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