OPINION: Larry David, Bill Maher, Trump, Hitler and a very public falling out

First, some context. David is the man responsible for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, perhaps the two greatest American television comedies of the modern era. He is the Stravinsky of sitcom, a towering figure who broke the rules and changed the game.

Maher, on the other hand, is a man who spent decades confusing being an atheist with having a personality. He would tell you he’s a satirist and iconoclast though he has more in common with an adolescent contrarian arguing for the sake of arguing than he does with Peter Cook.

Until recently, the pair were friends. That was until Maher accepted an invitation to dine with Donald Trump at the White House and then spoke about the experience in detail on his Real Time talk show. In an extraordinary piece of client journalism during which whoever was working the applause button in the studio presumably suffered a repetitive strain injury, Maher spent 13 jokeless minutes explaining that it was important to speak to the other side and the President was a perfectly amiable host.

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The only funny moment, albeit inadvertent, was a result of the unironic use of the phrase, “My friend, Kid Rock”. Yes, the man behind such masterpieces as Early Mornin’ Stoned Pimp was also dining with the leader of the free world because why wouldn’t he be?

David’s laser focus has generally honed in on the minutiae of daily life but he made an exception for a satirical take on the meeting written for The New York Times entitled My Dinner With Adolf.

In the piece, the narrator is a vocal critic of Hitler who accepts a dinner invitation from the Führer and concludes, “we’re not that different after all”. The piece liberally combines almost verbatim Maher quotes with Davidian flourishes in lines such as, “I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side – even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”

These times do not call for half measures and the essay’s final line is the kicker, once the protagonist has thanked Hitler for dinner and come to the realisation that political disagreement does not mean they should hate one another: “And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.” In other words, actions have consequences.

Maher, an outspoken critic of cancel culture who proudly hosted a show called Politically Incorrect for a decade, naturally framed the essay as offensive. He ran to teacher, in this case Piers Morgan, and said that the piece was “kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews”. One would have thought he would have encountered the concept of hyperbole before now but it seems to be one of the many comedic weapons missing from Maher’s arsenal.

In the same interview, the comedian claimed, “Nobody has been harder, and more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me.” Clearly his comprehension skills have vanished along with the jokes over the years since the essay includes the words, “I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship.” The essay has clearly been written by a disappointed comic who thought he knew his friend and understood his stance.

Maher’s whining continued: “Look, maybe it’s not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the GOAT of evil.” Setting aside the usage of “GOAT” and the way in which it calls to mind Steve Buscemi in the “fellow kids” meme, the talk show host has once again spectacularly missed the point.

The point is that anyone can be pleasant company over dinner and it is not the job of a comic to humanise those who seek to dehumanise others. The attempt to turn the whole thing into some kind of league table of dictators is clear obfuscation on Maher’s part having foolishly entered a battle of wits unarmed.

Trump and Maher have plenty in common. They are both loud-mouthed New Yorkers who revel in saying the unsayable things everyone else is, in fact, saying. Larry David, however, is the loud New Yorker both men can only envy – a beloved national treasure. Or, in terms Maher can understand, the GOAT (Greatest of All Time).

Click here to see the Piers Morgan interview with Bill Maher.

• Darren Richman is an freelance writer