article. I'm not sure that the article
gave me any optimism. I I mean, I guess in the sense of,
are you suggesting because this person who previously did not agree with the things
that Bill Maher was saying and later decided they were friends, is that is
that the part that would engineer I'm just wondering if there's another if there's another
take, if there if there's a silver lining to this great cloud we've been
talking about. Yeah, I think that it is doing a poor job of
talking about an issue that we are dealing with. You know, we've touched
on, you know, kind of political polarization going on in all of our
answers, and I agree that that is an issue, and we've touched on
you know, when people are using means to get their point across that are
hurting people, like doxing or something like that. That's not a good thing
to do, regardless of which side of an argument you're on. But it
is completely outrageous to suggest that one side is doing that and the other side
isn't. This is an article that's written by a man who holds a leadership
position and one of the most wealthy and powerful organizations arguably in the world,
writing an opinion essay that is published in CNN and widely disseminated. He has
blogs and podcasts and he is not silenced. He is loud and everyone can
hear his opinions. And he is talking about opinions, uh from the perspective
of an organization and giving examples that are about people on his side, if
you want to call it sides silencing others. You know, the one example
he gave in the article was about you know, Harrison Butker telling women at
a commencement that their place is in the home and get out of the workforce
basically. And I know there's a lot of people that have perspectives on that,
but that's the speech he's defending. Uh. And And the fact of
the matter is he is defending his ability to be able to tell other people
to shut up and then turning around and saying, but it's not fair if
people come back and say, hey, wait a minute, we disagree with
you, and here's why, and we would like for you, in facts,
to shut up and listen. He doesn't love that. And yes,
I agree that, you know, political polarization and making everything and end of
the world. Oh my goodness, if you said this or you think this,
we can never talk again. Yeah. I do think that that's not
great. We do need more civil discourse. But the problem here is not
wokeism. The problem is not you know, identifying discrimination and working to remedy
it. The problem here is absurd hypocrisy. Right, I lied, I
want to go to Cindy real quick before we wrap this one up. Cindy,
will you give this bishop any advice if he wants, if he wants
to present this as a way of people coming together, and and I think
we all kind of agree that he's really not doing a very good job of
it. What would what advice would you give to Bishop Baron on better ways
to make connections with different people. I would tell him to forget what he
thinks he knows about the woke movement and actually talk and listen people who identify
as this in this movement, and then have a real conversation with some one
and and and go from there. Because the thing is when when you put
everyone in the basket and say that the basket is written, then you never
talk with anyone inside. So and that that's what they all do, and
and sometimes we are guilty of that too, when we talk about the Magap
movement, for example. But if you can't if you can't speak to the
people, you cannot change their mind. And if you want them to change
you, you, they have to listen to you first. So that's what
I would tell him. Listen. You put that perfectly. I think that
puts a perfect ball. At the end of this is this discussion, so
we'll stop here. I want to thank all of you for watching and listening