[Cross-posted from my blog.]
I stayed home Friday night and watched Real Time, followed by the great little "Overtime" addendum that streams live online immediately after the HBO broadcast.
Bill Maher used to piss me off on a fairly regular basis. Not all the time, but generally at least once every other episode. Sometimes it was because of his flippant, dismissive views on wiretapping and other privacy issues, sometimes it was for some other boneheaded position he was taking, seemingly just to be contrary. (It was never enough to keep me from tuning in the next time, of course.)
But lately, he's been consistently great, and aggressively going after some of the most pernicious attitudes and trends in media and politics in a way that is usually reserved only for liberal bloggers. Tonight, the part that got me cheering came during the Overtime segment, during which he got into an exchange with John Avlon, ingratiating author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. There's a link to the segment at the bottom of this post so you can watch it yourself.