Maher Maher Pants on Fire

Bill Maher, whitewing hero, great at bashing the crazy evangelical village's idiot, can also occasionally get a warm-on for GW.

Maher admits mouthing to Dubya "you go boy," discusses the biased media, Israel is the only democracy, Israel's level of restraint …. And other yadayada current topics from the world of MSM and hahahahaha I can't believe they swallow this stuff.

BILL: I really wanted to say that, for all those who accuse the likes of myself … of being unpatriotic, or hating America first, the feeling I've had watching Israel defend herself and a US president defend Israel (a country that is held to a standard for "restraint" that no other country ever is asked to meet, but that's another story) just reminds me how wrong that is. I LOVE being on the side of my president, and mouthing "You go, boy" when he gets it right.

Bill Maher is an expert Bush basher. But don’t let it be said that the HBO talk-show host and political funnyman is incapable of showing a bit of love for the president. In an August 28 interview with Larry King, Maher gave Bush the thumbs up for his record on Israel.

Bill in Larry King August 2002 interview:

KING: What do you make of the Israeli situation, the Palestinian, is it ever going to solve that?

MAHER: This again, you know, I'm like the only guy on TV who defends Israel. The media is so biased.

KING: You think they're anti-Israel?

MAHER: Of course they are. They don't -- because they don't understand what happened in that area of the world throughout the last century. They're occupied. That's a term that's just used on all newscasts. That territory is not occupied, OK? The term "occupied" refers to a country that used to be a country. There was no Palestinian Arab country, ever.

And right now, we live in a situation where the Jews could wipe out the Arabs in two seconds if they wanted. They have the means. They don't. Do you think if the Arabs, you think if they had the atom bomb, that the state of Israel would last? How long would it last? One minute.

KING: Why do you think the media would be anti-Israel?

MAHER: They're not anti-Israel, they just don't know what happened there. And it's a lot easier to take the side of the underdog. You know? I saw a report on the news just the other day, a Palestinian girl who said, you know, I can't get through the checkpoint, and I only have my books, and the Israeli soldiers are so mean. Well, yeah, but that's because a lot of your brothers are blowing up their pizza parlors. Sorry.

KING: So you think -- because for a long time, Israel and the media in the United States had a relationship like they were intertwined. Palestinians had almost no voice in America media in the '60s and '70s.

MAHER: Well...

KING: It changed.

MAHER: It changed. It changed. And what I think people forget is that it is also the only democracy. It's not about a religious situation. It's a democracy, Israel, it's the only one in that part of the world, by the way. And we've never sent a soldier to defend Israel. We've sent our troops and our planes and our bombs to defend Muslims in Bosnia and in Somalia, and we certainly freed a country called Afghanistan recently.

Bill on Larry King September 2006:

KING: What did you make of the whole Middle East thing about Hezbollah?

MAHER: Well, I wrote a -- we were just talking about Arianna in the back. I wrote a little blog for Arianna about that because it was her birthday, you know. I'm not a big blogger but when it's her birthday you can't turn her down. And I was saying that to me, you know, the world is Mel Gibson because the world is anti-Semitic.

KING: The world?

MAHER: Absolutely and the proof of that is that they ask Israel to maintain a level of restraint when they're attacked that no other country would ever be asked to uphold.

I mean can you imagine if there was a terrorist organization that took over the country on our northern border, which would be Canada, and they started shelling us in our northern cities and Minnesota and Bangor, Maine was being shelled, what do you think George Bush would do?

I think he would nuke them before breakfast. And, look, you know I don't like George Bush but he is the best president we've ever had on Israel because for some reason he gets that.

I think the reason he gets it is because he's a crazy evangelical Christian. He thinks the world is going to end in our lifetime, so Israel needs to be in the hands of the people who it was in the hands of when Jesus returns which would be the Jews. That's why the Christians do so.

--- p.s. BM supports the usual progressive list of fears and freedoms, i.e. global warming, mandatory HPV vaccination for girls (Merck), the liberation of Afghanistan, etc. etc. etc. and many other sociopolitical issues of which he seems halfassedly informed or wholeheartedly paid.