E
edwest2
Guest
Well, as a person who works in the media and studies it daily as head of research for my company, I can tell you there is no such thing as a stand-up comedian anymore. Not on mass market outlets.Ed, in case I wasn’t clear, when he did Politically Incorrect, IIRC, many of his shows had nothing to do with religion. It’s like David Letterman or Stephen Colbert. Sometimes they make religious jokes; other times they make non-religious jokes.
Now SEPARATE from their comedy acts and usually outside of their shows, they may do some commentary. It’s rare for Letterman and Colbert to do that (Leno does a little more), but Maher does it occasionally for instance on his appearance on Huckabee – that was serious talk, not a comedy gig.
Maher is actually a stand up comedian.
It’s unfair to him to take something from a comedy routine and present it as serious commentary.
There’s plenty of things he has said outside of comedy which you can attack him on. Do that. On Huckabee for example, he did say religious people in his opinion suffer from a neurological disorder. Huckabee wanted him to clarify if he thought religious people were crazy or insane and that was his response (i.e. not insane, just neurologically disordered). That was a very civil and polite discussion. It’s the same as if you were discussing with a homosexual and you told him that homosexual desires were intrinsically disordered and he was suffering from a intrinsic psychic disorder (which is the church teaching). On Huckabee’s show Pastor Huckabee – fundamentalist pastor – told Maher how much he liked him even though he disagreed with his views. That’s what we need. Respectful disagreement and Maher and Huckabee are both good examples to follow.
Maher only seems disrespectful if you present a comedy routine as a serious commentary. Quote something from his appearance on Huckabee, not from a comedy show.
I mean this would be like trying to show that Stephen Colbert was a jerk or racist based on his show where he made fun of Rosa Parks on a day celebrating her memory.
At one time, comedy was about making jokes. Most relatively harmless until a man named Don Rickles decided to add some insults to his “act.” Then Richard Pryor and others appeared who crossed the profanity line.
No. I don’t think amateur Bible scholar Whoopi Golberg had any business “explaining” Leviticus to her audience as part of her “comedy.” It was clear her concern was to discredit the Bible, not to get people to laugh, which, traditionally, comedians did.
I watched Politically Incorrect. I know what Mr. Maher is up to. The movie he appears in is just a let’s mock religion piece. He does stand-up mockery, not comedy.
There are various anti-defamation groups out there. Mr. Maher shows a lack of respect for civilized culture and his guests when he mixes profanity with his analysis. I am 100% against normalizing profanity in this country. It debases the language and it damages the cause of respectful understanding of different groups who have disagreements with each other.
Peace,
Ed