Just like women who have a child, swear they'll never go through another delivery, and promptly get preggers again, we eagerly brought drinks and smokes to the couch last Friday night to watch the return of Bill Maher.
We had forgotten: For all his talent, he is an unforgivably lazy host. And as an interviewer, worse than the wonderful Jon Stewart, whose single flaw is his weakness in five-minute give-and-take.
Maher delivers a crisp opening monologue, snappy long-distance interviews, and closes with a tart segment called "New Rules." If only he'd do more in that vein. But the centerpiece of the show is a 35-minute panel, which invariably kicks around the Iraq War to absolutely no gain.
Either no woman wants to be on this show or Maher has a terrible booker, for he launched the season with a three-man panel. Four man, really, for Christopher Hitchens has enough testosterone for two--he not only supports the war, he gives the finger to those who don't.
Hitchens does not always seem sober on TV, but it makes little difference. He has that palmy Brit accent to give him gravitas, and he wears one of Graydon Carter's discarded cream suits for that suave look. In every other way, he's Ann Coulter--he makes it up as he goes along. He cites George Bush's State of the Union speech as if Bush's words meant anything. Ditto Colin Powell at the U.N. And Hitch seems to be the only one who knows that on 9/11 George Tenet said, "Gee, I hope those weren't the guys training at flight schools in the Midwest!"
Maher seems to think his job is to toss out a topic and watch until the panelists have eaten that bone clean. Or maybe he just doesn't know enough to jump in. In any event, HBO broadcast these lies and more--unchallenged. For Hitch, it was a four-star night.
Or maybe not. Earlier in the show, Maher interviewed Spike Lee and asked him a question, prompted by a lazy reading of a Bob Herbert New York Times column, about black-on-black violence. Hitch went out of his way to commend Maher for asking this question. And then Hitch's expression soured, as if to suggest a dark view of dark Americans. Maybe of all people of color. No doubt, in the late '60s, Hitch would have creamed his jeans over the carpet bombing of Vietnam.
This moment cried out for a wider audience. C'mon, YouTube, show us Hitch's expression as he talked about Spike. Let's see if that was a pro forma sneer or the rictus of racism. I'd put money on the latter.
As for Maher, I can't imagine many viewers found this dead zone in the middle of his show easy to sit through. If he continues to set the bar this low, he could find himself off the air--again. And that would be a loss, because you can count TV hosts of courage on one hand.
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