I was watching Bill Maher's wretched show on HBO last night. Only because my wife watches it, and because he had Andrew Sullivan on.
Then, at the end of the show, Maher gave a long, hurtful, ignorant rant about the south and southerners that displayed nothing but his blinkered arrogance and his vile bigotry. Then he ended by putting on a "country music" song and dance routine that was even more vile, stereotyping garbage. He might as well have put himself in blackface, sucked on a watermelon, and tap danced. (* Update * My lovely wife has posted the rant above, although not the country song.)
It was really that bad. It didn't make me angry so much as it made me shake my head in disgust. Disgust with this shallow, cynical man, his horrible elitism, his deep ignorance, and the obscene stupidity of the audience that was laughing and clapping at his hurtful (and, by the way, almost completely inaccurate) schtick.
To my disappointment, Ara not only seems to have liked it, but quotes parts of it and says, "Are You Listening Zell Miller?"
I hope so, since it will confirm for Zell Miller that everything he's said about the elitism and contempt, and profound ignorance, that people outside the South still hit southerners with is every bit as bad as he's ever said it is.
Of course, Southerners have always been willing to vote for northerners. They voted in droves for Roosevelt, for Truman, for Kennedy, for Reagan, and for Maine yankee George H.W. Bush. In Reagan and George H.W.'s case, neither of them even had a southerner on the ticket, and it was no problem for them in the South.
What southerners are increasingly tired of is being stereotyped, demeaned, lied about, called racists, called stupid, called ignorant, called bigoted, and treated like dirt.
The likes of Bill Maher, and, sadly, apparently my friend Ara, find this stuff clever and insightful? Maybe even "wise?" Jesus. No wonder Democrats are hemmorhaging voters down there. I kind of hope Ara knows that with that one ignorant rant and "satire" comedy song, he cost John Kerry a considerable number of votes come November--and the more southerners who saw it, the tougher a time Kerry will have.
Hell, if I were a Republican operative, I'd make copies of that tape and have people with VCRs and televisions in vans show up at every Democratic campaign event in the south from here until November, and just silently show it to people. They should show it at Bush rallies too, come to think of it.
Once again: Democrats' problems these days are mostly self-inflicted, and it seems like all they want to do in response is to blame everyone but themselves.
Hmm. I liked it and I think he was making a valid point - the only candidates aren't southern candidates.
I certainly didn't see bigotry to the extent that you did.
But it's bullshit, Michele. Total bullshit. Southerners have shown over and over again that they are willing to vote for non-Southerners. If anyone needs to be criticized, it's John Edwards for the arrogance of suggesting that southerners will vote for him just because he's a southern boy--although he would help deliver South Carolina, just because he's a native son.
I will repeat:
Southerners gave Franklin Roosevelt the White House, though he had no southerner on the ticket. They gave Massachussetts yankee John F. Kennedy the White House. They helped give Californian Richard Nixon the White House even though he had no southerner on the ticket.
Southerners voted in droves for Reagan, who had no southerner on his ticket. They gave a preppy Maine yankee named George H.W. Bush the White House although he had no southerner on the ticket either.
The entire premise is bullshit from the start, and if you accept the premise, then you need to ask yourself why.
People make these asshole assumptions about southerners all the time, and it's really sickening.
Edwards has only two advantages in the South. The first is that he's mostly a moderate centrist, which plays well to Southern voters. The second is that he's popular in South Carolina, and if he can deliver South Carolina that may well deliver the Presidency, because it's a big state and Bush probably needs it in order to win.
That's it.
This has not a fucking thing to do with this asshole notion that southerners won't vote for non-southerners--which is complete fiction. It has a lot to do with the arrogance of people who presume that southerners are so ill-bred and stupid and bigoted that they need to vote that way--and throwing in a bunch of shit about how they're racists, backwards, blah blah blah only rubs salt into the wound.
I'm sorry Michele, you are my friend, but it really was that bad. Maybe you have to have roots in the south to understand it completely, but the attitude of that rant, and the fundamental ignorance underlying it, was utterly attrocious.
Hell, Dean, I AM a Republican operative. (Read my post to Rosemary's stuff about stupid Bill Maher.) Southerners I talk with know all about non-southern attitudes that mock them.
But best of all, these southerners are my brothers and sisters in the huge and growing American pro-gun movement. We are in the process of creating the largest army in the world. It comprises armed Americans who are conscious of their right to keep and bear arms, and organize for collective political action on just that basis. One day, the NRA will be bigger than any church, bigger than any organization, bigger than any political party. In fact, it will BE a political party. Then you just watch.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
You seem to infer that Bill Maher is a liberal/democrat. He's not. He's a self-proclaimed libertarian. Also, it's a show, a satirical show. (Last week he did a Republican's Guide to Dating, which ripped into conservatives. This week he did the Democrat version.)
He's entitled to his opinions on the South, none of which I found bigoted, some of which I agreed with as a foreigner who's lived in the south almost 20 years.
I agree with you, Dean on the basic premise, and, unfortunately, Michele, reinforces your argument slightly.
Sorry, Michele, you need to spend some time down here and away from Long Island to understand how friendly most of the south is towards northerners. Worse yet, the attitude toward southerners in the north does seem to be partly prejudiced, in my own, limited, observations.
Having down consulting in Philly, NY (actually on Long Island) and Boston, I've noticed that clients don't hesitate to make light fun of the fact that I live in Greenville, SC; something that I never noticed in the opposite cases (Southerners consider me a "Yankee" even though I've lived in SC for 17 years now).
I learned early on in my career, both in the military and civilian world, the easiest way to alienate a southerner (white or black) is to display a haughty or superior attitude.
Hmm, which northern candidates have made that mistake?
Robert,
I know libertarians; libertarians are my friends Bill Maher is no libertarian. I've been watching Maher go from the center (which seems to have been an act now) from his Comedy Central days, when I would have agreed with you, to now when he definately is to the left when it comes to any libertarian ideals that have to do with limited, smaller government (not counting "morality laws")and individual economic rights.
(My first clue that he wasn't the libertarian that he claimed to be, during the period that Politically Correct was on Com. Central, when he was on "Jeopardy" and his charity was fricking PETA!)
Maher lost me when he started insisting that nicotine is not addictive. Then he started echoing myths about the non-danger of second hand smoke (it's smoke, smoke is dangerous, deal with it) and the non-existance of global warming.
My favorite episode of his ABC version of Politically Correct was when he had a pair of American Indian activists on. The first thing the two of them did was take over the show. Wouldn't let Bill do anything stupid. When he tried they shut him down.
My favorite bit in that episode came when Bill asked, "What do you call yourselves?"
They replied in effect that until the white man came along they really never thought of themselves as a people. Some were one tribe, some were another, but they never had a 'racial' identity. Get right down to it, "Indian" worked better than anything else people had come up with.
That episode confirmed a suspicion in my mind. Bill Maher is a bully. You have to be firm with him or else he will walk all over you. The two Indians he had as guests laid down the law, and stifled any attempt Bill made at running roughshod over things. But it was very doubtful he would ever let people like them on his show ever again. I watched a couple more episodes. Saw that his guests were now people who let him have his way, and decided the show was not worth my time. It's good to know my decision to 'boycott' Bill Mahrer remains a wise one.
Robert: You seem to infer that Bill Maher is a liberal/democrat.
I do no such thing. I understand that he fancies himself an independent, in the same way that Bill O'Reilly does. But it is very obvious when listening to him where his sympathies lie.
But, more to the point:
Not only did he give us this vile, bigoted, hateful, hurtful, and totally inaccurate and stupid rant, but Democrats I know are applauding it, saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Right on!"
For any of you applauding and laughing with this ignorant rant, I have only two words for you: FUCK. YOU.
You ignorant pissant motherfuckers.
It's those who are cheering on Maher's hateful and ignorant and demeaning sentiments that say so much about what a bunch of elitist pricks today's Democratic establishment has become.
Because a genuinely committed Democrat, one who really cared about his party, one who really cared about "the little guy," one who truly understood and cared about southern voters, would have been ashen-faced and infuriated by Bill Maher's words. Not amused by them.
Mortified, not amused.
Instead, the hard-core Democrats I know were cheering and laughing at Bill Maher's shuck-and-jive, "these stupid pickup-truck driving white niggers don't know what's best for them" bullshit routine, and even asking ASSSHOLE questions (yes, Ara, ASSHOLE questions) like, "Is Zell Miller listening?"
For the record: Yes Zell probably was. And you ignorant bigoted motherfuckers validated every word Zell has said about what a bunch of elitist fuckheads (ELITIST FUCKHEADS) you and your party have turned into. You pompous ass, bigoted, ignorant, stupid motherfuckers.
You think this shit is funny, or clever, or wise, or insightful? That says far, far, far more about you and the sick, twisted thing your party has turned into than anything I've ever seen.
You should be mortified by Maher, furious with him. Not laughing at him.
But you aren't mortified. You think he's wise and insightful .
Which only tells me that you've gotten exactly what you deserved on election day in the South for the last two decades.
There was a large drop in Democratic voting in the South in the 1960 Presidential election that was not seen further down the ticket that year. I wonder why? Could it be the same reason that several southern states, for the first time since Reconstruction, voted Republican in 1928? The real difference between FDR and Smith is that FDR was a WASP! You even yourself hinted at the nature of the new GOP dominant status in your post-2002 election column (The first of yours I ever read) about Archleader Bush and his plans. Do you now regret that column?
Lib:
What post was that, I mean, do you remember the title or about when he wrote it?
It was "Secret Master Plan Revealed". On 7 Novemer 2002 it was written.
Thanks!
That was satire. I'm pretty sure when Dean wakes up he will be able to explain why it is still a satire.
Imitating Game of Satan was he?
Gosh, Dean, I thought it was funny, that's all.
I guess that's the difference between you and me -- you're proud that you can feel hatred and I'm proud that I can feel mirth.
Like I said before, Maher was just doing what all comedians do: Pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
Sorry that it pisses you off so much. [shrug] You ought to let yourself laugh more -- you'll live longer.
Ara,
I can't agree. I've got to side with Dean on this one.
If you had grown up in the South and seen first-hand the sort of bullshit that we get shoveled by Northerners on an almost daily basis about us, what they think we are all about and what they think we stand for, you wouldn't find it amusing either.
Yeah, yeah, Ara. Whatever.
It was "funny."
Ha.
Ha.
By the way, I'm proud of the fact that I can know love, hate, fear, laughter, anger, joy, and sorrow. All are normal human emotions, and all are healthly emotions, in their proper time and proper place.
Laughing at vicious bigots is not, in my view, particularly appropriate. But that's just me.
By the way, do you think it's funny when Pat Buchanan tells queer jokes and jew jokes? Just curious.
Libertarian:
Here is the electoral map for the 1960 election, wherein the South went overwhelmingly for Kennedy. Which you can easily see for yourself.
Furthermore, here is the electoral map for the 1972 election, in which Southerners overwhelmingly supported Richard Nixon, despite the fact that Nixon signed several major expansions of civil rights laws, and despite the fact that he had no Southerner on his ticket.
Now here is the electoral map for the 1980 election. Notice something funny? Reagan was from California, Bush was from Maine, and they were running against a southerner named Jimmy Carter. Look at that map reeeeeal close Libertarian. Which way did the South vote in that election?
Now here is the electoral map of 1992. Notice something? Oh yeah, that Maine Yankee George H.W. Bush, who had no southerner on his ticket, still took most of the southern states, despite the fact that Bush was running against a Texan named Perot and an Arkansas governor named Clinton.
Now, do you want to back up and explain to me ONE MORE TIME why you think it's Southerners who have an attitude problem about non-Southerners?
Oh, and by the way? My piece entitled "Secret Master Plan Revealed" was meant as a satire of the tinfoil hat paranoids who talk like that. Seems to have gone over your head, huh?
By the way, do you think it's funny when Pat Buchanan tells queer jokes and jew jokes? Just curious.
Well, first of all, I've never heard him tell one. Second, if he was as funny as Hillary with her Gandhi joke, then I'd say, no, I wouldn't enjoy it.
Lastly, comedy should be left to the professionals.
Rage. Subsiding. Breathing. Becoming. Normal... ahhh.
Sorry.
But anyway, let me know when Maher finally becomes a professional comedian. It should be interesting to see that, I haven't seen it yet!
Dean, obviously Maher has struck a serious nerve with you. Maybe you hate his hair, but I have found him rather hilarious, profane, and hardly bitter in his tone or excessively ignorant in his content. (Yes, he goes over the top, it's show business you know.) His dogging of Neil Bush had me rolling on the floor. Remember, he went after Clinton so many occassions...he's a COMEDIAN!! Before you tell ME to FUCK OFF, why don't YOU stop massing your troops everytime someone rips Bush.
Maher has simply filled in after Dennis Miller left HBO. Miller used to rip conservatives (to often include southerners as his favorite target)every week without mercy, but since he's now a Bush supporter, we let him off. btw, I'm not comparing the two. Miller is much more intelligent and funny than Maher, but then again, Robin Williams is funnier and more talented than either one of them, but hardly as intelligent.
Oh, almost forgot, love you man!
Dean wrote:
"By the way, I'm proud of the fact that I can know love, hate, fear, laughter, anger, joy, and sorrow. All are normal human emotions, and all are healthly emotions, in their proper time and proper place."
Excellent and profoundly true. All of those emotions are valuable and necessary.
Dean's hate is much more restricted than mine. So far, I've seen him express hatred toward foreign dictators and their apologists, and maybe the other (Evil) Dean. That's about it. I'm far more a man of hate. I hate my enemies here at home as well as those abroad.
"Laughing at vicious bigots is not, in my view, particularly appropriate. But that's just me."
You mean laughing _with_ them is wrong. It's perfectly appropriate to laugh _at_ them. It's dangerous to laugh them _off_.
Dean:
"By the way, do you think it's funny when Pat Buchanan tells queer jokes and jew jokes? Just curious."
Ara Rubyan:
"Well, first of all, I've never heard him tell one."
How about the one where he denied that Jews were gassed at Treblinka? That was real funny. Sarcastically speaking. The fact is that Buchanan has repeatedly gone out of his way to attack and stir up hatred against both Jews and homosexuals on every possible occasion or issue. He is a Nazi. Yes, yes, I know, he's very subtle about it, and very charming and likable on TV, and he has an interesting _style_. That's precisely what makes him so dangerous.
I know, I know, I've heard it a million times: "You called Buchanan a Nazi! Why, that's terrible. You're not being Politically Correct. You musn't call anybody a Nazi, no matter what he advocates. It's wrong to call people names they don't like, even if they advocate stripping you of your rights or imprisoning or killing you. You must call him a 'social conservative' instead. That's a lot nicer."
I'm Politically Incorrect and proud of it. I call the shots as I see them, as they say. I call Buchanan a Nazi. I call Santorum a Communistic totalitarian dog-fucker. Whenever anybody advocates a violation of my rights, I recognize him for the thug he is and deal with him accordingly, no matter how "nice" he looks on TV. That's the way I am.
Rage. Subsiding. Breathing. Becoming. Normal... ahhh.
Normal? God I hope that never happens to you, my good friend. I've been successfully resisting it myself for decades.
I highly recommend it.
:^)
Us folks here in North Caroliny is gonna vote fer whichever one of them fellers as what will take them taxes off chewin' tobaccy.
Woah, what a journey I just went on Baille.
Your statement made me laugh and I decided to click on your name.
It took me to Elves and Lord of the Rings and I just kept clicking and ended up in India.
You know, many large Fortune 500 companies went over there because of the lower wages. I also know the people over there are learning to speak to it's customers like for instance, Hewlett Packard customer service has trained them to speak in a Western type voice.
I hope Dean gets to look at this along with Tim the Soldier that watches over Dean's World sometimes when he is working nights.
Interesting Baillie to say the least. North Caroliny? Chewin' tobacco? It was funny and I took the bait.
"You seem to infer that Bill Maher is a liberal/democrat. He's not. He's a self-proclaimed libertarian." - Robert S.
Just goes to show that any asshole can proclaim himself a Libertarian. It takes a lot more than that to be a libertarian.
[steps back in awe] Whoa! Dean, this is the first time in a long while I've seen you truly, incandescently pissed off. Impressive - thought I was at Misha's for a moment. ;]
I agree with you. This "all Southerners are white ignorant gun toting redneck hicks who're too stupid to vote right" sthick the Dem's and Lib's are on is getting a bit old. It's lost what bit of humour it may have had once.
Us half-breed over educated gun owning redskin urbanites aren't amused, and it's costing the Dems votes. ;]
[Ok, "ex-urbanite": I did move back to the boonies finally after more than a decade and a half in Big-D.]
Dean:
"...you ignorant bigoted motherfuckers validated every word Zell has said about what a bunch of elitist fuckheads (ELITIST FUCKHEADS) you and your party have turned into."
Glad you were able to nail down who the bigots are.
India? INDIA?
entropyhouse.com will take you to some odd places perhaps, but so far as I know India ain't included.
Janelle, I assure you, I am right here in Wilson, NC, with at least two hundred years of NC ancestry behind me. We even have our own private cemetary, as old Southern families are wont to do...
How much proof would you like? Old slave records, maybe? Land grants?
But PLEASE explain India!
Dean says: "Not only did he give us this vile, bigoted, hateful, hurtful, and totally inaccurate and stupid rant, but Democrats I know are applauding it, saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Right on!"
For any of you applauding and laughing with this ignorant rant, I have only two words for you: FUCK. YOU.
You ignorant pissant motherfuckers"
'Spoken by the mouth' of a true hypocrite. Mwahahaha, what a moron.