On Friday, Bill Maher went on a little Valentine’s Day comedy rant against the tech-enabled hook-up culture. (Warning: If you watch, you’ll discover a lot of childish cursing, plus a well of embarrassment inside yourself for everyone involved in these stale, sad jokes.)
“After years of being conditioned to search out prospective dates by swiping our phones,” Maher divulges, “singles are putting on pants and heading out to places like grocery stores, parks, and [lame sixteen-year-old joke omitted].” No more dating apps, he says—now girls are going to Home Depot to find a man to marry.
Maher seems happy about this, because whippersnappers on their phones bother him. “The phone ruined dating,” he complains, “and porn ruined sex.” Welcome to the party, pal.
Well, it’s really just the male whippersnappers who bother him. The sorry state of dating, as you might not be shocked to discover if you were educated any time in the last half-century, is the fault of some man. Maher notes that “women are finally revolting against” the dating app setup, which “works for men, who are oversexed and disgusting and biologically designed to seek the maximum orgasm for the minimal amount of work.”
Nobel Feminism Prize firmly in hand, Maher bravely weathers the applause and imitates the type of male loser who uses dating apps: “Is there a way I could have an electronic harem right in my hand, where the only answers are ever ‘yes’ or ‘next’?” And what a good thing that there’s no harem to be found for these losers! That’s why these apps are so unsuccessful, right?
Right?
Look, I would love to join Bill Maher in yelling at cloud. I don’t love online dating, and I hate technology so much that I’ve earned all the hypocrite points for depending on it for my living. But there are two nagging problems.
First, I know several couples who have profited immensely from online dating, by which I mean they’ve entered successful, fruitful marriages. So I suspect that the problem isn’t the medium of the dating, but rather the purpose of it. The men and women who want to fall in love, get married, and have lots of beautiful God-fearing children do all right with an app, or at a social event after Mass or by writing letters or sending carrier pigeons or whatever. It’s the people (I mean the men) who want a quick lay—or, just as frequently, who want to commit unspeakable sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance—who set Bill Maher to fuming. But only when they operate in this particular tech-heavy way, because Tinder is just the modern brothel, and I know that Bill loves him some prostitution.
Second, the whole “men are disgusting” thing has just got to end already. For a guy who prides himself, loudly, on being Politically Incorrect™, “men are pigs” is about the safest possible position to take. But feminism is supposed to have taught us that women are men’s equals in all things, including how disgusting we can be. Yes, Bill, there are in fact an eager phone-swiping “harem” begging for Tinder-Man to swipe them onto the nearest piece of furniture. Have you been on a college campus lately . . . or twenty years ago? Who bought fifteen million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey? Some man?
So I have to shrug my shoulders at this entertainer and his “kids these days” ranting. He’ll get plaudits for looking like slightly less of a libertine than his high-octane neighbors, but “that there Tinder is bad for the womenfolk, dagnabbit” isn’t going to change dating for the better. It’s just empty virtue-signaling. It’s bogus advice from a “very public” commitment failure, whose claim to expertise is a string of explosive break-ups. It’s warmed-over “thought” and “humor,” stuck rotating forever in a dim-bulb feminist microwave.
As for “putting on pants,” girls looking to attract a good man might consider a beautiful dress, too. Is that suggestion too edgy for politically incorrect Bill Maher? Remember, this is the guy who’s so cool that he’s still making jokes about Larry Craig. And God bless him, his studio audience is still laughing.