Bill Maher and guest John Cleese took aim at a few predictable targets in Sunday’s episode of “Club Random,” including kids on TikTok, American universities and anything “woke” — but they were particularly barbed about The New York Times.
“The New York Times on Sunday very often has on the back page of the weekend review a focus group with people — like 12 people. And I’m reading this, like, thinking, ‘Oh, we’re so f–ked.’ They’re just saying the dumbest s–t, and it’s printed in The New York Times.”
“I used to think that’s a great newspaper, and I don’t anymore,” Cleese responded.
“I don’t either. And I mean, it’s sad because it was, like, on my breakfast table when I was a kid,” Maher lamented. “It was in my parents’ house.”
The political commentator and comedian added that the paper has “great” columnists and “they cover the places in the world that no one else has a reporter.”
“But what’s annoying about it is that it’s not just ‘give me the facts,’” Maher continued. “There’s way too much editorializing on the front page, the way the articles that are just supposed to be the facts are slanted one way. And I’m not even necessarily for the other side.”
Maher added, “I just want someone to tell me the whole truth, not just your version of it, because you can lie by what you omit. And both sides do.”
“Trying to get a really accurate picture of something has got harder and harder and harder,” Cleese replied. “The hard thing is getting any reliable information.”
Cleese observed that inaccurate information goes all the way back to the Shakespearean age and that King Richard III wasn’t really hunchbacked, as he is portrayed by the famed playwright. “That was Lancasteran propaganda,” the comedian posed.
“You mean Shakespeare just gave him that hunchback?” Maher asked. “Well, it worked, we’re still talking about it.”
You can watch the entire two-hour conversation in the YouTube video above. The New York Times discussions begin around the 52-minute mark.