He's Back

In anticipation of Real Time's return tonight (not that I'll be able to stay awake long enough to see it), Bill Maher was interviewed by Joan Walsh at Salon, Real talk with Bill Maher. During his 13 week break in the Show, Maher has been busy:

[He's been] working on a documentary on religion with "Seinfeld" creator and "Borat" director Larry Charles, titled "A Spiritual Journey." No, he hasn't found religion; Maher will be spoofing it, although he insists he's not an atheist. "Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need. But I'm not an atheist, no," he told the Onion AV Club in a 2002 interview. "I believe there's some force. If you want to call it God. I don't believe God is a single parent who writes books." (Emphasis added)

I think that's the best quote against organized religion that I've heard in a long while. That and a variation of the old Woody Allen line -- who'd want to be in the same club with the likes of William Donohue and his ilk.

The interview is interesting, touching on the issues that have arisen while he's been away, such as the new Democratic Congress, the "Surge," and Maher's view of the various candidates for President. He's pretty much right on the money.

Maher speaking about the flak he took after he challenged Bush's calling the 9/11 hijackers cowardly:

This was our little time of trauma. We were angry. The president didn't focus that anger. He did not channel that anger anywhere it could have done some good. If he had made a speech and said, "You're angry at these people? Well, these are the people who are filling your cars with the substance that funds their terrorist activities," you could have passed a pretty comprehensive energy reform bill, just the way Reagan, after he was shot, could have passed significant gun control legislation. Who could have challenged the president, as he was sitting in the hospital with a bullet an inch away from his heart, on gun control? Even the NRA would not have dared to speak too loudly about that. But he let that moment pass. Now, LBJ, after Kennedy was shot, he pushed through that civil rights legislation. That probably would have been a lot more difficult to pass if it had not been over the body of our slain president.

As I think many people have pointed out, in Chinese the character for tragedy is the same one for opportunity. And there are opportunities in tragedy. So it's sort of a double tragedy when we let them pass.

Maher on the Democrats:

And the reason why the Democrats won't cut the money is that they're always afraid how something will look. In my view, the fatal flaw of the Democrats is not having confidence in their own ability to make a case, to say, "We're not against the troops when we're cutting the money. Of course we're not going to abandon them on the battlefield with no money and no weapons." It's not that hard a case to make, to decouple the idea of cutting funding from the idea of abandoning the troops.

* * * *

You'd think they would have learned how to win a national election. But they keep making the same mistakes over and over. John Kerry ran pretty much the same campaign that Al Gore did in 2000, which said to the American people, "Look, I'm not going to really outline how different I am from this guy, because I'm afraid there are some things about his positions you like. So I'll just trust that when you get into the voting booth you'll say, 'Well, the one guy is a retard. It's a no-brainer, I'll vote for the other guy.' "

John Edwards will be one of his guests tonight. Both the article and his show are worth checking out.

Tags: Bill Maher, Real Time