Bill Maher brought his vitriol and incendiary rhetoric to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday.
Maher always spews hateful, offensive stuff, but he really outdid himself.
He began by taking some of his trademarks shots at religion, mocking Christmas. One of his Christmas carols: "Oh, Come All Ye Faithless." Maher, raised Catholic and Jewish, said he doesn't hate Christmas because it doesn't have to be a religious thing. He called it a "national holiday."
Maher spoke of his childhood Christmas memories and mentioned how his mother loved Robert Goulet. He recalls the family always playing a Goulet Christmas album during the holidays. That's kind of a sweet memory but Maher fouled it by crudely describing how housewives of his mother's era allegedly responded to Goulet.
Transcript
BILL MAHER: My mother had a thing for Robert Goulet. I think a lot of housewives - he gave a lot of pussy boners out there.
NBC bleeped the term. Leno even objected.
JAY LENO: The word is OK... I think when you put the word with 'mom,' it gets a little confusing.
Acting surprised that his choice of words was unacceptable, Maher followed that with, "Vagina erection, OK?"
Good grief, he's talking about his mother. How creepy!
Then, Leno brought up the 2010 elections and Christine O'Donnell. Leno actually said to Maher, "You were the one that outed her as a witch."
What?
O'Donnell wasn't and isn't a witch. Very lame and very predictable.
Maher then took some swipes at John Boehner and the new Congress. Leno asked Maher what he thought of the new Speaker of the House.
MAHER: Oh, love him, Jay. Why would I not like that achievement-free tool of the extraction industry's John Boehner?
MAHER: You know, these people, this new Congress, you know, I'll be the first to admit the Democrats are no prize. I mean, I'm not a registered Democrat because if I was I'd always be resigning, 'cause they'd always be pissing me off. But, I mean, to throw out the Democrats for the ideas that we know didn't work - you know, it's like, you know, it's like, 'Gee, I'm a little tired of our babysitter. Let's leave the kids on the road tonight.'
The audience was silent. That's understandable. He wasn't being entertaining.
Maher is out of touch with reality. Obama's been in office for two years. Obviously, his ideas haven't worked out well at all for most Americans.
Maher went on to whine about the $14 trillion debt without acknowledging Obama and the Dems' role in creating it. Convenient.
Video.
After the break, Maher really racheted up his rhetoric when discussing the shootings in Tucson. Leno, of course, didn't challenge Maher. He tacitly approved.
Leno asked Maher for his take on the violence, saying "You always have an interesting perspective on these things."
MAHER: Well, I mean, first of all, you know, we're gonna have to hear from the NRA a lot about how this shouldn't stop anything that they want to do. First of all, the NRA should just change their name to the Assassin's Lobby, because that's what they are.
(Smattering of applause)
Yeah, you can applaud that. Somebody should applaud that.
I'm so tired of hearing about the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution. If you love guns, just admit it like it's a vice. It's like alcohol or drugs or sex addiction or gambling. It's just a vice. It's something you like. It's not good for you or anybody else. You just like it; but stop the b---s--- about the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution because nobody needs, nobody needs a gun that fires 31 rounds. That's what this guy had, although Sarah Palin needed 5 to shoot that moose that was basically on the end of the couch.
MAHER: There's a much bigger issue which is the psychology of this country which loves guns. It's just a very armed country with a lot of crazy people, which is not a great combination.
And somebody also should tell all these people, these NRA types who think it's great to be armed everywhere - Arizona has one of the loosest gun rules in the country. You can, I think, carry any weapon concealed without a permit. They want every drunk in a bar to be armed in case a fight breaks out.
And these guys always think that, you know, it's great to have a gun, because if some bad stuff goes down, I'll be able to stop the bad guy. This is your fantasy, a--hole. You would never be able to do that. People have to be trained for months and months at a time. They have to really know what's going on to be able to stop something like that. If that really happened, they would probably freeze up and shoot the wrong person. So let's stop that fantasy also.
Video.
Sure. Arizona wants "every drunk in a bar to be armed." That's the plan.
Note how Maher engages in such crass name-calling. "A--hole." How civil of Maher! What a sophisticated level of discourse!
Maher had some words of criticism for the Democrats and Leno's studio audience.
MAHER: And also I think, how about the Democrats reclaiming this issue? This is the problem. I understand that the gun lobby owns the Supreme Court and they own the Republican Party. What's disappointing is that they have cowed the Democratic Party into silence. There should be one party that sticks up for this issue. Not expecting it from this crowd, but some audience somewhere should stick up for this issue.
Next, Leno brought up FOX News and Roger Ailes.
LENO: Now, Roger Ailes said that at FOX they're going to scale back the rhetoric. Do you think this will last for any longer than a week or two?
MAHER: No, because that's the rhetoric they love. The Right-wing loves... the go-to rhetoric for them is 'Wouldn't it be fun to kill the people we disagree with?'
Good Lord. Talk about incendiary rhetoric!
Appropriately, some in the audience objected to Maher's hateful blather.
MAHER: You know, they try to put across this false equivalence... No?
(Audience members shout 'No')
Really? Then, do you read?
(Audience members shout 'Yes')
Have you seen what people have said? Have you seen what Sarah Palin says? You know, she talks about 'Don't retreat, reload.' She says it like a pull-toy that's broken; every five minutes she says this. Michele Bachmann said she wants Minnesotans armed and dangerous. Allen West, a new congressman, said he wants his opponent to be afraid to leave the house. Left-wingers don't talk that way.
They don't? That's completely absurd.
Here's just a few of the terribly irresponsible things said by Leftists, including Obama.
Apparently, Maher has been engaging in some very selective listening.
The guy has no credibility.
MAHER: And also, Left-wingers, even if they do sometimes make a gun analogy or something, their audience isn't hysterical. They're already talking, the Right-wingers, to people who are hysterical and are irrational and are highly-armed to begin with.
Newt Gingrich - and by the way, among the Right-wing douchebags I hate, I hate him the mostest - because, I mean, he says things, he said the Obama administration is as much a threat to us as were the Nazis and the Soviet Union. Now, it's not just ridiculous, but when you, when you characterize the opposition, the political opposition as not just the opposition but the enemy, the Soviet Union and the Nazis were our enemies. Of course, you're gonna have borderline people who go and take this over the line.
So stop telling me that the Left and the Right are both crazy. Yes, there are crazies on the Left, but they're not the same, they're not gun crazy. They're not violent crazy.
Video.
MSNBC has spent days complaining about the rhetoric from the Right, yet NBC airs this crap from Maher?
Maher calls conservatives "hysterical" and irrational." How terribly divisive, not to mention untrue.
As he rants about crazies on the Right, Maher doesn't mention anything about Leftist American terrorists like Bill Ayers or Karl and Dwight Armstrong. They were responsible for killing their fellow Americans, yet Maher pretends they don't exist. And Leno is either too stupid or too brainwashed into a liberal mindset to point out Maher's omissions.
Maher is yapping about the "Right-wing douchebag" that he hates "the mostest." That's certainly not scaling back the rhetoric, NBC.
Maher complains about Gingrich comparing the Obama administration to the Nazis and the Soviet Union, in terms of being a threat to the nation. Did he complain when Dick Durbin uttered his infamous words referencing Nazis and the Soviets and Pol Pot?
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."
Durbin wasn't speaking about a threat to the U.S. and making a comparison. He was actually putting Americans in the same category as "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."
Does Maher consider Durbin to be a "douchebag"? He certainly should if he's to be remotely consistent. Of course, he's not.
How utterly hypocritical and irresponsible on NBC's part to give someone as extreme as Maher a national platform to spew his drivel completely unchallenged!
Disgusting.
_________________
UPDATE: Maher claims, "Left-wingers don't talk that way."
Wrong, Bill. Some of the comments I've received as a result of this post reveal you don't know what you're talking about.
19 comments:
Everything Maher said about our current political discourse was right on. It wasn't hateful or vitriolic for him to point out that most of the violent rhetoric comes from prominent right-wingers, it was simply truthful. You haven't been able to refute Maher's statements on substance, so you've resorted to vague ham-fisted insults. The left-wingers in America are first and foremost, peace loving people. While they may use hyperbole from time to time, their basic arguments rely upon verifiable facts and sound logic.The primary propaganda tool of most right-wingers on the other hand is the classic logical fallacy: Appeal to emotion (usually fear). When this is inadequate, they resort to wrapping themselves in the flag and demonizing those who do not share their point of view as "america-haters" or "enemy combatants" When was the last time Keith Olberman or Michael Moore, or Rachael Maddow incited race-bating hatred or violence against their political opponents?
I don't know why, but I actually expected a little more reasoned intellectual debate from the Tea Party. How pathetic, disgraceful and disappointing.
"' Left-wingers don't talk that way.'...That's completely absurd."
Ya know, you guys are gonna have to make up your minds about us. Are we gun-hating, man-pantless peaceniks, or violent, dangerous, in-you-face bullies. You can't have it both ways.
For as unfortunate as it is that a moron like this is able to get air time on a network that is watched by a lot of people that are not in tune with the debates as we seem to be here, it's still his right to do so just as it's Fox News's right to air its more intelligent discourse. We here need to be carefull not to do the same thing to free speech that the left would like to see. We need to somehow find a way to talk to the same audience that Maher gets on HBO. That aside, when a guy like Bill Maher gets on the Jay Lenno show and opens his mouth, we also need to get to those persons in such an audience that might be swayed into thinking that this rhetoric is right in the first place, in turn making said audience member into another left wing wack job, and prevent them from taking a huge position of political belief without a good base of political principles that, in my opinion, wouldn't have led them to that conclusion (Mahers' rhetoric) in the first place. We need to prevent that person from ever turning on Bill Mahers show without having had them first know that he is an extreemist. He endorses pot smoking and in turn attracts a lot of pot smokers. They're many people in this country that smoke marijuana. It would be foolish to keep critisizing them. Instead, our side should be trying to embrace, not rsisit there existance. These people include a lot of the left that voted Obama in office. We did good in November but that was not a presidential election. We need to, as a republic, warm up to them. It's delusional to think that pot smoking is going away any time soon. Once on our side, they may find themselves. It is in the best interst of national security to have them on our side. They may even find the peace that they have long been looking for in the world by realising that a stable economy and less government regulation is the way there; not anarchy.(To the idiots that may be reading this, less government does not mean anti government). People of the center and those "unaware" on the left (Jay Lenno audience member) need to know that it is the ultimate intention of the left to creat a state of anarchy first and then come in as the hero with the FINAL SOLUTION that would cure it all which "for them" is socialism. In this light, having a few pot smokers around isn't such a bad thing.
Thank You.
I watched this last night and was truly offended. Bill Maher makes no sense and just like other liberals he completely disregards the Constitution and takes the principles it espouses out of context. It was positive though that audience members disagreed with him. Kudos to them. And for my money Jay looked completely uncomfortable.
He endorses pot smoking and in turn attracts a lot of pot smokers. They're many people in this country that smoke marijuana. It would be foolish to keep critisizing them. Instead, our side should be trying to embrace, not rsisit there existance. These people include a lot of the left that voted Obama in office. We did good in November but that was not a presidential election. We need to, as a republic, warm up to them. It's delusional to think that pot smoking is going away any time soon. Once on our side, they may find themselves. It is in the best interst of national security to have them on our side. They may even find the peace that they have long been looking for in the world by realising that a stable economy and less government regulation is the way there; not anarchy.(To the idiots that may be reading this, less government does not mean anti government). People of the center and those "unaware" on the left (Jay Lenno audience member) need to know that it is the ultimate intention of the left to creat a state of anarchy first and then come in as the hero with the FINAL SOLUTION that would cure it all which "for them" is socialism. In this light, having a few pot smokers around isn't such a bad thing.
I was disgusted too. His contempt for the audience too, "Do you read?" What an a-hole.
Dollars to donuts, Maher has an armed security guard. That's OK tho, because, he's not bat-shit crazy.
Bill Maher speaking some sane truth.
"Freedom" Eden? More like Glenn Beck rhetoric that Fox TV would be proud of.
Thanks for airing a non-Jesus toting, sane, non-gun firing human being.
Loving how your criticism of everything he said on Jay Leno isn't refuting his points, its simply just being outraged. hahaha Oh wow
HE'S NOT IN TOUCH WITH REALITY But yea I'm not going to go on more about that, i'll just gasp and go OH LORDIE!! at every statement that he makes that inconveniently attacks my bias.
"Left-wingers don't talk that way." “Yes, there are crazies on the Left, but they're not the same, they're not gun crazy. They're not violent crazy.” Ummm.. really?
From the National Review, “The fundamental problem with this ornate political prurience is that assassination in American history has pretty regularly been the blessèd resort of the Left. Start with Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who murdered the very conservative William McKinley; turn next to Harry Orchard, the union bomber who blew up Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905; turn again to Lee Harvey Oswald, the Marxist who murdered JFK (but whom Oliver Stone tried mightily to redefine as a clandestine conservative); add in Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, who tried to attack Gerald Ford in 1975 on behalf of “clean air, healthy water, and respect for creatures and creation,” and Sara Jane Moore, who fired a .38 revolver at Ford a few weeks after Fromme’s abortive attack because the “government had declared war on the left”; and then top it off with John Hinckley, the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan who claimed Lee Harvey Oswald as his role model, and you begin to get some sense of how closely the profile of the gun-toting lunatic assassin suits the Left’s enragés.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256921/climate-hate-allen-c-guelzo
And this from the same article, “I also seem to remember that the “climate” of nastiness that is supposed to have fostered the Giffords assassination attempt did not spring from the head of the Tea Party. It began long, long ago, sometime between Lyndon Johnson’s anti-Goldwater atom-bomb ads and the election of Richard Nixon, and then accelerated with the election of Ronald Reagan (whom Sam Donaldson badgered at press conferences in a manner unthought-of in the previous history of the Washington press corps). I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania when Reagan was gunned down, and I awoke the next day to find an op-ed column in The Daily Pennsylvanian, written by one Dom Manno, a DP staffer, gloating over the shooting and regretting only that the president had survived. Mr. Manno had to be taken in hand by the Secret Service for a brief lesson about the consequences of encouraging assassins, but the lesson Manno’s column taught me was about the serene sense of immunity he had felt in wishing a conservative president dead. The Left, in other words, never notices when it turns politics or journalism into a free-fire zone. It is only when one of its own gets hit in the process that the nastiness becomes unspeakable -- but it is still never the Left’s fault for having manufactured the ammunition in the first place.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256921/climate-hate-allen-c-guelzo
Sorry, if the whole gun debate were about the constitution and defend one's right to protect themselves from the government, why stop with pea shooters. If I have a right to bear arms damn it, I think it should be perfectly legal to own a want a canon that can fire nuclear tipped shells. After all a pea shooter won't defend you against the US government these days, but nukes are a good deterrent.
So give me what I want! Now!. Because if you can not or will not defend my right to own a weapon that will accomplish in spirit what the second amendment was all about, you can defend your ownership of a pistol or rifle.
Ya know, you guys are gonna have to make up your minds about us. Are we gun-hating, man-pantless peaceniks, or violent, dangerous, in-you-face bullies. You can't have it both ways.
Gee Jim, the left is never short on false dichotomies, are they? Why is it either or? It is nice to think of life in such simplistic terms yet rarely is life so simplistic. Did you happen to catch a glimpse of the G-20 meeting this past summer in Toronto? Molotovs, chaos, and destruction for the FIRST TIME EVER in Toronto with over a thousand arrests. Yes, they were all leftists. What were they so angry about? They wanted simplicity and peace. lmao.
And this gem from "PatrickHenry" (lol):
The left-wingers in America are first and foremost, peace loving people. While they may use hyperbole from time to time, their basic arguments rely upon verifiable facts and sound logic.
See Susan's excerpts from the National Review on those fun loving, peaceful lefties. They used bullets and not hyperbole to make their points. As well, I'm sure when you get together with all your leftist chums, they all seem to be peace loving and the reason is that you ALL AGREE on the bilge you tell yourselves. That is why you fancy yourselves peace loving. However, the problem arises when one actually disagrees with your points of view and then we see the leftist decompensate into the vile, violent, abusive, infantile, and destructive creature that they truly are.
As to your claim that leftists use verifiable facts and sound logic, please point to nations that have succeeded using the ideology of the left. Surely we have a long laundry list of failures including millions of deaths in order to maintain "the peace". But show me one success since you have all these facts and logic on your side.
I have no respect for progressives. Liberals are ok, but progressives are plain nuts. These people are developmentally stunted children in adult bodies. No insight into their hypocrisy and no concept that freedom means FOR ALL and not just for those that THINK they are correct.
"G-20 meeting this past summer in Toronto"
Had to go out of country for examples of libs behaving badly? There's a reason for that. The U.S. is a center right nation. The people you guys love to find new names to insult with -- fascist, commie, progressive, whatehaveyou -- are viewed as quite timid pretty much anywhere else.
"(P)lease point to nations that have succeeded using the ideology of the left."
How about any of our close allies in the western industrialized world. The U.S. lags in many quality of life measures.
"Liberals are ok, but progressives are plain nuts."
I would absolutely LOVE to hear you explain the difference. No cheating now. Off the top of your head.
I completely agree with PatrickHenry.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by all the disingenuous and intellectually dishonest moral and intellectual contortions that so many Conservatives go through to keep believing the inane tripe spewed by the lies of Rush, Hannity, Bill-O and Beck and the unrelenting Hate from Savage.
Thanx for the transcript though.
Had to go out of country for examples of libs behaving badly?
Jim, you're as loony as your picture suggests. The G20 meeting is a meeting that rotates around different cities from the G20 countries, you dolt. It happened to be held this past summer in Toronto. The take home point is that progressive leftists rioted, per usual since they are violent and intolerant. Another glaring point is that Canada may be left of center as a nation, there has never been a violent uprising with burning cars and buildings before. First time ever.
How about any of our close allies in the western industrialized world. The U.S. lags in many quality of life measures.
Which ones, Jim? Are they successful or are they simply redistributing wealth in order to give this appearance of quality of life superiority? I know what the answer is for Canada, do you? You spout bullsh*ite, Jim. One because you have no idea how these countries maintain their social services and two, the US was not founded on equal parts for all. It was individuality. Says so right in the Constitution, Jim.
I would absolutely LOVE to hear you explain the difference. No cheating now. Off the top of your head.
Liberals are people who understand the values of Liberalism. To create social nets for society and a minimum level of existence for its population. These people are also liberal in their thoughts and allow other ideologies to exist and abide by the will of the people. Progressives are intolerant, ignorant, and violent. They are jackbooted Marxists. Know any, Jim?
Know any jackbooted Marxists? Doesn't everyone? They're EVERYWHERE!
Wasn't it the Nazis that wore the jackboots? Oh, I know. Same difference. Nazis were progressives too.
Go back and read your last paragraph again and see if you don't agree with me that it's at least a little funny. You may want to take a refresher course in big "L" Liberalism. Also, take a look at the Milwaukee Socialists as a good example of progressivism from the first half of the last century. You may discover that those terms are more nuanced than you realize.
Oh, and as for quality of life measures, check the Legatum Group's Prosperity Index for 2010: http://www.prosperity.com/. The U.S. ranks 10 overall, behind all those pinko northern European countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Oh, and it's not some lefty organization either. They even use Heritage Foundation figures. I have a particular problem with their health measures; the U.S. places first -- the only study I know of that suggests as much. (see the U.S.'s page here: http://www.prosperity.com/pdf/United%20States.pdf)
"...Fox News's right to air its more intelligent discourse..."
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
How about you start blogging with some factual opinion. You have just put up a transcript of Maher and Leno interview. In between each subject spoken you stop to "debunk" what Maher says. Actually what you did was just spout off a bunch of rhetorical nothing just like you claimed Maher did.
If you are going to try and be a voice then you should be a voice with proof to back up your opinion and be a voice based on facts to correct the errors of others. Posting a link to another blog with some half-assed "left-wing hate speech" is not factual, it just falls into the same category as your blog does: mindless and uninteresting.
I am all for discourse and debate via internet blogging, but if you are going to blog with no depth and no real factual evidence to whatever argument you are trying to conclude then you should just stop writing, the internet doesn't need to be anymore bloated with bullshit than it already is.
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