Bill Maher Mocks New Book by Michelle Malkin, Displays Phony Books by Rush, Beck, Coulter, and Goldberg

August 2nd, 2009 10:45 PM

On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the host mocked Michelle Malkin's new book on the ethically challenged Obama administration, then mocked Jonah Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck with fake books that show how conservatives have "jumped the shark" [sic] in attacking Obama after only six months in office:  

He’s been in office, our president, for 6 months, and there is also, or there is already a book by Michelle Malkin. You know Michelle Malkin, she’s been on our show. She won’t come back, but. (Laughter.) But look at this. This is not a fake book we mocked up. This is a real book. Culture of Corruption. Look at him, it’s the American flag, he’s f—ed it up already. [Wrong. It's the Obama campaign logo.]

Six months in office! And already we can make this judgment! It blows my mind, because Bush always said ‘you can’t judge me now. Only history can judge me.' The long – we’ve got to wait 100 years to see how Iraq comes out.

Maher is having too much fun to acknowledge reality: George W. Bush faced a stack of Bush-is-corrupt books by the six-month mark. Try even earlier, like February of 2000, when CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl was promoting the book Fortunate Son by J.H. Hatfield, a man convicted of paying a hit man $5,000 to kill his former boss with a car bomb:  

Just because he lied to his editors about being a convicted felon isn't a good enough reason for those editors to doubt his book, in which he uses anonymous sources to accuse George W. Bush of covering up an arrest for cocaine when he was a young man.

Malkin isn't a convicted felon, but she won't count on a 60 Minutes story promoting her new book. Maher then shifted to his allegedly humorous list of fake books. Guest Rachel Maddow cackled at Maher enough to make Ed McMahon sound like a curmudgeon on the Johnny Carson set.  

We found out this isn’t the only right-wing book that has sort of jumped the shark. [Jumped the gun?] Look at some of these other books that I think really are a little premature.

Failure: Why the Obama Girls Never Amounted to Anything [Fake author: Jonah Goldberg.]

Clownfall: How Al Franken Destroyed the Senate, Bankrupted Minnesota, and Ruined Ice Fishing Forever. [Fake author: Rush Limbaugh.]

This one: Ann Coulter’s Sh-tfaced: Obama’s Pathetic Descent Into Alcoholism [illustrated by a "beer summit" photo].

And here’s a great coffee-table book. It’s Glenn Beck’s Painting With Poop. Because he is playing with his feces.