Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host argued with his guest Daniel Bessner about race, crime, and poverty. Bessner is an International Studies professor at the University of Washington and a Contributing Editor at the socialist magazine Jacobin. (Full disclosure: He’s also a friend and occasional collaborator of mine.)
Maher said that most murders in Chicago are committed by young Black men killing other young Black men, and asked why Black celebrities aren’t speaking out about it. Maher and another guest, conservative-leaning economist Glenn Loury, insisted that Chicago’s Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson isn’t showing “moral leadership” by speaking out strongly enough about crime.
When Bessner argued that the key to a solution is a more equal distribution of material resources, Maher scoffed. Hasn’t the United States already spent lots of money on the “war on poverty” over the decades? “Throwing” more money at the problem surely won’t solve anything!