Bill Maher

Public Enemy No. 1

One of America's biggest martyrs for freedom of speech is here to tell you ignorance isn't bliss!

by Chris Faraone

Photography by Brian Bowen Smith

Time and time again, Americans have proven their ignorance to the ways of the political world – and Bill Maher isn’t going to just bend over and take it. Loose lips sink ships, and Maher has no qualms about letting the cannons fire.

Americans are ignorant, and Bill Maher has evidence to prove it. More than half of us can’t name a single branch of government, and even less know that each state sends two senators to Washington. An outstanding number of people believe in magical carpenters and that human beings not only lived alongside dinosaurs, but also saddled up and rode them. And perhaps most damning of American beliefs, 18 percent of the population thinks the sun revolves around the earth. Maher didn’t personally wave a stupid stick across the Bible Belt – he just calls it how he sees it.

“It’s an embarrassment of riches when you’re picking from the barrel marked ‘America,’” says the firebrand comic and host of HBO’s Real Time. “I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said that the mark of a good mind is being able to retain in your head two disparate thoughts. That’s what stupid people can’t do. With me – on one hand, I’ll say that Americans are stupid. On the other hand, I don’t wish that Americans were stupid. It’s not my desire that America be stupid, but it just is. There’s the truth, and then there’s what you wish for.”

Maher’s greatest proof of his country’s dimwittedness came from a personal trial. In 2002, after nine years of hosting the talk show Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and then on ABC, he was fired for saying that the suicidal terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center were not cowards. He didn’t suggest they were heroes, nor did he state anything conspiratorial. His comments were actually obvious and intuitive – that anyone who willfully steers an aircraft into a skyscraper is hardly a pussy and, furthermore, that the longtime American tradition of air bombing adversaries is more cowardly in comparison.

“You’re talking about a time in the nation’s history when America lost its collective cool,” says Maher. “I know that Glenn Beck thinks of it as the good old days, but people were half off their rocker and the only acceptable things to say were ‘God Bless America’ and ‘Firemen and troops are heroes.’ There was no appetite for any sort of adult discussion about what happened and what was going on, as I found out. I stupidly believed the president when he said to go back to what you were doing or else the terrorists would win. So I guess the terrorists won, because I went back to doing what I was doing and I got canned for it.”

Luckily, it didn’t take long for Americans – or at least television executives – to regain rationality. In 2003, HBO tapped Maher to host Real Time, a supercharged Politically Incorrect on coke and steroids. As the Bush administration marched into a preemptive quagmire – and as its war-profiteering cronies stacked chips at the expense of soldiers’ lives – the thinking faction of America grew increasingly agitated. And as it turned out, the big mouth anti-pundit was the perfect hard-on to jizz on the establishment.

“The level and intensity of vitriol at that moment was so high that I thought I might never be able to show my face in public again,” says Maher, who former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used as an example for how freedom of speech was temporarily suspended. “Afterward, though, it was shocking how quickly it all went away. I’ve seen that pattern repeated so many times since then, because this is a very panicky nation. Don Imus had to be fired just so we could forget about it in another few months. And Janet Jackson – when her tit fell out – it was a national crisis. Howard Dean – oh my god, he spoke at a decibel level higher than what people are used to. He’s a crazy person; obviously he had to go away. It’s like they panic, and then they breathe into a paper bag and come to their senses.”

Before earning nearly two dozen Emmy nominations and nailing an impressive roster of thick and spicy specimens, including Karrine “Superhead” Steffans, Maher was a stand-up comic to be reckoned with. After just three years in the clubs, the recent Cornell grad was invited to bring his unique sarcastic brand of humor to both the David Letterman and Johnny Carson shows in 1982. Some moderate film and television work followed (he wrote for Roseanne), but Maher spent most of the next decade in the clubs, sharpening his polemical wit.

With Politically Incorrect, Maher provided platforms not just for his own views, but also for those of actors, comedians and a variety of informed persons who didn’t frequent The McLaughlin Group and Meet the Press. Politicians chimed in too – as they do now on Real Time – but for the most part, the discussions were of the sort that no prudent elected official would want to be seen near: the name of his show said it all. Clever folks were happy to have Maher as their mouthpiece before Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney and a number of other enemies of state effectively frightened the logic right out of most Americans (causing advertisers to pull away from Politically Incorrect).

As a man with no use for religious faith or fervor, it’s not surprising that Maher survived his judgment day more or less unscathed. Though it would be a stretch to call him optimistic, he certainly has made a point to enjoy the finer, more hedonistic activities that celebrity life has to offer. A Playboy mansion regular with a taste for titanic tits, Maher has never concealed the fact that his ideal afternoon is floating on a pair of implants with tampon spliffs roasting in between his lips. Does that lifestyle make so-called conservatives jealous? Of course. Does Maher smoke trees just to aggravate religious zealots? Don’t be silly – the guy just enjoys grass and ass, though he has recently slowed his roll.

“I’m 53 now, and I have calmed down a lot in the last two years,” says Maher. “Republicans would be less jealous now than they would have been a few years ago, but I definitely did have a tit and weed parade that would make your head spin. I don’t really go out to clubs like I used to, and I don’t drink like I used to. At a certain point I just didn’t want to do that anymore, so I got into holistic medicine and cleaned up my system. That’s a big change. But I’m certainly not a phony in that I admit that marriage just isn’t for me. I’m not against marriage – people confuse that – I think marriage works for a certain percent of people. I’m just not one of them, or at least I never have been.”

Soon to enter its seventh year, Real Time has influentially surpassed the mighty contrarian soapbox that even Maher’s former broadcast once was. Each show lives long beyond its moment on HBO; interviews, roundtable crossfires and such segments as “New Rules” become instant viral sensations, get posted on tens of thousands of websites and rack up millions of YouTube views. Whether he’s rapping about healthcare with New York Congressman Anthony Weiner or making Mos Def look foolish for his willful ignorance, Maher is the loudest voice in the liberal forest – and sometimes even beyond that.

“Sometimes I even get booed by my own audience,” he says. “I voted for Obama – I’m a fan – but I don’t drink Kool-Aid, and he’s not my boyfriend – he’s the president. Some people who are conservative tell me that they watch my show, and they think I give an honest rendering of what I think and have on people who I don’t agree with. One problem we have in this country is that people can go for years without ever hearing a contrary opinion. The left-wingers listen to their shows, and the right-wingers listen to their shows, and it’s like we live in two different worlds. It’s rare that you have an honest accounting of all the opinions.”

Perhaps Maher’s most honest accounting yet came this past year with Religulous, his documentary boot to the balls of organized religion. Directed by Borat visionary Larry Charles, the film makes a laughing stock of anyone who believes in talking snakes and other folklore. Basically, the movie rips on the sort of people whom, unfortunately, we can’t publicly execute, but who Maher believes are slowly retreating from the dumb side.

“Things are changing,” says Maher. “I’m not going to live to see the end of religion, but I do think that something has started and will only get bigger. At some point people have to wake up to this, or they really are going to have to face the consequences that they’re preparing for. Let’s be honest – religious people are not against the end of the world. That’s a fucking scary thought to begin with – I’m not comfortable at all with people who are rooting for the end of the world.

“My comedy is content-filled, and there are good ideas in there,” he continues. “Oftentimes they’re not the mainstream ideas, though; so if that makes people think of me as a contrarian – it’s not just because I’m trying to be, it’s because the majority of thinking in this country is boneheaded. If I’m contrary to that, then good.”