When you’ve got William Shatner, aka Captain James T. Kirk, in your present, you get to ask the Star Trek questions you’ve at all times wished answered.
That’s what Bill Maher managed to do on Friday’s Real Time, as he probed one of popular culture’s most fascinating moments — the interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura.
The second induced some consternation within the higher reaches of the community earlier than it occurred. It was the Nineteen Sixties, and lots of Southern TV stations would doubtless not approve.
But Shatner insisted on the kiss staying within the present. “If you had not insisted,” Maher stated…, “It would not have gotten done,” Shatner admitted.
Maher additionally marveled how far Shatner fell from grace after the primary run of Star Trek was canceled after three seasons. Shatner talked about watching the precise moon touchdown from a pasture whereas in his truck, his base of operations after a divorce and a lull in work.
How did you fall so quick? Maher requested. “With great precision,” Shatner joked, including that it was simply “circumstances of life.”
Of course, these days are gone for Shatner. He is the topic of the brand new documentary, You Can Call Me Bill, and the artist behind the upcoming digital album, So Fragile, So Blue, which he recorded dwell with the National Symphony Orchestra.
He’s additionally planning a visit to Antarctica, one other of his efforts to discover and highlight his efforts in local weather change.
Of the latter, “There’s no way out except through technology,” Shatner stated. “There’s a wave coming.” It’s one motive he might contemplate as soon as once more going into area, he stated, as a technique to “promulgate the idea that there’s so much going on by science and scientists to correct global warming.” He added, “There’s an element of hope I will cling to.”
Maher wrapped up the phase with a point out of Shatner’s age (93) and compliments on how nicely he seems.
“I don’t mind when you say my age,” Shatner stated. “But when they clap…”
After Shatner, Maher had a panel dialogue with Piers Morgan, New York Post columnist and host of the YouTube channel’s Piers Morgan Uncensored, and Gillian Tett, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and columnist on the Financial Times.
The panelists beat the conflict drums for persevering with the battle in Ukraine and stepping up U.S. help.
They additionally talked a couple of protest in Dearborn Michigan that featured chants of “Death to America.” Maher pushed again on these on the protest who stated, “The entire system has to go.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Maher countered. “I like our system. I’ve always liked America and thought death to it was bad.”
In Maher’s “New Rules” editorial, he identified the falsehoods about Canada and a few progressive European international locations the place the idyllic fantasy doesn’t jibe with actuality, leading to what Maher termed “zombie lies.”
Maher identified a number of ways in which these international locations are faring worse in housing, well being care, and on immigration points
“I need to cite you as a cautionary tale: yes, you can move too far left, and you push others to the extreme right,” he stated. “Calling something racist doesn’t solve the problem,” Maher stated. That opens the door to somebody conservative who will act, and “Who I promise, you’re not going to like.”