Talk show host is considering runs for Senate, White House.
Bill Maher: Grilled
On Letterman, Polanski, atheists and whether he's ever done his show high.
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Winding up his seventh season of “Real Time With Bill Maher” on HBO, the straight-talking comedian (or is he a stand-up pundit?) started the season soft, but found his footing round about the time his ardor for President Obama finally started to dim. This season his guests have included Jay-Z, Michael Moore, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Thomas Friedman and Sarah Silverman.
Sharon Waxman got to grill the politically incorrect oracle on David Letterman, Roman Polanski, why Bill Clinton won't do the show and if Maher has ever hosted while high.
So what happened to the show this season -- you had panels with two people, and then switched back to three. Was this a failed experiment?
No, we just don’t have that rigid a format. Some weeks it’s three guests, sometimes it’s two. We did change. We used to have the two single interviews, almost always by satellite. We like it better when it’s live.
Well, what’s up with interviewing Ron Howard?
That was a whole different type of show. In the first six seasons we had to take a giant break in the middle of the year budgetwise, we could only do so many shows. So we’d go from mid-February to mid-May, and be off till September. Every year we thought, "It’s such a drag when you take a big break like that, some of the audience goes away. You have to get them back again, do all the talk shows.’”
Mmm. You must hate doing talk shows.
It is a drag to always have to be priming the pump twice a year.
Do you think the show is more challenging because of the left-wing Obama lovefest? You’ve been pretty slow to criticize him.
Not over here I don’t. We were the very first place to get on his case. Three or four months ago I was being booed by my own audience for doing it. Quickly everyone else was doing it, and I wasn’t getting booed by my own audience.
Someone has to go first. Obama has been a big disappointment to progressives. We all thought it was going to be a new day.
You’re not really that hard on him.
I have been as hard on him as anybody – of the people who voted for him. Of rational people who are not insane.
I thought the first 100 days would be a time of enormous change, radical change. And it looks just like business as usual. Corporately controlled type government that we’ve had forever. It’s still early, but it doesn’t look good.
The fact that health care lobbyists wrote the bill -- isn’t that what we were rebelling against? Corporate lobbyists writing legislation?
If he passes health care, will you change your mind?
It depends. If he passes something that says health care on the cover but underneath it’s a mess, I don’t think that’s very good. They’re going to pass something that’ll cover more people, but if they don’t control costs it will get us into more deficit problems.
The health care industry is of course looking forward to being delivered 45 million guaranteed new customers.
OK, what about Roman Polanski?
I don’t understand why Hollywood defends somebody like that.
Comments
Peter D Says
Amanda, ADD isn't a disease, it's a behavioral disorder. As such, you can treat it through prevention or by addressing the symptoms. I agree that it makes more sense to prevent something than it does to medicate it but, like Maher, you're oversimplifying the matter.
First, he's not only talking about ADD. At least he doesn't bother to specify ADD in his comments. To say drug companies are in a conspiracy with food companies and the entire medical industry to make and keep Americans unhealthy, as Maher has said on many occasions, is irresponsible and stupid. Such conspiracy theories are *exactly* as wrong as the 9/11 Truth conspiracy he has railed against.
Yes, Americans can and should consume fewer calories and better food. Yes Americans should get more exercise. I believe doing so would improve health and happiness as well as alleviate some of the neuroses only idle people have the luxury to notice. However, to come out and say raw food is some panacea is, once again, irresponsible and stupid.
I'll say it again: Over-simplifying complex issues and creating a monolithic boogey man, as he does, makes Maher less of a progressive or an intellectual and more of an idealogue who never strays far from the "party line".
Amanda Says
@Peter D
How is his stance on food puzzling? Just go to any country where people make food from scratch, using fresh vegetables, meat, grains etc, instead of the processed/canned/frozen American kind, and you´ll see most of the population has not even heard of ADD. Literally. You can explain it to people, but most will not be able to tell you about one single case of ADD among their friends and family.
I know, because I´m Brazilian and have lived in Europe for some years and I had barely even heard of ADD until I was in America, where somehow everyone seemed to suffered from it. You know how I explain ADD? Kids who eat way more sugar and calories than their bodies can process, and don´t do nearly as much exercise as they would need to in order to burn it all off. Instead, American kids take medicine. For something that is simply the result of unbalanced eating/exercising. If they ate less (or better) and exercised more there would be no ADD. The symptoms would be gone, and what does that tell you? It´s a made up disease. It´s like finding someone who hasn´t eaten in weeks and saying they have a disease just because they show "symptoms", and instead of feeding them giving them medicine. You´re keeping people sick and making money off of it by selling them "medicine" that will do anything but cure what they have.
I agree with Bill Maher in a lot of subjects, especially these two, but not because I think he´s smarter than me, or because he´s on TV, but because I know, from life experience, that what he´s saying is the truth, at least on some topics. Don´t agree with him on everything, but when it comes to the food and pharmaceutical industries he´s right on.
Peter D Says
Actually, marcus graap this information has been known since before Peter Joseph was born. I knew it before I saw Religulous and I haven't even seen your little wacko conspiracy movie.
Peter D Says
As a somewhat left-leaning libertarian I'm with Maher *most* of the time. Something like 15% of the U.S. is non-religious, but have no public representation. He is finally airing the dirty laundry, making people aware there are perspectives other than the default Chrisitian viewpoint. However, his rants against science, food and the medical community expose the kind of cognitive dissonance he accuses the religious of having. I used to think he was a progressive, but his puzzling stance on food is making me see him as more of an idealogue. It seems we all have sacred cows, eh Bill?
Bilwick Says
Glad to see Maher has come out as one of the "progressives" (i.e., collectivists) and dropped the facade of being a libertarian. I'm a libertarian, with an almost infallible built-in statism detector, and I knew Maher was just another State-fellator from the get-go.
marcus graap Says
The part about Jesus Christ biography not being original in Religilous is actually lifted straight off the Zeitgeist documentary.
marcus graap Says
The part about Jesus Christ biography not being original in Religilous is actually lifted straight off the Zeitgeist documentary.
marcus graap Says
The part about Jesus Christ biography not being original in Religilous is actually lifted straight off the Zeitgeist documentary.
marcus graap Says
The part about Jesus Christ biography not being original in Religilous is actually lifted straight off the Zeitgeist documentary.
Alexis Says
Hypocrite.
The criticism of Obama was for attention and self-publicity, done on the cusp of a stand-up tour. Of all the infotainers, Maher was the only one, out of Stewart, Colbert, Leno and Letterman, who wasn't getting kudos or comments on his content. He started the ball rolling on the gratuitous Obama criticism. As an educated person, some of the comments he makes about government and science are ill-informed and puerile.
This is a man with serious self-esteem problems, who seeks debate in the realms of ad hominem argument and who has an incredibly wide streak of puerility and narcissism. His rants about the stupidity of the nation are further evidence of a childhood wrought with disdain and psychological abuse. I blame the parents.
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