I'm generally a fan of Maher and agree with him very frequently in politics. To be sure, everything I know about him suggests he's an enigmatic guy. This is a guy who once started a public scene waiting on line at a bathroom because people were letting the women go first. He went off the rails about double standards and "reverse sexism."
Still, I've always been a fan of his and no doubt his stock rose a great deal especially after 9/11 when he at least was willing to give us more than the conventional spin at the time-where everything was censured and the conservatives were gloating about how we were living in a new "more serious"-in other words a "new" age that was more like an older age, the Cold War age in particular- age that disallowed anything other than unquestioning support of the policies of George W. Bush.
Maher got himself fired by calling the kidnapped passengers on hijacked planes "cowards" for letting themselves be driven into the World Trade Center-and the Pentagon-rather than following the lead of the fourth plane-Flight 93-that the passengers forced down into a field in Pennsylvania-.
Eleven years later, if anything those comments are rather caustic at the very least. At the time though I really appreciated them. It was a kind of Zizekean moment were as the Right wing had foreclosed any acceptable place of dissent, Maher reacted with a hysterical outburst. At this point the details of what he said doesn't matter. He refused to go along with groupthink and that was very important. For his trouble he was fired, showing the temper of the times.
While Benjamin Franklin had said that those who are willing to sacrifice liberty in exchange for security deserve neither, many Americans were unfortunately all too willing to do just that at the time falling into the trap of the Bushies.
Maher wasn't and for this he will always deserve credit. I was a fan before this but that cemented my high esteem for him.
However, on the recent Rush Limbaugh scandal, he's wrong. He's saying we liberals are not playing nice and fair by not accepting Rush's apology and trying to turn his advertisers against him.
Maher misconstrues the situation. That he does so may be undertandable with his personal experience of being thrown off the air for expressing his opinion, but that experience is not comparable to Rush.
Nor is it for that matter comparable to Ed Schultz insulting Laura Ingraham last year for that matter. I see even over at Firedoglake someone wrote a post claiming that Democrats are just being partisan about Rush that they are just as guilty of personal insults. Really not true. Laura Ingraham has made a career of playing a very rough and dirty game of scorched earth against liberals.
Her and her fellow blond conservative cohort Ann Coulter play very dirty and don't get much sympathy from me. You live by the sword you die by the sword.
Rush attacked a private young woman who was visiting Congress to stand up for the rights of women for available contraception. Rush's viscous, relentless attack on her, was not only personal but also directed at women everywhere. Indeed this week he went off again about "over-educated young, single white women."
Maher here too, I suspect is applying a false equivalence. He feels that he should not be hypocritical and so he needs protect Rush's freedom as well as his own. I just don't agree that there's any attack on Rush's freedom of speech.
There seems to be a sentiment that it's illegitimate for someone to be thrown off the air because their advertisers pull out the ads. Why should this be? If advertisers no longer want to sponsor a particular radio show this is no different that if listeners no longer want to listen to a particular radio show. It's the free market in either case.
For me it's not a question about whether you should accept Limbaugh's apology, or do not accept his apology. Like Ron Paul observed, he didn't sound very sorry.
There's every reason to think that Premiere Radio forced him to do that apology-which was very unusual especially on Saturday afternoon.
So as he didn't mean it why must we accept it? But for me that's not the point anyway. We have something on Limbaugh. Clearly he at risk in a way that he has seldom been in the past. Glenn Beck was let go by Fox News-Fox News. Imus, too lost his job. While I understand that Rush is a particularly big fish, there is still a shot now. My take on it is why if you have a clear shot on a big fish like Rush would you not take it? Whether you believe an apology is sincere or not?
I'm not Rush's girlfriend and don't really care about his apology. The reaction of Premiere in making him apologize on a Saturday afternoon proves this is not small beer despite Limbaugh's brave attempt to define it so yesterday afternoon. You get a clear shot, you take it.
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