On Tuesday's In the Arena on CNN, Bill Maher channeled the far left's
frustration with President Obama: "This is one of my big problems with
our president.
He never blames the Republicans for anything. He's their best friend....There's
an oil rig that blows up in the Gulf of Mexico, and the party of drill,
baby, drill does not get blamed." Host Eliot Spitzer also joined Maher
in bashing the Tea Party.
The two liberals vented about domestic politics during the second half
of the segment, which began 18 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour.
Spitzer mouthed off his regular talking points about how "the middle
class has been squeezed and has suffered....[and] the top 2 or 3 percent
has profited amazingly well. And then...we had this financial meltdown,
caused primarily by Wall Street." He then lamented how this situation
hasn't benefitted his fellow liberals as much as he'd like, which led to
Maher bashing the apparent stupidity of the Tea Party:
SPITZER: ...Out of that combination of things, when you might have
thought we'd get a turn politically towards a new vision of what
government should do, it hasn't happened. We've gotten the Tea Party and
we've gotten anti-government rhetoric and a push once again for less
government, less regulation. How did that happen?
MAHER: Well, if you read Newsweek this week...there's a big story called- I think it's called, 'Why are We So Dumb?'
They did surveys- this happens all the time- and they ask Americans
very basic questions. I think they gave them the citizenship test that
people who are trying to immigrate to this country have to take, and, of
course, people just don't know very much.
The Tea Party is a party named after a tax revolt that does not
know very much about taxes. It's very hard to get effective policy in
place if the people are voting against their own economic interests. The
Tea Party- it's supposed to be a party of the common man, a populist
movement, and yet, somehow everything they want is also what Steve
Forbes wants. I mean, if your agenda is the same as a billionaire,
you're not really a populist movement, and if they're supposed to be all
about taxes and deficits and debt, most of the money, most of the
deficit money, the debt money, was from under Bush. These are facts that
they don't care about.
This rant delighted Spitzer, who has also
bashed the Tea Party, and set up the question which led to the HBO host venting his frustration about President Obama:
SPITZER: Let me ask this question. Where
have been the elected officials educating the public, instead of
creating the void into which you get the sort of empty rhetoric that
fuels the Tea Party? In other words, where has the leadership
been on the other side to explain as articulately as you just did what
got us to this precipice?
MAHER: I couldn't agree more. This is one of my big problems with our
president. He never blames the Republicans for anything. He's their best
friend. He always helps them with their narrative. There's an oil rig
that blows up in the Gulf of Mexico, and the party of drill, baby, drill
does not get blamed. There's a financial meltdown, and the party of
bank deregulation does not get blamed. There's an attack in Arizona with assault weapons, and the party that backs assault weapons doesn't get blamed.
Earth to Bill: it isn't very hard to find instances where either
candidate Obama or President Obama blamed former President Bush or the
GOP for something. Also, Jared Jee Loughner used a
semi-automatic pistol with a 33-round magazine
in Tucson, not an "assault weapon." Maher likely wants to ban those
extended magazines as well, but it doesn't give him an excuse to spout
off a false detail.
Earlier in the segment, Spitzer asked the HBO personality if the
current revolts in the Muslim world was a defeat for al Qaeda. Though
the atheist targeted Islam in his answer, one could easily see an
implied attack on Christian conservatives as well:
MAHER: Yes, I do think it's a defeat for al Qaeda, but it's not a
complete defeat. There was a million-woman march a couple of weeks ago
in Cairo, and about 1,000 women showed up, greatly outnumbered by men
jeering them to get back into the house, as women should be-
So, you know, I said this on our show a few weeks ago and people were
very upset. I very often make my liberals in our audience mad at me when
I talk about this subject, but I said, you know what? If there is not a
sexual revolution that is going to accompany your
revolution-revolution, just forget it because, you know, that's part of
it, is becoming a somewhat secular society. I mean, al Qaeda draws its
strength from religion, and we know this is a religious culture, much
more than the West is a religious culture. At some point, they are going
to have to make a break. You cannot have a sort of semi-theocracy,
where you're getting laws from the Koran and so forth, and I worry about
that. We saw the polls that were coming out of Egypt at the time of the
revolution when Mubarak was still in power, and a majority of the
people believe in things like Sharia law. It's very a religious
conservative society, and I don't think it's- that is compatible with
democracy. I know liberals don't like to hear that, that some people
aren't ready for it, but you know what? If you're too religious, you
can't also be a democracy.
SPITZER: Look, you are absolutely right. The tension
between a secular democracy and the theocracies that still govern in
many parts of that world is a tension that's going to have to see work
itself through. We hope it works itself through in favor of secular
democracy. We're going to have to wait and see.
At the end of the interview, Spitzer unsurprisingly heaped praise on
his guest: "Thank you so much for joining us. Your show is brilliant. I
love watching it." Maher is used to getting this kind of treatment from
CNN hosts, such as during his
regular appearances on Larry King's program.
It might be interesting to see if King's successor in the 9 pm Eastern
block, Piers Morgan, would follow this model, given his
debate with atheist Ricky Gervais in January 2011.
- Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
