Bill Maher

There are times when I find his show excruciatingly idiotic, and rightly so. I've tuned in over the years (on both his ABC late night show and his new HBO show) and have shook my head with disbelief at the vacuousness of the guests, not to mention Maher's insipid, boilerplate humor. However, the last two times that I've watched Maher's HBO show (because I'm a glutton for punishment, natch), the obligatory conservative/human sacrifice guests have not only held their own against stacked odds (Maher's typical formula is to stack the guest panel with two liberals, one conservative, and a highly left-wing cheering section/audience, thus ensuring that any points the guest conservative/dissenter makes gets drowned out and sufficiently mocked), they've actually managed to clean the clocks of Maher, the audience, and the left-wing guests. Two weeks ago James Glassman, who runs the blog TechCentralStation and is a trained economist and a libertarian, managed to make Maher, journalist Cynthia Tucker, and the no longer relevant George Carlin look positively foolish. As an added bonus, Kurt Vonnegut managed to make himself look like a doddering old crank. (This he did unassissted.) Glassman punctured one lefty canard emanating from Maher's and Carlin's mouth after another. So good was Glassman that Maher actually "shushed" his audience so that Glassman could get his point across uninterrupted. Conversely, Carlin sagged back on his tired old left-wing bromides like, "Elections and politicians are in place in order to give Americans the illusion that they have freedom of choice." Sure George....nice to see the recovery is going well. No more booze and sedatives in his life, thank you.

Even better than the Glassman episode was last night's episode, which pitted the brilliant Christopher Hitchens against George Galloway, British MP and apologist for Islamic extremism. (Islamic extremism....what a redundant phrase.) Hitchens is no conservative, but he is one of the sharpest intellectuals in the world, and yet again, the lefties got their clocks cleaned. Galloway's contention that British and American actions in the middle east have produced "10,000 more bin Ladens" (how do these people quantify that number?) was met with Hitchens rightly pointing out that American shipping in the Mediterranean was raided by the North African muslims (sorry, moslems) from 1785 to 1815, with no diplomatic justification. The reasoning of the Dey of Algiers, who was one of the chief instigators of this calumny, gave? The Koran. (Color me shocked!) So, here's what it boils down to: do nothing and left the Islamists have their way with us because, hey, they're mad at us! Or respond forcefully, but, oh no, they'll really get mad at us! That's the left-wing position articulated by Galloway and Maher, consciously or not. Galloway also went on to say that Cuban exiles on the coast of Florida were also terrorists, because they were plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro since 1959, and yet America was okay with them. Amazing.

I just wanted to post these observations on Maher's show because they're indicative of the fact that, when confronted with actual historical fact and measured reasoning, the left cannot win, particularly in regards to their myopic defense of an Islamic ideology which makes American conservativism seem like radical libertarianism. (Quiz: who do you think radical feminist Eve Ensler would say is more dangerous to the universal rights of women: Ayatollah Khamenei or George Bush? Discuss your answers amongst yourselves.) This is why they're so shrill, angry, and regurgitate the same soundbytes (how many times does the "Bush is stupid!" joke have to be regurgitated before it ceases being remotely amusing or even remotely interesting? Ad infinitum, I would imagine the answer would be...) in lieu of actual reasoned thought. Disagree with them...and you're a fascist!!!!

(Yawn.)