Secrets of Real Time with Bill Maher

If anyone's read or recalls an earlier post I wrote, "Secrets of the Daily Show", then this one is a lot shorter. I think that experience was more exotic to me, also a much more painful waiting and seated period. That was 5 in the afternoon, this was 6:30pm Friday night.

Undeniably a thrill to drive from Santa Monica to the legendary CBS Television City, with its convenient studioside parking and charming young ushers in ratty red page jackets.

Undeniably a thrill to be at a live broadcast. A whole different vibe than the New York taping, a lot because it's not just a taping, it's a real time to HBO East 11pm ET/8pm PT Real Time with Bill Maher. I got home and my TiVo already had me in the second of two audience shots.

I am a big fan of this show and think Maher has done a yeoman's job of fomenting social and political discussion. Sadly, the bad history-making of the Bush Administration is so unrelenting that it's a lot of hitting on Bush for being a moron. He was able to style more interesting kind of anti-partisan positions back when there wasn't neoconservative hegemony, making all other debates basically superfluous.

Besides narrowing the range of ideas being explored, the Bush torpor also means that smart Conservatives avoid the show. Yes, the audience was 85% liberal and (if even) 15% conservatives by shows of hands (and a whole brave family of them next to us in our row), but I think there once was a middle ground or maybe just soft enough partisan ground that if it still existed there'd have been much less booing and I'd bet even consideration of some debate-worthy conservative points. But with this Iraq War killing America, even a Heather Wilson (R-NM) is a rarity.

Consequently, we get Christopher Hitchens, a college Trotskyite turned neoconservative. He's a gifted writer, has many good things going on in his mind, but has messianic notions of what America should have done, should be doing, whatever, on the world stage.

From the first time he got booed for some statement or other he went on the audience, insulting the audience, at one point I thought gave us the finger, but will check the TiVo again, first whip through it seemed to be forefinger, still with the very aggressive facing.

I don't know if he was jonesing for a drink or a butt or what, but just before "New Rules", Maher told guest Vali Nasr he knew he had a plane to catch and thanked him for coming on; but it seems Hitch snuck out as well. I didn't actually see him go, just realized he wasn't sitting a chair over from Max Clelland like he should have been, Max having parked his wheelchair in tableplace next to Bill from the start of the show.

I have to admit that I adore Max. He's got a lot of folksy slogans and did his best to get a word in with Bill and Chris going at it all schoolyard. Max is my kind of old-fashioned Democrat, populist and cheery. The producers lucked out, because even though he was the only one they could cut to for reaction shots during "New Rules," Cleland was laughing all the time. He's in that wheelchair and he has a totally great sense of humor.

Bill did satellite interviews with Spike Lee (When the Levees Broke) and Elvis Costello (duets with Allen Toussaint) on our 1st Katrina anniversary, shameful as it is that so little has been done since then. Spike actually thinks about every question an interviewer asks, kinda cool and thoughtful but not all that suited for Maher's more wired pacing. Bill got into a weird prepared bit on She Hate Me that Spike took a moment to catch onto, silly lesbian pandering boy stuff. When pressed by Bill on Kanye West's accusation against Bush, Spike was careful to say that he didn't know Bush personally, but that it was the policies of his Administration that seem racially repressive, and there was a big class issue as well -- the TV networks liked showing poor looters, not hurricane damage in the high rent parishes.

Costello was a brilliant interview as he's always been, this time really bringing the love of New Orleans and his semi-adopted America as well. When Bill tried to bait him with the poll that 1% of Britains think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, hey how stupid is Middle America, Costello went on a grandslam closer about how in every little town anywhere he's ever been across America, there's always someone cool who knows what's going on. Remember liberal humanism?

As Elvis left Hitchens slapped on a racial smear regarding Elvis' accent, that it sounded more Irish to him, as it would since Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus' ancestors were indeed Irish. As in, his views don't count because he's not English. Wow, we hit him pretty fast on that, and coward Hitchens responded quickly to the boos, "Not that there's anything wrong with that! Plenty of fine..." but it was too pathetic really to continue on.

Ah, for the days of Tony Snow as guest from the Right.

But of all the celebrities, the one the audience knew the least (a smattering!) and I loved the best was online political discourse pioneer Markos Molitsas, a.k.a. Kos, founder of DailyKos. Since so many readers of his blog would be viewers of the show, there's a diary up on the site with a number of reader comments that really accurately describe some aspect of the episode. A few of my favorites on Markos:

Kos' best moment came early, and completely diffused the direction Maher wanted to take the interview, Kos said something like: 'I'm not even in charge of my own blog. What I did was create a forum where people can talk and interact and arrive at collective solutions to move our country forward; we hold public officials accountable. And that's why the republicans (and democrats) in power are so scared of us, they hate being held accountable by the people."

I loved hearing that because I believe this country needed that marketplace of ideas and political discourse that Markos had made real. It's part and parcel of Stewart and Colbert and Maher, although Maher seems a bit late to the party, and started going off on some preplanned jokiness coining a kind of ghetto term, "blogga" that seemed an ill-advised detour. Per diarist Mr Met:

I'm sorry that he didn't seem to have a better handle on Kos and what's going on in the blogosphere. That whole "blogga" riff was preconceived, not spontaneous, and a waste of Kos' precious moments, in my opinion.

But what made Markos' interview a success was that he took it back for the closer:
Kos smartly recognized his time was a-wasting so he brought the conversation back to something worthwhile and made a few points in the few seconds Maher gave him to make them.

Bloggers getting to know the TV game. Good for Markos, who seems quite the nerdy Berkeleyite but has gotten better dressed and smoother over from the first TV interviews, maybe not even a year ago.

The show lives or dies by its panel, and while this one had its entertainments, I'm hoping for better ones later this year.

Mostly, I'm just hoping for better news.