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    A Night With Bill Maher


    Created on Monday, April 26, 2010        Bookmark and Share

    Home -> Blog -> 2010 -> April


    Bill Maher visited the University of Buffalo on Saturday night and yours truly had a ducat to the show.

    Now some of you might find it curious that I went to see Bill Maher. After all, I am neither a liberal or a democrat (nor a member of any other party, for that matter). I'll give two reasons for this. One, while Maher shares mostly different views than me I feel that at heart he is a humanist. Unlike the talking heads that you'll see on MSNBC or Fox, I believe that Maher's goal is to promote the well-being of the people of his country. Two, he is one of my favorite atheists and (like me) usually ties this disbelief in God to the betterment of mankind.

    Maher was almost apologetic when he took the stage. He was brought to Buffalo as part of the "Distinguished Speakers" series and...well... maybe that wasn't an accurate description. I know that some recent letters to the editor said the same thing but I don't have a problem with it. Very few people have anything interesting to say and I feel that he does. While someone like Tony Blair (a recent speaker) might seem like a bigger name, I can't imagine being that interested in what he thought of the world today (especially after spending years being W's lackey).

    It wasn't long before he launched into politics. He was rather amusing at how he took shots at Republicans and occasionally at the Dems. I have to admit that after about an hour I was ready for something different. I did have one issue with with this part of the show - he regularly made reference to people that he didn't like (republicans) as "doughy white people". I've never understood this about liberals - it seems that they constantly need to act like they are the protectors of black Americans (douchy Keith Olbermann is the worst offender). While this may seem admirable on the surface I think it reeks of racism. If you need to think that you're the protector of some group than you either think that you're better than they are or they are worse than you are. He had good points - he didn't need to muddy them up by constantly playing the race card. It really didn't serve any purpose.

    After about an hour he warned the audience that he was about to touch on religion. Yes, he warned us. It seems like he has had a fair amount of walkouts in other shows. As he said, you know what you are getting when you sign up to see him but he seemed to take it easy on this topic.

    He started off by asking a question that I also often wonder about: why is faith a virtue? In no other aspect of life do we encourage people to put aside their logical and rational mind. How can this be a good thing? He moved on to talk about how silly the Mormon religion is and how (like other religions) they changed their story over the years to be more appealing. The mormons have always been the best example of this - it was only 100 years ago that they embraced polygamy and only 30 years ago that they openly hated non-whites. He went on to read a few hysterical excerpts from Rick Warren's book. It is amazing that these people seem to know so much about God and the afterlife.

    My favorite part of the act was his take on Jesus being the son of God. He started off by pretending to be God and then deciding that he was going to send his son to Earth. "I'll send Jesus, which is really me (wink wink) to earth and he'll be a big hero. It'll be rough for a few days but Jesus (wink wink) will come back here to heaven". I didn't do it justice but the whole parody showed just how absurd the whole story is when you step back and look at it from afar. As Maher said, if someone came up to you on a bus telling the same story you would immediately exit the bus. But because you're born into it....

    Maher did make the occasional reference to his libertarian beliefs and I wish he would have expanded on them. He could have talked about why it is important that we embrace free speech and what free speech really means (so many Americans get this part wrong).

    There was a mediocre Q&A after the show and there was one interesting question. A woman asked Maher why he used the word "retarded" so much and if he would use it if he had his own special needs child, as she does. There was a smattering of both applause and groans after the question was asked. Unfortunately, Maher's answer left something to be desired. At first he asked who was offended, and she answered that as a mother of the child she was offended. Maher than pushed the envelope and asked if the child was offended, and the mother replied that the child was not offended. Maher than said that since the child was not smart enough to be offended that it is ok to use the word. This comment got the crowd more than a little worked up. Maher did go on to say that he would like to think that he would use the word if he had such a child.

    I wouldn't have argued from this position as it just made him seem like a jerk. I know I've written extensively about this before (here) but it needs to be said again. Can we just get past being offended? Better yet, can we strike the word from our vocabulary. First, everything is offensive to someone. No matter what you say or how you say it, people will be offended. But more importantly, the word has been hijacked by this group and they want to claim it is their own. If I tell you to stop being retarded, I'm not associating you with with a special needs person. I'm telling you to stop being an asshat. If you call me a fag, I know that you're telling me an asshat. Words only hurt because people choose to put special meanings on them. So what is more likely to work for us - are we going to run around putting out all of the fires like people do now, or can we all just lighten up? There are groups out there that want people to start saying "the r word" instead of retard. Haven't we learned anything? We did the same for the n word and all it did was give what people a way to say "it" without saying "it". Now THAT is retarded.

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