About
Bill Maher is an American political commentator, pundit and television host well known for his aggressive atheism and tendency to say politically incorrect things.
Career
Maher made his first TV appearance in 1983 in a special titled The 8th Annual Young Comedians Show. He went on to appear in several more specials throughout the ’80s, and ’90s with extended runs on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Hollywood Squares. He hosted his political commentary show Politically Incorrect from 1993-2002, and Real Time with Bill Maher from 2003 to 2012. In 2008, he released his documentary Religulous, which earned a 69% on RottenTomatoes.[9]
Online History
9-11 Comment
A week after the terrorist attack of 9-11, Maher spoke about the attack on his show, saying:
“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.”
I Am Not a Witch
Prior to her political affiliation with the Tea Party movement, Republician senate candidate Christine O’Donnell worked as a political commentator promoting conservative Christian values in a number of major news media outlets, including Bill Maher’s 1990’s late night talk show Politically Incorrect. During the 2010 special election to fill Vice President Joe Biden’s vacated Senate seat in Delaware, O’Donnell’s interviews from that time were brought back into the political spotlight by Maher on his HBO talk show Real Time, as he threatened to air one clip per episode until she appeared on his new show. On the September 17th, 2010 episode of Real Time, Maher selected a portion from an October 29th, 1999 episode of Politically Incorrect where O’Donnell admitted to dabbling in witchcraft while in high school (shown below, left). On October 4th, 2010, in effort to do damage control after backlash from that commentary, O’Donnell uploaded a simple ad (shown below, right) to her official YouTube channel, Christine4Senate, stating that she is not a witch and is a normal person, just like her constituents.
Maher vs Ben Affleck
On October 3rd, 2014, Ben Affleck appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher.[4] During a segment which featured a debate on whether western liberals should feel comfortable criticizing sexism and radicalism within Islam, Affleck and Maher got in a heated debate, with Meher saying liberals should criticize them, while Affleck said he was stereotyping. The same day YouTuber PumpedToWatch[5] uploaded the clip to his channel, within a week the video gained over 4.1 million views.
The television debate sparked an online debate. On October 6th, Salon[3] published an interview with Maher, who avoided talking about the segment, saying when the topic came up:
“You know, I don’t want to talk about this. You just said we’re not going to talk about this and now we’re talking about it.”
The video and surrounding controversy were covered the same day by several other websites including Us Magazine[6] and TIME.[7]
Social Media Presence
As of September 2014, the Maher’s Twitter account[1] has gained over 2.7 million followers and his Facebook page[2] has gained over 2.5 million likes.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Twitter – Bill Maher
[2]Facebook – Bill Maher
[3]Salon – EXCLUSIVE: Bill Maher on Islam spat with Ben Affleck: “We’re liberals! We’re not crazy tea-baggers
[4]The Huffington Post – Bill Maher And Ben Affleck Have A Fierce Debate Over Radical Islam
[5]YouTube – PumpedToWatch
[6]Us Magazine – Ben Affleck, Bill Maher Debate Over Islam on Real Time: Watch the Intense Argument
[7]TIME– Watch Ben Affleck and Bill Maher Argue About Islam
[8]IMBD– Bill Maher
[9]RottenTomatoes – Religulous