Can you explain the talented, funny and great parts?
Because I really don’t see them…
He is full of willful untruth and wanton malice.
I think Bill Maher’s 2008 documentary Religulous was well-conceived and decently executed. I mostly enjoyed it. He showed bravery and integrity in making it. What other popular social critic is his equal here? And I think his HBO show Real Time is often wonderfully ambitious, and frequently discusses more important issues, with better guests, and in a deeper more intelligent manner, than the Sunday morning roundtable shows.
Even when he cruelly, maliciously rips Ayn Rand by calling Atlas Shrugged “a book that’s never been read all the way through by anyone with a girlfriend,” and says that it “belongs in the same milk crate as your beer helmet and the t-shirt that looks like a tuxedo,__” these are clever criticisms that hit home with a lot of people.
But, yes, Maher is considerably dishonest and cowardly when dealing with the thought of AR, which is a million miles above him, and entirely beyond his powers to fairly confront. And, yes, he presents his audience with plenty of “willful untruth and wanton malice.” He simply seems to have quite a few more personal flaws than those other two talented comics and social satirists, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.