...Well, actually, I caught about five minutes. A few minutes of monologue, where Tony Blair gets called Bush's "prison bitch." (Original and classy. High quality programming from HBO and a first-tier comedian!) Then Maher made fun of Tony Blair for trying to act tough. Because he's not every tough looking, see. Someone please inform Maher that he's not exactly in a position to throw stones here.
Then we get treated to Dave Matthews pontificating about how the war will, you know, not make the world safer, and create a lot of anti-Americanism, and that will make everything more dangerous, and help Osama bin Laden. (Actually, I don't think he was even that coherent.) You see some guy in the audience in the background going absolutely freaking nuts with joy at hearing this babble. At this point, watching the show is an experience not unlike having your teeth scraped by a rusty pick while listening to fingernails on the blackboard.
Then they bring out the WWI-era dental drill, and you say "aaah": it's David Horowitz's turn. Why the right likes this guy so much, I'll never know. I respected him when he took out the anti-Slavery-Reparations ads on college campuses, and caused a whole lot of ruckus. (Why? Well, at the very least, because it exposed the closed-off nature of those campuses, and the inability of "The Establishment" to even tolerate the airing of opposing views. The often-violent and thuggish response to the ads by ultra-left reactionaries did more to discredit the movement than Horowitz's ads themselves ever could. That's valuable and takes guts, and it earns my respect.)
But now, Horowitz has set his shrillness dial a few notches past "maximum," accusing everyone who thinks that maybe attacking Iraq right now isn't the best of ideas of being in the pay of Hussein and out to destroy America. He seems unable to coherently refute arguments against war, or even offer any of his own; his entire shtick is demonizing the opposition. Which is stupid, because it's trivially refutable, and makes him look like an incoherent raving reactionary. And nothing hurts your cause quite like shrill and inept advocacy in its favor. Ironic, isn't it, that Horowitz seems to be stepping on the very same mines that he laid for the Reparations nuts? I've heard this guy a few times now (including on Maher and on Hannity's radio program -- which didn't impress me much, either), and if anything, I think he's more useful to the anti-war side than to mine. Cripes, so many good, useful, valid arguments for invading Iraq, and all he comes up with is that we already have the troops in place? (So freaking what?!)
Anyway, I didn't feel like watching the rest of that crap, and turned off the TV in disgust. There are better ways of spending my time than this -- like, say, sleeping. As for Maher, if his show continues with this incoherent crap, punctuated by his affected expressions of thought and "intellectual" musings that are two angstroms deep, he'll be following Donahue down the TV sewer pipes in no time, and good riddance.
Great weekend otherwise, so I'm sorry for such a grumpy post. There's a lot of crap out there, on both sides. Wear high boots, and hold your nose.
I just can't believe that Dennis Miller was taken off the air for this.
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