Rypro 525

I loved that Maher almost deliberatly pissed off Hoover and the other dude just to do it.

Mr. Cinema

Yes, I noticed that as well. Maher will definitely take jabs at the right, even when their reps on are on there, but he's usually fairly restrained. Friday, he definitely looked determined to piss them off as much as possible. Definitely got a bit testy during some of the exchanges.

Honestly, I expected that to happen when Breitbart and Amy Holmes were on before, but that show was more reserved compared to this one.

Rypro 525

The guy in the middle looked legit pissed every time Maher called the republicans/tea party people are "your team"
And here's the joint smoking clip
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gmanca

Yeah, he even flipped out when talking about how Maher was rallying up his side with that loud "Go Team!" It was like he hadn't seen an episode of Real Time before where they move through a ton of topics.

superfro

Yep. He was obviously just looking for fights Friday night. It was entertaining though, that's for sure. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Hoover was just far too eager to drop her factoid tidbits and try to laugh off everything anyone had to say in opposition or common sense.

Rypro 525

For some reason, Real Time seems like a show that would need to be like an hour and a half or 2 hours where they don't have to rush through certain topics.

Also, Levi Johnston was on last week, and he almost came off like, 'why did i sign up to do this show, i don't wanna talk about Bristol and sex and condoms and such'.

coli

I used to love this show, but the past few seasons Maher has had far too many shows like the one this week: everyone on the panel is liberal and they just bitch about republicans like it is a therapy session. There wasn't even a debate on this show, it was just the republicans suck, republcans are liars, etc.

Come on Bill, you should never have a panel of all liberals or all conservatives, ITS BORING!!!

JohnSlider

I think the path most Republicans are trying take this country down has created a great need for liberal therapy sessions. I loved Friday's show.

Jack Straw

+1 You said it brotha!

coli

I don't care what side these shows are catering too, when they have a one sided panel bitching about the other political party for 60 minutes, it is waste of time. Hannity does this sometimes, he has on 2 republican pundits, and they just rip on democrats for the whole segment, and its just as stupid as Mahers show is these days.

I guess this maybe the trend for these shows with a panel of ALL liberals or ALL conservatives without an opposing view.

BORRRRRINNNNGGGGG....

Rypro 525

well to be fair he did have Huckabee on earlier (whos prob as conservative and as far opposite of Maher your gonna prob get, outside of maybe a tea party person on the show.) Also it was amusing to see Moore get so upset to a point where he could of had a heart attack

dolphinboy

OMG, comparing anything about Hannity's show to Maher's is ludicrous.

wm lopez

Yeah, Hannitty will show clips of promises broken by Obama and Maher will just make jokes on how stupid Sara Palin is.

dolphinboy

No, while Maher is a liberal/libertarian, he's not part of the Democratic Party established and a shill for anyone. Hannity and 99.9% of Fox News is just another arm of the Republican party.

Maher like Michael Moore both take shots at Dems ALL the time. Big shots, nasty shots, and it's just part of the conservative line now that the "liberal" lamestream media are all out to get them. Thus any real criticism is looked at as persecution. Jesus would be proud.

And I don't care that, in the end, Maher or Moore or even Stewart, are obviously progressives and thus fall in line with the "platform" of the Democratic party. Sure, that's a no-brainer, but it's a platform of ideals that many Democrats sh*t on just as often as Republicans do and these guys point that out every week or when they get the platform.

But they're obviously going to see one side as MORE right. The ones with shows just aren't part of raising money and getting Dems elected on a daily basis.

coli

Maher is a libertarian????? Pleasssse...

I have been watching Maher all the way back to his Comedy Central days in the early 90's before he got his show on ABC, and he USED to be a libertarian, and has become a shill for the democratic party since he came over to HBO.

Maher is everything a liberal is: Higher taxes, more government spending, environmentalist, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, single payer healtcare, etc.

I am a libertarian, and we are for LESS Government, lower taxes, less regulation, government to get the fuck out of our lives, and Maher wants government in every part of our life when it comes to my paycheck every week, the same way republicans want government in every part of our life when it comes to moral issues. The only thing I agree with Maher on is the abortion issue.

Maher has been a shill for the democratic party probably since the War in Iraq where i noticed a change in his show. He used to make fun of ALL polliticians, his show used to be great because he called it as he saw it. Now he is so one sided his show has gotten boring. I remember during the '08 campaign his monologue would only make fun of republicans and John McCain. He wouldn't do one joke about Obama. Trust me and go back and watch the fall of 08 shows on HBO, not one joke on Obama!

Now his show goes like this: Sarah Palin is a dumbass, George W Bush is a fuckin idiot, everything republicans do is evil, and fuck religion and anyone who follows any faith.

Sorry dude, Mahers show is no different then Hannity, Olberman, or any of those political shows, simply because he isn't funny anymore, and he is all about electing democrats. This wasn't the case when he was on ABC.

I am no defender of republicans or democrats, but all of these shows are so ridiculous these days because the new thing is exactly how Maher's show is these days: Stacked panels of all one side with no one from the other side to balance things out. Can you say BOORRRRING......

superfro

Agreed!

coli

I actually agree with a few of these statements. But not EVERY show

dhmac

Bill Maher addressed the Libertarian claim on one of his show (either early this year or last year). He basically said that he only claimed to be a Libertarian in the early '90s when the Libertarian Party was the only party that was publically calling for ending the war on drugs. (In other words, he did it because he wants pot to be legalized.) He has rejected the Libertarian label since then because of the Libertarian economic views, which are essentially no different from the Republican views in practice.

However, conservative guests still come on and again and again call him a Libertarian even though he has publically renounced that label. (I guess they don't watch the show )

JTH182

+2

wmansir

Here's what he said in 2006:

Q: You describe yourself as a Libertarian. Is that even a political designation anymore?

Maher: I don't know. There's no one in the Libertarian Party who breaks through, even to Ralph Nader status. I've always thought of it as allowing people to do anything they wanted to do as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. Sometimes people say to me, "You're not a real Libertarian because Libertarians believe there should be no gun control." I'm not a radical Libertarian, O.K.? Every party has something of a big tent.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz15PFI9eGE

A little googling reveals several articles around 2001 in which he describes himself as libertarian as well. So either you or Maher himself is misremembering history to claim he only said it in the early '90's because of their stance on drugs.

dolphinboy

Another false equivalence that most conservative and some libs believe, that Hannity and Olbermann do the same thing. They don't.

Olbermann pushes his side, Hannity is bought and paid for by his side.

Olbermann is a liberal commentator who certainly is biased towards his own beliefs. Hannity makes up stuff regularly and is accountable to no one and in one night helped raise 7 million dollars at a Repub fundraiser. This is common at Fox.

Maher and Olbermann are nowhere as deep in the sh*t as Hannity and most everything else on Fox News. Just because they might be on different sides of the political spectrum with tv shows doesn't make them the same.

superfro

Not to mention future candidates for office that are actually on Fox's payroll.

Josh-da-man

You do realize that being pro-choice and pro-gay marriage are both libertarian positions, don't you?

wmansir

So the networks shouldn't employ people who MAY run for office, like when Chris Mathews was seriously considering running for Specters seat in PA?

dhmac

Guess what? He changed his mind. That happens (...to non-conservatives, that is).

I found what he said this year and, hence, which is his current view...

This is what Bill Maher said in 2010 about Libertarianism: "It seems to me a very strange moment in our history to be pushing Libertarianism. I said many, many years ago that I was a Libertarian, like in the early '90s, and I've heard people say 'well, Bill you just really care about smoking pot and sex.' Exactly, that's really what it was, you got me. But at this moment when BP, a private corporation, is ruining an entire ocean, when Wall Street private companies brought down an entire economy; isn't that a strange moment to be pushing for Libertarianism?"

If people just watched his show, they would've heard this and understood, at the very least, that Bill Maher no longer considers himself a Libertarian. That was then, this is NOW.