AT LEAST I STILL GET OSCAR INVITES: The Wages of Glib

HBO’s Bill Maher has been good to me over the years, showing a professional and personal courtesy. I’ve always been impressed by how hard he and his staff work to make sure they put together a balanced, interesting current events show during volatile times, with Bill himself trying to keep a sense of humor and an open mind about most every subject.

Except one: Russiagate. Bill so far hasn’t suffered the fate of someone like Stephen Colbert because he remained a comic at heart through all these years, while Colbert gave up being funny to become an abject establishment mouthpiece. The flip side of that equation, though, is that when a subject gets too weedsy or difficult, Bill glibs his way through the hard parts and uses his host’s prerogative to bully guests by cutting them off after scripted laughs. He used my friend Walter Kirn as a prop for this act Friday night. If it’d been me in that chair, I might have pulled his arms off: