MY FAVOURITE LEFTY MORON, BILL MAHER

A mini-shit-storm has erupted over some of Bill Maher's comments in the New Rules segment on the final show of the season (13 May). The segment starts with this:

New Rule: The next reality show must be called "America's Stupidest State." We'll start at 50, and each week, if your state does something really stupid with, say, evolution or images of the Virgin Mary, you'll move on to the next round. Now, of course, the final five will always end up being Alabama, Utah, Kansas, Texas and Florida. Sorry, Tennessee.

People in these states were bound to be offended.

Looking to generate further controversy – it was the last show of the season – Maher observed:

And finally, New Rule: The people in America who are most in favor of the Iraq war must now go there and fight it. The Army missed its recruiting goal by 42% last month. More people joined the Michael Jackson Fan Club. "We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit." And now we need warm bodies. We need warm bodies like Paula Abdul needs...warm bodies!

Clearly, Maher sees the military as a sort of real life Springer Show, wall to wall with possibly mentally defective low lifes. Anyway, he was looking for a reaction and got it from Representative Spencer Bachus R-Alabama (one of the states singled out in the segment's intro):

"I think it borders on treason," Bachus said. "In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country."

It's a bit of stretch to call Maher's attention seeking stupidity treason but I can understand why Bachus was upset.

Now, Maher has responded to Bachus in a post at Huff 'n' Puff containing these little gems:

There's nothing I can really do to help or hurt our troops (although anyone who's watched my shows or read my books in the last twelve years knows I'm a pretty ardent supporter of the military).

The "low-lying Lynndie England fruit" comment isn't neutral, it's an offensive indictment of America's military. It sure doesn't help the soldiers.

But a congressman, there's someone who can actually DO SOMETHING to help our troops. In fact, a case could be made that it's a lot more treasonous for someone in his position to be wasting his time yelling at a comedian. Shouldn't he be training his outrage at such problems as troops not having enough armor?

There is no such thing as enough armor, you fuckwit. Military armor will improve and be upgraded over time; it's an evolutionary process. Personally, I won't be happy until every soldier has totally bullet and explosive proof personal armor but for now the troops will have to make do with the armor that can be provided.

Maher continues:

And by the way, these "comments" were part of a longer, scripted comedy piece in the modest proposal tradition. I can see why administration supporters would want to deflect attention away from the gist of the piece, which was this: now that we can't meet our recruiting goals, maybe it's the people who were so gung ho for this war to begin with who should step up and go fight it. But of course it's always easier to distract people.

The point of this paragraph being to distract attention away from the focus of Bachus's attack, Maher's stupid "low-lying Lynndie England fruit" comment. It's a real stretch to call the original segment "comedy".

Maher concludes:

Finally, I would direct the Congressman to chapter 3 of my book "When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden." The accompanying poster shows a soldier, a cop, a fireman, and a teacher, and says, "We Say They're Our Heroes...But We Pay Them Like Chumps."

Heros are heroic in large part because they do what they do because it has to be done, not because they get paid lots to do it. That's one reason there are no – none that I can think of, anyway – modern mercenary heros.

Bill may not ride with bin Laden but he would if he could.