Bill Maher, the 2006 edition
'Real Time' on HBO is making news these days because its still politically incorrect host has begun to slam and ridicule the insane wokeness that has made a joke of the Democrat Party.
I wrote this column about Bill Maher in 2006 for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, which was not his ideological pal then or now.
'Real Time' is real diverse
God bless Bill Maher -- whether he likes it or not.
His show "Real Time With Bill Maher," which airs live on HBO Friday nights at 11, is far from perfect.
Maher is noticeably soft on Democrats and not a third as politically astute or non-liberal as he thinks he is. And he, his guests and his live audience, which has never let a liberal cliche about the living wage or a Cheney joke pass without a burst of clueless clapping, can be incredibly annoying and stupid at times.
Still, Maher deserves praise from someone on high for creating a unique mix of newsy, often off-color stand-up comedy, serious political commentary and spirited debate.
"Real Time" is built around the cynical talents of the politically perceptive comedian who came to fame in the 1990s with his late-night ABC show "Politically Incorrect."
To fill about half of the 60-minute ad-free show, Maher moderates a politically diverse panel usually made up of a name politician like Sen. Joe Biden, a pundit or journalist and a liberal from the Hollywood creative community who believes his celebrity has made him into a junior Dick Morris.
Except for the absence of a conservative, Maher's April 28 panel was typical: His "favorite congressman," Rep. Barney Frank, liberal NPR correspondent Michel Martin and British actor Ian McKellen.
Maher, a devout agnostic, calls himself a libertarian. He is famous for torturing President Bush, hating organized religion and being politically incorrect. He's also politically schizophrenic.
On the conservative-libertarian side of his brain, he supports limited Social Security privatization and wants drugs and prostitution to be legalized. He also ridicules things like "hate crimes" and, calling himself "pro death," favors abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.
Meanwhile, Maher publicly supports PETA, doesn't dislike gun control and bashes Big Oil like a born-again 19th-century populist. He voted for Nader in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, which buttresses Jonah Goldberg's assessment that Maher's really a "libertine socialist."
"Real Time's" panel usually includes a conservative politician or pro pundit like the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes. But invariably even they end up being ganged up on or have their arguments disrupted after 2.5 sentences by a Maher joke.
It doesn't matter, though. Maher says his show is not designed to always seek fairness and balance. Its first priority -- obviously not always attained -- is to achieve adult, knowledgeable conversation. Anyway, willing conservative guests are hard to find.
Liberals love "Real Time." But few Bush partisans, church-going conservatives and die-hard fans of the war in Iraq could endure 15 minutes without calling the FCC or FBI.
"Real Time" could be better than it is. For instance, it could use a good economist like Lawrence Kudlow now and then to counter the economic ignorance that flows from Maher et al. whenever things like oil and minimum wages are discussed.
At its core, "Real Time" is really another liberally tilted political TV talk-and-shout circus -- with good jokes and four-letter words.
Yet on any given night it is more ideologically diverse than NBC's "Meet Tim Russert" -- and a heck of lot more interesting than PBS' liberal snoozefest, "Washington Week in Review." It may not be saying a whole lot, but despite its flaws and biases, "Real Time" is arguably TV's best political talk show.
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Before Maher brought his stand-up tour to Pittsburgh he was interviewed by Paul Guggenheimer of the Tribune-Review. Here’s Maher’s criticism of wokeism:
Q: It’s safe to say that you are a progressive on the issues, but people have noticed that you have been taking dead aim at the left lately and “woke” liberals as you call them. What has sparked this for you?
A: They changed. I didn’t change. Liberalism didn’t change. Wokeism is not liberalism. It’s very often the opposite of liberalism. We’re doing something this week at the end of the show about whether we should have two national anthems and I’m showing the clip of Barack Obama saying, “There’s no white America, there’s no Black America, there’s no Latino America, there’s one America. We’re the United States of America.”
Segregation, I’m an old school liberal. I’m against it. But wokeism is very often about the reverse of that. The traditional liberal view is “we don’t see color.” That’s the goal, a color-blind society. Now it seems to be to see it everywhere in everything. I don’t think this is leading to a good place.