Bill Maher is a television host, stand up comedian, political commentator, author and occasional actor. He began doing stand up comedy and appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman several times. He later got roles in several films such as ‘Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death’ and ‘Pizza Man’. In 1993, Maher became host of ‘Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher’ which was a late night political talk show on Comedy Central and was later moved to the ABC network in 1997. In 2002, the show was cancelled because of controversial comments Maher had made about the 9/11 terrorists. He had said that they weren’t cowards for blowing up themselves on a plane and that the real cowards were the American military for shooting cruise missiles from hundred of miles away at specific targets. He was accused of being anti-military but Maher defended himself by stating that he is a huge supporter of the military but won’t defend the military all of the time if they’re doing something which he feels is wrong.
In 2003, he got a new show on HBO called ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’. The format was very similar to his old show except he had more freedom on HBO to say what was on his mind compared to traditional broadcast television or cable TV. His new show would feature less actors/actresses and more political pundits, columnists,activists and journalists. In addition, Maher is also a political commentator who is a frequent guest on political shows such as ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’ or CNN’s ‘Wolf Blitzer Report’. Maher is a very outspoken critic or religion and health care. In 2008, he created the film ‘Religulous’ which is a documentary criticizing extremism in religion. Also, he feels that the health care industry and the government aren’t the right people to help give you advice on dieting and that you must be very careful and act and choose by yourself what is the best nutrition for your body and is alarmed by the growing obesity epidemic in America. Maher’s personal life is highly criticized for his stance against marriage as he is a ‘confirmed bachelor’ who enjoys dating smart women but doesn’t see himself getting married anytime soon. One of the end segments of his HBO show is called ‘New Rules’. In this segment, Maher gives a quick editorial on popular culture and politics and finishes off with an editorial comment on a specific topic to finish off the show. Here is one of his ‘New Rules’ quotes for our quote of the month for May…
| “New Rule: If you make a plane like the F-22, and it cost $350 million each and then you have THREE wars, and you still don’t use it, you have to admit that the defense budget is really a jobs program. Did we buy this plane as a favor to someone in the office? Is it a supersonic Girl Scout cookie? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya: who are we saving it to fight? The Transformers? – Bill Maher in his “New Rules” segment |
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