No Fan of Maher

I know I am late on this, but I need to get it off my chest. Remember the Rush Limbaugh craziness? Well Bill Maher decided to weigh in a few times. First on Twitter to aid Limbaugh after his non-apology. Then he defended himself and his own attacks on women on his show. Then he wrote an Opinion piece in the NY Times about how people should stop getting offended.  I was never a fan of Maher, and I am even less so now. All of his contributions have been absurd. Though we shouldn't be surprised that someone who regularly offends isn't helpful in a debate about offensiveness.

First, I'll talk about his defending himself on his show. Maher thinks what he did (calling Palin a slut) is okay because Palin is in the public sphere. Apparently, Maher wasn't paying attention to the outrage over Rush Limbaugh. Sure some of the outrage was directed at the fact that Limbaugh was attacking a mostly private person who was merely commenting on legislation. But that was only a tiny part of it. Most of the outrage came from the lack of civility generally and the direct misogynist nature of the attacks.

Bill Maher's attacks on Palin are guilty of both of those things. No one should be called a slut. Not someone running for vice president or president. Not someone who is on a bad reality show. No one.

But worse is his Opinion piece in the Times. Here is the worst line: "I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone." That is sophistry at its worst.

This isn't about making sure no one says anything that offends anyone. It is about agreeing that there are some things that are out of bounds. If we follow Maher's fake and self-serving logic, than either nothing is out of bounds or everything is. I think we can easily reject that logic. Instead, there are some obvious things that a decent society should reject. Most of us are smart enough to know what that is.

Then there are others who make a lot of money pretending not to know - they appeal to the worst among us. They should get a message - not passive avoidance - that what they are doing is not acceptable.