Leftist HBO host Bill Maher was the only guest on Larry King Live last night, in between the live broadcast of Smith dinner speeches by McCain and Obama. Maher declared that Obama is the Jackie Robinson of presidential politics: he has to stay calm and cool and even punctual, or America will tell him the presidency isn't for "colored" people:
MAHER: Well, I think Obama always wins when he does what he did there -- calm, cool, boring, you know?
KING: He bores you to death.
MAHER: He's got to be -- you know, when he plays the part of the most boring black man you've ever seen in America, he wins. And it's funny because, you know, all the liberals say, you know, why don't you go after McCain more, why don't you fight him and get him and how can you take that? He's smarter than all of us. He knows what he has to do is just what he did there -- don't take the bait. You know, he -- I keep calling him the Jackie Robinson of American politics. Now, you, Larry, as the ultimate Brooklyn Dodger fan, know what I'm talking about.
KING: I knew Jackie.
MAHER: You knew Jackie? Oh, you did? You knew him personally?
KING: I interviewed him a couple of times. I saw his first game.
MAHER: Well, as you well know, he had to be perfect.
KING: He did.
MAHER: As the first black guy in baseball, he could not react.
KING: He couldn't get mad.
MAHER: He couldn't get mad. If he wasn't perfect, they would have said no, black people don't belong in baseball. And it's the same with Obama. He cannot make one mistake and he never does. Imagine if he showed up somewhere five minutes late or played into any stereotype that racists think about black people? They would say oh, well, we can't have a president who's going to be on colored people's time. Come on.
Later, Maher admitted he was overstating a bit:
Al Smith, the dinner who this is for, ran in 1928 -- the first Catholic. The hatred that was hurled at Al Smith for being a Catholic, I think, was more than what is being hurled at Obama in 2008 as a black man. So, you know, I criticize this country a lot. I'm not asking for the check. We do come a long way in a relatively short period of time -- relatively. I wish we could move faster, but that's me. I'm a crazy liberal.
And:
Look, I think what's sad is that apparently in this country, the only way we can ever elect a Democrat is if there's an absolute and utter calamity that happens. And then people kind of get it through their heads, oh, you know what, maybe this time we don't elect a guy we want to have a beer with. Maybe we have to get serious. We might have to even, oh, heaven forbid, vote for the black guy. But they're going to do it this time, because they understand, even the racists understand, yes, he's smarter.
Maher joked there will be a "reverse Bradley effect," that the racists will say they won't for Obama, but secretly will because they will be better off.
