This week’s Real Time seemed to focus on the two sides we see of police in the media, also dropping a few barbs at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the days ahead of their debate. The events in New York, Charlotte, and Tulsa all weighed heavy on the show, led by a discussion into the police actions that led to the deaths of Keith Lamont Scott and Terence Crutcher. For Maher and his panel, the main issue at hand for most police is their lack of training in these situations:
“We have to train our police to not be that guy, that just empties the clip. If I was the police academy, I’d say wait until later in the encounter before you shoot. They seem to be training, ‘shoot first’ in the encounter…
The cops don’t get a lot of use of force training.”
The panel also hits on the reactions to these shootings, especially with how many seem to believe that not following directives from police is an acceptable death sentence, and the apparent hypocrisy attached open carry in states like Charlotte.
On the other side, we have the discussions of the events in New York last weekend, with the bombing and manhunt that brought Ahmad Khan Rahami into custody. Maher criticizes Hillary Clinton for “lecturing” following the terrorist attack, saying she’s telling people how to be a better person as opposed to giving her solution to the issue. He then ends up giving Trump some praise — after a healthy dose of hate on everything else the candidate does, of course. The praise comes from Trump’s plan to “profile” in a manner similar to Israel, with Maher saying we’re already profiling people but we’re just doing it stupidly. The host seems to agree with him somewhat, noting how the “behavioral profiling” used in Israel seems to work and doesn’t involve “the rubber hose” or sending someone to a “black site.”
It’s a begrudging praise, though, with Maher saying Trump is giving in to, “paranoid lunacy aimed at dumbasses.”
Away from the serious issues, Maher gets a few good shots in at Apple for essentially convincing the public that they need a new iPhone every year. It’s part of a larger rant on the need for growth in a corporate sense and how it seems to breed situation like what we’re currently seeing with Wells Fargo. Having a very good and repeating that isn’t good enough for companies these days, with Apple getting knocked for not stopping at just “revolutionizing the world.”
Personally, I think the shaving example is a better one that seems to affect everybody. If there was ever an industry that seems to take advantage of people, it’s shaving and razors.
The talk on corporate interests and how it will form the future continues in the Overtime segment, with Max Brooks being a bit of a “Debbie Downer” in terms of hackers taking over self-driving cars and the control of our national food supply being handed around as some sort of commodity following Monsanto’s purchase by Bayer.
