D.L. Hugley puts Dan Senor in his place
Bill Maher’s Real Time was worth watching this week. Most of the sparks of consequence occurred in the Overtime segment. Bill Maher’s main panel consisted of Fmr. Rep. Jane Harman, Republican neocon Dan Senor, and actor/political commentator/stand up comedian D.L. Hughley.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz appeared to introduce his new book “The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them.” He described President Obama’s inability to fulfill many of his promised middle-class centric policies while fulfilling many for the wealthy as cognitive capture. It is likely that the same phenomenon, cognitive capture, is the reason for his support of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Chess champion Garry Kasparov pretty much made a one dimensional fool of himself by his continued existence in a Cold War mentality. He may be a great chess player but he is not very smart or intuitive outside that realm.
The best part of the Overtime however is when D.L. Hughley watched Republican neocon Dan Senor in a most assertive rant. Senor slammed President Obama’s new Iran agreement. D.L. Hughley stayed quiet most of the time but was impatient to get something out.
“Isn’t hearing somebody who was so wrong about a war lecture you about what is going on now like Kim Kardashian telling how to be a wife,” said D.L. Hughley. “It’s kinda like that. I just know that so many mistakes were made, and they were argued just like this, so many points and facts and figures. And it was so wrongheaded that we will suffer for that for decades. And how are you so – You all speak with such certainty and if you were right we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in right now.”
It was obvious that Dan Senor felt deflated at that moment as Hughley broke his rhythm. Bill Maher piled on. “I could ask you the same question I asked Professor Stiglitz out there,” Bill Maher said. “I mean, 60 billion was the estimate from Rumsfeld and George Bush and ended up costing over 4 trillion dollars. What else can you be so wrong about? Where else could you even be close to that wrong?”
Dan Senor came back with a lame response. “You could say we won the war against Al Qaeda when we haven’t.” It was an attack on President Obama’s statement that Al Qaeda was on the run.
Bill Maher asked if that is really comparable. Dan Senor conceded that he did not know if it was comparable but that it was a big deal. What was Bill Maher’s response? “WOW.”
There was a learning moment here. Neocons and those on the Right are loud and are good at talking points. When they are challenged with irrefutable realities they crater and where able, they run. It is imperative that one engages them and not allow their fallacies to cauterize.