During Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” liberal comedian and host Bill Maher took a stance on country star Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” hit that may have surprised his left-wing fans.
As the show progressed, according to Deadline, Maher and his guests discussed a range of very serious topics, including the left’s recent drive to curtail free speech, the war between Ukraine and Russia, anti-Semitism on American campuses, inflation, and rising crime.
It was during the discussion of crime that Maher took a startling position. At least one that may startle left-wingers.
It all came about when guest Jane Ferguson, a PBS NewsHour correspondent, began talking about crime, noting she herself had been randomly attacked while riding the New York subway system.
The admission brought fellow panelist John Avlon, CNN analyst and former editor of the left-wing website “The Daily Beast,” to note that, “we brought down crime in the mid-1990s. We seem to have forgotten a lot of those lessons,” according to Deadline.
That is when Maher jumped in to bring up country star Jason Aldean and the recent smash hit song, “Try That in a Small Town.”
The song’s basic message is that small town life is safer because residents and police know each other and don’t put up with the sort of wildly spiraling crime plaguing the country’s deep-blue cities.
WARNING: The following video contains language that some viewers may find offensive.
The song itself was released in May, but it was the video’s release in July that went viral as it became an instant target of attack from left-wingers who claimed that Aldean was somehow “dogwhistling” with the message that blacks should be lynched over crime.
The left’s shrill attack on the song quickly drove the weak spines at CMT to ban the video from its rotation.
Despite the left’s attempt to destroy the song, though, “Try That in a Small Town” quickly jumped to the top of the charts.
With all that hanging over its head, it is interesting that Maher cited the song on “Real Time” on Friday.
“I ain’t mad at it,” Maher said of Aldean’s tune. He went on, saying that “I wish we could have that in big cities.” (Though he also insisted that “crime in red states is just as high.”)
That was not the first time Maher revealed that he feels differently about the song than the average left-winger.
In November, during a “Club Random Podcast” discussion with actor James Brolin, Maher blasted the sincerity of leftists who falsely claimed that Aldean’s song was about “lynching” black people.
Maher slammed the left’s “bad faith” attacks on the song by citing black writer Coleman Hughes, who wrote in a substack piece in July that the accusation that Aldean’s song was about lynching was ridiculous.
The piece was titled, unapologetically: “Jason Aldean Isn’t ‘Pro-Lynching.’ And His Critics Know It.”
Do you agree with Bill Maher?
In the same Friday show, Maher also excoriated leftists on American campuses for allowing calls for genocide against Jewish people to flourish, and also blasted the left’s rising obsession about eliminating free speech in the U.S.
It all might cause a clear-thinking person to fear that we have gotten so far down the road to left-wing totalitarianism that even a leftist like Bill Maher has become alarmed.
