Bill Maher can be — and undoubtedly has been — called many things, including the accurate (and printable) tags of talk show host, social critic, actor, author, and documentary filmmaker.
But the 54-year-old Maher started out as a stand-up comic while attending Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English that’s come in handy since 1978. The New York City-born, New Jersey-raised satirist used it to deliver a scathingly brilliant 90-minute routine Saturday night to a capacity crowd at the Kravis Center’s Dreyfoos Hall.
Dressed casually in slacks and a T-shirt, Maher entered to the theme music from his seasonal Friday HBO series Real Time With Bill Maher, on which he wears a suit and tie. The early portion of this appearance provided his only tentative moments, as he leaned on lines he’d already delivered on Real Time episodes while getting a sense of how far he could go without sending hordes to the exits.
Yet this was a younger-than-usual Kravis crowd, and Maher seemed to relax 15 minutes in as he lit into one of his favorite topics, religion.
“I’ve been through the South recently, and there’s a church literally on every corner,” he said. “Tonight, the devil has come to South Florida.”
The crowd roared its approval. Maher is the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Jewish mother, so both faiths eventually took their lumps throughout the evening. His 2008 film Religulous became the seventh-highest grossing documentary ever by spoofing all religions with equal aplomb.
“Evangelical Christians believe in torture more than any other group,” Maher said. “There’s only one group that doesn’t really believe in Christian values — the Christians.”
He also referred to the Bible as “that old book of Jewish fairy tales,” and called the pope “a big, popular Catholic celebrity who should be a float in the Macy’s [Thanksgiving] Day parade.”
Politics provided an even more central theme for the night, primarily President Obama and his Republican challengers. The left-leaning Maher, a self-described libertarian, gave the president both praise and criticism.
“Obama finally got legitimized by Middle America,” he said. “There’s nothing like shooting someone in the face to do that. I bet Gaddafi is [soiling] his pants now. I’ve put him ahead of Charlie Sheen in my celebrity dead pool.
“But Obama seems like the nicest guy in the world; always apologizing for things. C’mon. You’re the Jackie Robinson of American politics, and 40 percent of the country wouldn’t vote for you if you saved them from drowning, so be the first black president! Grow your hair out. Rush Limbaugh always looks like he’s gonna have a heart attack, so give him one!”
The president’s predecessor, one of Maher’s favorite targets, also came up on occasion.
“The Republicans are upset because George Bush didn’t get enough credit for killing Bin Laden,” Maher said. “But that’s because he didn’t! Obama got Bin Laden; Bush got Wesley Snipes. When Obama invited Bush to Ground Zero after Bin Laden’s death, Bush turned him down, and I don’t blame him. That would’ve been like inviting Sarah Palin to a spelling bee.
“People like to say, ‘Remember how you felt after the 9/11 attacks.’ Yeah, remember when we started making stupid decisions like invading the wrong country, and getting me fired.”
That reference was to Maher’s ABC show Politically Incorrect, which was canceled due to “low ratings” after living up to its name in 2001. Six days after 9/11, Maher criticized the United States government for not preventing the attacks, and referenced the dedication of the hijackers who successfully killed themselves along with thousands of U.S. citizens.
“I hope some of this is offensive!” Maher railed at one point. He then raged against Palin (“Stupid people used to at least realize they might be stupid before America got Palin-ized”), Michele Bachmann (“For people who find Palin too intellectual”), Arizona’s immigration laws (“They now have a law that you can’t fry beans more than once”), Donald Trump (“That curiosity from the ’80s”), and Newt Gingrich (“The moral compass of an infection”).
Another prospectively offensive reference involved Obama and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.
“Even after seeing his birth certificate, some Republicans still say that Obama just seems foreign,” Maher said. “Well, John Boehner seems feminine to me! Mention the American Dream and his lip starts quivering like a gay guy watching ‘Rent.’ ”
Some of Maher’s leftover ire was saved for the Tea Party movement.
“The tea-baggers hate being called racist,” he said. “The other thing they hate is black people. They’re cranky, independent bed-wetters who named themselves after a gay sex act. And I know there are some union issues right here, so I want to know: Why isn’t the Tea Party on the side of the unions?”
Maher was invoking the current dispute between the stagehands union and the Kravis Center, which resulted in 100 or so picketers protesting in front of the performing arts center Saturday. Union activists had tried unsuccessfully to get Maher to either cancel the show or perform elsewhere.
A few of the evening’s lighter moments also included local references.
“You have to vote for your own economic interests,” Maher said. “That’s why Republicans want to repeal the estate tax. But there’s a reason it’s called an estate tax — because it’s for people who have estates! You know: Palm Beach types. But of course you need some help around the estate, right? Well, my father had some help around the house in New Jersey in the ’60s — me!”
“And you guys sure have bigger cockroaches here in Florida. But you call them palmetto bugs, right? That sounds better; more like a drink you’d order in a bar. Cockroaches must have great publicists here.”
Like his comic hero, the late George Carlin (especially in the latter half of his career), Maher knows how to draw laughs out of otherwise taboo subjects through his cynical writing and often perfectly timed delivery.
Despite a slow start, this performance was arguably funnier than any of Maher’s nine HBO stand-up specials, four books, his string of TV and B-movie appearances, or even the bulk of his intermittently great Real Time episodes.
Give the devil his due.