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Bill Maher took aim at the “tea baggers,” Sarah Palin and organized religion during his presentation at UB Saturday night. Photos: STEVE MORSE

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• “Sarah Palin is screaming about death panels. You know what, sweetheart, if we were killing off useless people, you’d be the first to go.”

  Comedian Bill Maher

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: April 28, 2010

There’s no sitting on the fence when it comes to Bill Maher: The man has opinions. Strong opinions.

Same goes for his audience: You either love him or you hate him. Maher made some enemies a few years ago when he agreed with a guest on his network television show that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowardly.

But local Maher-lovers came out in force Saturday night (one wag observed that if a bomb had been dropped on Alumni Arena it would have taken out every liberal in Western New York) as the political satirist and host of the HBO series “Real Time with Bill Maher” closed the 2009-2010 edition of UB’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

In a talk spiked with expletives that was more comedy routine than traditional Distinguished Speakers Series presentation, Maher took aim at a variety of subjects, chief among them members of the conservative Tea Party movement (tea baggers, in Maher-speak), former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and organized religion.

He noted, to catcalls from the audience, that UB was located in a Republican district. “Good; I want to know what other people think,” he said. Besides, he said, in America, it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right, or Democrat or Republican. “Americans just like a winner; they’re too stupid to understand the issues,” he said, pointing out that “if Tiger Woods had won the Master’s last week, he could’ve murdered all those girls he slept with. We just like a winner.”

The UB Reporter offers a few more of Maher’s observations, edited for publication in a G-rated faculty/staff newspaper:

On the tea baggers:

• “What are these tea baggers so upset about? Yes, we are now living in a world where Americans can acquire health coverage from a private insurance company—like it’s always been. What was the big revolution? Single payer would have been a revolution.”

• “The argument heard during the health care debate was, ‘why are we messing with the greatest health care system in the world?’ I don’t know, maybe because the UN ranks it 37? It’s not 1945. But that’s another fantasy. Where are they getting this (idea) that America has the greatest health care system in the world? You know where they’re getting it? From “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House.” The same way they got their ideas about torture and the war on terror from watching “24.” They are steely-eyed realists, these Republicans. In their fantasy world, like on those shows, you get sick and a team of 10 or 12 doctors works only on you, and thinks only about you. That’s not the world we live in anymore.”

• “But you can’t call tea baggers racists, even though 99.999999 percent of them are white and the president who drives them crazy is black. If it’s one thing they hate, it’s being called racists. If there’s another thing they hate, it’s black people.”

• “This idea that tea baggers dress up as the founding fathers: Excuse me; the founding fathers were elite, European-thinking, secular, enlightened individuals. They would have nothing to do with these morons. Little known fact: George Washington was not into NASCAR, the national sport of rednecks. Life is just distracting yourself until you die. But NASCAR? Watching traffic? That’s a sport? They have to act shocked when drivers die. How could it have happened? One minute he’s flying around on an oil-slicked track at 200 mph. And then he’s just gone.”

On Republicans in general:

• “In polls of the Republicans Party as a whole, 67 percent think Obama is a socialist; 57 percent think he’s a Muslim, even though a year ago they were screaming about his Christian minister; 38 percent think he does things that Hitler did. So true: shaving, eating…it’s spooky how much like Hitler he is; 45 percent think he was not born in America. They’re not up on the fact that Hawaii is a state. Here’s my theory: Barack Obama was born in America and you were born with an umbilical cord wrapped around your neck.”

• “At some point in this country’s history, the left moved to the center and the right moved into a mental hospital. We are talking religious lunatics, and Civil War re-enactors. You think I’m exaggerating?” Maher then told a story about a congressman from Georgia who, during the last week of the health care debate, predicted that if health care reform passed, “The American dollar would be worth less than Confederate money during the Great War of Yankee Aggression. He called it, in 2010, the Great War of Yankee Aggression. OK. Can we call Republicans a bunch of crazy crackers now?”

On Sarah Palin:

• “And these people (tea baggers) are screaming about death panels. Sarah Palin is screaming about death panels. You know what, sweetheart, if we were killing off useless people, you’d be the first to go.”

• “Sarah Palin has a new reality show. How about that? I love this—it’s on The Learning Channel. That’s like me getting a show on the Christian Broadcasting Network.”

• “Conservatives have to stop saying, ‘why are liberals obsessed with Sarah Palin?’ We’re not obsessed with Sarah Palin. We’re obsessed with the idea that the entire Republican Party can be so serious about this manifestly unserious person. That’s what’s fascinating…to Republicans, she’s a MILF. I agree. She’s a MILF: A Moron I’d Like to Forget.”

On the economy:

• “I’m a tea bagger when it comes to debt. The one-year deficit is $1.2 trillion. To give you an idea how much that is, take the value of your house and add $1.2 trillion. I also don’t like it when the government bails companies out. I thought that was supposed to be the Darwinism of the market—if you fail, you fail. Why bail out Chrysler? To make sure there was a product in the market for that hard-to-reach 75-100-year-old demographic.” The government, he said, “then forced them into a shotgun marriage with Fiat. Like when Elton John sings with Eminem. They have a new slogan: Chrysler-Fiat: It’s supposed to make that noise.”

On religion:

• “Why is faith good? Why is the purposeful suspension of critical thinking a good thing?” He noted that in 1979 Mother Theresa had a crisis of faith and “thought it was all a crock. If Mother Theresa thinks it’s a crock, it’s like finding out that Col. Sanders doesn’t eat the chicken.”

• “How have otherwise intelligent people believed in the talking snake? How do you know what you know? Either God told you directly, in which case you should call Bellevue, or you got it from one of these very seriously flawed holy books that were written before people knew what a germ was or an atom was, or where the sun went at night.”

• “If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he just wipe out evil—kill the evil? If he wipes out the devil, there’s no story, no reason to go to church, no reason to pass the plate.”

• “Anybody who went to catechism like I did found out the devil is a fallen angel. One of God’s favorites and then he plotted against him. God is omniscient, but he didn’t see it coming? It’s not well thought through. It doesn’t need to be because they’re selling an invisible product. Why don’t people rise up and say, ‘who are you to tell me what happens when I die? Why do you know this and I don’t?’ That seems to be the basic question I have. If God does have a message, if there is a God, why doesn’t he just tell us all? Why does it have to be a game? Why does he have to speak through a prophet—some dubious character who he meets out in the woods or up on a mountain—Joseph Smith, Moses, Mohammed? There’s always one guy who comes back and says, ‘wow you guys, you’ll never believe what happened.’”