45 Comments

1. richard mcenroe:

Bill Maher’s actually a pretty good barometer. Anyone who actually pays attention to him is probably not worth taking seriously.

He’s like Howard Stern without the balls and Morton Downey without the cigarettes…

Mar 4, 2005 - 9:57 pm 2. mythusmage:

To paraphrase Aldous Huxley, “He has sold his jokes for the pot of importance.”

Mar 4, 2005 - 9:59 pm 3. Jim C.:

richard mcenro: “He’s like Howard Stern without the balls”.

Or the good taste.

Mar 4, 2005 - 10:14 pm 4. Wax Tadpole:

I kind of liked Bill Maher in “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death!” It’s been all downhill since then, though.

– Erik

Mar 4, 2005 - 10:17 pm 5. MisterSnitch:

Maher’s material, actually, is much better than it was in his first season or so. That was so abysmal, I was surprised he survived. I suspect there were some writer-heads rolling.

One thing that changed was, Maher learned he had to be somewhat more even handed, if only because he could no longer get foils to appear on the show. Guests who were being set up to be skewered saw it coming, and who wants to walk onto a stage where they know the audience will hiss at them until they cannot be heard? Maher moderated his rhetoric, contenting himself to slimy “asides” followed by a blythely insincere “but I kid the Pope” type remark.

Maher has also gotten somewhat better about falling into rhetorical traps than he used to be. But when he does step in the quicksand, he does sometimes get sucked in pretty deep.

I know couple of fellows who just about rented (Biblically I mean) their garments when Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was about to be released. The streets were about to run red with Jewish blood because of this irresponsible man. There was no doubt about this whatsoever, and only an arrogant fool could not see this fact. Prominent Hollywood figures took up this cry also, some braying they’d never work with Gibson again. When the film came and went without a suggestion of violence, they took up the complaint that the film was simply too violent. Not one of them admitted they were wrong, they simply found themselves something new to complain about.

Maher complains about people who voices are banned from television - and brings them on his national television show. He is just another guy who can’t say he’s wrong. That’s bad news in any human being, but it’s death for a comic. Pride and arrogance unacknowledged in oneself is not funny. Maher’s arrogance makes him an exteremly poor comic. It makes him predictable, and while the studio audience is supportive (was there ever a studio audience that turned on the host?) he is a fool, a first class fool, to use their response as a barometer of his skills (as he quite apparently does). He has been trying to make up this great comic shortcomings by pandering to a certain brittle leftist point of view. There is so far no evidence that this is fooling anyone but Maher.

Mar 4, 2005 - 10:59 pm 6. yadid:

Maher is something else - a cynical, preening, self-deceiving narcissist who clings to the airwaves with the desperation of a dying leech that will never get off our backs. Nothing he ever says is more than a clichÈ or less than self-promotion. Whatever small modicum of humor he may once have had has disappeared up his own navel while he was gazing at it, sort of like liposuction in reverse.

wow…..this will serve me as a template..

Mar 5, 2005 - 12:38 am 7. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Thank you, Roger for commenting on that little prick (as opposed to just the big imposter).

If you ever wondered about the difference between libertarianism and libertinism, just listen to Maher. He claims to be a libertarian, but to him means merely that the government stays out of his sex life, that he can slander religious people and destroy their freedoms at will, and that he can say whateer he wants no matter the venue.

But he also supports the usual panoply of socialist government programs, which real libertarians would never come close to.

Narcissist - you bet. On PI it was pathetic how he played to his liberal audience.

The one good show I saw had Ben Stein as a guest. Whenever Ben spoke, quietly and monotonically, there was dead silence. The bubbleheads including Maher were afraid to say anything because Stein would shred them to confetti. It was truly a fine show, with the preening idiots shown up for exactly what they were. And Ben never had to even raise his voice (which, I hear, he can actually do).

Maher is what is wrong with America’s society. He is a living, breathing, walking and talking and talking and talking and talking selfish, indulgent, preening narcissist and ignoramous who believes he has something important to say.

Sorry, Bill, but you are just another brand name with nothing real in you at all.

[ed - why don't you tell them how you really feel, John?]

Mar 5, 2005 - 12:54 am 8. Paul:

John Moore sez:

“Maher is what is wrong with America’s society. He is a living, breathing, walking and talking and talking and talking and talking selfish, indulgent, preening narcissist and ignoramous who believes he has something important to say.”

That’s right, and he is typical of the smug leftists everywhere who revel in their imagined moral superiority.

Why do I get the feeling that underneath their pretense of boldly and courageously speaking truth to power these people are the weakest sort of cowards?

Mar 5, 2005 - 2:39 am 9. Jabba the Tutt:

MisterSnitch: (was there ever a studio audience that turned on the host?)

To be fair, it wasn’t his audience, but did you ever see the Pat Sajak Show, when Rush Limbaugh sat in for Pat? They had to get rid of the audience, so Rush could continue. It is a classic.

Mar 5, 2005 - 3:03 am 10. Terrye:

I have mentioned before that my brother and I do not see eye to eye on many things. Well Maher is one of the reasons why. It was in a discussion about this idiot’s sorry self serving sense of humor that we had our first real disagreement. Thanks Bill.

Bro said that he kinda sorta looked at things like Maher did. As if being a dickhead was cool. I told him that Maher was an idiot who made a ton of money on the one hand while ranting about evil wall street types on the other.

It is typical of the mindset. Even in the social security war we have to listen these guys talk about the bad Republicans who will never have to live on social security trying to destroy the social welfare program so that old ladies will slowly starve… blah blah blah.

I could be wrong about this but I bet that people like Maher and Kennedy have alot more invested in the market than I do. But I don’t think I am wrong. So let’s listen to the three thousand dollar suits and the fake Indians pontificate about why they hate us.

Mar 5, 2005 - 3:29 am 11. JB:

“Why do I get the feeling that underneath their pretense of boldly and courageously speaking truth to power these people are the weakest sort of cowards?”

Because you’re perceptive.

This is almost axiomatic. The only power they dare speak truth to happens to be the one that protects their freedom to do so.

Mar 5, 2005 - 3:41 am 12. JB:

Oh, that should have been “truth”, not truth.

Mar 5, 2005 - 3:43 am 13. kellymo:

I would have loved to see Ben Stein on PI. In fact, he’d be ten times better as the host. Hey Roger - know anybody who could give Ben his own show?

Mar 5, 2005 - 4:12 am 14. Buzzbait:

I saw Bill Mahrer at a comedy club in Houston after he ended his “Politically Incorrect” show on ABC back in the late 90s. I caught the 2nd show. He came on stage drunk and did 30 minutes of incoherent material culminating with a Bob Dole impression that included kneeling on a stool and waving a clawed hand at the crowd. I have not cared about him since.

Mar 5, 2005 - 4:28 am 15. PeterUK:

Maher is something else - a cynical, preening, self-deceiving narcissist who clings to the airwaves with the desperation of a dying leech that will never get off our backs. Nothing he ever says is more than a clichÈ or less than self-promotion. Whatever small modicum of humor he may once have had has disappeared up his own navel while he was gazing at it, sort of like liposuction in reverse.

Yes,but what are his bad points?

Mar 5, 2005 - 5:05 am 16. jack risko:

Wow. Roger’s post about Maher is a warning to all never to get on his bad side. Ouch!

Thanks, Jack Risko

Mar 5, 2005 - 5:17 am 17. David:

Come on Roger, tell us what you really think.

Mar 5, 2005 - 6:37 am 18. Vulgorilla:

Hmmmmm….Apple wants to restrict the lawful use of computers? Sounds like another business limiting decision by the mental midgets that run that place. Oh, well…….At least they’re consistent. Having 2% of the computer market must be too much for them to handle. Heh.

Mar 5, 2005 - 6:46 am 19. Fausta:

A more interesting show would be Churchill reading his little manifesto, followed by listening to Jarvis’s audio narration of what it was like to be at the WTC on Sept. 11. But that will never happen. Churchill doesn’t have the guts, Maher doesn’t have the intelligence.

Mar 5, 2005 - 7:31 am 20. PJ:

I wonder if Ward got to go the Mansion with Bill after the show!

Eeeeuuuuw….that’s not a pretty picture.

Mar 5, 2005 - 7:48 am 21. Knucklehead:

That is one of the finest rhetorical takedowns I’ve ever had the pleasure to read, Roger! Gosh how I admire the skill of a true professional.

I don’t know if Maher is a symptom of what is wrong with a large segment of our society or yet another opportunist who has found an economically (and ego) satisfying niche. Either way he’s reprehensible. I have noticed that he holds “prophet” status among the BDS fringe.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:06 am 22. Old Dad:

It’s a dicey challenge to lie down with dogs and get up flealess.

Way to go Roger!

To riff just a little on your reverse liposuction trope–isn’t Maher’s brain a colostomy bag of sorts?

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:22 am 23. Buddy Larsen:

What’s so revolting–to me–about Maher is his own certainty. His “daring intellectual rebel” attitude is beyond grating, especially since every 12 yr old on the planet has long-since evolved beyond it.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:43 am 24. Buddy Larsen:

Oops, meant to toss in my concurrance on Ben Stein…one of the great deadpan comics in media…not to mention very good indeed as a stock-picker on that Fox financial show on Saturday morning.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:51 am 25. pst314:

Maher’s smirk instantly gave him away. I knew I’d despise him before he had finished his first comment.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:56 am 26. kcom:

“Why do I get the feeling that underneath their pretense of boldly and courageously speaking truth to power these people are the weakest sort of cowards?”

That’s because whenever it comes to speaking truth to the real powers of evil they are missing in action. How many TV shows did Maher do in Baghdad prior to 2003? How many has he done in Beijing? How many has he done in Sudan? Exactly how did he go about speaking truth to power when people were being slaughtered in Rwanda?

It’s hard to imagine Bill Maher even being worthy enough to tie Vaclav Havel’s shoelace, let alone pretend he is in the same league with him when it comes to speaking truth to power. Spending your nights in a jail cell for your views is a lot more impressive than spending them at the Playboy mansion.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:57 am 27. scott1798:

“Whatever small modicum of humor he may once have had has disappeared up his own navel while he was gazing at it, sort of like liposuction in reverse.” That is one of the funniest sentences I’ve ever read. Funny and yet so true.

Mar 5, 2005 - 9:01 am 28. kcom:

I guess I should clarify that as far as I know Bill Maher has never compared himself to Havel. It’s just an example I’m using by way of illustrating my point.

Mar 5, 2005 - 9:01 am 29. Rick Ballard:

Maher on TV. Moulitsas on the internet. Franken on radio. Robbins in Hollywood. Churchill representing academe. Howlin’ Howard leading the party.

I sure can’t complain.

Mar 5, 2005 - 9:11 am 30. Barry Dauphin:

Politically Incorrect left the airwaves because Bill Maher committed the one sin no comedian can afford to commit- he wasn’t being funny. Tuning into to a (purported) comedy show to be preached at by Peter Pan Playboy is not fun.

Second his preaching was obsessed with the “H” word loved by the Hollywood chic left-Hypocrisy. He saw it everywhere but in the mirror. It should have been hard to miss there, because I presume he spent a lot of time looking in it. That stuff becomes tedious rapidly. He’s lucky to live in a country where he can actually make a living- where else could this guy get paid to do much of anythng?

Mar 5, 2005 - 9:17 am 31. Mark Alexander:

I once thought Maher was at least a slightly left of center moderate, since he was so insistent that he voted for Bob Dole.

Now it’s apparent that he used that vote (or claim) to “appear” to be centrist.

He is a classic, lying, hypocritical leftist. Like Clinton, he is quite probably a narcicistic sociopath.

But in a good way…

Mar 5, 2005 - 9:59 am 32. VietPundit:

Roger,

Thank you so much for saying exactly what I’ve thought of Maher but could not quite articulate it so well as you do. And thank you for being angry. For any decent human being should be angry at that revolting coward. As you said, many people in the world are suffering, and are struggling for their freedom, and he’s cynically laughing at their suffering.

As I mentioned in my blog, I am so grateful for the freedom enjoyed by me but denied to so much of the rest of the world. Whenever I hear of Maher, I have to remind myself that fools like him are the price that I must pay for that freedom. Seriously, I have to talk to myself and remind myself of that fact, otherwise I’d go insane.

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:00 am 33. Buddy Larsen:

He plays a decent H.L. Mencken only in a circle of ward churchills.

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:05 am 34. Mark Alexander:

Thanks, Roger.

When I first saw Politically Incorrect, I bought into Maher’s self-characterization as a slightly left-of-center moderate. He tried to cement that label by his insistence that he voted for Bob Dole.

But ideological leftists cannot help but reveal themselves, their hypocracies, their two-faced lies, their hatefulness and projected self-loathings.

I suspect Maher is like Bill Clinton: a narcicistic sociopath.

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:08 am 35. Paul:

Rick Ballard:

“Maher on TV. Moulitsas on the internet. Franken on radio. Robbins in Hollywood. Churchill representing academe. Howlin’ Howard leading the party.

I sure can’t complain.”

My first thought on reading the Jarvis post was that the best thing that could happen would be for the whole nation to see these two assholes together running down America.

Oh, but just don’t question their patriotism…

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:13 am 36. Captain Hate:

“He came on stage drunk and did 30 minutes of incoherent material culminating with a Bob Dole impression that included kneeling on a stool and waving a clawed hand at the crowd.”

Nice highbrow humor, Bill!! I’m sure the mensa’s over at Daily KOS and DU were rolling in the aisles over that one. If he had an ounce of self-respect he’d take all the prior posts here to heart.

Not holding my breath on that one.

Mar 5, 2005 - 1:55 pm 37. richard mcenroe:

The Jeff Jarvis thread is still going. Picking on Oliver Willis and Jay Rosen is fun! Come on over!

Mar 5, 2005 - 7:56 pm 38. Jakester:

Funny how the subject of the Irak sanctions gets brought up and no one has the brains to hint that maybe Saddam and the UN are the bad guys, not some selfish yuppie in the Towers. No one had the diligence to read off the reasons Osama and Co. gave for their attack and notice that neither sanctions nor Malaysian sweatshops were mentioned. Doesn’t anyone do any research? I don’t hate Bill Maher, narcissist is the most over used word in our modern lexicon. Teb years ago his show was somewhat interesting and original but he settled for superficiality rather than substance and now I’m glad he’s been exiled to HBO, which I don’t have!

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:18 pm 39. richard mcenroe:

Jeff Jarvis now has a podcast fisking of the Maher/Churchill … um… what’s the opposite of “Summit?” Sinkhole? over at his site at the link in my previous post.

Mar 5, 2005 - 8:41 pm 40. MisterSnitch:

“To be fair, it wasn’t his audience, but did you ever see the Pat Sajak Show, when Rush Limbaugh sat in for Pat? They had to get rid of the audience, so Rush could continue. It is a classic.”

Thanks for that recollection, Jabba (or is it MISTER Hutt?). It must have been one WILD scene! That actually sort of makes the point, though. TV audiences are chosen, like juries, to support the host. (In fact they kind of choose themselves - who would show up to sit in the audience for a host or show they hated, anyway?) So the audience that shows up for one host may detest an unexpected replacement if the replacement is coming from a whole ‘nother place.

There was a scene at the end of Brian De Palma’s ‘Untouchables’ film where a less-than-impartial jury is switched to insure a fair verdict. Imagine the fun if we switched the audiences for a Bush “town hall” appearance and Maher’s show…

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:01 pm 41. Pat Curley:

“He claims to be a libertarian….”

That’s the part that really chaps me. He’s about as libertarian as Noam Chomsky is anarchistic, and yet they get away with it. What’s next, Barbra claiming she’s really a neocon?

Mar 5, 2005 - 10:55 pm 42. Capt Trevett at the Commons:

“Politically Incorrect left the airwaves because Bill Maher committed the one sin no comedian can afford to commit- he wasn’t being funny.”

I watched it once and decided never again. It was Michael Moore agitating the crown against-I believe-Tom Ridge.

That show was already on its way to being cancelled because the ratings sucked. Maher exploited the post-911 controversy and leveraged it into a new show by playing the martyr (and reminding everyone about it).

Mar 6, 2005 - 6:53 am 43. CMN:

If you watched the whole episode, you saw that they’re actually soliciting an all conservative audience for at least one show, so you have to give Maher at least a modicum of credit for being willing to step out of a safe cocoon to mix it up. And while I frequently find him infuriating for the same reasons enumerated above, I don’t think it’s accurate to say he is simply pandering to the left. He still, occasionally, does take an authentic politically incorrect position, usually on sexual/gender issues, as when he defended Larry Summers. He also gave (albeit reluctantly) props to Bush for the positive recent developments in the ME.

Mar 7, 2005 - 3:51 pm 44. freetotem:

Many people upset with Al Franken’s descent into deranged mania say they never found him funny. But I did. I used think he was hilarious back before he decided he was so important to world events. But Maher was never funny. He is just the smarmy, insecure class clown who tries far too hard to convince you how cool he is by ridiculing everyone else. The archetypal loser. He was always a fraud.

Of course he would give Ward Churchill a sympathetic forum to rehabilitate himself and even feed him his lines, as he had to do to follow his script for the appearance. Because, you know, these guys are brothers in the struggle, man. Men who dare to speak painful and unpopular truths to the rest of us frightened sheep of the programmed proletariat. These guys are visionaries.

His HBO show is just like PI, stacked with 3 loony lefties to one conservative, heavy on the quick “humorous” putdown (because this is all just comedy, you see, in case you want to get all party pooperish on how incoherent his opinions are.) Gang up on the conservative one and make him look like a fool. Maher is far too cowardly to ever take a conservative on in a fair fight, or to have more than one at a time on his show. Whatsamatter Bill? Chicke-e-en?

Maher isn’t just the worst kind of lefty, he is the worst kind of Boomer narcissist—the lifelong class clown who now wants to be seen as a great mind, a man of intelligent opinions. An expert on religion who has given the most profound matter throughout human history 30 seconds of thought and thinks he is the smart guy in the discussion. Replaying 60s dorm room cliches, trickle down cocktail party Marxist drivel and antique sexual revolution hooey lifted directly from circa 1960s Hugh Hefner Playboy Philosophy. Like so many Boomers, he thinks he’s still really hip, not realizing his schtick is 30 years out of date. He walked right by me in an airport the other day, and he looked like every other little shlemiel wise guy I’ve ever known.

Mar 12, 2005 - 4:58 pm 45. Dan:

And Maher isn’t even funny, but he thinks he is.

Mar 12, 2005 - 10:44 pm

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