We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.Pressure was on. Advertisers were out. The show? Cancelled. The Maher? Exhibiting a peculiarly Jewish resilience in the cutthroat world of entertainment, in less then a year, Maher had a deal with HBO for a new weekly series.
The TV promotions for HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher featured a serious Maher championing his new show as a true Truth-Telling alternative. He goes so far as to say, "We're not a nation of rebels, we're a nation of lemmings. We need more rebels who lead by example. I'm one of them." Apparently Jew comics will steal from anyone, even the late Dr. Pierce.
Real Time with Bill Maher premiered Friday, February 21, 2003, and the results could not be more telling.
In the opening monologue of the first episode of his new show, Maher says, "I really feel like I've landed at home here. The great thing about HBO and this show tonight is we are going on the air without commercials or any advertising! How about that?" (Roar of applause.) Punchline: "Just like my old show." (More laughter.)
No doubt unintentionally, this opening joke was pregnant with meaning, foretelling all we were about to see, and demonstrating the limits of what is allowed to be seen. The joke hinges on the contrast between a network like HBO, where absence of advertising revenue allegedly means freedom, and ABC, where absence of advertising revenue means cancellation. When Maher says he feels "at home," the implication is that he is finally in a realm unfettered by advertising concerns, where a bold, brash, truth-telling Jew comic can finally express himself uncensored, no-holds-barred. Unfortunately, it turns out the new show is just like the old show in every way. When the king of the "politically incorrect" is unleashed, what he delivers up is as semitically correct as anything else out there. The guests he features: Pro-Israel Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R. California), pro-black author Michael Eric Dyson ("Why I Love Black Women"), pro-Jewish neocon author Ann Coulter ("Slander"), and Zionist Jew comic Larry Miller. The comic featured in the weekly dose of what Maher hails as "completely uncensored, cutting-edge comedy"? Jewess Sarah Silverman. The subject of more than half of her "too radical for the mainstream" routine? Jews, jewishness and -- drum roll please -- the Holocaust. The butt of a slew of her jokes? Nazis, racists, and of course Hitler.
Thanks, Bill Maher, for offering the world a real alternative.
VICTOR WOLZEK