Bill Maher: I Know You Are, But What Am I?

In keeping with what apparently is the Left’s best argument against any opposition to President Obama’s policies, which is that anyone who disagrees with them is a racist, Bill Maher posted his most recent profanity-laced juvenility on the obviously standardless Huffington Post this weekend, informing President Obama that, in order to best the lying racists he is forced to govern, he needs to become “an a**hole.”

I couldn’t help but remember a favorite story that my wife and I tell on each other from time to time. Years ago, we were going through some counseling about our relationship (we’re totally cured now, of course. Just ask my wife). We had two counselors who were partners, one of whom focused on us, but both of whom knew our story. After a considerable number of sessions had come and gone with no tangible improvement, one day my wife stormed into their office in an obvious fury to see our guy. His colleague, a wonderfully grumpy man, glanced up at her and offhandedly said, “What’s your problem?”

“My husband’s an a**hole.”

He responded flatly, “Maybe you’re the a**hole.”

We’ve laughed about this many times over the years, but it was a strange little turning point for us. We remember it often to remind each other always to make sure our side of the street is clean before we start complaining about the other side.

But in Maher’s case, there is just no “maybe” about it.

When I read his column, I realized something about Maher that I also realized about Obama a couple months ago, when he so badly botched the Gates affair in Cambridge: To them, it’s all about race. Obama admitted that he didn’t know the facts of the case when he decreed that the police acted stupidly, but he knew the only facts that mattered to him. Gates was black. The officer was white. Case closed. Let’s have a beer.

In his column, Maher is either willfully lying or he is, to use one of his favorite projections, stupid. He claims that Obama fired Van Jones because Glenn Beck told him to, which would mark the first time in history that Barack Obama ever listened to someone who disagreed with him, and then multiplies the dumbness by claiming that the reason Beck told him to was because he called Republicans “a**holes.”

Everyone from Charles Krauthammer to Beck himself said that Jones’s “Republicans are a**holes” comment didn’t bother them at all, Krauthammer famously stating that he’d called members of his own family that and worse. Krauthammer even went on to say that Van Jones’s describing himself as an “avowed Communist” didn’t matter, since we’ve had a few Communists in our government before (see Maxine Waters).

No, Bill, it was Van Jones signing on as a “truther” that scuttled him. You see, in the Obama Administration, you can call the opposition names (Obama does it himself), you can advocate the destruction of free-market capitalism (see previous parenthetical), you can accuse white people of intentionally poisoning minorities who work in their agricultural industries, and you’ll still be a remarkable addition to the team. But even Obama can’t have a lunatic around who agrees with idiots like Charlie Sheen and Rosie O’Donnell that President George W. Bush, the stupidest man who ever lived in their eyes, somehow pulled off the greatest crime and cover-up in history, by orchestrating the murder of 2,996 Americans and blaming it on Islamic terrorists, all so he could go into Iraq and avenge the attempt on his Daddy’s life made by Saddam Hussein. (Jonah Goldberg has a great takedown of this lunacy here.)

Maher loves to call people stupid as much as he loves to call people racists, as he made clear during his appearance on the Conan O’Brian show, where he said that Obama should just drag health care over the finish line with or without the support of the American people, because they are stupid. Maher, like most self-righteous liberals, pines for a nice a**hole dictator who would just ram whatever he wanted down the stupid peoples’ throats (assuming, of course, that said dictator is someone Bill Maher thinks is smart, like, say, Joe Biden). To a third-grade mentality like Maher, Bush is stupid, Palin is stupid, Reagan was stupid, all the Tea Party protesters are stupid — everyone who doesn’t agree with Bill Maher is stupid.

I know you are, Bill, but what am I?

And in fact, Maher is provably so stupid that he wouldn’t know a truly ignorant, plagiarizing, buffoonish dolt if one bit him in the a** and then got his vote for Vice President. (Hey, wait a minute!)

But the racist label that Maher throws around is the true projection. To him, Van Jones got fired because he became the “Scary Negro of the week on Fox News,” and had nothing to do with his radical policies.

But the truth is that conservatives, independents, disaffected Democrats, and unlabelled Americans who disagree with the President do so on the basis of his policies and his philosophy. We look at the people he surrounds himself with and has throughout his life, and we listen to his stated opinions and intentions, and make a judgment based on them. Many of us who are old enough opposed Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health care plan back in 1994 in the same way we oppose it now. It wasn’t racism then, and it isn’t now.

But the racist Bill Maher looks at Van Jones and Obama and only sees the color of their skin. His recent disgusting skit based around the Drudge Report abbreviating Negatives to Negs featured racist jokes that we haven’t seen the likes of since Al Jolson sang “Going to Heaven on a Mule” — or at least since Ted Danson wore blackface to impress Whoopi.

And to complete the projection trifecta, Maher calls others liars, while lying himself. He says that Obama should stand up for the “70% of Americans who aren’t crazy.” Where does that figure come from? I haven’t seen 70% in any poll about anything. Maybe Bill just pulled that out of –well, I’m sick of those asterisks — the place on his body that he wants President Obama to become.

You know what, Bill? Maybe we’re not all stupid lying racists. Maybe we just disagree.

And the time for asterisks has passed, Bill.

Maybe you’re the asshole.