The Automatik

I watched Bill Maher on The Daily Show last night.

You know, I was with him with the whole “religion is crazy” bit, especially when he compared the ridiculousness of Scientology with Christianity, but here’s where things started to derail for me.

Clips of Bill Maher on last night’s episode. (I can’t view these because I’m in Canada so hopefully they’ll show up for you.)

1. Referring to Barack Obama as “our boy.” Now, I know he meant “our candidate” or “our voice” or “the guy we like,” but referring to an African American as “boy” EVEN IF YOU DON’T MEAN IT “that way” is not cool. Not acceptable. Not going to cut it.

2. The reference to “witch doctors” and Sarah Palin. Granted, I understand that Maher hates all religions equally (ahem!), but usage of the term “witch doctor” in such a pejorative context just smacks of, oh, I don’t know. . . at best, imperialism and at worst, racism.

3. Then he quite literally made my stomach turn when he made a comment about how if McCain and Palin get into the White House we might have a guy in there “with a bone through his nose.”

Unfortunately, I cannot find a transcript of this so I can’t write his entire statement word for word. But trust me, the phrase “bone through his nose” is accurate.

Remember Number Two above? Yeah, that. Again. And again and again because that is NOT ACCEPTABLE, MR. MAHER.

Why isn’t that acceptable? Because it implies a distaste, a condescension, a feeling of superiority over “primitive” people. And that, folks, is racism.

Speaking of talk shows, yesterday I watched Bill Clinton’s appearance on David Letterman from September 22.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

I was feeling pretty nostalgic for Ole Bill for a while. He has a knack for making things make sense and doing it in an intelligent, but non-pedantic way.

Pay close attention to Part Two when he says, “Nobody is totally blameless.”

And then read about how Clinton signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law in 1999.

No, GLBA was not a real estate bill, but it did impact us by creating the “financial services industry.”

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted 1999-11-12, is an Act of the United States Congress which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act, opening up competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited a bank from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate. For example, Citibank merged with Travelers Group, an insurance company, and in 1998 formed the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking and insurance underwriting services. Other major mergers in the financial sector had already taken place such as the Smith-Barney, Shearson, Primerica and Travelers Insurance Corporation combination in the mid-1990s. This combination, announced in 1993 and finalized in 1994, would have violated the Glass-Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act by combining insurance and securities companies, if not for a temporary waiver process [1]. The law was passed to legalize these mergers on a permanent basis. Historically, the combined industry has been known as the financial services industry.

{snip}

The bills were introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (R-TX) and in the House of Representatives by James Leach (R-IA). The bills were passed by a 54-44 vote along party lines with Republican support in the Senate and by a 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives. Nov 4, 1999: After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90-8-1 and in the House: 362-57-15. This ‘veto proof legislation’ was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.

Who is Phil Gramm? Again, check Wikipedia.

Note his ties to the “Enron Loophole,” the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis, and John McCain.

Again, this whole stock market/Wall Street Bailout/financial services mess we’re in right now is not entirely Bill Clinton’s fault. But he’s doesn’t exactly have the cleanest hands. And we should remember who was involved in getting into this mess before we vote on November 5.