Bill Maher Charges MSNBC Has ‘Just Too Much Cheering for Your Own Team’

September 9th, 2014 10:35 PM

During an interview with Joel Keller that was posted Tuesday on the Parade magazine website, “libertarian” comedian Bill Maher hammered the liberal MSNBC cable channel for having “just way too much conformity” and a mantra of “never say anything that will upset our own audience.”

“It is very sheep-like, the thinking of this country, and anything that shakes it up, I think, is a good thing,” Maher claimed.

“And that includes politically shaking up the views perhaps of your own constituency. I think one of the big problems with commentators on television is that they’re so ghettoized into their own camps and they go by a mantra of ‘never say anything that will upset our own audience.’ It seems like every question that is asked on an MSNBC show, the answer begins with, ‘You’re so right, Chris. You’re so right, Rachel. You’re so right, Ed.’ Everybody is always so right.”

“I’m usually in agreement with what they say over there,” the host of the Friday evening Real Time with Bill Maher HBO series stated. “But I do think there is just too much cheering for your own team, sometimes without being very informed about the issue itself.”

The comedian added that he loses interest when the anchors and guests are “just cheering for the blue team, booing for the red team, or cheering for the red team, booing the blue team, no matter what the issue is, no matter what the answer is.”

“I love it when somebody goes against their own tribe and points out something that they may not be thinking hard enough about,” he explained.

Maher also stated:

In general, I get the feeling that other people in the media don’t ask the same questions I do. I think they ask: “What will please our audience?” And I ask “What’s true?” And that can get you in trouble with your own audience, and I know because I hear my own audience boo me sometimes. I think if you never hear that response from your own audience, you’re not challenging them enough.

“The world would be a much better place if everyone agreed with me all the time,” the comedian joked. “But I think it’s necessary, yeah. I think the bond that I have with my audience is that they know that I’m always going to say what I really believe, even if it upsets them a little.

Keller certainly couldn’t ask a challenging question on Maher insisting Dick Cheney set himself on fire. Just ask: Is that helpful? Keller only tossed a softball: “You recently made some jokes about the ALS ice bucket challenge.” Maher said the whole ice-bucket thing was tired: “Who wants Kirk Douglas to pour ice water over his head? I do want Dick Cheney, though, to either pour ice water over his head or set himself on fire.” Even then, Keller merely followed up: “Are there parallels between this and other issues where people jump on the bandwagon?” That led into the MSNBC conversation.

When Keller asked if Maher still considers himself a libertarian, the comedian said:

"This is a word I used 20 years ago like twice, and the label has stuck. If by libertarian you mean a very basic notion that we should be able to do whatever we want to do, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, yes, I’m a libertarian. Not to the degree where I want to get rid of stop signs and traffic lights because they’re infringing on my freedoms to fly right through the windshield."

The interview concluded with a discussion of the comedian's Flip-a-District Project, which he hopes will unseat a GOP incumbent and “raise awareness about the fact that our government is just not working.”

In addition, “I’d like people to start getting on the page that the Constitution was written by men. It wasn’t written by Jesus. And it can be changed, and they wanted it to be changed. That’s why we have things called amendments.

“A lot of the Constitution just does not work anymore,” he noted. “We shouldn’t have California represented by the same amount of senators as Wyoming, since we have 36 million people and Wyoming has half a million. I can see more people out my window today than live in Wyoming.”

Since Maher doesn't seem to understand that the Senate was created to balance the legislative authority of the population-based House of Representatives, it comes as no surprise that he's taking aim at conservative Republicans.

Nevertheless, with his low pay-cable ratings, it's doubtful Maher will have any impact whatsoever on the upcoming mid-term elections.