Hi! I have changed my address. To jump to the current version of this post, click here.
Deliver us, Bill Maher
In the ages when speaking truth to the king was considered treason, that job has always fallen to the jesters. Under the cap and bells he likes to remind us he is wearing, Bill Maher is and has been one of the bravest men in America---and he is certainly the funniest.
Real Time 9-9 (link)
Angry laughter is sometimes not just the best medicine, but the only medicine. When laughter breaks through the numbness, the rage, shame and other damaging emotions that have been paralyzing you come out with it. When you’re crying and gasping from the mixture, the blinkers fall from your eyes, the yoke drops off from around your neck, and you can stand up and see clearly again. It’s not just cathartic, but liberating.
Bill Maher delivers blow after blow to the worst evils and hypocrisies of our time, and he does it with grace. He uses wit to unhorse his opponents and they always go down. But he does it charmingly. He does it humbly. He does it with a deprecating lowering of the head and with a self-deprecating “Don’t mind me; I’m only a comedian!” chuckle. Only rarely---last night was one such occasion---does he drop the jester's mask and let his anger and his distaste shine through.
In the aftermath of Katrina, the press seems to have grown back the balls they collectively lost in the wake of 9-11. (As Bill Maher said last week on Real Time, finally). But during the long dry spell when they seemed to be nothing more than silent enablers, Bill Maher---who is a libertarian, not a Democrat or a liberal (his previous show was called Politically Incorrect)---was one of the few who were willing to stand up and speak the truth to power. (I suppose it's fitting that in these days, when the supporters of the Administration are claiming for it exemptions from criticism that are traditionally accorded to kings, that only the country's jesters have dared to to challenge them).
He is not cowed by anyone. He is apparently unfraid of the networks, the press, the Administration, or anyone else. He is not fooled by sophistry or beguiled by the most adroit side-stepping, fencing, feinting, or faking. His wit is a needle, a lancet, a lance, a shield, a crossbow, and a blunt instrument. The motley and the bells are a likable disguise he uses to disarm the opposition so they don't notice the ammunition he is carrying.
He reminds me more than anyone else in my time of the great and irate Samuel Clemens, who also used comic derision as a mask for his rage, and who---despite his surface misanthropy----was deeply and furiously moved by the oppression of the weak and the sufferings of the poor. .
So I honor Maher for his courage, for his laughter, and most of all, for his plain-spoken rage. Last night, watching Real Time, I felt a cathartic joy when he said what I actually feel: That it’s the duty of all to come to the aid of the poor now, and we all get that, but that we are capable of helping while still calling those who should hold themselves accountable to account.
As cathartics do, the angry laughter that ensued purged and clarified my own thinking.
We live in a democratic society. Our leaders are our agents. They represent us. They are us. To hold them accountable in a disaster on this scale is the only way to hold ourselves accountable If the government of the United States is not accountable to the American people, who is? If this Administration won’t acknowledge even partial responsibility for the aftermath of this disaster, when will they ever? The answer is: That they will never accept it, they will never see themselves as accountable, and they will never admit responsibility. And until they do, we can’t either. It’s their duty to do that for the rest of us, even if it hurts, even if it makes us all ashamed. Only shame can bring any lasting good out of this disaster. Without that, we’ll just patch it over and make the same mistakes all over again.
During Real Time I was overjoyed to hear Maher make the point that it is irrelevant whether the President is to blame for the hurricane; he is still accountable for what happened afterward. (The only constraint on my angry delight was that nobody mentioned the levees; I kept saying, “The levees, Bill! Say something about the levees!” till my husband quietly asked me to stop). To see him drop his pleasantly ironic mask (though only briefly) and reveal some of the same anger and the grief that I was holding pent up inside me was cathartic, painful, and healing. Before a suppurating wound can heal, there's the messy and nasty business of lancing it.
To hear him acknowledge feeling shame, to have say that shame is the legitimate response to the aftermath of this disaster, was liberating. So that’s what this sick feeling is---this heavy, numbing, sickening nausea---shame. It’s the one emotion no American can tolerate. It’s the emotion you feel when you glance in the mirror, find that someone’s scraped off the protective vaseline coating, and see what you really look like. If you don’t alter the mirror, the only remedy is to change the thing that is being reflected there and that is very hard work.
Despite all the cant from the Right about ‘individual responsibility,’ there is precious little of that in evidence at present. Instead, we see our leaders engaged in the unseemly (and utterly transparent) effort to identify one or more scapegoats they can drive off into the desert so that the mob will stop whinging for an accounting. Somebody has to tell them that we’re not as stupid as they assume, and that no tidal wave of rhetoric is going to be able to wash away our pain at the loss of this city and so many of our people.
And to have him make the point that it is quite possible to help the sufferings of the poor while still calling the government to account gave me the sweet relief you get when a pious rejoinder to justified outrage finally receives a just (and justly mocking) response. Yes, we should ‘concentrate’ on helping the victims, but to ensure that there are no further victims, we absolutely must demand an explanation, accountability, and a different plan for the future. As our representatives, they owe it to us. And though President Bush has never acted as if this were the case, he is not president only to the people who actually voted for him, but to those who didn’t, including Bill Maher and me.
I’m a person who hates confrontation and who always listens to excuses. I believe in forgiving people for mistakes and for mistakes in their thinking. I’m a soft, wimpy, turning-the-other-cheek liberal. I think people can be redeemed and I believe that those who wish it can be rehabilitated, but not until the person acknowledges responsibility, feels shame, and undertakes to change. In short, I'm a typical soppy liberal---the sort of liberal despised and reviled by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Nonjudgmental, unsure of my righteousness, unsure even what righteousness means. I need someone who isn't held back by liberal diffidence to speak to my genteelly suppressed rage.
So, deliver us all, Sir.Bill from this toxic numbness, apathy, and shock. Make us feel our anger and our shame. Nothing else can release us.
In other words: Dude, you rock.
RELATED LINKS
An Interview with Bill Maher; Republican “Humor” at the Expense of a Veteran White House Reporter
Don’t Put Out More Flags (A Reprise!)
Suffering Fools Gladly: The Consolation of Mockery
Oh, I kid Bill Maher, sort of.
Deliver Us, Bill Maher! + Heroes’ Corner: Bill Maher, George Clooney, & Edward R. Murrow
Image drawn by Mr. Tenniel; painted by Damozel!
2:53:04 PM 
|
|
