More on Maher and "Real Time"

As a follow up to what I said below (and in the interest of fairness), I went back and watched the rest of the show to see if Bill Maher rebuked Christopher Hitchens for his "F.U." gesture that I posted about below. To my non-surprise, not a further word was said.

(Another point about Hitchens...he said last night that we should observe "a moment of silence" for the two Fox News journalists captured in Gaza. Funny, but I don't recall Hitchens making this same request when two CBS News journalists were killed and one injured in Iraq, and I don't recall him speaking up sympathetically when ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff and his cameraman was injured in Iraq.)

Update: The important thing, all snark aside, is that the two reporters are now safe (I couldn't find the story at CNN, which is apparently in "dead Diana" mode, as Molly Ivins once put it, concerning every little excruciating detail about Jill Carroll's abduction and release from her captors).

The comedy bits were genuinely funny (a spoof of the products we're supposedly no longer allowed to bring on airplanes, and a great "New Rules" and closing monologue about Pluto), though the opening bit about Hezbollah was a little weak I thought. I liked this joke in the monologue in particular: "Bush's aides tried to explain to him why Pluto was no longer considered a planet, but they got frustrated and ended up telling him that it was blown up by the Death Star."

I realize I'll probably get absolutely nowhere asking for an apology for Hitchens' behavior, but I'm going to try anyway. I guess it's kind of a funny thing to me in a way; none of these people in the spotlight would be worth anything if they didn't have an audience, and if they're going to totally and completely disrespect their audience, then they should be held accountable.

Another thing - as I watched Maher interview Markos Moulitsas, it occurred to me that Maher has absolutely no familiarity with The Daily Kos at all. With all of the time Maher has to do his reading and work on his show, is it asking too much for him to go to the site every now and then, especially if he's going to be interviewing the site's founder (I also just realized that Maher had, I believe, nothing whatsoever to say about Ned Lamont defeating Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut).

This makes me wonder if Maher reads any blogs at all, aside from the vanity posts he can get on HuffPo. I think that would account partly for the fact that he was so unprepared for Hitchens last night.

(Also, I would ask that Maher no longer invite Spike Lee on the show - Lee appeared remotely last night to plug his HBO documentary on Katrina. I think Lee is great, but the problem is that every time Maher asks him a question, his responses usually come way too late, are labored and are virtually incoherent. If Maher wants to suck up to Lee and compliment him on his films, then he should do it on his own time.)

I just don't know what I'm going to do about this show at this point. Yes, Maher is funny, but if he's going to allow a guest to totally disrespect his audience, then I'd feel kind of silly watching his program, wouldn't I?

Update 8/28: Earlier today, I left a comment to Maher's post at HuffPo about impeaching Bush (great idea) and pointed out that he sat there and did nothing while Hitchens "displayed the digit" twice, and I left links to this post and my previous Hitchens post in my comment. I just checked about five minutes ago and saw that Maher's post was pulled not just from the front page of the site, but the entire site altogether (I searched for it and couldn't find it).