Bill Maher must be doing something right.
The comedian and self-styled gadfly absorbs flak from the right and the left, hated as much for his unapologetic politics as his smug mug.
And thanks to his HBO show, “Real Time With Bill Maher,” he’s in our faces every week.
“One of the great things about the election of Barack Obama is how it terminated the relevance of Bill Maher,” spat Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld earlier this week. “His shtick is now just a smirk in a suit, a walking catalog of jokes that could have been written by the most brain-dead of Huffpo commenters.”
Gutfeld apparently hasn’t been watching Maher’s show.
“I was trying to get my friend Dennis Miller to do our show again and he said, ‘Well, I didn’t really have a good time the last time,’ ” Maher said. “Of course, he’s gotten more conservative lately, so I said, ‘Dennis, they boo me all the time and it’s my show. That’s when you know you’re really saying something.”
Perhaps Maher isn’t quite the liberal lackey some make him out to be.
“You can always get half the country to applaud you and the other half to boo you because there’s stuff that unsettles them,” said Maher, who visits Macky Auditorium on Saturday for a night of stand-up. “But I just got back from (shows) in Tulsa, Kansas City and St. Louis, and they were great, even though it doesn’t get much more red-state than that.”
Maher thinks the audiences at his stand-up shows are more open-minded than his studio ones — and certainly more so than the network suits. The 53-year-old’s previous talk show, “Politically Incorrect,” was famously dropped by ABC in 2002 after Maher made controversial statements about the 9/11 hijackers.
What did they expect from a show called “Politically Incorrect”?
“There’s not even that many free political voices, let alone challenging ones, out there,” Maher said.
Indeed, Maher comes from a tradition of comedians unafraid to jam their sticks into the hornet’s nest, from the newspaper-toting Mort Sahl to the late, great George Carlin. All championed free speech and debate.
“Carlin to me is the great Mount Rushmore comedian because he did what I aspire to do — and maybe now that I’m over 50, I’m doing it finally — which is really put on a show that makes people belly laugh for an hour and a half, but that’s also challenging and brutally honest about everything,” he said.
Maher admits that the political and economic realities of the past few months have reshaped his subject matter. He climbs on stage to entertain, not give a speech.
“Carlin was, in my view, the most courageous while remaining extremely funny,” Maher said. “You want to remain extremely funny when you’re doing stand-up comedy, especially in a recession and people are spending their hard-earned money to see you. It’s a comedy show, not a rally.”
That practical approach grounds Maher’s fiery views on religion, drugs and the cultural divide without necessarily softening them. He knows as much as anyone that what happens on- and offstage are two different things.
He even took part in a series of East Coast debates with conservative author and liberal lightning rod Ann Coulter — his ostensible nemesis.
“Offstage she’s a lot of fun and I really enjoy her company,” Maher said. “Of course, onstage when we’re talking politics I wanna take the water bottle and crack it over her head.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
Bill Maher
Comedy. Macky Auditorium, 17th Street and University Avenue in Boulder. Saturday. 8 p.m. $47-$57. 877-598-6659 or
