You may have heard comedian Bill Maher marred Canada’s image in a recent entry to the long list of rules for living like Bill Maher.
A new “Real Time With Bill Maher” New Rule segment opens with the host making fun of the notion America could learn a thing or two from other civilized nations, saying: “If we want to save our country, we should follow the advice good liberals have given for decades and learn from other countries.”
This was met with deafening silence from the audience, likely worried he was going to start talking about Russia or offended by the very idea the US has room for improvement, prompting him to clap his hands encouragingly for a “please applaud” moment that would’ve made Jeb! blush.
Robyn beat me to the punch and dove deep into the many things he and his writers got wrong in the eight-minute diatribe pushing the rightwing narrative that America’s hat has become the Great Woke North under Justin Trudeau.
I’ll wait.
But one of the throwaway jokes about Canada’s current affordable housing crisis jumped out and IMHO deserves, as more affable late-night TV host Seth Meyers would say, a closer look:
If Barbie moved to Winnipeg, she wouldn’t be able to afford her dream house, and Ken would be working at Tim Hortons.
This was a weird flex for a number of reasons. The most expensive house currently on the market in Manitoba’s capital is listed at roughly $8 million, and Barbie could surely find this under her sofa cushions after the busty doll’s live-action film debut grossed nearly $1.5 billion. There’s even a special Arctic Barbie released in the ‘90s who would surely feel right at home after it’s painted pink.
Barbie star Margot Robbie herself has an estimated worth of $60 million and could no doubt flat-out buy the place in cash if she wanted, although it’s hard to imagine the Aussie actress relocating there. She got pretty good at ice skating while shooting I, Tonya though, so maybe it would be a fit.
Even director Greta Gerwig would probably qualify for the mortgage.
Going with Winnipeg for the laugh rather than hellaciously expensive cities like Toronto or Vancouver was an odd choice as it’s way cheaper due to being basically Hoth with an intermission for flooding, mosquitos, and now wildfire smoke. It regularly gets to minus 40, a temperature so cold the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit is moot. Nobody dreams of someday moving to Winterpeg, including the 1.3 million immigrants last year he’s so worked up about, even those from what he’d consider “good” countries with white people accustomed to chillier climates.
And name-dropping Tim Hortons was just easy pandering with a stereotype viewers are hopefully familiar with, although it’s actually kind of sweet to suggest Ken would be willing to punch the clock at a minimum-wage gig to be a good supportive partner. Working there is no day at the beach.
(If unfamiliar with the franchise, Timmy Ho’s is a ubiquitous doughnut donut chain in Canada owned by a Brazilian multinational and named for a hockey player who died drunk driving that has persuaded people into thinking is a crucial component of the national identity. Even Quebec has a bunch of them. It’s like if the expression was “as American as Krispy Kreme” instead of apple pie. Ryan Gosling would probably prefer a location in his home province of Ontario though.)
This isn’t the first time the dude has taken aim at the Mattel moneymaker, and he offered his personal review of the film on the dying microblog owned by a recent guest on the program.
OK, “Barbie”: I was hoping it wouldn’t be preachy, man-hating, and a #ZombieLie – alas, it was all three. What is a Zombie Lie? Something that never was true, but certain people refuse to stop saying it (tax cuts for the rich increase revenues, e.g.); OR something that USED to be true but no longer is, but certain people pretend it’s still true. “Barbie” is this kind of #ZombieLie.
He yadda-yaddas on at length because he’s a blue checkmark who can exceed the new 280-character limit but you get the gist. New Rule: Life in plastic ain’t fantastic, no matter what Aqua tells you. The rambling tweet suggests he also might’ve been deep into the weed at the time, and he seems to have somehow missed the not-so-new rule you only use a hashtag once.
But if the latest dig seems a bit personal, it’s because it may well be.
Last month the career contrarian fired his longtime talent agents at CAA (Creative Artists Agency, not the Canadian Automobile Association) after they couldn’t score him an invite to a big Oscars party hosted at CEO Bryan Lourd’s own dream home/mojo dojo casa house.
The Hollywood Reporter first got the scoop:
Maher, according to sources, was furious that he was snubbed for the event — which was scheduled opposite the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Night Before bash. The party at Lourd’s home drew the likes of J.J. Abrams, Barry Diller, Kamala Harris, Margot Robbie [emphasis ours], Bob Iger, Alan Bergman, Dana Walden, Brian Robbins, Jason Blum, Brian Grazer, Donna Langley, Pam Abdy and such CAA clients as Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston, among others, according to industry newsletter Puck.
And just who were the toast of La La Land at this year’s Academy Awards? The cast and crew of Barbie, even if it wasn’t reflected in the hardware handed out, and both Robbie and Gerwig were criminally overlooked in their respective categories.
Gee, it’s sure hard to guess why an increasingly irrelevant crank pushing 70 wasn’t welcome among all the A-listers and industry heavy-hittters after taking a big ol’ dump on one of the year’s biggest movies!
You’d think he’d be grateful after the agency recently negotiated a two-year extension for his weekly gabfest until 2026, which will make “Real Time” HBO’s second longest-running series after “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” went off the air in December after 29 seasons. The lucky guy currently earns $10 million a year hosting the show, or at least one Winnipeg mansion per annum, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
“Every night is boys’ night,” was one of Ken’s memorable lines in the movie, accompanied by a perfect double-sunglasses gag à la Captain Rex Kramer in the cult classic Airplane!
My apologies for the mansplaining but this was clearly meant as a jab at the patriarchy, not fodder for a potential new rule moving forward.
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