Let’s let Bill Maher explain

Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach along with the rest of the perpetually outraged professional right-wing defend the four times married morbidly obese one with what they claim is equivalence:”But Bill Maher called Palin a cunt!”.

Silly comparison. Maher explains it precisely:

MAHER:  To compare that to Rush is ridiculous – he went after a civilian about very specific behavior, that was a lie, speaking for a party that has systematically gone after women’s rights all year, on the public airwaves. I used a rude word about a public figure who gives as good as she gets, who’s called people “terrorist” and “unAmerican.” Sarah Barracuda. The First Amendment was specifically designed for citizens to insult politicians. Libel laws were written to protect law students speaking out on political issues from getting called whores by Oxycontin addicts.

Palin’s pendants

POSTED BY ORHAN

Via Andrew Sullivan. I’m not a big Bill Maher fan, but sometimes he gets it just right:

The requisite Super Bowl post

and still good designers can't find work. Go figure.

Actually, I don’t do Super Bowl posts. I don’t even do football posts. But thanks to Political Irony and Bill Maher’s New Rules, I have learned there’s an angle of interest to me, an entirely new angle on this ‘ball game’ business. I learned the freaky scary truth about the NFL . They’re commies! Run-for-the-frackin’-hills!

A week ago, I posted about a New Rules bit in which Maher compared baseball and football in terms of popularity and earnings. He pointed out that football – the clear winner  – is run on a ‘take from the rich, give to the poor’ model.  The NFL, he said “put all of it [television revenue] in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways [among the teams].

We learn more from Political Irony: Take the Green Bay Packers who have won more NFL championships than any other team. How do they do this? Do they pay their players more? No! In fact, they have the lowest median salary in the NFL. Do they represent a big city? No! Green Bay (population 100,000) is the smallest city to have a major league football team. Their games always fill their stadium (which can hold 70% of the entire city population) and they have a waiting list for season tickets that could more than fill another stadium just as large.

So how do they do it? Most people don’t realize this, but the Green Bay Packers are a non-profit community-owned organization. You can buy stock in them, but it does not pay dividends, and it never increases in value. It is a worthless investment, and yet they have 112,000 shareholders (more than the population of Green Bay).

The NFL is me. Who knew?

Bill Maher comments on the decline of baseball, and the vigorous insurgent success of football:

” . . . football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. You have to be a rich [team] just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.   

Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy . . . That’s why the NFL runs itself in a way that would fit nicely on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard – they literally share the wealth, through salary caps and revenue sharing – TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways. Because they don’t want anyone to fall too far behind. That’s why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call “punishing success.”

 

It’s from one of his recent New Rules segments. (I don’t have HBO so I never get to see his show, but do manage bits of it online)

I think it’ll be Bill Maher

Someone named Piers Morgan is scheduled to replace Larry King’s when he retires from CNN at the end of the year. I know because CNN told me so.  But suddenly Bill Maher is all over the network. Gets me wondering if CNN is sponsoring Maher’s next Vegas show or maybe Piers Morgan is NOT going to replace Larry King.

I actually think Maher in that spot would be brilliant for him and for CNN. Maher would talk to interesting people about interesting things and feed my need for more snark. And CNN wouldn’t lose the loyal Larry King audience, who know Maher well as he was King’s favorite and frequent guest.

Guess we’ll see.