Published on 10 Mar 2012
As we've already discussed here, Bill Maher has become somewhat of a punching bag from both sides of the aisle over the last week or so, both for saying that liberals looked bad for not accepting Rush Limbaugh's "apology" and with the false equivalencies by the right, screaming that what he said about Sarah Palin is somehow the equivalent of what Rush Limbaugh did with his attack on Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke.
On this Friday night's Real Time on HBO, Maher addressed both, starting with his criticism from the left. MAHER: Let me tell you something. I got crap from both the left and the right this week because... okay... let me address the left first, because I found this more disheartening. They were very mad at me because I tweeted that people like Rush Limbaugh, who I absolutely disagree with, I've never said a good word about him. I did a whole monologue on what an asshole he was only a week ago. But I said, I don't like it that people are made to disappear when they say something, or people try to make them disappear when they say something you don't like. That's America. Sometimes you're made to feel uncomfortable, okay? I mean, can we put this in perspective? No one died. A guy made a bad joke, a bad joke because a., it was a disgusting sentiment that he was evoking and also because it wasn't even a joke. He's a stupid fat f**k whose not funny and it annoys me that... it annoys me that people people who cannot keep two disparate thoughts in their own mind, lump me in together with him and say I'm defending him. I'm not defending him. I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the boundaries for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesman?
Okay, fair enough on a few points like defending free speech and the fact that it's unfair to lump the two of you together. But I'll make a few points in rebuttal. First of all, you did not just say that you didn't like the idea of people pushing to get Limbaugh off the air. You said liberals looked bad for not accepting his apology. What Rush Limbaugh did was not an apology.
On this Friday night's Real Time on HBO, Maher addressed both, starting with his criticism from the left. MAHER: Let me tell you something. I got crap from both the left and the right this week because... okay... let me address the left first, because I found this more disheartening. They were very mad at me because I tweeted that people like Rush Limbaugh, who I absolutely disagree with, I've never said a good word about him. I did a whole monologue on what an asshole he was only a week ago. But I said, I don't like it that people are made to disappear when they say something, or people try to make them disappear when they say something you don't like. That's America. Sometimes you're made to feel uncomfortable, okay? I mean, can we put this in perspective? No one died. A guy made a bad joke, a bad joke because a., it was a disgusting sentiment that he was evoking and also because it wasn't even a joke. He's a stupid fat f**k whose not funny and it annoys me that... it annoys me that people people who cannot keep two disparate thoughts in their own mind, lump me in together with him and say I'm defending him. I'm not defending him. I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the boundaries for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesman?
Okay, fair enough on a few points like defending free speech and the fact that it's unfair to lump the two of you together. But I'll make a few points in rebuttal. First of all, you did not just say that you didn't like the idea of people pushing to get Limbaugh off the air. You said liberals looked bad for not accepting his apology. What Rush Limbaugh did was not an apology.
