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Maher Marred by Misquote
Cornell Daily Sun ^ | September 24, 2001 | Matt Flahive

Posted on 09/29/2001 5:37:26 PM PDT by The American

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To: Eagle Eye
Maher deserves everything he is getting from this and nothing more or less.

As others have pointed out, did this writer (or anyone at Cornell)defend Jerry Falwell, Dr. Laura or John Rocker when they were being crucified in a similar manner? I doubt it.

It's OK for liberals to attack but when it happens to one of their own, it becomes "a warning sign for an impending repeat of the Red Scare".

41 posted on 09/29/2001 6:48:30 PM PDT by kcpopps
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To: Eagle Eye
How can you justify saying that he called the military cowards after you read his quote and his clarification?

AND his clarification? Well, pardon me while I worship the most patriotic American of all time (while he tries to cover his little pink rump).

I've seen a transcript, but I can't seem to locate it at the moment. However...

Bill Maher on the Defense: "We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2000 miles away, that's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, not cowardly."

Are you seriously trying to convince people that BM was comparing the brave terrorists - that actually stayed in the plane - to our politicians - that ordered others to actually perform the deeds? PUHLEEEZE...

Let BM exercise his First Amendment right, by purchasing bumper stickers and protest signs -- just like the rest of us!

42 posted on 09/29/2001 6:51:34 PM PDT by InfraRed
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To: InfraRed
See post #27.
43 posted on 09/29/2001 6:53:33 PM PDT by Double Tap
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To: Eagle Eye
In some folk's mind --- this incident would not have enflamed so much anger - but for a few points:
1. His timing was worse than insensitive - it was a cruel slap at Americans.
2. His history of insulting positions against the Conservative or Christian right - had already worn a raw spot. His last (hopefully) insult - poured salt into that wound.
3. His humor had a edge that swung in only one direction...cutting the Right.
This clymer lived by the word --- he committed suicide with the word.... No one put those words or positions in his mouth, He did..

Dr. Laura was driven from her TV job by Gays that were insulted by her position...... Should not other LARGER groups not have the same impact?
Semper Fi

44 posted on 09/29/2001 7:13:05 PM PDT by river rat
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To: Mudboy Slim.....Check this thread out and you will see what I mean.
Ethis are preached and not practiced by many posters.

Cheers:^)

45 posted on 09/29/2001 7:24:00 PM PDT by eazdzit
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To: Eagle Eye
I saw the show and I heard him just fine. Maher has gotten away with a lot of things for a long time. People have finally gotten tired of him. Like it or not, he will be gone soon and your pacifist, slow-roll attempts at vindication will fail.
46 posted on 09/29/2001 7:24:31 PM PDT by Hillary 666
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To: TheWriter
"MCCARTHY WAS RIGHT."

Yep...MUD

47 posted on 09/29/2001 9:32:50 PM PDT by Mudboy Slim
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To: eazdzit
"Ethics are preached and not practiced by many posters."

Of course any group this large is gonna have some knuckleheads and scalawags, but it's best to just let the trash they spew roll right down yer back. Call it "ethics" or call it "manners," but it all comes down to common courtesy. What was so strange about this thread?...a few snide comments and a few spirited disagreements, well, that's FR!!

FReegards...MUD

48 posted on 09/29/2001 9:38:04 PM PDT by Mudboy Slim
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To: CaptRon
Why the misquote was the missing second line of Maher's...

Where he went on to say that the terrorist were not cowards for staying on the plane... You know, killing unarmed innocent people isn't cowardly...

This article is the misquote…

49 posted on 09/30/2001 3:13:16 AM PDT by DB
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To: DB
This article is the misquote…

Yes! I don't see Maher "misquoted" anywhere, his words were reproduced in full.

50 posted on 09/30/2001 3:17:29 AM PDT by xm177e2
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To: The American
Now I completely disagree with anyone who calls American military personnel "cowards," but I respect the right to hold and share that viewpoint.

Fine. Corporations are also entitled to be associated with anybody they want to as well. Or would the author force them to sponsor Maher.

A few days later, Maher clarified his stance. "I never meant to imply nor have I ever thought that our actual servicemen are cowardly... it's our government, it's our politicians, who have been cowardly in not letting the military do their job." Sounds like a reasonable statement that actually compliments the United States military. Yet Sears, FedEx, KSFY, KLKN and WOI-TV 5 are still sitting on the sidelines.

I wonder where this author was when John Rocker was being crucified. Oh that's right, the liberal press was calling for everything but his public execution.

In other words, Maher is the victim of a witch hunt. This brings to mind a famous widespread bullying from just a few generations ago -- Joe McCarthy's character-destroying investigations of "communists" in the 1950s. Will America again shun those with dissenting opinions and jump to conclusions about those it fears?

No, that would the Stalinism of political correctness. As practiced by your pals for the last two, three decades.

And if we choose to revoke people's freedoms when we find it convenient, then we have already lost the war.

I can't stand these people. Denying freedom is a way of life for libs, and now he wants to cry about some strawman.

51 posted on 09/30/2001 3:26:48 AM PDT by He Rides A White Horse
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To: Eagle Eye
Bill Maher has been quoted all over the place and taped excerpts of his show are, too. The cat has been out of the bag for two weeks. What else do you need?

You sound like a Clinton supporter: "He didn't screw her. He didn't pardon drug dealers and other scumbags for huge amounts of money. There's nothing there and nobody did anything."

52 posted on 09/30/2001 4:17:18 AM PDT by Hillary 666
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To: Eagle Eye
Yes to both.

This article is incomplete. He went on to say more than the single line quoted here.

Bill Maher deserves the heat.

53 posted on 09/30/2001 4:21:24 AM PDT by DB
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To: The American
I hate the smell of spin in the morning.
54 posted on 09/30/2001 4:26:07 AM PDT by AppyPappy
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To: The American
I responded to a post like this earlier with this thought:

Sure, there's freedom of speech. You can say any darn thing you like. At the same time, while the government is not suppossed to inhibit your right, there are social consequences to acting like a complete ass. This is the sitation in the case of Bill Maher. He acted like a complete idiot, which while consistant for his behavior, is completely socially unacceptable at this point in time. One would think that Darwinistic instincts might overcome the urge to make a complete ass of himself, but in this case such did not come into play.

The left would have us believe that any behavior is socially acceptable at any given time. Fortunately, society is showing that to be a complete falsehood. Maher is reaping the consequences of behavior that borders upon giving support and comfort to the enemy. This is the type of behavior that typically results in getting your bitch-ass kicked any time you have the gall to show your pimply face in public after making such remarks. Yes, there is freedom of speech in America. It is alive and well, and you have your free will that you may excercise in enjoying this right. You are also going to be held in account by the standards that society holds in the execution of this right and you will be judged by how you use it. This factor of accountability is always what seems to upset the left. Bill Maher is just one example of what is to come. The left is only beginning to learn just how wrong they've been about America all these years.

55 posted on 09/30/2001 4:40:40 AM PDT by Caipirabob
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To: TheWriter
I, too noticed this feller was quick to dust off the Ghost of Evil Joe:

It is our duty to stand by Maher, to stop people from running his character into the ground. Half a century ago, Americans stood idly by while Joe McCarthy ruined the reputations

....FWIW, I posted this a while back:

Tailgunner Joe--Patriot Whistleblower or Right-Wing Witch-hunter?

56 posted on 09/30/2001 4:49:15 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: The American
Bill Maher echoed the same sentiments as Washington Times conservative columnist Fred Reed. Here is Fred's column which ran before Maher's comments. You can check out his other columns here.

The World Trade Center

The Price Of Pansyhood

A few unorganized thoughts regarding the events in New York:

(1) We lost. Our moral posturing about our degradation is merely embarrassing. We have been made fools of, expertly and calculatedly, in the greatest military defeat the country has suffered since we fled from Viet Nam. The Moslem world is laughing and dancing in the streets. The rest of the earth, while often sympathetic, sees us as the weak and helpless nation that we are.

The casualty figures aren't in, but 10,000 dead seems reasonable, and we wring our hands and speak of grief therapy.

We lost.

(2) We cannot stop it from happening again. Thousands of aircraft constantly use O'Hare, a few minutes flying time from the Sears Tower.

(3) Our politicians and talking heads speak of "a cowardly act of terrorism." It was neither cowardly nor, I think, terrorism. Hijacking an aircraft and driving it into a building isn't cowardly. Would you do it? It requires great courage and dedication -- which our enemies have, and we do not. One may mince words, but to me the attack looked like an act of war. Not having bombing craft of their own, they used ours. When we bombed Hanoi and Hamburg, was that terrorism?

(4) The attack was beautifully conceived and executed. These guys are good. They were clearly looking to inflict the maximum humiliation on the United States, in the most visible way possible, and they did. The sight of those two towers collapsing will leave nobody's mind. If we do nothing of importance in return, and it is my guess that we won't, the entire earth will see that we are a nation of epicenes. Silly cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan will just heighten the indignity.

(5) In watching the coverage, I was struck by the tone of passive acquiescence. Not once, in hours of listening, did I hear anyone express anger. No one said, coldly but in deadly seriousness, "People are going to die for this, a whole lot of people." There was talk of tracking down bin Laden and bringing him to justice. "Terrorism experts" spoke of months of investigation to find who was responsible, which means we will do nothing. Blonde bimbos babbled of coping strategies and counseling and how our children needed support. There was no talk of retaliation.

(6) The Israelis, when hit, hit back. They hit back hard. But Israel is run by men. We are run by women. Perhaps two-thirds of the newscasters were blonde drones who spoke of the attack over and over as a tragedy, as though it had been an unusually bad storm -- unfortunate, but inevitable, and now we must get on with our lives. The experts and politicians, nominally male, were effeminate and soft little things. When a feminized society runs up against male enemies -- and bin Laden, whatever else he is, is a man -- it loses. We have.

(7) We haven't conceded that the Moslem world is our enemy, nor that we are at war. We see each defeat and humiliation in isolation, as a unique incident unrelated to anything else. The 241 Marines killed by the truck bomb in Beirut, the extended humiliation of the hostages taken by Iran, the war with Iraq, the bombing of the Cole, the destruction of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the devastation of the Starke, the Saudi barracks, the dropping of airliner after airliner -- these we see as anecdotes, like pileups of cars on a snowy road. They see these things as war.

We face an enemy more intelligent than we are.

(8) We think we are a superpower. Actually we are not, except in the useless sense of having nuclear weapons. We could win an air war with almost anyone, yes, or a naval war in mid-Pacific. Few Americans realize how small our forces are today, how demoralized and weakened by social experimentation. If we had to fight a ground war in terrain with cover, a war in which we would take casualties, we would lose.

(9) I have heard some grrr-woofwoofery about how we should invade Afghanistan and teach those ragheads a lesson. Has anyone noticed where Afghanistan is? How would we get there? Across Pakistan, a Moslem country? Or through India? Do we suppose Iran would give us overflight rights to bomb another Moslem country? Or will our supply lines go across Russia through Turkmenistan? Do we imagine that we have the airlift or sealift? What effect do we think bombing might have on Afghanistan, a country that is essentially rubble to begin with?

We backed out of Somalia, a Moslem country, when a couple of GIs got killed and dragged through the streets on TV. Afghans are not pansies. They whipped the Russians. Our sensitive and socially-conscious troops would curl up in balls.

(10) To win against a more powerful enemy, one forces him to fight a kind of war for which he isn't prepared. Iraq lost the Gulf War because it fought exactly the kind of war in which American forces are unbeatable: Hussein played to his weaknesses and our strengths. The Vietnamese did the opposite. They defeated us by fighting a guerrilla war that didn't give us anything to hit. They understood us. We didn't understand them.

The Moslem world is doing the same thing. Because their troops, or terrorists as we call them, are not sponsored by a country, we don't know who to hit. Note that Yasser Arafat, bin Laden, and the Taliban are all denying any part in the destruction of New York. At best, we might, with our creaky intelligence apparatus, find Laden and kill him. It's not worth doing: Not only would he have defeated America as nobody ever has, but he would then be a martyr. Face it: The Arabs are smarter than we are.

(11) We are militarily weak because we have done what we usually do: If no enemy is immediately in sight, we cut our forces to the bone, stop most R&D, and focus chiefly on sensitivity training about homosexuals. When we need a military, we don't have one. Then we are inutterably surprised.

(12) The only way we could save any dignity and respect in the world be to hit back so hard as to make teeth rattle around the world. A good approach would be to have NSA fabricate intercepts proving that Libya was responsible, mobilize nationally, invade, and make Libya permanently a US colony. Most Arab countries are militarily helpless, and that is the only kind our forces could defeat. Doing this, doing anything other than whimpering, would require that ancient military virtue known as "balls." Does Katie Couric have them?

www.fredoneverything.net

57 posted on 09/30/2001 6:12:09 AM PDT by SBeck
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To: CaptRon
I have an idea for Bill Maher. He should invite Dr. Laura onto his program. That is, if he has the guts to.
They can discuss the pros and cons of misquotes and free speech.
58 posted on 10/01/2001 8:01:57 AM PDT by pray4liberty
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