Say what you will about Bill Maher — dude ain’t shy. He came to Bibleburg and did a show tonight, and if he was wearing a bulletproof vest, I couldn’t make it out from the cheap seats.
He got a late start but went long, so it evened out. Call it two hours of material, which is impressive. I couldn’t keep my little act running for two minutes even if I doubled up on the fucks.
Now, I won’t pretend that Bill Maher is my favorite standup. Most of my top-10 list is at Open Mic Night in the Great Beyond. And left to my own devices, I would have spent tonight lounging around the estate, irrigating my tonsils with Colorado ale and wondering idly why lawns rarely if ever mow themselves.
But Herself and a couple of pals dragged me away out of my comfort zone, made me eat ribs, potato salad, chips and salsa, and sorbet, and then sat me down in the balcony at the Pikes Peak Center to listen to someone else talking shit for a change.
And finely honed shit it was for the most part. I particularly appreciated Maher’s perplexity at the average American’s eagerness to support plutocrats who would, in a hot New York minute, grind him or her into Soylent Green to be fed to their guard dogs.
The line that stuck with me involved health care. More than a few of our dimwitted countrypersons think theirs is the best in the world (until they actually need some) and bristle at the notion of the feddle gummint getting its boogery comm’nist fingers all up in their doctorin’.
Quoth Maher: “That’s not blood you’re coughing up, Billy. That’s freedom.”
Mad Blog Media 
Bill Maher, and Chris Rock are my 2 favorite stand up comedians, mainly because they both have the stones to tell it like it is.
All I can say is….”you know what my wife says”…and Maher points it out oh so easily.
I love how this group of people, 99% of whom never put on the uniform, throw around the word “freedom,” telling us how they’re defending it. But ask any of them to rate the top three health plans in their state, and you can hear their shoulders shrug a mile away. So if it ain’t the freedom to make an intelligent marketplace decision. So it’s gotta be … the freedom to watch your neighbor go broke with medical bills and not feel guilty?
And now these same folks are saying that the hospitals should just forgive the medical bills for the victims of the aurora batman shooter? Cuz wishing away problems has always worked in the past??
I’ll occasionally chuckle or snort at a Maher line, but you have to admit: it’s not like our political system isn’t spoof feeding him with some easy material.
Siri decided “spoonfeeding” should be “spoof feeding.”
well that works too.
In another universe in another time Bob Rolle(?) and Richard Pryor do the TDF commentary on Eurosport.
I’d like to see the surviving members of Monty Python call the Tour sometime. Or the London Olympics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqObJtGrKaA
Damn I miss Carlin.
Think about George Carlin and Richard Pryor calling the Tour. You’d quit watching the race and just listen. And talk about a couple of experts on doping. …
Incidentally, Maher is donating the proceeds from his Mile High and Bibleburg shows to help victims of the Aurora shootings and the Waldo Canyon fire. I like him a lot better already.
Maher is a good man. And I no longer agree with Larry’s wife. People aren’t stupid. People are SO FUCKING STUPID.
K, he really was pretty damned funny, not least when he was talking about Tea Baggers chewing on their toenails and spitting them at the TV.
My favorites are the teabaggers on Medicare who hold up the signs saying “keep the guvmint out of my healthcare.” A good response to them is “So you go to the ER every time you have a cold, then claim poverty (or just walk out without paying) so you don’t have to pay the bill, and MY insurance premiums go up? So I end up paying for you? Teaparty Socialist!!!!”
Hear, hear!
If you’re going to be an honest conservative, you have to acknowledge that some people think that your interests are special interests. But, no, typically, special interests are what someone else wants.
Don’t get me started on this debate, I attended a “town hall” meeting organized by my so-called representative in Congress, Steve King. I took the floor and before I could get any farther than the waiting times for primary care in the US vs single-payer countries, was shouted down by folks………..on medicare. The healthcare reform opponents very craftily created the idea in these seniors that by giving the rest of us access to healthcare, they were going to get less of it themselves. It then became the classic “me-first/greed issue” and we all know how those work out. The Repugs play these fools like a fiddle.