Nope, Bill Maher is not my messiah, but I suspect Maher is probably off the adulation charts on this site. If you didn't know how he feels about perfection, go see the movie Religulous; it came and went fast, better rent it. Or just consider how he feels about the simple idea of any dummy who wears a football jersey with a super star's name and number on their back.
Everybody says he’s a genius. As a Republican, albeit a poor one, (an atheist too by the way) I’ll give Maher his due. He is a genius; but nobody is perfect. And as far as I’m aware he’s not in a class yet, nor would he claim to be, with humanitarian entertainers like the late great Paul Newman; so let’s not get carried away with this guy. Bill Maher is a comedian and business man first and last (if you know what I mean, I suspect some won't).
Of course Maher was hitting soft balls on Larry King last night,and Religulous and football jerseys came up, and that’s why I’m writing this and that’s why your now wondering, whoa, who the hell is this interloper?
There were chinks in his rant last night, yes a rant about awful Republicans; even if he is perfectly calm while excoriating us rich Republicans, (and like I said, a more then few ordinary, struggling ones like me.) As I remember, when a caller asked Maher how he felt about cut backs in the economic stimulus package for funding of the arts, (maybe it was the National Endowment to the Arts, and it’s probably a reduction in the increase in the funding), Maher responded by saying the caller is making assumptions about him, and Maher pointed out that he’s never been in favor of government assistance for artists. I think he said "that’s not the purview of the federal government." He recalled that he didn’t need it as a fledgling comedian.
That’s a very conservative stance, and one I don’t necessarily share by the way. But if that’s the direction where the great mind of Maher is going, then it’s a very slippery slope indeed. He came up the hard way! Whaaah! I hear that a lot from my fellow Republicans.
Maher also latched on to the often shown Obama clip, where the President is jiving Republicans, you’ve seen it; where he says the stimulus plan, duh, is what it implies, spending- stimulus, stimulus- spending; like they’re somehow synonymous. That it’s not loaded with pork. Some of us in the real world would question that.
Put aside things like 20 million dollars in Nancy Pelosi’s district to study the "salt marsh mouse" (or was it frog); if billions in stimulus are going to reimburse bankrupt states to protect the status quo of teachers, police, etc. or better teacher pensions, police pensions etc., some of us would at least like to hear lip service to the idea of asking public unions to be willing to accept some kind of pain.
You know I usually, I always, use the privilege of posting on this site to discuss Mexico and immigration reform in a sometimes deliberately rambling style, (check it out, I'm asking for more trouble), but my attacking the public sector unions is real heresy and I should be using a pseudonym like everyone else. And I have one in mind, Captain Kirk, but let me finish this death wish (not by you, but God forbid someone where I live who works for.....)by remembering back a few months ago, when the state employees in my beloved home state of *** ****** were asked to make a small sacrifice and they went ballistic. They were asked to give up the perk of free calendars every year. The rationale being that New Jersey is broke and that modern technology made calendars expendable anyway, why not save a few hundred thousand dollars?
Adios from a humble Republican, and as always I’m looking for one reporter to accompany me to my friend’s hometown in Mexico, room and board provided. (See this is how I always get in trouble)
Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones.
But something is happening
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ? Bob Dylan