However, for those who have watched Maher move further and further to the left over the years – so far so that his current television program seems like an hour-long excuse to bash conservatives – it was quite surprising to read the following: “I have to say, watching George Bush talk about Israel the last week has reminded me of a feeling that I hadn't felt in so long I forgot what it felt like: the feeling of pride when your president says what you want your president to say, especially in a matter that chokes you up a bit. I surrender my credentials as Bush exposer - from the very beginning - to no man, but on Israel, I love it that a U.S. president doesn't pretend Arab-Israeli conflict is an even-steven proposition.”
Shocking to say the least. However, he wasn’t done:
Lots of ethnic peoples, probably most, have at one time or another lost some territory; nobody's ever completely happy with their borders; people move and get moved, which is why the 20th century saw the movement of tens if not hundreds of millions of refugees in countries around the world. There was no entity of Arabs called "Palestine" before Israel made the desert bloom. If those 600,000 original Palestinian refugees had been handled with maturity by their Arab brethren, who had nothing but space to put them, they could have moved on -- the way Germans, Czechs, Poles, Chinese and everybody else has, including, of course, the Jews.
To his credit, Maher even had more to say on this subject:
But I digress. I really wanted to say that, for all those who accuse the likes of myself and the birthday girl of being unpatriotic, or hating America first, the feeling I've had watching Israel defend herself and a US president defend Israel (a country that is held to a standard for "restraint" that no other country ever is asked to meet, but that's another story) just reminds me how wrong that is. I LOVE being on the side of my president, and mouthing "You go, boy" when he gets it right.
Now, he did qualify this last statement with, “He just, outside of this, almost never does.” Yet, this shouldn’t diminish the sentiments from one of the most fervent Bush haters in America. If only Maher could be so forthright on a regular basis, and move back to the more moderate tone he had when his program “Politically Incorrect” was first aired on Comedy Central. Now that would be a real show of nonpartisanship.
