Bill Maher and Milwaukee and the 'Baby-fication' of America

"I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder."

--Bill Maher

To promote Bill Maher's show at the Riverside this coming Thursday, Tim Cuprisin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel devotes a column to the so-called comedian.

I have to add that qualifier since I don't think of him as a comedian anymore, not because I don't occassionally laugh at what he has to say but because he's not about entertainment.

If you believe he's sincere, he's an activist, pushing a specific agenda.

If you believe he's insincere, and controversial for the sake of controversy, he's an exhibitionist.

Comedian? No.

Bill Maher was vaguely aware that his coming Milwaukee appearance had angered some local conservative bloggers a couple months back.

It's hardly a new thing for a comedian who doesn't hold back on the kinds of comments likely to anger some folks. And the Internet kerfuffle over a crack that Maher made about the pope being a Nazi certainly hasn't prevented him from doing his stand-up act Thursday at the Riverside Theater.

"I think I did hear about it," Maher said in a telephone interview last week.

The Milwaukee reaction paralleled the response from The Catholic League, a vocal group that often gets media access by expressing outrage.

"In today's day and age, it's easy to make it look like you have a whole army, but you don't," Maher said of his critics. "What you really have is a fax machine and e-mail, and you can make it look like there are thousands of people who are storming the barricades with their pitchforks."

Cuprisin is being misleading when he refers to the "Internet kerfuffle over a crack."

Maher's rabid attack on the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI can hardly be characterized as a "crack."

Would you call this a "crack"?

"I'd like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That's right, the Pope is coming to America this week and, ladies, he's single."

"If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you 'Pope.' It's like, if you can't pay your mortgage, you're a deadbeat. But if you can't pay a million mortgages, you're Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia -- too big, too fat."

"When the current Pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul's Dick Cheney, he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the Statute of Limitations ran out. And that's the Church's attitude: 'We're here, we're queer, get used to it,' which is fine, far be it from me to criticize religion. But just remember one thing: If the Pope was -- instead of a religious figure -- merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of day care centers, where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster than you can say 'who wants to touch Mr. Wiggle?'"

Of course, Catholics were offended.

And of course, Maher was eager to offend. That's how he makes his living. Being offensive, spewing hate-filled rants, is his bread and butter.

Cuprisin continues:

Maher sees the response to his initial crack as "part and parcel of the baby-fication of America."

"People used to have to protest everything that they didn't like. If someone said something that they didn't like, they turned off the radio, they turned off the television, they turned the page in the newspaper.

"At some point, life in America became all about not having one second where you are made to feel uncomfortable in any way. So if something makes you uncomfortable, what you have to do is start a campaign, make the person go away, demand apologies.

"It's all such nonsense, because it's so easy to choose not to have me in your life, if that's what you want," he said, his voice trailing off in a laugh.

Again, Cuprisin calls Maher's rant a "crack," "his initial crack."

Surely professional journalist Cuprisin must be somewhat familiar with the power of words and their connotation.

Maher's diatribe wasn't a crack. It's as if Cuprisin is purposely marginalizing just how offensive Maher was when talking about Pope Benedict and his visit to the United States.

Maher's notion that the uproar is an indication of the "baby-fication" of America is lame.

I don't consider exercising free speech to be "baby-fication."

Maher not only was incredibly insensitive but he was factually inaccurate in his anti-Catholic, anti-Pope Benedict rant.

He has his little HBO forum to air his thoughts/lies. Fine.

The public responds. Fine.

Having my faith attacked in such a vile fashion was extremely disturbing to me.

I reacted, as did people all over the country.

That's not the "baby-fication" of America. That's America, baby.

About HBO, Maher said, "I'm on a network that totally understands freedom of speech."

Too bad Maher doesn't understand it. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. I think free speech is best answered with more speech.

Maher offends. People respond. No need for Maher to whine.

Maher said, "It's the great clarifier, standup comedy. First of all, it's the greatest joy I have."

Really? There's something very twisted about finding great joy in unfairly and mercilessly tearing people down, good people.

Cuprisin writes that Maher will be talking presidential politics on Thursday night at the Riverside. He'll also be talking religion.

Maher fans will have more than this live performance and his HBO show to feast on.

...He even has a big-screen movie coming out in October, "Religulous" - a title, Maher said, that combines the words religion and ridiculous.

"Comedically, religion is the side of a barn door. If you can't hit this target comedically with the talking snakes and the man who lived inside of a whale, you just really shouldn't be in the comedy business."

View a clip from the movie and the trailer here.

The documentary bills itself as an "uproarious nonfiction film about the greatest fiction ever told."

Greatest fiction?

I don't consider my faith to be ridiculous.

I would be lost without it.

It's not as if I'm incapable of enjoying good-natured humor about my religion, but there's a difference between jokes and ridicule, wit and disrespect.

But Maher said he's not doing this just to get a reaction.

"I certainly never do anything just to push people's buttons," he said. "I just tell it the way I see it. And if that pushes their buttons, so be it.

"I'm never looking for a fight, but I never run away from one."

I don't buy that.

Maher knows exactly what he's doing and it's clear why he's doing it.