Sarah Palin sends liberals into irrational frenzies of contempt and,
in the case of Bill Maher, fits of condescension which drive him to
denigrate anyone stupid enough to see anything good in her. Maher began
and ended his Friday night HBO program, Real Time with Bill Maher [1], with derogatory "jokes" based on the presumption Palin and her supporters are morons.
He started with how at the health care summit the attendees recited stories about health care perils: "John McCain told how he once carried a brain-dead woman through an entire campaign."
About 56 minutes later, Maher raised Tiger Woods and his Buddhist
beliefs, wrapping up the show by ridiculing the eastern religion, but
turned it into a slam at Palin fans: "Thinking you can look at a
babbling, barely house-broken, uneducated being and say that's our
leader doesn't make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin
supporter."
Both lines, of course, earned laughter mixed with approving applause from the audience at CBS Television City in Los Angeles.
The two "jokes" on the February 26 edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher:
♦ Being politicians, you know, they all got to sharing their personal stories. Obama talked about his mother's battle with cancer, Harry Reid talked about a kid with a cleft pallet and John McCain told how he once carried a brain-dead woman through an entire campaign.
♦ People are always debating, is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It's a religion because you're a religion when you do something as weird as when the Buddhist monks scrutinize two-year olds to find the reincarnation of the dude who just died and then choose one of the toddlers as the sacred lama. Sorry, but thinking you can look at a babbling, barely house-broken, uneducated being and say that's our leader doesn't make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin supporter.
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [2] to follow him on Twitter.