As someone who leans to the left, I have long been disappointed by Bill Maher: his clear inability to inform himself on the matters he professes to skewer, this tendency buoyed by an insufferable smugness that fails to listen to WHERE the other side is coming from, and the way in which he has been lionized for his "free speech" on his "the people who rammed into those buildings weren't cowards" line. I had no particular problem with the latter quip, while others did at the time, but the suggestion that Maher was somehow considered courageous in expressing a muddled and rather general observation about cowardice absolutely appalled me.
I think the only reason Maher has the credibility that he does today is because there are now very few good satirists or social commentators of any stripe in America (or at least there are very few that the media is willing to usher before the camera). Compared to George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison, and Bill Hicks, Maher is a fifth-rate comic at best and a buffoonish social commentator at worst. He seems to think that he's taking a big chance with this film, and he seems to think that he's unfettered because he's saying "fuck" on HBO. But I suspect that beneath this facade, he does all this because he knows he's a fraud and he knows that he's about as warmly intelligent as a tuna fish sandwich.
As someone who leans to the left, I have long been disappointed by Bill Maher: his clear inability to inform himself on the matters he professes to skewer, this tendency buoyed by an insufferable smugness that fails to listen to WHERE the other side is coming from, and the way in which he has been lionized for his "free speech" on his "the people who rammed into those buildings weren't cowards" line. I had no particular problem with the latter quip, while others did at the time, but the suggestion that Maher was somehow considered courageous in expressing a muddled and rather general observation about cowardice absolutely appalled me.
ReplyDeleteI think the only reason Maher has the credibility that he does today is because there are now very few good satirists or social commentators of any stripe in America (or at least there are very few that the media is willing to usher before the camera). Compared to George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison, and Bill Hicks, Maher is a fifth-rate comic at best and a buffoonish social commentator at worst. He seems to think that he's taking a big chance with this film, and he seems to think that he's unfettered because he's saying "fuck" on HBO. But I suspect that beneath this facade, he does all this because he knows he's a fraud and he knows that he's about as warmly intelligent as a tuna fish sandwich.