What did Bill Maher say to get himself kicked off his show on ABC ??

[kentuck]

I recall it was the old "Politically Incorrect" show.

And it had something to do with our troops, as I recall?

He lost his job for it.

In a moment of passion, Ed Shultz once called Laura Ingraham a "slut". One time. And he was taken off the air for a week or so.

And the Republicans argue that there is a "double standard" that accepts it from liberals but blame conservatives when it happens.

Rush did not say it just one time. It was not in a moment of passion. He was on the air for three days, for nine hours, calling names and distorting the facts of the issue. Double standard? Hardly.


. .

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Specifically, for this reason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97KllcZidKQ

BTW, Maher is someone I keep an eye on because his intellect has a way of tripping him up. Like when he suggested that it was a waste of time to be harassing travelers at checkpoints when they didn't fit the profile of terrorists. (I liberally paraphrase).

I took his remarks offensively since I was getting pulled out of flight lines at that time almost every time I traveled.

[Marr]

2. He said the terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center were not cowards,

as was being mindlessly bleated from every channel. He went on to say that some of our tactics (drone aircraft and remotely-guided missiles) actually are cowardly.

Seemed obvious to me then, seems obvious now. Whatever else those men may have been, they were certainly not cowards.

[kentuck]

3. In other words...

He got fired for telling the truth?

[No Elephants]

10. He said something like, You can say many things about people who would fly a plane into a building,

but flying a plane into a building is not the act of a coward."

The comment he lost his show over had nothing to do with our troops or any nation's troops.

World War Ii was before my time, but, throughout my life, I have heard many who lived through it speak about it. I recall many negative things Americans said about the actions of the Japanese during WWII, including that they ate our troops, but I don't recall reading or hearing about anyone's calling the Japanese kamikaze pilots cowards.

Bill Maher lost his show because, despite his publicized Libertarianism, many of his comments sound liberal and no one can forgive that.

[ellisonz]

14. Yes. n/t

[hlthe2b]

4. He had the temerity to correct those stating 911 hijackers were "cowards"...

It was one of those intellectually honest statements that the frothing reactionaries just couldn't handle.

Separating "cowardice" from "horrific, despicable, beyond defensible, and morally unredeemable" was impossible for those calling for Maher's head.
I'm not exactly his fan, since his overt misogyny is sickening. But, his statement re: 911, though predictably ill-timed and misunderstood, was similar IMO to Time magazines decision to put Hitler on the cover for the 1938 "Man of the year" and their attempt to differentiate "influential" from "greatness"...

I admire Maher's intellect. I detest his narcissism, misogyny, and frequent arrogance.

[kentuck]

5. I think Maher is a mixed bag...

...much like the rest of us. :-)

I admire his originality.

[hlthe2b]

6. Yes.. his talent gives him more latitude than, perhaps might others.

A mixed bag, that I can still stand to watch and frequently enjoy, even if I could gladly "dope-smack" him on occasion.

[kentuck]

7. Yep!

:-)

[lbrtbell]

8. He also hates kids

Craig Ferguson cut his interview with Maher short, when the latter suggested it would be better to be gently fondled by a pop star (Michael Jackson) than to be bullied.

Sorry, Bill, but sexual abuse is the worst thing anyone can do to a child, short of murder. And the former often leads to the latter.

[KoKo]

9. Good Points....Look at all the Celeb's who have paid a Price..yet,

Rushbo has managed to keep going trashing and trashing and making his high millions with only a few kerfluffles. He was even involved with using Doctors for his Med Dependency and buying the drugs from a parking lot in Palm Beach? How many others could get away with that and have a show that appears in markets sometimes aired three times a day (like here in the South) and still be on the air?

Don Imus comments seem to pale in comparison with what Rushbo has said all these years that was offensive.

[No Elephants]

11. Calling African American female members of a high school sports team "nappy headed ho's"

doesn't seem all that pale to me no pun intended). And that was only one of many offensive comments Imus had made until that point.

IMO, in a just America, he would have lost his show and not gotten another one.

Then again, as several Presidents have told us, "Life is unfair."

Limbaugh's net worth and adulation provide only one of many, many examples that our Presidents were correct on that point.

[KoKo]

12. I stand corrected. I had not remembered the exact quote and it's

as bad as Rushbo's. Both of them should have been thrown out long ago. Agree. People seem to become immune to this kind of talk...thinking it was just "guy talk"..."sports talk" and things that wouldn't have been said on the airwaves as fit for "all audiences" became commonplace. Just "turn it off" we were told. But, when this kind of talk becomes acceptable we can see how it just spreads and becomes the norm.

Thanks for pointing out his exact quote. :hi:

[No Elephants]

13. You're welcome. No worries. I was mistaken, though. It was a Rutgers team.

I just googled because I suddenly could not remember if Imus had actually said it himself or his diminutive jerk of a producer had said it and Imus did nothing. Turns out, it was worse than I remembered.

On the April 4 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team, which is comprised of eight African-American and two white players, as "nappy-headed hos" immediately after the show's executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, called the team "hard-core hos." Later, former Imus sports announcer Sid Rosenberg, who was filling in for sportscaster Chris Carlin, said: "The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors."

McGuirk referred to the NCAA women's basketball championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee as a "Spike Lee thing," adding, "The Jigaboos vs. The Wannabees -- that movie that he had." McGuirk was presumably referring to Lee's 1988 film, School Daze (Sony Pictures), though co-host Charles McCord misidentified it as "Do the Right Thing" (Criterion, June 1989).

http://mediamatters.org/research/200704040011

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. To be fair, I don't really agree with Maher on that, but he shouldn't have been fired for it.

Being willing to commit suicide in order to kill lots of people is a pretty cowardly act.

Of course, having read the articles warning of the attack in a newsmagazine a year before it happened (warnings that mysteriously dissappeared from the online archives) I'm a LIHOP-per so...