Late-Night talk-show host Bill Maher may be a far-left leaning liberal but even he sees how poorly informed Democratic voters are. The Comedian took aim at the media for misleading liberals for views because ‘fear sells’, and slammed his own people for believing them.
“Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble,” Maher said. “But what about liberals? You know, the high-information, by-the-science people.”
“In a recent Gallup survey, Democrats did much worse than Republicans at getting the right answer to the fundamental question: ‘What are the chances that someone who gets COVID will need to be hospitalized?’” he continued. “The answer is between 1 and 5%. … Forty-one percent of Democrats thought it was over 50%! Another 28% put the chances at 20% to 49%. So, almost 70% of Democrats are wildly off on this key question.”
Then Maher turned his attention to one of the sources of the problem, the media:
“Media? Well, I think we all know: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ The more they can get you to stay inside and watch their panic porn, the higher the ratings,” Maher said before citing a Dartmouth College study showing how negative U.S. media coverage of the pandemic has been compared to the rest of the world.
“The U.S. national media reported almost 90% bad news. Even as things were getting better, the reporting remained negative,” Maher said. “When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us, yeah, you wind up with a badly misinformed population, including on the Left.”
“So, if the right-wing media bubble has to own things like climate change denial, shouldn’t liberal media have to answer for ‘how did your audience wind up believing such a bunch of crap about COVID?'” he said.
Maher even touched on states who have had success with handling the virus- despite being big scare red states:
“Texas lifted its COVID restrictions recently, and their infection rate went down in part because people getting outside to let the sun and wind do their thing,” Maher said. “But too many liberals, that can’t be right. Because Texas and beach-loving Florida have Republican governors. But life is complicated.”
Turning his attention to Florida, Maher pointed out that Gov. Ron DeSantis is “a voracious consumer of the scientific literature, and maybe that’s why he protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York.”
“Those are just facts,” he said. “I know it’s irresponsible of me to say them.”
Watch
.@BillMaher: "When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us? Yeah, you wind up with a badly misinformed population–including on the Left." pic.twitter.com/oRPbkDqP99
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 17, 2021
Maher failed to mention Democrats’ role in feeding these fears, but striking out at the media and the gullible public who believes them is a huge step in the right direction- if you ask me. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.