Add Bill Maher to the long liberal list of media members and celebrities who have hopped on the bandwagon of smearing Joe the Plumber aka Joe Wurzelbacher. In the case of Maher, this is quite an ironic charge given that Maher admitted he lied to get people to appear in his movie bomb, "Religulous." Maher made his slams against Joe the Plumber while on appearing on the Larry King show last night. Here is the transcript (emphasis mine):
KING: All right. What do you make of this whole "Joe the Plumber?"
An Ohio plumber had an off-the-cuff chat with Obama about tax policies. "Joe the Plumber" got mentioned -- in fact, we have -- this will give us a kick out of this -- we got a blog from Michelle, who blogs: "Bill, isn't it funny that "Joe the Plumber" has already done more interviews than Sarah Palin?"
MAHER: I did that joke today.
(LAUGHTER)
MAHER: We do our -- the bloggers are beating me to my monologue. Oh, that's not a good sign. We do a rehearsal on Thursday for our show tomorrow. I just did that joke.
KING: (INAUDIBLE).
MAHER: I think it worked better for her.
I think it's great that McCain has chosen this guy to be the exemplar of middle America, because, to me, "Joe the Plumber" proves exactly what I've been saying -- and many people have been saying for so long about the Republican Party in the modern era -- they take advantage. They prey on people like "Joe the Plumber," who don't really understand the issues. He finally admitted, I think, today that, yes, Obama's plan -- tax plan would actually benefit him more.
But you see "Joe the Plumber," who, by the way, isn't really a plumber...
KING: He's not a plumber?
MAHER: He's kind of Joe the liar. Well, he doesn't have a plumbing license. You know...
KING: So how does he plumb?
MAHER: Exactly. And he's -- see, he's like so many -- this is what the Republicans do. They prey on people who have a dream -- and we're all for dreams. I'm not against dreams. The American dream, terrific. But sometimes it's just a fantasy.
And Joe thinks, apparently, he's going to take over his boss' business and make more than $250,000 a year. So really what we're talking about is someone who would benefit from the plan that Obama has on the table, but doesn't want to vote for Obama, for whatever reason. He might think he may be an Arab or a communist or, you know, maybe he's black. "Joe the Plumber" did compare him to Sammy Davis, Jr. tap dancing today.
KING: He did?
MAHER: Yes. He said he tap danced on the answer to taxes like Sammy Davis, Jr. -- you're kind of tipping your Mitt there, "Joe the Plumber".
But, you know, Obama is for people who live in reality, who actually need money and a tax break now. He's living in the Republican fantasy world, where he's going to become rich and he's going to have over $250,000 and then he might have to pay some more taxes, Larry. And we can't have that in America, because we only two have two wars going, the economy is melting, we're $11 trillion in debt.
You know, at some point, somebody is going to have to pay the taxes. Neither one of the candidates was very forthcoming about that last night.
Apparently Maher missed the real controversy over the encounter between Barack Obama and Joe the Plumber. It wasn't what Joe asked as it was about Obama claiming that we needed to spread the wealth. So now liberals like Maher are enraged at Joe for causing Obama to be too honest about his redistributionist self.
