Bill Maher was a guest on The Jay Leno Show last night.
Maher was his usual offensive self, doing his offensive shtick. I used to think he was funny. That seems like so long ago. Maher is a lot like David Letterman in that way. They've grown so mean-spirited and bitter. They haven't aged well.
During the interview, Leno brought up Maher's alleged documentary, Religulous.
That opened the door for Maher to engage in an embarrassingly self-congratulatory stint, to go off on religion, and to do a series of tasteless jokes about Mother Teresa.
Transcript
JAY LENO: What did you learn from doing the movie?
BILL MAHER: It was a very gratifying experience because to this day, and I think it's gonna go on probably for the rest of my life, people either come up to me or in cyberspace tell me, 'thank you.' You know, people don't usually thank you for a movie. 'Thank you, you opened my eyes.' 'You changed my life.'
I think I liberated a lot of people from believing in superstition.
LENO: Right, right.
MAHER: Um, you know, and the movie was just there to ask a very simple question, which is, why is faith good?
Faith is the lack of critical thinking.
LENO: Uh huh.
MAHER: Why, especially in perilous times, is that a good thing? And people are interested, I think, to know that a lot of people who they think are beyond doubting faith have done it.
Mother Teresa famously a couple years ago, you know, she wrote all these letters, and she said specifically in her will that she wanted these letters to remain private when she died. So, of course, the minute she died the Catholic Church released every single letter she wrote, which kind of backfired because in her letters we found out that she had a crisis of faith in 1979.
LENO: Right.
MAHER: She thought about junking it all. Now that's the same year Rod Stewart came out with 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy.' I'm not saying there's necessarily...
LENO: Right. So you think there might be a connection.
MAHER: Well, I'm saying... But that's the truth. I'm not making that up.
LENO: No, no, I know.
MAHER: 1979 she went a little nuts. She was gonna junk the whole thing. Uh, she started drunk dialing old boyfriends.
LENO: Wow.
MAHER: She got implants. She started stripping at The Platinum Lady under the name 'Original Sindy.' Did you know that, Jay? Kevin, you've been to The Platinum Lady, haven't you? I've seen you.
KEVIN EUBANKS: She's hot, man.
MAHER: I've seen Kevin at The Platinum Lady, by the way. It's the purple neon. Always the universal sign for strip clubs, purple neon.
That's right -- Maher the Liberator.
Good grief. Maher sees himself as freeing people, as an evangelist for atheism. What a great man! He sounds like he's campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if he were awarded it.)
The material Maher did about Mother Teresa was terribly inappropriate. The Catholic Church did not release her letters the "minute she died." She died in 1997. The letters were gathered by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, her postulator. I don't know what Maher's talking about when he says she wrote in her will that they remain private. In some instances, she did express her wish that the letters not be made public, but there was no specific direction in a will.
If Maher wanted to make a legitimate point about her faith and doubts, he blew it when he talked about Mother Teresa drunk dialing and stripping.
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Bill Maher also did Leno's Green Car Challenge.
Just for Maher, Leno had a cutout of George W. Bush on the course for him to hit with the car. He did hit it, repeatedly.
Video
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