Bill Maher is a tick on the back of this great country. Sucking its blood, and not giving it any credit for the lifestyle he is able to live here.
Speaking of lifestyle, below is a piece I wrote during the height of Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. It touches on Maher and on other controversial topics, so be warned!
During the height of the Clinton-Lewinski scandal, I was watching the late-night show "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher." (Disclaimer: I see nothing "Politically Incorrect" about seeing the host and three liberal guests attacking conservative straw men and shouting down the lone conservative guest for an entire half hour.) During the couse of the conversation, it was mentioned that the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King had committed adultery on the night before his murder. Bill Maher pounced upon this point, looking directly at the conservative guest. Raising his voice, and gesturing theatrically, he declaimed,"Did the adultery make MLK unfit as a leader of the civil rights movement? I'm asking you...NOW!"
The horns of the dilemna were painfully obvious. Either say that yes, adultery makes one unfit as a moral leader (and be branded a Puritan bigot, more concerned with "personal matters" like sex than about "the pressing issues facing our time" such as civil rights and race relations; or, concede that one can lead even though an adulterer, thereby letting President Clinton off of the hook. I don't remember the response of the conservative guest; but I do remember staying awake much of the night poring over the matter. At the time, I came to the reluctant conclusion that Maher was right; attacks on the moral failings of a leader (ad hominem attacks) do not themselves invalidate the message. But through it all, I still had misgivings which I was unable to place.
It was not until more recently, during the revelations of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child, and the allegations of hush-money paid to the mother, that things crystallized. Some conservative columnist pointed out that Jimmy Swaggart and the Bakkers were treated with contempt for falling short of Christian standards, so why not Jesse Jackson? Standards! That was the key. Forget about double standards for liberal vs. conservative, for white vs. black, or any other division--our society's standards have changed. In other words, Bill Maher was playing with an unfair advantage in the case of MLK.
What unfair advantage? "Politically Incorrect" was looking at the behavior of MLK at a distance of some thirty or forty years, after civil rights had become an accepted part of the landscape, and no longer in serious question--we even have a government bureaucracy charged with enforcing civil rights, the EEOC, and a national holiday MLK Jr. day. Contrast this with the early sixties--civil rights agitators and voting organizers were being murdered for their activities, while local government officials turned a blind eye. The goals of the civil rights movement have been achieved, the outcome is no longer in doubt. So what if someone had an affair, or a one-night stand, so long ago?
The "so long ago" is the key to the dilemma. True, MLK did have an affair; but we did not learn of it until many years later--after he has become a martyr, after his goals have been accomplished. What if his philanderings had become known (as Clinton's) at the time? Consider all we have been through as a society since the early sixties...from the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" through Woodstock and "Free Love", on to Deep Throat (the movie, not the Watergate figure), past Jimmy Carter's admissions of lust and on to Monica Lewinski. We have become inured. Imagine the shock, imagine the outrage, if it had become clear (back then) that MLK had committed adultery the night before his death. Would the civil rights movement even have survived, if its opposition had been given such a choice bit of ammunition?
And this makes clear why the second horn of Maher's dilemna was misleading. Clinton, reprobrate though he is, remains merely a political leader--subject to the ballot box, and subject to being defined by his Lewinsky Legacy. The late MLK was a moral leader, deriving his authority not from the Constitution but from example, giving his life in service to a higher power. And, if he clearly falls short, his moral authority will be diminished. Our lack of outrage--at either Clinton or the late MLK--or at Jesse Jackson, for that matter--only serves to show how far we have fallen.
(May God grant us the grace to return to the moral stature we have once occupied.)
Cheers!