This is pretty rich all the way around:
A congressman says comedian Bill Maher’s comment that the U.S. military has already recruited all the “low-lying fruit” is possibly treasonous and at least grounds to cancel the show.
Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., takes issue with remarks on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, first aired May 13, in which Maher points out the Army missed its recruiting goal by 42 percent in April.
“More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club,” Maher said. “We’ve done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies.”
Army Reserve Pfc. England was accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
“I think it borders on treason,” Bachus said. “In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.”
In a statement released Monday night, Maher defended his support for the American armed forces.
Offensive and obnoxious, yes. Treason or borderline treason, not even close. Good luck getting him off the air- he is on HBO.
Amen.
*** Update ***
Bill defends himself.
M. Scott Eiland
Bill Maher is a walking occasion for outrage–and has been ever since he suggested that being an unpaid hooker for the Bubba-in-Chief was something that a young woman should be proud of–but this seems like a trivial thing to get worked up about. Maher is an idiot: this statement is more evidence of that, but not of much more.
the talking dog
As I recall, Bill Maher lost his ABC gig (for a time, and then ultimately) for a rather intemperate remark he made after 9-11 involving, IIRC involving the purported “courage” of the 9-11 hijackers, and he made some hand motion as to the planes crashing into the towers (which I happen to have heard from my office window, across the street from the WTC).
So… here we go again. Well, it’s Bill’s absolute constitutional right to express his opinion. It’s easy enough to say that mishandling of our reserve system and abuse of “stop-loss” and similar provisions led directly to easily foreseeable long term recruiting problems. Indeed, go ahead and criticize, and say that better care should have been taken to avoid having short term manpower needs override the overall health of the reserve system (and active duty levels).
Heck, go further and question why something like 50% of our COMBAT capability in Iraq is handled by RESERVISTS in the first place. Feel free to question why– even in a time of war– the Bush Administration has not done things much differently on this manpower allocation score from what the Clinton Administration was doing.
All fair questions.
Of course, instead, Bill Maher still shoots his mouth off. Pfc. England is a troubling case, and, frankly, is just not the appropriate punchline for the joke Maher was going to tell. (Hasn’t West Virginia been through enough with this war?)
TREASON? TREASON? I would say that Congressman Bacchus’s attempts to resurrect the old Alien and Sedition Act comes much closer to something grossly unAmerican and “treasonous” in a rhetorical sense than any unfunny
joke that a smug (and unfunny) t.v. comedian is trying to say.
What’s “treasonous”? That Maher is pointing out that our military may be close to critical manpower shortages, at least in some areas? I would say that efforts to SUPPRESS THAT knowledge from the AMerican people– thereby making SOLVING THE PROBLEM more difficult are the realm of treason. Congressman, J’accuse…
Jorge
This is probably an exploratory remark for the Radical Clerics in the US congress who are looking to get the FCC into cable TV. Let’s just hope Bachus never sees the Da Ali G show.
You know, the more I hear about incidents like this, the less absurd statements about the Taliban wing of American politics seem.
Jeff
I think Maher is a blithering idiot, but I give him credit for having the far-right pretty well figured out.
He knows if he says something stupid enough, some right-winger–in this case that stupid congressman–is gonna totally over-react and Maher is gonna end up getting far more attention than someone of his limited talent and intellect deserves.
Zeke
I’m sure Bill Maher is laughing at Bachus, all the way to the bank!!! He’s increased Maher’s viewers at least 10 fold! I don’t agree with most of what Bill Maher says, but you have to defend his right to say it!!! Give me a freakin break, it’s HBO!!!!!Maybe someone should introduce Bachus to one of those new fangled pieces of techmology (as Ali G says!). They’re fairly inexpensive and easy to use. They’re called REMOTE CONTROLS!!!! Amazingly, they have a feature that allows you, with one click, to chage the channel!! Obviously, Mr Bachus is unaware of this high tech gizmo!! Think he’s that dense when it comes to Bo Bice??
Zeke
I’m sure Bill Maher is laughing at Bachus, all the way to the bank!!! He’s increased Maher’s viewers at least 10 fold! I don’t agree with most of what Bill Maher says, but you have to defend his right to say it!!! Give me a freakin break, it’s HBO!!!!!Maybe someone should introduce Bachus to one of those new fangled pieces of techmology (as Ali G says!). They’re fairly inexpensive and easy to use. They’re called REMOTE CONTROLS!!!! Amazingly, they have a feature that allows you, with one click, to chage the channel!! Obviously, Mr Bachus is unaware of this high tech gizmo!! Think he’s that dense when it comes to Bo Bice??
over it
I dunno…..I thought it was kinda funny.
If every comedian that offended someone was pulled of the air….there would be a lot less laughter in TV land.
ppgaz
Maher is the best, sharpest, wittiest and most accurate of the Bush regime tormentors. I pay for HBO solely for the purpose of getting that type of programming.
Treason? Start with GW Bush, who ginned up a war of opportunity and choice by selling it as a response to a nonexistent, immediate threat to this country. Every death in that war is on his hands AFAIC. A far worse crime than telling a joke on a cable comedy show. But of course, not in the bizarro world of the right, where up is down and black is white.
Maher is the only guy on television who had the guts to speak the truth about this stupid war from the get-go.
Offensive and obnoxious? I’ll trade your Bill Maher card for my George Bush “Mission Accomplished” card. Mission accomplished — arguably the most despicable and insulting charade ever carried out by an American president. Your former alcoholic, “I flew fighters in the Air National Guard, and I enjoyed it” piece of dirt, against my in-your-face comedian.
Straight up trade. Best deal you will get today.
Gary Farber
John, note also Pat Buchanan’s rant here. Sedition by Newsweek! Note McLaughlin’s response. (Who would have thought, twenty or thirty years ago, that Father John, the guy who advised Nixon to never resign, would wind up a voice of sanity?)
Non-Fat Latte Liberal
First, I can’t beleive I’m actually defending Bill Maher. He’s egregiously wrong about everything. Except one thing.
Why is it hard to admit that the 9-11 hijackers had courage? I think what they did was attrocious, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t take courage. A coward either foes the easy thing. 9-11, despite the numerous security laspes on our part was not easy.
Similarly robbing a bank takes courage. Or any other depicable act that puts the offender at great risk. Doing something that requires courage is no tthe same as doing something that is right.
Oh and just to be clear, this isn’t an anti war blurb, I’m strongly pro Iraq War. Just a semantic point.
Now back to bashing Maher. I’ll start:
Low lying fruit is just designed to get a rise and it did. Maher rhetoric is just that rhetoric. He’s a classic sophist. Once he gets your blood boiling, he’s done.
Jay C
It’s not exactly a brilliant insight to note that Bill Maher is often quite unfunny in his comments (ought to be a problem for a professional comedian, but there you go….), and has a tendency to blather inappropriate quips re political matters, but “treason”? C’mon: if a Pentagon spokesman had said something like “we’ve already picked the low-hanging fruit” (the correct term, not “low-lying” – Maher is an idiot) in relation to Army recruiting problems, no one would think twice about it. But let Bill Maher say on TV…… Rep. Bachus really ought to get on (or stay on) some meds… why does the “R-Ala” after his name come as NO surprise at all?
wild bird
Bill mahaer just your typical seweage spewing foul mouthed comedians who should go tell his dirty jokes in the bathroon where he can get his mouth washed out with soap like IRISH SPRING
Oberon
I don’t want to sound like a paranoid moonbat over here, but shouldn’t it scare more people that an elected official — not the usual wingnuts, but an actual elected member of Congress with the power to propose legislation –says that a joke about the military “borders on treason”?
People get put to DEATH for treason.
The judiciary protects free speech, but if the wingnut right ever starts putting judges on the bench, I’ll start getting nervous…wait a minute…
M. Scott Eiland
People get put to DEATH for treason.
Sadly, not so much these days; after all, Aldrich Ames and Jane Fonda are still breathing.
RW
Oberon,
Yes, it was atrocious for Baucus to say that. How ya doin’? Send me an e-mail w/an update on your business.
Three funny things about Maher:
1) it’s always hilarious to see a Nader voter pontificate about whether or not the duly elected majority party is starting to delve outside of the mainstream. A Nader voter!
2) I get a chuckle every time I hear the “I’m a libertarian” thing from him. He wants his drugs, hookers & isn’t a pacifist but otherwise he’s indistinguishable politically from Barbara Lee. Every time he uses that line I burst out laughing.
3) His show is the place for gay bashing. Oh, he supports gay rights, but every Republican, every conservative or every person who disagrees with him is a closet fag compensating for a small penis. Think I’m overreacting? Watch a show and see how many gay jokes he throws out in a manner as to feminize the target of the joke.
But, for those saying that this is great publicity for Maher….er, no. Conventional wisdom is that all publicity is good publicity for a public person, especially an entertainer. Tell that to John Rocker, the Dixie Chicks or Hugh Grant. Maher has now marginalized himself as chief comedian for the far (very far) left. Which is fine, if that’s your niche. I guess he’s a good supplement for Ann Coulter, who is the comedic writer/pundit for the right. A good portion of the country no longer cares for his drive-by sort of humor, which is why he couldn’t make it on network television — his ratings were in the crapper.
Jon H
“Let’s just hope Bachus never sees the Da Ali G show.”
Yeah. Because that’ll make it even funnier when Bachus grants Ali G. an interview.
Far North
One of my favorite line from Maher was when he said that he’s been the only one fired over 9/11.
Think about all the early warning signs that we missed, think about statements like, “nobody ever imagined that terrorists would fly planes into building”, think about the title of the PDB “bin Laden determined to strike inside US”.
Our government failed us. And Maher was the only one fired over 9/11.
Far North
One of my favorite line from Maher was when he said that he’s been the only one fired over 9/11.
Think about all the early warning signs that we missed, think about statements like, “nobody ever imagined that terrorists would fly planes into building”, think about the title of the PDB “bin Laden determined to strike inside US”.
Our government failed us. And Maher was the only one fired over 9/11.
ppgaz
Let’s see … we KEEP a president who used misdirected 9-11 outrage and fear of nonexistent nuclear weapon initiatives to push a war of opportunity and choice, and smirked his way through the aftermath, tried to prevent an investigation of the 9-11 tragedy, pretended to be in support when the investigation went ahead anyway, follows a 20+ year old rightwing thinktank script aimed openly at destroying the Social Security system and calls it ‘saving the system’, sets in motion a taxation and budgeting scheme that will bankrupt the country in 30 years or less, and then refers to the bonds that represent the Social Security Trust Fund as “just IOUs in file boxes”, sums up his entire military service record by saying “I flew fighters in the Air National Guard, and enjoyed it” and “I received an honorable discharge, which proves that my service was honorable,” suggests, after no WMD could be found in Iraq, that they “could have been moved to another country” ….
We KEEP this guy, but we want to GET RID of a comedian on HBO?
Right. Got it.
Jesus H. Christ, give me a break.
Lee
Ppjiz: your humor is in line with bill maher. i rather think your insult of our troops is pretty sad also: “pay for HBO solely for the purpose of getting that type of programming”. excellent. just excellent. keep your lib insults of bush the military coming. very original humor.
JPS
Non-Fat Latte Liberal,
First, let me salute you on your chosen nickname. Now then–you wrote:
“Why is it hard to admit that the 9-11 hijackers had courage? I think what they did was attrocious, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t take courage. A coward either foes the easy thing. 9-11, despite the numerous security laspes on our part was not easy. ”
I agree with you that not every atrocity is by definition cowardly. An atrocity may be loathsome, yet require a certain deranged courage. A commenter who makes that distinction isn’t necessarily expressing admiration for the act or the perpetrators. One could be making it in the spirit of, “The enemy’s got guts, dammit, and that makes him all the more dangerous.”
So Maher’s demur, on the hijackers’ cowardice, isn’t wrong just because we loathe them and what they did. Here, not that you asked, is why I disagree with Maher and, respectfully, you: Their cowardice outweighed their courage by a long shot.
They had chosen their own deaths, planned them, had plenty of time to come to grips with the fact. The passengers were plunged into a nightmare beyond what any of them could have imagined beyond the palest, remotest abstraction.
Once the shock of what was happening began to subside, the calmer ones would have remembered, from so many examples in the past, that the thing you do in a hijacking is to cooperate and everything will be fine.
So while in the larger sense the hijackers took on the most powerful nation in the world, in the tactical sense they used the advantages of surprise, shock and brutality against vulnerable people in an exceedingly poor position to put up a fight. I’ll save the word “courage” for the ones who did so anyway.
The reaction to Maher’s comment may not have been exactly fair, but in more or less the same breath he went on to call our pilots cowards, for dropping bombs in the Balkans from 15,000 feet. That guaranteed a lot of anger, and only as a purely intellectual exercise can I sympathize with him even slightly for the drubbing he underwent as a result.
Of course, as the talking dog wrote, it’s his absolute right to say things like that. But it’s mine to conclude he’s an asshole for them and, if I’d ever been a fan, to stop watching him. Which of course makes him a free-speech martyr, and people like me terribly “intolerant.”
SheRa
Bill Maher’s commentary made sense. His point–taken out of context here–is that there are people who love to jawbone about how they love the troops and support the war, but don’t do anything more than get one of those idiotic bumper stickers. You love this stupid war, go fight it, Patriot! And Lynndie England IS low-hanging fruit. This is not to say that all soldiers are idiots. But haven’t we all read the recent articles about how recruiters are getting desperate to get anyone who has a pulse to sign up to fight in this fiasco (I mean, glorious escapade in which we are winning more each and every day as proven by the fact that suicide bombers are killing our soldiers in droves). Why anybody thinks it’s fair to take a couple of sentences out of Maher’s rant–and let’s face it, if Lynndie England isn’t low hanging fruit, who fucking is?–and leave out the point, well, I just don’t know what.
ppgaz
In case you hadn’t noticed, Lee (Rove?), you are visiting a blog written by a responsible and intelligent conservative, who right now doesn’t have a lot of respect for the way your rightwing idiot friends are behaving.
George Bush is putting a major, major dent in good conservatism. It will take a long time for responsible conservatism to recover from the debacle of this man’s leadership. A long time.
Mind you, as I’ve said — here — before, responsible conservatism is good for this country, just as I think responsible liberalism is good for the country. The two complement each other and can produce good things.
But what you have right now is not responsible … anything. What you have right now is extremism, the tail wagging the dog of Republican elected officials. And it’s ugly, butt ugly.
I’m torn between trying to straighten the Republicans out, for the good of the country, or just letting them sink to lower and lower levels of idiocy. Which I assure you, they will do, left to their own egocentric devices.
It’s too bad, because when they start to drive away good people like John Cole …. that’s bad. Very bad. For your side, and for the United States.
syn
What is even funnier than the comedian himself are those extremists who believe that Bill Maher is actually a news anchor and repeat ad nauseum his out of reality-based facts. Maher must be pissed that so many idiots are selling his act.
That said, he’s a fucking entertainer for crying out loud!
syn
Okay, Islamofascism has been waging war against America and the west for a quarter of a century yet people still believe it all started on 9/11/01. Oh, and poor Bill Maher was fired
Ya know John, this is why mixing entertainment with serious issue like fighting against radical Islamic Fascism can cause serious mental problems among the masses. We must all give great thanks to our distinquished comedian for making such a mess of people’s minds.
TJ Jackson
I can see Maher’s good judgement and tase is matched only but that of his fans. Water seeks its own level. But then again Maher seeks his audience amongst the low branches.
Andrei
“What is even funnier than the comedian himself are those extremists who believe that Bill Maher is actually a news anchor and repeat ad nauseum his out of reality-based facts.”
Please point us to to the people who think Bill Maher — or for that matter, John Stewart — are anything but comedians.
Just because it spews forth from your mouth does not make it true.
Jorge
Does anyone criticising Maher actually watch his show?
Here are some of the guests he had on this season: Norm Coleman, R-MN, Andrew Sullivan, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R), Jeff Gannon, Joe Scarborough, Alan Simpson, David Frum, Richard Perle, Joe Watkins, Bill O’Reilly, Frank Murkowski, Ileana Ross-Lehtinen, Christie Whitman and Bernadine Healy.
In other words, Maher has people on his show ever week who call him out and unlike in other such shows, they are encouraged to disagree with him.
Non-Fat Latte Liberal
JPS,
Sounds like we agree more than we disagree. Maher gets to say what he wants, Maher is an idiot, and haveing courage doesn’t mean doing something good.
Alas, our disageement is not very interesting either. I think your reasoning is good and it exposes an assumption of mine I didn’t realize I’d made: I think the hijackers are crazy. That’s simply the only way I can account for them being anything like the same animal as myself. So, as a group of Don Quioxtes attacking windmills, they had courage. Don quioxte attacked innocents and attacking innocents is cowardly, I agree, but he thought he was attacking evil knoghts so he was not cowardly, although he commited cowardly acts. Am I making any sense at this point?
Cheers, though, good argument.
JPS
Thanks, Non-Fat Latte Liberal. We still disagree in part, but I think it’s on the level of an emotional reaction put into words, rather than a provable argument.
In any case, your points are reasonable and well-taken, and I think you do make sense, so, cheers back.