Evening with Bill Maher

Gilbert Gottfried recently got fired from a gig voicing a duck in commercials for an insurance company after he used his Twitter account to share a few bad-taste jokes about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Bill Maher can relate, sort of: He got fired from a gig hosting a late-night talk show, Politically Incorrect, for speaking too harshly too soon after 9/11. But Maher, unlike Gottfried, was and remains just as committed to making a point as to getting a laugh. Whether acidly mocking religion in his 2008 documentary Religulous, grappling with issues and guests on his HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher or delivering a lecture on Western values in the middle of a stand-up performance, he has the infuriating confidence of a man who unshakably believes he is right. But comedy doesn’t succeed because of ideology; it succeeds because of talent, and Maher has the timing and pacing that only decades on the comedy circuit can provide. Nowadays, he spends more time in front of audiences disposed to like him, but he does have a knack for finding and exploiting a crowd’s sore spots. He’s one of the few living repudiations of the idea that comedians are all just sad clowns looking for love and acceptance. He’d rather fight than play the fool.

-- Jon M. Gilbertson