I have a confession to make: I like Bill Maher.
Kind of a lot.
For a long time I resisted putting this in writing, or saying it out loud. (My wife, for one, can’t stand him and proceeds to remind me of this whenever his name comes up.) It’s not that I disagreed with the majority of Maher’s political opinions but there was also a part of me that recognized that he was a little glib . . . a little too pleased with himself . . . a little condescending to those he viewed as stupid. Which was everybody.
And yet every Friday night I find myself staying awake to watch his HBO show, “Real Time.”
His new book, “What This Comedian Said Will Shock You” (Simon & Schuster, $30), is a compilation of Maher’s “New Rules” monologues over the last few years (although it’s recent enough that he has a couple of commentaries on Israel’s war in Gaza). For fans, the book is a welcome reminder of Maher’s funniness, his intelligence, his sanity — as well as the smugness and self-regard that rub so many people the wrong way.
The book’s publisher describes “New Rules” as Maher’s weekly “sermon” — and I wasn’t sure whether this was meant ironically. (I think so.) Because Maher’s contempt for religion is one of his few opinions that has remained largely unchanged since he started at HBO two-plus decades ago. (Maher was raised Catholic but has described himself as agnostic, atheist and even “apatheist” over the years).
Still, putting Maher’s book in ecclesiastical tones wouldn’t entirely be a mischaracterization. For the last 10 minutes of every show he looks straight into the camera and he talks, almost prophetically — about Republicans, Democrats, college students, the environment, cell phones, healthcare, pot, cancel culture, Facebook . . . The list goes on and on.
Maher’s observations are often as cutting as they’re well-written—in describing the oversensitivity of Gen Z he employs the term “emotional hemophiliacs.” Likewise, Paris Hilton is “the face that launched a thousand little s–ts.” These sermons, if that’s what they are, come from a place of wit and education and work well bundled together as a book.
What’s unusual about Maher is that before these sermons — which are delivered with the moral poise and conviction of a minister who knows his opponents are hell bound — is that they stand somewhat in contrast to the rest of the show, where Maher is surprisingly open-minded and willing to entertain guests he loathes and mercilessly ridicules.
Maher has spent many years taunting the junior senator from Texas on his show saying things like: “Ted Cruz is immune to insults because he has learned to live in a world where everyone, everywhere has always hated him. Vaudevillians used to say they were born in a trunk — Ted was born stuffed in a locker.”
But he was willing to book Cruz as a guest on “Real Time” and sparred with him civilly.
One sees the tension between the glib, smart-ass comedian and the reasonable opinionista play out in the pages of his book.
At “Trump rallies . . . liberals are described as weak, lame, coddling, over-sensitive and limp-dicked,” Maher writes. “Which are strong words coming from a bunch of mouth breathers, s–tkickers, knuckle draggers, Bible thumpers, sister f–kers and rubes.”
Ouch.
And then the very next paragraph:
“Yes, I’ve been guilty of saying things like that, but I’m going to try to stop… Telling people you think they’re irredeemable and deplorable is what makes them say, ‘You know what? I’d rather side with Russia than you.’ ”
Which would be an admirable sentiment if he didn’t fail so often in this respect.
“I used to say our elections went on far too long,” Maher writes, “but you know what? No. Americans are dumb; they need the extra time.”
In recent years, Maher might have shown a greater willingness to give a hearing to conservatives than he is to progressives.
In the old days his contempt for conservatives (particularly George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) was bottomless, and he’s certainly not shy in his loathing for Donald Trump. As the left grew more dour and humorless, Maher has come to turn his ridicule on them. (Something he happily cops to here.) And as a somnolent member of the Democratic Party, readers like this one are glad someone on my side says it as well as Maher does.
“Several universities in recent years have . . . compiled lists of terms we should be warned about or get rid of altogether including: ‘Virgin,’” Maher writes. “ ‘Virgin’? We can’t say ‘virgin’? As opposed to what — ‘person experiencing not getting laid’?”
To both sides, Maher is standing athwart history, yelling, “Get over yourselves.”
None of which is to say that Maher’s book will win him converts, or that he doesn’t succumb to the impulse to dismiss those who don’t agree with hims. (See examples above.) And Maher isn’t above the Catskills comedy of yesteryear.
“If there’s one place God shouldn’t be, it’s on money,” he writes. “Why? Because one is a supreme, all-powerful entity that Americans worship above all else. And the other is God.”
Ah, he was talking about money!
It’s a setup that Maher favors a lot in his comedy (so much so that I was waiting for it in his book and I’m grateful he only does it once), but this is largely a throwback from a comic who came of age when the comedians at the clubs were a lot shtickier, and it didn’t induce quite so big an eye-roll.
For some of us, this is one of the reasons we like him. I happen to like a cheap knee-slapper. And, shared political opinions aside, that’s the best reason to read this book: Maher is funny.
Bill Maher’s own assessment of himself as a comedian versus an opinion maker has long been a needle that he has (perhaps hopelessly) tried to thread. But, in the end, he’s not asking for your vote, or anything else. It’s why accusations of glibness are besides the point when it comes to Maher.
Is he self satisfied and dismissive? Sure. But this has the benefit of intellectual clarity. Maher is right that not all points of view are equally valid. Some arguments are a lot more serious than others. So many of the shibboleths of modern American culture are — not to put too fine a point on it — ridiculous. And he’s willing to say it here.
“The people who can’t take a joke now aren’t old ladies in the Bible Belt,” he writes, “they’re Gen Z at elite colleges. Colleges, where comedy goes to die. Kids used to go to college and lose their virginity—now they go and lose their sense of humor.”
All of which might be true—and even though this is not the kind of statement intended to persuade anyone of anything, there’s nothing wrong with that. Maher has roundly declared his first and foremost allegiance to comedy, and part of the job description is to point at the latest mass piety and say: “You’re full of it.”
