Bill Maher devoted his “New Rules” segment of Friday’s “Real Time” to a message of tolerance between all Americans that culminated in the punchline that people ought to try and be more like “JD Vance’s c—sucker-loving grandma.”
He didn’t mean that in a derogatory way, but instead meant it as a metaphor for being tolerant of other people, inspired by the right wing Republican vice presidential candidate’s own memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Maher got there, basically, by starting with an uncharacteristically obtuse understanding of an obvious joke. He said he wanted to know “how Americans can keep becoming more alike, but also hate each other more than ever. I was made to think of this recently when it came to my attention that vice presidential candidate JD Vance f–ks his couch. Oh, I’m sure you heard it too. It was everywhere. One guy wrote it on Twitter, and immediately half the country was all in.”
“Our hate for each other is so intense, we all just immediately believed anything bad about the other side. I mean, don’t get me started on ‘they’re eating the dogs. They’re coming to eat all the dogs,” Maher said, referring to the bigoted lie about Haitian migrants that Vance has been spreading even after admitting on CNN that he knows it’s not true.
“Look, I think JD Vance is kind of a giant asshole. Still would love to get you on the show. JD,” Maher said as an aside. “But he doesn’t f–k the couch. It’s not in his book, as the rumor suggested, what goes on between a man and upholstery is none of my business, but in this case, it just didn’t happen.”
Now we need to take a brief moment to discuss the couch thing. Contrary to what Maher said, no one has seriously professed to believe Vance has sex with couches. The guy who first told the joke even explained in an interview that he was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, and the point is (in his view) that Vance is the kind of person who ‘gives off’ that kind of vibe — and the fact the joke took off has more to do with a whole lot of people agreeing with that assessment.
Whether or not you think the joke is funny or think it’s awful, it needs to be made clear that at no point has anyone ever seriously suggested it’s true. Everyone understood it to be exactly what is is: A mean joke. About someone who also happens to spread vicious, racist lies about immigrants that has resulted in a small town in Ohio being basically shut down by terrorist threats inspired by those lies.
But back to Maher, who mentioned Vance’s book to make his larger point. “What is in that book is a much more interesting passage where Vance recalls how at age eight, he thought he might be gay… the eight-year-old Vance goes to his grandmother… and he asks her if she, a woman born in Kentucky in 1933, thinks he’s gay.”
“She says, ‘JD, do you want to suck d–ks?’” Maher continued. “And he says, ‘No, Mama.’ And she says, ‘Then you’re not gay, and even if you did want to suck d–ks, that would be OK, God would still love you.’”
Maher argued that this was “a teachable moment” for the rest of us. He then devoted the bulk of “New Rules” to examples of what he sees as tolerance and open-mindedness in red states.
Then he concluded, “Why don’t we just resist our worst impulses, and next time we’re tempted to be hateful and just want the other side to die, stop, stop, and think about JD Vance’s c—sucker-loving grandma … maybe we’re not so different after all.”
Watch the whole thing below:
