I’m Not The Only One

I’ve been a fan of Bill Maher since his ABC show “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” and I am an avid viewer of his latest show on HBO “Real Time With Bill Maher”.

However I was disappointed with some things he has said on his show, things that make him sound really ignorant. I’ve posted the following onto the HBO.com Real Time message boards because apparently Bill and his staff read these postings.  I figured I’d also post it here.

Bill Maher-Out of Touch With Latinos
Mar 9, 2008 5:07 PM

I am a Latino and I’ve been a fan of Bill Maher since Politically Incorrect, but I’ve always been a bit disappointed on his coverage of Latino issues and Latino guests. For one thing, the only Latino guests I’ve ever seen on either of his shows were Cristina Saralegui, Vicente Fox (the Mexican ex-President with the German last name) and that Cuban-American Congresswoman from Florida, three of the whitest Latinos I’ve ever met. Why not Carlos Mencia, Tego Calderon, Nydia Velazquez, Bill Richardson or Antonio Villagrosa?

Second, I was really disappointed last Friday to see that Bill has bought into the mainstream media-propagated bullshit regarding the Latino vote being against Barack Obama? Last week he “caucused” some Mexican-Americans in Texas and kept saying “But don’t Latinos have a problem with black people?” “Would your parents have a problem if you brought home a black guy?” and even whined “Why won’t any Latinos admit that there is a blood feud between Latinos and blacks?!?” Nobody will admit to something that doesn’t exist, Bill. Bill Maher was looking for Black-Latino tensions the way George Bush was looking for WMDs in Iraq. And in both cases,

I find it fascinating that everyone is an expert on the Latino vote except for Latinos. Eating at Taco Bell does not make you an expert on the Latino vote. And the whole rumor about tensions between blacks and Latinos came from the Clinton campaign, which was obviously a successful effort to divide and conquer, which is how white people have defeated people of color for hundreds of years.

I am an Obama supporter, and I have found that Latinos, although supportive of minority candidates in local elections will vote for the Democratic leadership in Presidential elections. Obama is not part of the DNC leadership, but the Clintons certainly are. Also, Obama began his Latino vote outreach much later than Hillary did, plus the Clintons are obviously well known to the Latino community for a much longer time.

I think this whole reporting of the so-called friction between the black and Latino communities are based on isolated incidents and are an accurate reflection of the abysmal lack of mainstream news coverage of the Latino community and a sign of lazy reporting in general, which has become the norm in this country. I’m very disappointed that Bill Maher of all people has stopped thinking for himself and has joined the chorus of the ignorant in declaring themselves experts on Black-Latino relations. I found it ironic that in his New Rules for last week he mentioned that people should not listen to outrageous rumors just because it was said on television or the Internet. I guess he picks and chooses which rumors to follow blindly.

Many white people did not vote for Obama either; should this suggest a “blood feud” between the white and black communities?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Voting, Review, 2008 Presidential Race, Race & Ethnicity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.