It’s been said there are two kinds of people when it comes to UFOs: 1) Those who know it’s all nonsense, and don’t bother to investigate, and 2) Those who investigate, who know it isn’t nonsense at all.
Bill Maher, the political talk show host/comedian used to be in the first group, but now he’s in group number two, pretending as if he didn’t pull a Krugman (see: Internet will be like fax machine to economy).
The guy from Cornell University- of course he knew UFOs were real all along. Unless he didn’t- which he didn’t.
Maher used to be a UFO debunker. He rubbished the UFO community on an older episode of his show Real Time with Bill Maher. I remember seeing the show. I remember hating on him pretty good because of it, despite being a fan at the time.
When it comes to Maher’s “transformation” from debunker into advocate, I’m reminded of Schopenhauer’s observation that: “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.” Bill Maher made it all the way to from ridicule to self-evident in the course of his tenure on Real Time.
On Halloween, Maher interviewed Dan Farah, Director of the new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, set to drop on Nov. 21 on Amazon Prime Video.
Maher doesn’t interview anyone because he’s interested in what they have to say or their opinions. Bill asks questions in a way that acts as a prompt for his thoughts and opinions. He started off with a statement he seemed determined to make– despite being interrupted by his guest midstream.
“I’m old enough to remember when it was just the kooks who thought about this- and I just want to say, if you don’t think this is happening now- I’m not sure who the kook is,” said Maher, “but I don’t think it’s me.”
Maher never thinks it’s him – even when he was wrong – not too long ago, if he’s old enough to remember.
My best guess is that it was about 10-15 years ago, while I was still working on my first book, unsure whether I’d be able to get it across the finish line. It had to have been before December 2017, when the New York Times reported that UFOs were real, citing three Pentagon-vetted UFO/UAP videos.
If memory serves, I believe he made a scathing rant against UFOs and ETs as complete nonsense. The segment featured a graphic of an ET taken from the cover of Whitley Strieber’s book Communion (I did my best to pull the image from my memory- see above).
Unforunately, I don’t remember anything else about the show (like guests) that would enable me to conjure enough google search terms to find the exact episode. There are, of course, Real Time with Bill Maher, episode guides available online. I couldn’t find the motivation to go through them all to provide the reference (he’s been on for a few decades now).
I figured Siri might be able to do it, but either I didn’t ask the right question, or it didn’t find the answer- but it didn’t find the answer. Maybe if I spent some time with chatGPT?
Once I get involved with AI like ChatGTP – if I do – I’m going to have a lot bigger fish to fry than that reference.
Anyway, on Halloween, there was a moment when it seemed like Maher suffered some kind of Freudian Slip, indirectly referring to his old rant against UFO “kooks” featuring the cover of Whitley Strieber’s Communion, which I’m sure he’d rather forget.
After opening with Disclosure Project Steven Greer’s observation that “If they wanted us dead, we be dead by now,” (aren’t comedians supposed to be sensitive about stealing other people’s lines), Maher said Roswell was real. (Hey Bill, thanks for clearing that up for us)
Then he dove into alien abductions and said: “There was that book Communion– somebody wrote about a number of people, hundreds of people, who had a very similar experience…”
Somebody? You’d think he’d at least know the name of the guy he slandered years ago for something he knew nothing about- but assumed he did. You’d think maybe he’d take the opportunity to apologize for being so incredibly, Religulously wrong!
Nevermind Maher was actually conflating Strieber’s Communion with Budd Hopkins’ Missing Time. Anne and Whitley Strieber did publish a book of letters they received from all over the world from others who’d had similar experiences a couple decades after Communion was first published.
Anyway, the point is that Bill Maher was the guy who thought people who took UFOs and alien abduction seriously were kooks. He was that guy. He used the closing monologue on one of his old shows (which obviously hasn’t aged well) to play the hey-gullible-rubes-I’m-Ivy-League-Bill-Maher-and-I-know-better card.
For those of us who had to sit there and watch him Big-Time us, it’s really sweet to see him cry uncle in the face of The Age of Disclosure.
In my next post I’ll have more to say about Bill Maher and The Age of Disclosure, which streams on Amazon Prime Video on Nov. 21st.