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The Center Cannot Hold
Bill Maher’s White House dinner and the complicity of centrism
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”
- William Butler Yeats
What a pathetic final act Bill Maher is having. HBO’s long tenured late night comic has quietly gone from “politically incorrect” to “can’t we all just get along?”
In that spirit of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness, Maher scurried to Donald Trump’s White House for dinner at the behest of venerated statesman Kid Rock. I personally would decline such an invitation without hesitation. I’d rather eat a plate of nails marinated in dog piss than break bread with Foolius Caesar. But, I get the draw of the office. I was willing to let Maher’s moment pass without comment had he not then taken to the stage of his Real Time show to trumpet the meatloaf summit as a holier-than-thou moment of statesmanship.
“I’m not the leader of anything,” Maher bloviated, “except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people, who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.”
Such a contingent does, sadly, still exist. Maher is hardly its leader. He has grown steadily less relevant as digital media supplants linear television, and age and wealth place him at increasing remove…
