Satiristas

  And it’s, “Hey, we are mad! Thanks for reminding me; I almost forgot to be mad today.”

  It felt like the whole country had all this rage and no place to really put it and they turned it on me for a few weeks. It was the subject of White House press briefings for days; Ari Fleischer and officials at the highest levels commented on it…but within six months people were telling me, “You were right. They weren’t cowards, were they? They stuck with a suicide mission.”

  By a year later, people were, “Didn’t you say something a while ago that was some kind of a thing…?” They had a vague notion of some brouhaha, but I could hardly find anybody who remembered what the fuck the whole thing was even about. The cycle was quick and complete, and I was back on TV within six months of leaving ABC. It’s amazing.

  I’ve seen that same scenario play out with the Dixie Chicks, Don Imus—so many people who’ve gotten in trouble for something they said—and in every case, a short while later there was a reversal of thinking on the initial rush to judgment. I’m not comparing Imus’s comments to mine; he just made a silly, shock-jock insult whereas I made an adult comment about an adult subject—one also echoed by intellectuals like Susan Sontag, and not-so-intellectuals like Rush Limbaugh, too. Dick Cheney even said pretty much the same thing. But what was similar is that all those instances show over and over how this is a nation of panickers. It’s so supersensitive. Anything upsets it, it panics right away. As we panicked about 9/11 and ended up invading Iraq. And always, a short time later the country goes, “Oh jeez…Maybe we overreacted. I guess Don Imus can have a job.” Or Janet Jackson, another one where people flipped.

  PAUL PROVENZA: The Janet Jackson furor was just a handful of organized people duping America into believing it was outraged. Most Americans were outraged that anyone was outraged.

  BILL MAHER: That’s what happened with me. It was a handful of people whose opinion doesn’t reflect “America” at all—it doesn’t even reflect people watching the show, it reflects people who heard about it somewhere else. But it’s amplified, because it’s easy to send mass e-mails, so Sears or FedEx, who pulled their advertising, could easily believe an army of people is upset when it’s really just a few people contacting other people going, “Can we put your name on this list?”

  People go, “Sure! You bet I’m mad as hell about whoever on whatever show I’ve never seen because I go to bed at nine o’clock!”

  It seems unfair that you don’t actually have to watch a show to insist that it not be on.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Then powerful people with their own agendas fan the panic flames.

  BILL MAHER: Anytime people are in the dark they’re susceptible to being frightened easily. When September 11 happened, we had no idea why, what to do, how to fix it, what caused it, or how to make sure it didn’t happen again. It was just put forth that they’re crazy, we’re pure good, they’re pure evil. To a nation of ignoramuses, that worked.

  Using our army against an enemy with no army? That’s pure panic. Al-Zawahiri’s plan to take down the superpower never involved an army; he doesn’t have one. But he knew he could draw us into a backbreaking conflict, economically, spiritually, and militarily, and he’s done that. It reminds me of Gulliver’s Travels, where the Lilliputians tie down the giant. He used our own panic as the means to take us down.

  Bush and his people were so naive as to think the little three-week war before occupation was the war. The Iraqis understood that was just the trailer. And now…your feature presentation.

  Torture’s another example of panic. We blundered into war, our guys were getting blown up instead of greeted with flowers, and, “We don’t know why they’re blowing us up! Let’s get some people under a lightbulb and beat some information out of them!”

  We’ve fought every other war we’ve ever waged without needing to go there. But the Bush/neocon crowd believed that whatever they do is justified, because the big picture is keeping the right people in power in America. Nothing is more central to their belief system than that Americans are always the good people: “All we gotta do is show up and spread some freedom dust and they’ll all fall in line.”

  They believe we can do anything—torture people, create millions of refugees and send them back to countries where they’ll be assassinated for collaborating with us, treat our own veterans horribly—because it’s in the greater service of keeping them in power, and they view their staying in power as the lynchpin to maintaining this great American experiment. They think they’re the only ones who can uphold what they see as America. But their knowledge of history is faulty and shallow: their idea of America is what we think of as Middle America—but America was founded by enlightened liberals from Boston and Philadelphia. Their path is the one that’s diverged from the original intent and conception of this country.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Some of their religious-Right power base see American Mid-East policy as a means to fulfill Biblical “rapture” prophecies, too.

  BILL MAHER: That had a lot to do with Bush’s policies, especially toward Israel—but this affection many on the religious Right claim to have for Israel is a cynical one; they don’t love the Jew or Israel, it’s just important that Israel not be wiped out or moved, because Israel must be in the hands of the Jews when Jesus returns. And what happens when Jesus returns? Jews either convert, or they’re killed. That’s the prophecy: 144,000 Jews are “raptured” up into heaven—I guess they’re, like, “grandfathered” in, but aside from them, when Jesus comes back, no more Jews.

  PAUL PROVENZA: It’s hard to believe there’s really all that much support for these ideas among people who call themselves Christian.

  BILL MAHER: It’s a smaller group than the power suggests, but it’s considerable; I wouldn’t call it “fringe.” Their power’s outsized to their numbers, because they’re so well-organized and devoted. Smaller, more devoted groups always succeed over a larger, more apathetic group. And few things fire people up more than religion, because it’s connected with the ultimate questions. And if you’re crazy enough to think you know with utter certitude what happens after death, then you’re crazy enough to do anything.

  This is what Religulous is all about, and what I’ve been saying on TV about religion being so destructive. I’ve pretty much owned the subject on television for the last fifteen years.

  I give great credit to George Carlin; he talked about it in stand-up long ago. I’m glad all the books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are on the scene, but Carlin and I were talking about this long before they came out.

  My fervent hope for Religulous is that it helps give people permission to say, “We’re rationalists.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Yet you don’t consider yourself atheist?

  BILL MAHER: I wouldn’t describe myself as a strict atheist, but even Richard Dawkins doesn’t describe himself that way. In The God Delusion, he establishes a scale of one to seven: one being completely certain there’s a God, seven being completely certain there isn’t. Dawkins says he’s only a 6.9, because you just don’t know. You can’t. So I say I’m a “rationalist.”

  I would like Religulous and this burgeoning movement to give the millions and millions in this country who think along those lines permission to say, “We’re not the crazy ones; people who believe in talking snakes are the crazy ones. We believe in empirical proof, not in personal gods and prayers that obviously don’t get answered and cosmic justice that obviously doesn’t exist.”

  Sixteen percent of Americans say they’re atheist or agnostic. That’s a really sizeable minority—bigger than blacks, Jews, homosexuals, or NRA members. Any other minority that big would have tremendous political clout, but this is the one minority with none. Because, one, they’re individualist—by very nature, they’re not joiners. And, two, they’re cowed to such a degree as to believe they should just go in the corner and shut the hell up. I’d like them to come out of the closet and assert themselves.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Can you change mind
s through jokes?

  BILL MAHER: I used to answer that with that textbook modest answer: “Oh, no. I’m just out to get laughs.” Well, I’m out chiefly to get laughs, no doubt about that—if you don’t get laughs you don’t have a job, then you’re not speaking to anybody about anything—but honestly, in the last few years too many people have said to me, “I’ve changed my mind. You convinced me.”

  So I have to say I guess I do change some minds. I think minds are more open than people realize, and that you can change them—it just can’t be your raison d’être, or you get lost in your own causes rather than be a comedian. And that’s self-defeating; that’s the least effective way of changing anyone’s mind. The most effective way is to make them laugh. Being an involuntary response, laughter lets people know there’s some truth to what they’re laughing at. When they can’t help laughing, they kinda have to question it.

  And one of the great things about being a comic and not a politician is that you’re allowed to change your mind. If a politician changes their mind anytime after they’re eighteen years old, they’re “flip-flopping” “inconsistent.” But anyone else is just a human being who’s learning—and we don’t want that in a politician.

  But changing people’s minds is a far cry from changing government policy. I guess changing minds is a step toward changing government policy, but is it enough? I’m skeptical. Not long ago, 80 percent of the country thought we were on the wrong track, yet half of them were still willing to vote for the guy who’s for a more wrong track, so…I never underestimate inertia in this country.

  It’s that “Who are these people?” factor: “Who are these people upholding such failed ways of thinking?” They’re out there. There’s obviously so many of them it’s always an uphill battle for progressives.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Like, if two-thirds of America believes marijuana should be decriminalized—another topic you feel strongly about—why is it still illegal? Individual states have decriminalized it, but the federal government won’t allow them to listen to the will of their own people. “We the people” aren’t controlling that issue at all.

  BILL MAHER: Marijuana should be a nobrainer, why can’t we move those goalposts? They haven’t moved since I was a child, and before that. That’s what I mean about inertia in this country. I think if you asked most people if marijuana should be a criminal offense, most people would say, “Not really,” yet nothing changes.

  A lot of it’s because no politician wants to look weak or “soft on drugs.” They’re scared into backing off what they know is the right stand on this. I’ve talked to politicians privately about this; privately, they all concede that marijuana should not be criminalized, but publicly, they don’t want an election fight where somebody runs an attack ad: “My opponent wants your child smoking marijuana! Marijuana leads to other drugs and your child will be blowing people behind a Dumpster for heroin money, so vote for me, the other guy.”

  Intelligent arguments only work for a politician if enough intelligent people who hear the bullshit smear campaign come back against it with, “Oh, please. Stop it. It’s one of the more benign things around. Look in your medicine cabinet, it’s all worse than marijuana.”

  You can’t move the country past where people are willing to go, so if people are so easily panicked like that, so easily herded toward one dumb position after another, I don’t know how we’ll ever move forward.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Let’s not forget how much money is made in imprisoning people. The prison industry is big business. Building, operating, maintaining prisons—it’s all outsourced to big corporations, and the more prisoners the bigger the contracts. America has the largest prison population in the world.

  BILL MAHER: It’s horrible—and another example of doing anything other than actually thinking about an issue. “Let’s not think about it, just lock them up, throw away the key. Criminals are criminals.” I did an essay once, comparing the word “criminal” with “terrorist.” It’s a name to put on somebody so no matter what happens to them or what you do to them, it’s okay; you don’t have to think about it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Which is how you get compassionate, rational people to accept torture.

  BILL MAHER: Right. “Terrorist” is a magic word: it makes rights disappear. No cruel and unusual punishment, no torture—unless it’s a terrorist. No tapping phones, no search and seizure without a warrant——unless we think it’s a terrorist.

  I have a relatively clear idea of who the Taliban is: the people who harbored Al Qaeda, religious fanatics who make women wear beekeeper suits and cut people’s heads off in soccer stadiums. I know who they are; I don’t have a big problem going after them and killing them. But who are we fighting in Iraq? The media uses a variety of names, including, guess what? “Terrorists.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: In this country of 300 million, are there really not enough intelligent people to give traction to intelligent arguments about these things?

  BILL MAHER: You know what it takes for a novel to make the bestseller list? Like, fifty thousand copies. In a country of 300 million. A bestseller means one in six thousand people has read it. A million people watching Stephen Colbert is one in three hundred. It gives one pause when you consider the numbers: how many people are really taking this in? How many are really involved in any issue? How many are really aware, or really knowledgeable? Well…Not that many.

  I lay a lot of blame on the media, for many of the same reasons that our schools are failing. All too often the teachers are not that much brighter than the students. It’s the same thing with news media. They’re in the position of being our teachers. If they’re not smart enough to tell us what’s important or to understand things themselves, we’re certainly not gonna get it.

  That problem begins with the corporate takeover of news organizations. They used to be loss leaders. Networks didn’t care about ratings when it came to news; news wasn’t about that. News didn’t compete with The Beverly Hillbillies, it was subsidized by it. Entertainment made money for CBS, and Walter Cronkite did his thing—he didn’t have to contribute to the pot; it was news. That’s not how it is anymore.

  It’s distressing to watch news channels geared supposedly to the “smarter” people. MSNBC dumbs down whenever Chris Matthews isn’t on, and CNN—my hero Larry King, half the time he’s interviewing Scott Peterson’s lawyer or some other bullshit—and this is for the smart people! If what’s put on the air for the smart, interested people who care more than most others is so terribly dumbed down, what hope is there for anyone else?

  The Mike Judge movie Idiocracy really captures America to me. It satirizes the dumbness we live in every day; it’s just brilliant. It takes place five hundred years in the future, but to me, it’s not even five hundred days in the future.

  I was just at an airport, trying to get a ticket, in a scene I see every time: one person ahead of me, and it takes twenty minutes to process him. The airline person’s looking puzzled at the computer, another one comes over and they look puzzled at the computer together…I’m, like, “What the fuck could be the problem? How many fucking passengers have you processed in the last fifty years, Delta?!? He’s flying from Tampa to somewhere in the U.S., he’s got a ticket and a bag—what could be so complicated here?”

  They looked like the people in Idiocracy.

  I swear, it seems like America can’t do anything anymore. We can’t give health care to our people, can’t get cell phone service without cutting out—so many things people don’t realize other countries have already figured out how to do. I did an editorial about this at the end of Real Time once and got some responses just so insulted that I would even suggest it. I said, for all of you out there waving that big foam “We’re #1” finger, going, “We’re the greatest country in the world!,” I’m sorry, but they have actual statistics about this stuff—standard of living, where we place in education, the health care we provide our people—and we’re nowhere close to #1.

  And our shit is dingy. Our airpor
ts look dingy, bus stations, train stations—have you been to the original Disneyland lately? Doesn’t it look like it hasn’t had an upgrade since, like, the fifties?

  PAUL PROVENZA: It’s always looked Soviet to me.

  BILL MAHER: Exactly! Our shit is becoming like Havana, behind the pace of the rest of the world in so many ways. We’re coasting on this image of being number one that we’ve had in our minds, but it’s not 1955 anymore.

  I don’t have confidence that this country can get anything done. I hope a new generation of inspired, hope-filled people come in and turn this country around, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

  The heart of the problem is the corporate takeover of government—otherwise known as fascism. Congress is just the leisure service of American corporations now. That’s hard to defeat because people don’t understand; they can’t seem to see “the corporation” as the entity: they work for a corporation, they love Nabisco’s cookies.

  But we’re so easily bought off. It’s so easy to throw people a sop: “Look! You can transfer your old cell phone number to your new cell phone,” and we’re dancing in the streets. I once asked on my show, “If you could wipe out global warming tomorrow by giving up your TV remote, would you?”

  I’m not sure even I would. Can you imagine having to get up every time you wanted to change the channel or volume?

  PAUL PROVENZA: Hey, say what you want about Jesus, but don’t fuck around with my BlackBerry.

  BILL MAHER: Well, that’s what “iconoclast” means, right? Destroying the icon.

  HENRY ROLLINS

  FEW PEOPLE ARE as outspoken as Henry Rollins. Former front man for the seminal punk band Black Flag, author of numerous books and spoken-word albums, and host of his own no-holds-barred talk show on IFC, Rollins is a first-rank polemicist possessed of keen intelligence and biting wit. While he’s not a comedian per se, his spoken word bristles with searing humor, provoking the awed laughter that only comes from speaking truth. The most daring of comedians share the DNA of his punk sensibility, so it’s no surprise that Rollins’s innate sense of irony and hypersensitive bullshit detector churn out full-blown, genuine comedy. He speaks passionately on channeling the anger of his youth, and how today’s generation needs to wake up and do the same.