'Real Time with Bill Maher"

The monologue was tight, the interview was expert and the panel was… oh, who gives a you-know-what, Chris Rock is here! An impromptu appearance by the raunchy comedian about half-way through HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday interrupted a thoughtful debate on the state of health care reform and how long-term economic incentives … ah hell, I still don’t care, Chris Rock just made a joke about white people. What a funny guy.
It’s too bad he had to leave just two minutes later, and that he really wasn’t at his best trying to spit ball about how health care reform is like going from coach to first class. Luckily, Maher was there to pick up the pieces with some voice overs stereotyping the Japanese President of Toyota at his recent Congressional hearings. Then he introduced Adam Corrolla and it all went to… well, you know.

As is so often the case in sports, this show was the story of the halves. The first half, excluding the monologue, was Meet the Press Uncensored. The second half was The Man Show without any half naked girls jumping on trampolines – that is, if Corrolla had ever talked about guns, military airplanes and hemp on The Man Show.

This juxtaposition exemplifies how Maher can lighten the heft of any serious subject just as fast as he can ground a punch line in profundity. New Rules, the segment that closes each show, does just that.

During this week’s New Rules, Maher said that Tiger Woods owed one more apology to the Buddha for dragging him into this. He then said, “…proving once again that whenever something tawdry, loathsome and cheap happens, just wait a few days, religion will make it worse.” Maher, an opinionated advocate for no religion – going as far as to make an entire documentary about it in 2008 – then explained that, “Christianity is for rubes; Buddhism is for actors,” and that eastern religions are a crock, too.

Maher went the extra mile this week to insult Sarah Palin, likening her followers to Buddhist monks who selected a two-year-old as their reincarnated leader. I don’t know if that is fair, but it was definitely funny.

Now, I know U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times Chrystia Freeland, author and blogger for the National Review Online Reihan Salam and actress Olivia Wilde prepared vigorously to discuss today’s most pressing issues, such as health care reform, so I don’t want to dismiss their words. Nor do I want to glance over Maher’s one-on-one interview with the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of War of Necessity, War of Choice Richard Haass, who spoke critically of the Obama administration’s strategies in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and offered a grass-roots approach to diffusing the ticking-time-bomb that is Iran.

But, I am going to do that, because, as good a show as Meet the Press is, when I have to compare Real Time with it, I believe I have said all that needs to be. Experts or not, the show began to drag a bit; that is, before Maher exclaimed, “Chris Rock came by!”