Real Time with Bill Maher

Published on Friday, February 12, 2010 by Politico.com

A Ruthless Bill Maher Returns with Plenty of Ire for Tea-Baggers, Republicans, and Obama Alike
by Patrick Gavin

They once said, if you lose Walter Cronkite, you lose the nation.
But what happens if you lose Bill Maher?


Bill Maher says that the upcoming season of his show will continue to hold the administration accountable. (Photo courtesy of HBO)

The liberal comedian has surprised friends and foes alike by adding President Barack Obama to his list of usual targets, such as conservatives and the religious right.

"He's just a president and like any president you have to hold their feet to the fire," Maher tells POLITICO.

Maher, who initially praised Obama, changed his tune last season on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," his hour-long political show. He knocked Obama for not standing "up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren't crazy."

"This is not what I voted for" he said, after Obama had failed to meet Maher's expectations on health care and climate change. "What he needs in his personality is a little George Bush. ... What we need to do is to marry the good ideas that Barack Obama has with a little bit of that Bush attitude and certitude."

He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I don't know if this administration has really caught up to the idea that Americans are a lot more liberal, perhaps, than we think they are." He even compared Obama to Lindsay Lohan: "[W]e see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something."

Maher returns for his eighth season of "Real Time" on Feb. 19. And the question is, will Maher continue to sour on Obama? You can count on it.

"I used to get booed for it and now everyone seems to be marching to that beat," Maher told POLITICO, adding that he's noticed at stand-up shows that his loyal liberal fans have started to appreciate his outspokenness against Obama. "In one way, it's kind of progress, the fact that he's been in office a year and the novelty has worn off. He's not the first black president anymore that the left wing feels a need to coddle."

"I'd like to see results," said Maher. "I still don't see him completely backing what a lot of us would like him to back, with the full force of his office."

Obama's difficulties with health care reform in Congress remain a sore spot for Maher. "I don't know why he doesn't just demand that the House pass the Senate bill, and then tweak it in reconciliation and tell Glenn Beck to shove his tea bag up his a**. Could he do that?"

In fact, Maher thinks Obama needs to stop worrying about Republican support entirely. "I've been trying to tell the president over and over again about the right wing: They're just not that into you. He's the wrong party, the wrong age, the wrong color and no matter how much he reaches out, they're just never going to vote for him."

As for the upcoming season of "Real Time," he expects to pay plenty of attention to newly elected Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

"This Scott Brown looks to me like he's going to be a real a**hole," says Maher. "Anybody who could win an election with the slogan, 'I drive a truck,' just really bothers me. ... 'Mr. 41' also bothers me that he signs '41' on all his autographs because he's so proud that he can block votes on things that the majority of Americans want. He's a regular Gandhi - if Gandhi took off his diaper and posed for Cosmo."

And, as for the 2012 election, Maher isn't convinced that a second Obama term is assured. "Anytime you have unemployment over 10 percent, I think there's an excellent chance you won't be reelected," he says. "And if none of his signature legislative goals get accomplished - health care, cap and trade, banking reform - if none of these things really get done, he's going to look very ineffectual."

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Chris wrote:

Are you a fan of Real Time With Bill Maher? I never miss it.

Impact wrote:Anyone catch this past episode, with the guy in the audience having a shitfit? Much of what he was yelling out was inaudible, but at some point it sounded as if he was saying "Don't touch me...battery..."

TRANSCRIPT:

All right, New Rule, stop calling this place a mansion. It looks like a 5-unit apartment complex in Van Nuys. A mansion is where the Beverly Hillbillies live. This is more like the house they show on the local news when some Mexican's pit bull has eaten a baby.

New Rule, stop saying "we" got Osama. "We" didn't do anything. "We" were watching Celebrity Apprentice and eating Funyuns in our sweatpants. SEAL Team Six did the killing, with money we borrowed from Beijing that our grandchildren will have to pay back. So it was a joint Navy SEALs, People's Bank of China, grandchildren operation.


New Rule, the White House doesn't have to release the dead bin Laden photos, but don't pretend that we can't take it. We handled pictures of Britney Spears' vagina getting out of a car. Come on, television has desensitized us to violence, and porn has desensitized us to people getting shot in the eye.


New Rule, the Pentagon must apologize to Native Americans for giving such a universally reviled character as Osama bin Laden the code name "Geronimo"... and admit they should have gone with their second choice, The Donald.


New Rule, conspiracy theorists who are claiming that we didn't really kill bin Laden, must be reminded that they didn't think he did the crime in the first place! Come on, nutjobs, keep your bullshit straight! The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition by George W. Bush to distract attention from Hawaii where CIA operatives were planting phony birth records, so that a Kenyan named Obama could someday rise to power and pretend to take out the guy we pretended took out the towers! And I know that's true because I just got it in an e-mail from Trump.


And finally, New Rule. Now that it's become clear that the Republicans, the fiscally conservative, strong on defense party, are neither fiscally conservative nor strong on defense, they have to tell us what exactly it is they're good at.


Because it's not defense. 9/11 happened on your watch. And you retaliated by invading the wrong country. And you lost a 10-year game of hide-and-seek with Osama bin Laden. And you're responsible for running up most of the debt, which, more than anything, makes us weak. You're supposed to be the party with the killer instinct. But it was a Democrat who put a bomb in Gaddafi's bedroom and a bullet in bin Laden's eye like Moe Greene. Raising the question, how many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?

(wild audience applause)


Let's look at some facts. Now, for you Fox News viewers, feel free to turn down the sound until the flashing "FACTS" light at the bottom of your screen disappears.


When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that by the end of the decade, we would have paid off the entire debt, and have a $2 trillion dollar surplus. Instead, we have a $10.5 trillion dollar public debt, and the difference in those two numbers is mostly because the Republicans put tax cuts for the rich, free drugs for the elderly, and two wars on the layaway plan, and then bailed on the check. So, so much for fiscal responsibility.


But hey, at least they still had the defense thing, right? The public still believed Republicans were tougher when it came to hunting down dark-skinned foreigners with funny-sounding names. But Bush had seven years to get Osama. He didn't. He got Wesley Snipes. Only 6 months after 9/11, Bush said he didn't spend that much time on bin Laden, adding that he was no longer concerned about him, just as he wasn't before 9/11, when he blew off that mysterious, inscrutable memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." In under a year, Bush went from "Who gives a shit?" to "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and back to "Who gives a shit?" Why focus on the terrorist who reduced Wall Street to rubble, when you can help Wall Street reduce the whole country to rubble?


In 2008, the candidates were asked, if they knew for sure that bin Laden was in Pakistan, would you send our guys in without permission to get him? McCain said no, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. Obama said yes, he'd just do it. And McCain called him naïve. Who's being naïve, Kay? And why can't you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient steely-nerved multitasking black ninja gangsta President?


In one week, he produced his birth certificate, comforted disaster victims, swung by Florida to say hey to Gabby Giffords, did stand-up at the Correspondents Dinner, and then personally rappelled into bin Laden's lair and put a Chinese star through his throat without waking up any of his 13 wives! That's how it went down, I saw it on MSNBC.


Look, 30% of this country will always vote Republican. I'm just asking why. Yes, paranoia, greed, and racism are fun, but it's like when you see someone driving a Mercury. You think, did that person really wake up one day and think, "You know what car I really want to drive? A Mercury Mariner." No! You assume he knows someone who sells them, or he was molested by a KIA dealer as a child.


And I know this all sounds like harsh truth, but Republicans are supposed to be the party of harsh truths. Like, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And speaking of lunch, I think Obama just ate yours.