Larry David Writes Short Story Purely to Mock Bill Maher
Curb Your Enthusiasm may be over, but that doesn’t mean that Larry David has given up writing. In fact he just published a brand new short story in the New York Times’ opinion section. While he’s known for joking about the minutiae of modern life, such as dinner party etiquette, marital difficulties and giving Bruce Springsteen COVID…
…this time, David’s muse, it would seem, is the awfulness of Bill Maher. His piece is titled “Larry David: My Dinner with Adolf.” You can probably see where this is going.
“Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler,” the story begins. “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.”
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While the narrator of the story agrees to the meeting with Hitler, it’s only because he “concluded that hate gets us nowhere.” Once at the dinner, he says that Hitler “seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler.”
While the name “Bill Maher” is never mentioned, clearly this is a pretty brutal satire of the Real Time host’s recent anecdote about the friendly meal he shared with President Trump. Maher also claimed to be surprised at his host’s congeniality, and similarly suggested that this was the real Trump. “Why can’t we get the guy I met to be the public guy?” Maher asked.
Some of David’s jabs are even more pointed. Maher noted that Trump asked him questions in a “‘Hey, you’re a smart guy, I want your opinion’ sort of way.” The character in David’s story notes that Hitler “was quite inquisitive and asked me a lot of questions about myself.”
David’s story perfectly encapsulates the point Maher’s critics have been trying to make ever since he performed his tone-deaf monologue; the problem with rulers who target vulnerable communities, defy the courts and vilify the press is not that they’re incapable of being affable dining companions.
David further makes the point that Maher’s claims of political neutrality are pretty ludicrous when he’s actively participating in sanitizing a political leader’s image, and arguably acting as a low-key propagandist. In the damning final line of the story, David’s protagonist thanks his host: “‘I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.’ And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.”
Although David’s story doesn’t make it clear which member of the Third Reich is supposed to be a stand-in for his buddy and former Martha’s Vineyard roommate.
