Comedian Bill Maher says it's his patriotic duty to mock Bush

Mocking Bush is my patriotic duty
A comedian explains how cruel jokes about the president can stop terrorism.
By Bill Maher (from Salon.com)

New rule: Bad presidents happen to good people. Amid all the 9/11 anniversary talk about what will keep us safe, let me suggest that in a world turned hostile to America, the smartest message we can send to those beyond our shores is, "We're not with stupid." Therefore, I contend -- with all seriousness -- that ridiculing this president is now the most patriotic thing you can do. Let our allies and our enemies alike know that there's a whole swath of Americans desperate to distance themselves from Bush's foreign policies. And that's just Republicans running for reelection.

Now, of course, you're gonna say, "But Bill, ridiculing Bush is like shooting fish in a barrel," or, as Dick Cheney calls it, "hunting." Maybe, but right now it's important, because America is an easily misunderstood country these days -- a lot of the time it's hard to make out what we're saying over the bombs we're dropping.

But we are not all people who think putting a boot in your ass is the way to solve problems, because even allowing that my foot lodged in your ass would feel good, which I don't -- what then? OK, my boot is in your ass, but I can't get it out, so I'm not happy, and it's in you, so you're not happy -- there's no exit strategy.

Anyone who opposes the indefinite occupation of Iraq shouldn't be labeled an al-Qaida supporter. That's like saying that if I tell my exterminator that there are more efficient ways to rid the house of vermin than hitting them with a hammer, I'm "for the rats."

Questioning whether it still makes sense to keep troops under fire is supporting the troops. Asking for a plan supports the troops; asking when they'll be leaving supports the troops. Sitting around parsing the definition of "civil war" doesn't support the troops, it supports the president, and he's not a soldier, he just plays one on TV.

So yes, for the sake of homeland security, I ridicule the president -- but it gives me no pleasure to paint him as a dolt, a rube, a yokel on the world stage, a submental, three bricks shy of a load, a Gilligan unable to find his own ass with two hands. Or, as Sean Hannity calls it, "Reaganesque."

No, it pains me to say these things, because I know deep down George Bush has something extra -- a chromosome. Cruel? Perhaps, but it may just have saved lives. By doing the extra chromosome joke, I sent a message to a young Muslim man somewhere in the world who's on a slow burn about this country, and perhaps got him to think, "Maybe the people of America aren't so bad. Maybe it's just the rodeo clown who leads them. Maybe the people 'get it.'" We do, Achmed, we do!

And that's why making fun of the president keeps this country safe. The proof? I've been doing it nonstop for years, and there hasn't been another attack. Maybe the reason they haven't attacked us again is they figured we're already suffering enough.

If I could explain one thing about George W. Bush to the rest of the world it's this: We don't know what the hell he's saying either! Trust me, foreigners, there's nothing lost in translation, it's just as incoherent in the original English. Yes, we voted for him -- twice -- but that's because we're stupid, not because we're bad. Bush is just one of those things that are really popular for a few years and then almost overnight become completely embarrassing. You know, like leg warmers, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or white people going, "Oh no you di-int."

So while honoring the anniversary of September 2001, we must also never forget September 2000. That's the month when Gov. George W. Bush said, "I know that human beings and fish can coexist peacefully." If you don't believe me, you can look it up on both internets. The world changed on 9/11. He didn't. That's why we owe it to ourselves, and our children, to never stop pointing out that George W. Bush is a gruesome boob.


2. When Can We Finally Be Funny Again?
The serious problems and bittersweet ironies of pulling comedy -- and truth -- out of tragedy.
By Bill Maher

WHENEVER THERE'S a tragedy, comedians are presented with a dilemma: When is the right time to make jokes about it, and what kind of jokes can you make? I vividly remember watching Johnny Carson every year on Lincoln's birthday, doing assassination jokes. (My favorite was about Lincoln's birthday stripper, "Freda Slaves." According to Johnny, "Every guy took a shot at her in the balcony; four scored and seven came close.") When the jokes bombed, he'd comment to Ed McMahon: "Too soon."

I know something about "too soon," because it was only six days after 9/11 when I got into all sorts of trouble with the country and the White House for saying that sticking with a suicide mission, as the terrorists had done, was not, strictly speaking, "cowardly," and that, in fact, "we have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away." Of course, by "we," I meant American society as a whole, but it was not hard for people who never liked me to begin with to pretend that I was calling the military cowardly. I wasn't.

In fact, I was just trying to follow orders. Right after 9/11, President Bush said the terrorists would win if we didn't go back to doing exactly what we were doing before the attack, and so the best way to show we were victorious was to not change a thing. And, like an idiot, I believed him, resuming my mandate to never pull a punch and live up to the title of my show at the time, "Politically Incorrect."

But the atmosphere in the fall of 2001 allowed for very little beyond singing "God Bless America" and buying a flag to put on your gas-guzzling, terrorist-funding car. In fact, I was not the only one whose comments helped flood the ABC switchboard in the first day or two after the attacks. Peter Jennings had the temerity to suggest that some presidents are more reassuring than others in situations of crisis. Stone him! Kill him! How dare he suggest that our president might be anything but perfect at everything! We have been attacked; ipso facto , our president is a genius!

Which lasted until about the end of the year, as I recall. I measure it by when Jay Leno, the man who really has his finger on America's pulse, went back to doing "Bush is stupid" jokes. Or, as we refer to it in comedy, "bread and butter."

But that fall we were all trying. I remember offering up the hope that perhaps George W. Bush would be like Shakespeare's Henry V, who started life as a callow lush called Prince Hal and emerged in wartime as the matured and victorious Henry V.

Oh well, so much for analogies. But now that the president has said that he's read "three Shakespeares," maybe he'll take the hint.

I always felt that in the months after 9/11, while "Politically Incorrect" was still on the air but struggling for sponsors and referred to, not inaccurately, as "Dead Show Walking," we did some of our best work. The country had decided it was going to try to be a little bit serious for a while, and that liberated us to book guests with more gravitas and less Pauly Shore. In addition, I found it liberating to go through the fire of being fired and then realize afterward that there was a whole half a country out there that did not think truth was like wine: It does not get better with age. "Don Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately," Tom Hagen says in "The Godfather." I agree.

A couple of years ago, a congressman named Bachus from East Jesus, Ala., tried to get some traction nationally by demanding that HBO, the network I'm with now, fire me for saying of the U.S. military's recruitment problems that "we've picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit."

But by 2004, that dog wasn't hunting even a little. Even my detractors knew that I was just keeping it real and not attacking our troops. And it helped that, a few weeks later, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, that Patton of the Gulf War and former drug czar, said basically the same thing: "We're reaching the bottom of the barrel."

Which just goes to show you: Where do left and right meet? At the truth.