Bill Maher complains about being criticized as a "bad person" for saying that fat people need to take responsibility for the health problem they, in fact, have.

Here's the image from 1988 of Oprah, newly thin and openly leading a celebration of herself for the achievement. Maher and Rogan say you can't do that today. It would be socially unacceptable fat-shaming.

The singer Adele recently lost a lot of weight, and Maher and Rogan talk about how people are actually criticizing her for quitting serving as a role model for people who want to feel good about being fat.

Oprah Magazine instructs its readers on the proper reaction to Adele's weight loss: "On Adele’s Weight Loss: Let's Stop Criticizing Her Body, No Matter How She Looks/Why can't we focus on how happy she looks on the beach, instead of how she looks on the beach?"

At a time when body positivity is (finally) being more widely celebrated, some folks are apparently disappointed that she changed what many women saw as a valuable representation of their own plus-size figures.... The core of the [body positivity] movement stands behind the radical idea that your worth has nothing to do with the size of your body.... So who are we to criticize Adele’s frame...? Her body belongs to her—not us.

Maher was repeating a point he'd made a while back on his show — that 40,000 people a month die from fat-related illness and that it's not about how people look but the terrible health problem. He talks about the criticism he took from James Corden, and I found this background in Variety:

Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” joked about obesity on his show last week, saying “Fat isn’t a birth defect” and “Nobody comes out of the womb needing to buy two seats on the airplane.” He advocated: “Fat-shaming doesn’t need to end, it needs to make a comeback.”...

In the podcast, Maher claims that he didn't make any jokes about fatness! Obviously, he did, even if he also has a serious purpose.

“There’s a common and insulting misconception that fat people are stupid and lazy, and we’re not,” Corden said. “We get it, we know. We know that being overweight isn’t good for us and I’ve struggled my entire life trying to manage my weight and I suck at it. I’ve had good days and bad months. I’ve basically been off and on diets since as long as I can remember and, well, this is how it’s going...".

Now that I'm reading this, I think Maher, in the podcast, is quite dishonest about his own statements and Corden's. Maher may have something of a good point about the costs of fat-related health problems in a system in which we're all more or less paying for each other's health care, but he's not doing straight health policy analysis. In fact, if you did hard-nosed, truth-telling policy analysis, you wouldn't stress the 40,000-a-month death toll. Early deaths save money.

ADDED: Here's the "Real Time" routine that I think Maher was dishonest about:

The Grammys comedy sketch about trying out as the audiobook reader of "Fire and Fury" (and ending with Hillary Clinton).

"Spoken Word" is a category in the Grammy Awards, and it seems to be almost entirely the audiobook version of published, printed books. I love audiobooks, but I wouldn't call them "spoken word" performances. They keep giving the award to Presidents — Jimmy Carter (more than once! including 2 years ago for "A Full Life: Reflections at 90"), Bill Clinton (beating out David Sedaris!). They gave it to Hillary Clinton in 1997 for "It Takes a Village" (come on! who wants to listen to Hillary Clinton read her book).

My idea of a "spoken word" performance would be something more like what Spalding Gray used to do. Something like this, which he could take on tour and perform on stage, and you'd actually go see in a concert hall. I've done that. I've seen Henry Rollins give a spoken word concert. He once won a Grammy in the spoken word category, but it wasn't for a live, memorized performance like what I saw here in Madison years ago. It was a reading of his book "Get in the Van." And speaking — in written word — of Henry Rollins, I loved his performance on "Portlandia" as a member of the old punk rock band Riot Spray:



But back to last night's Grammys. I can't stand the Grammys, though I did DVR the show and attempt (unsuccessfully) to watch a few things, but I did watch that "Fire and Fury" sketch (just now, on YouTube). It must be hard for the Grammys people to figure out how to do politics, because they are playing to a general audience, and the people of the United States did elect Donald Trump. They can't act like they're talking within a group that all agree they hate Donald Trump. And yet those who like Donald Trump may like him in part because he can take all the heat you want to give him, his whole life has been heat, he likes heat, in a certain way. He wins even when he's attacked, as a certain subgroup of Trump fans understand.

In last night's sketch, we saw Cardi B, John Legend, DJ Khaled, Cher, and Snoop Dogg along with Hillary Clinton, and they were comical in different ways, some of which could be viewed as skeptical of the book or even admiring of Trump. Cardi B stops and says "Why am I even reading this shit? I can't believe this!" DJ Khaled seemed to love embodying Trump to proclaim, "If my shirt is on the floor, it's because I want it on the floor."

And a joke is made at Hillary's expense, with James Corden assuring her that her spoken-word Grammy is "in the bag." She has to say "The Grammy's the bag?" in an excited hopeful voice to set up the comedian James Cordon's line "in the bag," which is said in a way intended to remind us of how Hillary was (it seems) duped by pollsters and advisers assuring her that she'd already won the election.

ADDED: That "Portlandia" clip is even better now that Bruno Mars won all the Grammys.