there's so much to be annoyed about out there, bill...why so dickish toward raising awareness?

"It's time to raise awareness about a very serious problem: raising awareness."—Bill Maher's lead for his editorial "New Rule" on the March 5, 2021, episode of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher

OK, then I have an important announcement, myself: "It's time to raise awareness about another very serious problem: Bill Maher raising awareness about raising awareness being annoying."

Bill thinks there are too many campaigns constantly haranguing us about every little medical trifle and social injustice. And hey, I agree it's a lot sometimes.

Here are the causes Bill's annoyed at for running awareness campaigns, all during just the month of March 2021 alone:

• World Glaucoma Week
• National Poison Prevention Week
• International HPV Awareness Day
• World Down Syndrome Day
• Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month
• Brain Injury Awareness Month
• National Bleeding Disorders Awareness Month
• National Deep-Vein Thrombosis Awareness Month
• World Salt Awareness Week

And sure, that last one is a bit of an eye-roller at first glance, but of course its mission isn’t to goose Morton Salt's market share; rather it’s to make sure people understand salt should be ingested in moderation. 

Hailing from the Midwest and now living in the South, I can confirm for you, Bill, that there's a need for awareness of too much salt being bad for you.

He goes on to ridicule how everything comes in the color pink these days, to spread the word about the measly little health snafu that is breast cancer. There’s even a pink ribbon-shaped stapler being sold at Staples now, apparently.

"Am I a terrible person because I'd like to be able to buy office supplies without needing a drink afterward?"

Well, yeah kinda!

I mean, I know it's just a comedy bit (and speaking of bits, it is pretty rich that the giant pink drill bit for fracking Bill references is a real thing, when that activity has almost certainly caused plenty of breast cancer), but you can’t even stand football players wearing pink shoes in October?

It pisses me off wayyyy more that the NBA is letting its players wear whatever-damn-color shoes they want to now; if my navy-and-gold Pacers are playing the friggin' Celtics, Domantas Sabonis damn well better not be wearing kelly green shoes that night, I don’t care if he's wearing green for Gay-Bashing KKK Child Molester Awareness Month.

The thing about the pink shoes, though, is that a football broadcast might be the only way certain public awareness campaigns can reach some parts of the country. I know sports are supposed to offer folks an escape, but people have to watch commercials for the dumb sitcom coming up after the game, or for too-big-to-fail investment brokerages whose services aren't so relevant for fans watching on TV because they can’t afford a stadium ticket. So can't we throw a World Down Syndrome Day ad in there between ones for Strawberries and Cream Doritos (a real thing) and Bud Light Platinum Seltzer Lemonade Iced Tea Chelada with Tapatio (not a real thing, but close)?

As I’m looking at Bill's list of offending causes that have so audaciously claimed a day, week, or month to boost their fortunes, it occurs to me that I've never even heard of any of them—or if I have, the awareness went in one synapse and out the other. Either way, no skin off my ass...and yet, multi-millionaire TV star Bill Maher's ass is positively chapped. 

(And speaking of...aren't you of an age when pissing all over colorectal cancer isn't the greatest idea, Bill?)

"Humans need to zone out sometimes...I can't even watch The Price Is Right without thinking of cutting my dog's balls off."

I laugh at that joke every time I replay it. But where else have you ever heard about, specifically, the importance of doing your part to control the pet population? Isn't it a good thing that I know Bob Barker's (and now Drew Carey's) Price sign-off, asking me to have my pet spayed or neutered, by heart? And hearing it takes less than five seconds of semi-consciousness. 

"Crew members on the major airlines now wear Black Lives Matter pins during the flight,” Bill continues. “You know, you can support a movement without being constantly reminded of it. Can I just get a rum and Coke and hold the white guilt trip till we land?"

Do you think people living in Kansas City are constantly reminded of Black Lives Matter everywhere they go, like you probably are in L.A.? You're showing your West Coast bubble mentality here, man. I'm pretty much inclined to support the Black Lives Matter movement, but if I saw a Delta flight attendant wearing a BLM pin on a packed flight from Indianapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth, it would surprise me! And solidify my support. And it would be one of the higher-profile, more public places I'd have ever seen that cause represented.

At the end of the "New Rules" segment, Bill gets around to pinpointing why raising awareness raises his hackles so much: "I don't have a lab where I can cure cancer...[establishing an awareness campaign] is not actually doing something. That ribbon is not there to make me think, so much as it's there to raise awareness of what a good person you are."

And I see his point, it can get annoying when every other Instagram post is somebody soliciting for a cause I know they're not doing any real work for; a social media post is literally the least one can do, other than nothing at all. And yes, as Bill suggests, for some disingenuous people, wearing a ribbon is to activism what plunking a flag on top of your car is to patriotism. 

But a major airline’s flight attendants wearing Black Lives Matter pins is a major statement, I think; it provides social proof to someone prejudiced against BLM that it's not some terrorist organization, but rather a legitimate movement whose voice deserves a place not just on MSNBC and Huffington Post, but amongst the national discourse. 

You can endure a few moments of minor annoyance to promote that common good, can't you, Bill?

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​ADDENDUM (Friday, July 16, 2021): Here's another example of awareness doing its thing, further proving...awareness is a thing:

I was taking the news quiz the New York Times gives every Friday to see how much readers picked up throughout the week (I got a raw score of 9.67 out of 11, incidentally...not bad), and here's the question that got the most correct answers (91% of 55,355 readers answered correctly at time of test-taking):

Democrats in the Texas Legislature staged a late-night walkout in May to defeat a Republican voting bill. When Republicans advanced a similar proposal this week, what did Democrats do?

A. Blockaded the entrance to the Legislature
B. Burned a copy of the bill on the steps of the Capitol
C. Fled Texas on a pair of chartered flights
D. Resigned en masse
E. Turned out all the lights in the State House

And the answer:

C. Texas Democrats flew to Washington to deprive Republicans of the quorum needed to advance a restrictive voting bill that would overhaul the state’s election laws. The move is likely only to delay the bill’s eventual passage.

Emphasis mine, because, no, fleeing the state is not a long-term solution, but it was one of the biggest stories of the week because these lawmakers did something drastic in response to a situation calling for drastic measures. And then the big-swinging-dick governor of Texas made a whole to-do about "arresting" them when they set foot back in Texas, which, nobody's going to jail for breaking quorum, they'll just be escorted back to the statehouse. But it sure made the guy sound tough.

That said, his being a peter-puss on national TV likely did infuriate a few more people who weren't to that point mentally invested in what was going on down there. 

Point being, those on-the-lam house members kicked up enough dust to meet with VP Harris, and secured a few good quotes for the media from the president, to boot. By standing in front of the Capitol building in D.C. for their close-up and screaming from the mountaintops (OK, the Capitol step-tops) that the filibuster needs to go and the Voting Rights Act needs serious bolstering on the federal level, they alerted more Americans that Texas, along with so many other states with authoritarian-leaning governments, is trying to pick and choose what kinds of citizens may enjoy a clear path to the voting booth.

Hard to measure how much this heightened awareness actually "does," but in reference to Bill's suggestion that awareness is not​ doing "something"...how can that be?