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Love him or hate him, Bill Maher is a man on a mission. Maher, who hit hard on the big screen last year with the audacious critique of organized religion, “Religulous,” has just completed the seventh season of his HBO series, the political-humor-driven talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Conservatives call for his head, and even President Barack Obama — whom Maher generally supports — finds himself in the crosshairs of the comic’s verbal assault. No one is safe. And all the verbal carnage, Maher assures, is for a greater cause.
Q: Are the American people really as stupid as you say?
A: It’s not getting any better for the American people. It seems to be getting worse. That’s predictable; education is a cycle. Stupidity breeds more stupidity. The teachers don’t know anything. What are the kids going to learn with a horrible education system?
Q: You’ve received some recent criticism for calling out President Barack Obama, specifically about health care. Has the negative backlash first directed at you changed?
A: People are sort of catching on to that. I was saying that a few months ago and getting on Obama’s case, and I was getting booed by my audience. They’re not booing anymore.
I was out last night at the HBO party, these are liberals, I imagine, and a lot of people came up to me and said, “Keep giving it to the president.”
I said something recently about how the president should stop trying to placate the crazies and the right wing and the Republicans and stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who are not insane and stand up for the people who actually voted for you. That hit a real nerve. I can tell on a sort of anecdotal basis, and from the reaction of the studio audience when we did the show, it’s really shifted.
People do not want to be disillusioned by the new president. The liberals felt, finally, this is our time. Now they’re worried. Now what they see is more business as usual. We all want to give him the benefit of the doubt, we know it’s a tough job and he inherited a mess, but at the end of the day, is it really change we can believe in when there’s no public options and Wall Street reform has no teeth in it? It really looks a lot like we just changed the color.
Q: It seems that the country’s youths have been pretty quiet. Do you see this changing?
A: Yeah, they don’t seem to be rising up. It takes the youth, really; they’re the ones that should have the energy, it shouldn’t be the old geezers, but the signs are very worrying. Half of them, apparently, don’t believe in global warming. They think it’s a hoax, which is more of that stupid, stick-their-head-in-the-sand attitude. Where is the outrage at the generations that have preceded them spending all the money? But the cynicism is so deep and so ingrained; I guess no one feels they can do anything. Even when (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke said the recession was over ... you think that would have been a bigger boom somewhere, but it seems we just take everything in stride.
Q: The news media follow and report on everything. At the same time, it seems most entertainers are not saying much or their record labels and publicists keep them from saying anything real. Your recent Jay-Z interview dealt with this.
A: There’s more attention paid to entertainers than ever and less that they have to say. Not that entertainers were ever a great beacon of knowledge to begin with, but at least when the Beatles were the leaders of the culture, they had a message. It was brief; it wasn’t terribly complicated. “Give Peace a Chance.” “All You Need is Love.” But at least they were trying. At least they had grown.
What is Kanye West’s message? Like most rap, “I am the greatest person ever and you’re not.” I used to call it affirmative action for the ego.
It’s understandable why a minority that was treated as badly as blacks in this country have been for so long would, when they finally found themselves on top, brag about it and want to shout from the rooftops.
But, again, it has been 30 years now. All I’m saying, as a fan, is I’m tired of the same song for 30 years. Can’t we change the message a little? You’ve arrived. You have a black president. Every white guy in a commercial doesn’t have to be the idiot and every black guy in a rap song doesn’t have to be God’s gift to the world.
Q: Your thoughts on marriage?
A: I’m against it as an institution, but I know it does work for a certain percentage of people. I ... would guess maybe about one or two out of five men is suited for marriage and probably four out of five women are better at marriage than being single and would like to be married.
But let’s be honest, half the marriages end in divorce. For me, it’s never made much sense. I have a girlfriend now, and I’m not interested in anyone else, but I still wouldn’t want to bring the federal and state government into my life.
