It appears that no matter what disgusting things Bill Maher says about conservatives - especially conservative women! - HBO is going to continue to reward him.
On Wednesday, the cable network announced that it was renewing Real Time with Bill Maher for a 13th season (press release via TV By The Numbers):
Former Time reporter Nina Burleigh – the infamous feminist journalist who once announced "I'd be happy to give [Bill Clinton oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal" -- has a new article at The New York Observer on “The Year In Sexism.”
Even the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in May was used audaciously as a feminist moment to correct those who “demonize abortion generally.” She insisted while late-term abortions were violent and gruesome, so is childbirth:
Filmmaker Oliver Stone made some truly offensive comments on PBS’s Tavis Smiley show Wednesday.
“I don't know why these Republican white people...They're strange to me," he said. "It’s almost as if we’re an apartheid state and they’re still fighting for the rights of whites in South Africa” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank joined host Al Sharpton in lambasting Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Tom Coburn for attending a fund-raiser in New York City the day before the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Sharpton griped:
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During his Monday briefing with reporters in the White House, press secretary Jay Carney was asked several times how president Barack Obama would respond to a partial government shutdown. The most interesting query came from Cable News Network's senior White House correspondent Jim Costa, who asked if the Democrats have been using heightened rhetoric to attack Republicans and “trying to taunt” the GOP into doing a shutdown.
“In the last couple of weeks, Democrats including the president have -- and he has not used all these words but I’ll throw out some of them -- have referred to Republicans as arsonists, anarchists, extortionists, blackmailers, hostage takers,” Acosta noted. Even Dan Pfeiffer, assistant to the president and senior advisor to the president for strategy and communications, “talked about bombs being strapped to chests.”
Bill Maher came back from his summer vacation predictably attacking conservatives while defending Barack Obama.
During his New Rules segment, the HBO Real Time host said with pictures of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on screen, “Scientists must study the correlation between not having a chin and being an a—hole” (video follows with commentary):
It's one thing to expect Hollywood to convince young people to sign up for Obamacare, since they're seen as Hollywood-friendly. It's another thing to expect Tinseltown to sway the red state of Kentucky. The Hollywood Reporter relays that one of Barack Obama's staunchest backers, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, "is throwing himself completely behind Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes’ effort to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell."
Democrats told the magazine that Katzenberg has decided to make the Kentucky senate race the focus of his efforts during the 2014 midterm elections, and Tuesday he sent out a letter urging La La Land liberals to turn out on Grimes’ behalf during a two-day fundraising visit she will make to Los Angeles September 25 and 26. How will this play in Louisville?
On Monday's PoliticsNation show on MSNBC, as he mocked Republicans for fearing that Democrats use dead voters to engage in voter fraud, host Al Sharpton hyped a USA Today article about people bequeathing money to political campaigns after death.
Sharpton recounted the case of a donor who died soon after mailing a contribution to a super PAC benefitting Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and tried to spin the happening into a scandal so he could charge Republicans with "hypocrisy."
After noting that a "computer glitch" had incorrectly recorded the date of the contribution so that its arrival date appeared to be months after the donor's death, Sharpton searched for a scandal:
MSNBC contributor Joy Reid continued her daily assault on Republicans Tuesday on Martin Bashir, comparing Republicans to chain smokers and blasting the GOP for its resistance to President Obama’s economic agenda. Reid argued that offering Republicans tax cuts is “like offering a chain smoker a cigarette,” pushing the same anti-GOP rhetoric she’s known for on the Lean Forward network. [Video after the jump.]
Host Martin Bashir offered his own analogy to complement Reid’s, likening President Obama’s revenue-neutral corporate tax reform to giving “a drunk a glass of bourbon.” Reid seemed content with Bashir’s insulting and sophomoric joke, sneering:
Ed Schultz took a dive off the deep end on Saturday’s The Ed Show, claiming that Social Security is a “cheap” program that “has never contributed one penny to the deficit.” The bombastic MSNBC host also blasted Republicans who support partially privatizing Social Security, arguing those lawmakers just want to “get their hands on the money.”
Schultz echoed similar arguments made by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who suggested that Social Security doesn’t contribute a “penny” or a “dime” to the national deficit. Both Democrats’ claims were challenged by fact-checking organizations, including PolitiFact, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, and FactCheck.org. And while the term "cheap" is relatively subjective, few would argue that Social Security – which takes up one-fifth of the federal budget – is "cheap."
What does a liberal cable television host do when a guest confronts her with an ugly truth? Why, she cuts off his microphone, of course!
That's what happened on Thursday, when Nancy Grace -- host of a weeknight program on HLN, which was formerly known as the Headline Network -- clashed with Frank Taaffe, a friend of George Zimmerman who stated that black teenager Trayvon Martin had drugs in his system during their encounter on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla.
While NBC and CBS covered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell having a "war of words" over GOP opposition to some of President Obama's nominees, neither network detailed the hypocrisy of Reid considering the so-called "nuclear option" to eliminate the filibustering of such nominees.
On Thursday, Time's Michael Scherer cited numerous quotes from Reid decrying the tactic in 2005, when Senate Republicans – then in the majority – toyed with the idea. In one statement, Reid warned that such a move would "set a new precedent – an illegal precedent – that will always remain on the pages of Senate history – a precedent that will thrust us toward totally eliminating the filibuster in all Senate proceedings, a precedent that will eliminate the essential deliberative nature of the Senate..."