Tonight's Bill Maher

It's a Friday night, which can only mean a nice juicy fresh Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. (The web site posts the "New Rules" each week, but that is only one small segment of the show.) One of tonight's guests was a guy I've heard of before: former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Although Maher did introduce him as "Slick Willie," I would've liked to see something like, "The city government in New Orleans was about as corrupt as they come — even worse than San Francisco under Willie Brown!" or words to that effect.

Willie's smarter than Dubya, by far, and Dubya has a bigger budget, by far, and they work opposite sides of the political spectrum, but at heart they'd both feel right at home in Tammany Hall. (Tammany Hall was the wife of one of the founding fathers and the mistress of several others. She had really big gazongas.) Is it any wonder that His Willieness got along so famously with witty Republican thickhead P. J. O'Rourke tonight?

(As for New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, I at least give him due credit for realizing and admitting that his city government was not capable of coping with the disaster that was about to unfold.)

I'll just give you one line from Bill Maher himself tonight:

Bottom line: some people think Satan is real, and some people think global warming is real. If you think stopping gays from "doing it" is more important than the ice caps melting, the boogey man is you! — [Real Time with] Bill Maher, 2005-09-16