Bill Maher to Rush Limbaugh: "You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do..."

I've already blogged about what Bill Maher said on his show last night about Rush Limbaugh, so forgive me if you've already had enough of the Maher-Limbaugh topic, but this really is something else and I have something different to say. Maher said:

The word that they're upset about. I never said on this show.

What is he referring to? He did call Sarah Palin a "dumb twat" on the show. (See?)

It was in my standup act, which I consider the last bastion of free speech. 

The word, apparently, is "cunt," and he used it in his standup show. He tones it down a notch for HBO.

There's a reason people compare me to George Carlin — 'cause we're standup comedians. 

By the way, "twat" wasn't even on  Carlin's original list of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." "Cunt" was. Later, Carlin expanded the list, and "twat" got on along with "fart" and "turd." It's like a late year in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones got in long ago, like 2002 and they're getting around to Gene Pitney and Brenda Lee. It's an analogy! I don't owe Brenda an apology. If people are too dumb to handle analogies, why do we even have democracy? Let's just make Obama king, stop talking about politics, and spend our lives dancing and singing.

Did you watch that Carlin clip? Astounding! Maher cites "people" who compare him to George Carlin. He doesn't dare claim the comparison sprang out of his own semi-bald dome. But I'll compare him to Carlin: Bill Maher is not at all as funny or perceptive as George Carlin. Now that's a comparison. What did those other people who compared Maher to Carlin say? I'd like to know, because I'd like to do a comparison comparison. I think mine is better.

Back to this quote from last night that I'm trying to analyze:

Rush Limbaugh likes to say he's a comedian. 

No, he doesn't! Rush's critics like to call him a comedian. When it suits their purposes. Other times they like to say he's the spokesman for the Republican Party. And that's what Rush likes to say. I listen to the show all the time, so I know what he likes to say. Unlike a lot of people who love to hate Rush and simply react to out-of-context quotes they've been fed.

But Rush uses humor. He likes to "use absurdity to illustrate the absurd."

Mayer continues:

You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do and make them spill their fuckin' guts out and laugh their asses off for 90 minutes, you're a comedian. 

Rush doesn't do theater shows — which tend to be scripted with crafted jokes told one after the other — and let's grant Maher that Rush would be bad at that. But Rush does sit down at a microphone 3 hours a day, 5 days a week and hold the attention of not 3,000 people but many millions. For 20 years. Maher could not do that. These are different activities. Both deploy humor as they talk about politics, but they do it in a different way. Maher's bragging that he's doing much more than Rush... it's as off as the implication that he's as good as Carlin.

But you're not a comedian. And when you do that, I say, my rule: You get a little extra leeway. 

Each humorist can decide for himself how much leeway he's going to take. And people will decide whether to give it to him. He can't dictate a rule, except as a joke. You don't get the leeway because you do standup comedy (or a radio show using absurdity to illustrate absurdity). You get what people feel like giving you. And what we feel is a response to what you do. It's a mystery why we feel the way we do. We're not following any rules. It's a personal relationship, like love.

But if I offended women, I'm sorry. I don't have a problem saying I'm sorry. 

Oh, but you do, Bill. Because that is not an apology. It's easy to say "I'm sorry" in the sorry-if-you-are-offended form, i.e., a nonapology.

I don't know why women would want to align themselves with Sarah Palin. I don't know why an insult to her is an insult to all women, but if it is, I'm sorry.

If... and obviously, you don't think it is. The joke — not a terribly good one, not anything that's going to make us spill our "fuckin' guts" out over— is that women shouldn't see Sarah Palin as one of the women who count. If we can isolate her over there with the bad people, we can call her a name that is specific to women: a "cunt." Is the use of a woman-specific insult something that switches the subject to all women? That is, is "cunt" like a racist epithet? If one black person is called the n-word, the topic ceases to be whether that one black person is a bad guy. Or is "cunt" like "dick"? If one guy is called a "dick," we stay on topic: the way that one guy is a "dick." I wrote "cunt," "dick," and "n-word," so you can see what my answer is. I'm for sexual equality... and abandoning the famously hurtful racial epithet.

So let humorists of all kinds select the language they want to use. Let them be gentle or cutting. There are all sorts of things you can do with words. There are no rules. There are no 7 dirty words for TV or extra leeway for extracting puke from 3,000 theater-ticket buyers. There is a mystery to using words to reach other human beings, and you're all on your own.

"Nominees for the 2012 class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Non-Country Popular Music of the 1950s and Beyond Hall of Fame."

"First-time nominees include Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, The Cure, The Spinners, Eric B. & Rakim, Guns N' Roses, the Small Faces/Faces, Rufus with Chaka Khan, and Freddie King. The Beasties and Chilis return to the ballot, as do Donna Summer, Donovan, Laura Nyro, and War. First-time eligibles this year but not nominated include Crowded House, Guided by Voices, the Jayhawks, Lyle Lovett, Salt N Pepa, Soundgarden, They Might Be Giants, and Yo La Tengo."

Says Adam at Throwing Things, pointing to a link to throw in your opinion.

My opinion is just that I love Donovan and Laura Nyro (and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a bit ridiculous, but I always pay attention and I've visited the place more than once).

ADDED: Saffron!

Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Dr. John, Darlene Love, Tom Waits.

New inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Passed over this year: Bon Jovi, LL Cool J, the J. Geils Band, the Beastie Boys, Donna Summer.

But as "Rock Hall says no; White House says yes":

The humble band from Sayreville will not be among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees... In brighter news, President Barack Obama on Tuesday named Jon Bon Jovi, a staunch Democratic supporter, to the White House Council for Community Solutions....

Bon Jovi, who performed during Obama's inaugural concert, heads the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, a nonprofit group working to alleviate poverty and homelessness across the U.S. The White House cited the rocker's work with that foundation as a reason for the appointment.

I'd vote for Donovan and Laura Nyro.

The new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees.

ABBA, the Chantels, Jimmy Cliff, Genesis, the Hollies, KISS, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Stooges and Donna Summer.

Such are the nominees this year for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Patrick Goldstein moans:

It's pretty pathetic when you consider that you can vote for the Chantels and Darlene Love, but not for Linda Ronstadt, Steve Miller, Chicago, Rush, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Journey, Dire Straits or Stevie Ray Vaughan, just to name a few of the ineligible worthies... Those of us who are actual voters are asked to choose a maximum of five nominees, using numbers (1-2-3-4-5) to signify our preferences. You can do the same. Here's how I'd make my choices as of now, but I'm open to being swayed by any especially passionate or persuasive arguments:

1) The Stooges....

2) The Red Hot Chili Peppers....

3) Laura Nyro. (Nearly forgotten today, she was a seminal influence on Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash and untold other singer-songwriters.)

4) LL Cool J....

5) KISS....

Laura Nyro, nearly forgotten?! Crazy! Can you surry? Can you picnic? Perhaps you think no one even asks questions like that anymore, but we do.

"Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Rush, Kiss, Ted Nugent, Iron Maiden, Motorhead."

Metallica's James Hetfield, celebrating his band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, names the artists he thinks belong their too.

Also: Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page played "Immigrant Song." Ron Wood, presenting Bobby Womack, told about the time "he and Womack hid as some Hells Angels gang members were roughing up Wilson Pickett." And Rosanne Cash said that Wanda Jackson "could really rock and still kept her femininity intact."

5 of these 9 will go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I got the list at the WaPo, where they are asking readers which nominee is most deserving, but I'm going to repeat that question, to get a special Althouse blog result. So answer here before you go there and see what the WaPo readers are coming up with. It's not easy!

Who's most deserving of a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
	The Stooges
	Jeff Beck
	Bobby Womack
	Chic
	War
	Metallica
	Run-D.M.C.
	Little Anthony and the Imperials
	Wanda Jackson
pollcode.com free polls

Here's the post to talk about "American Idol."

There are only 4 left, and by "American Idol" tradition — dating back to the Season 1 ouster of Tamyra Gray — this is the week for a shocking early departure. Could it be that a David will leave this week? It's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame night tonight, so David Cook ought to be safe. Could he possibly screw up? Could fans screw up thinking he's safe? Or could David Archuleta fall this week? I'm sure there is plenty of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame crap that is suitable for young Archuleta. Anyway, I'll be watching much later tonight, so carry on without me.

"Thank you so much for reminding me that I wrote a couple of good lines."

Said Leonard Cohen to Lou Reed. It was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night.

A bigger deal, of course, was made of Madonna, who gave a long speech that included a lot of thanking, and she's done so well she can thank anyone who did anything in any relationship to her, like the "ones that said I was talentless, that I was chubby, that I couldn’t sing, that I was a one-hit wonder. They pushed me to be better, and I am grateful for their resistance." Thank you for providing the contrast that makes my greatness all the more apparent.

"You women have heard of jalopies/You heard the noise they make/Let me introduce you to my Rocket '88."

Ike Turner — one of the originators of rock and roll — has died.

"Rocket 88" — according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — "is widely considered the first rock and roll record."

ADDED: Jon Pareles writes a nice, full-scale obituary for the NYT. One issue, but only one issue, is the way he treated Tina Turner:

Ms. Turner’s [autobiography, “I, Tina”] describes domestic violence, infidelity and drug use; his [autobiography, “Takin’ Back My Name: The Confessions of Ike Turner”] does not deny that, although he wrote... “Tina and me, we had our fights, but we ain’t had no more fights than anybody else.”

Tina walked out on him in 1975. Mr. Turner, already abusing cocaine and alcohol, spiraled further downward during the 1980s while Ms. Turner became a multimillion-selling star on her own. A recording studio he had built in Los Angeles burned down in 1982, and he was arrested repeatedly on drug charges. In 1989 he went to prison for various cocaine-possession offenses and was in jail when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Very sad. A flawed man. But he's just died, and he was a great musician.

"Denny, you know there aren't many who can sing a song the way that you do..."

Goodbye to Denny Doherty.

The Mamas and the Papas, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, were one of the first major rock groups to include both women and men in equal performing roles, with Mr. Doherty, Mr. Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot striking an image of casual, collegiate friendship. In reality, they were a destructive tangle of love affairs, accompanied by plenty of drugs and alcohol.

“It was an untenable situation,” Mr. Doherty said in an interview with The New York Times in 2000. “Cass wanted me, I wanted Michelle, John wanted Michelle, Michelle wanted me, she wanted her freedom. ...”

Everyone loved Denny.

Here's Denny's own telling of the story of the Mamas and the Papas, if you can get to it. (I'm seeing "bandwidth exceeded.")

How well I remember when their first album came out. What an impression it made, including the amazing cover photo:



See the sign superimposed over the toilet. The original photo, with toilet in full view, was considered too scandalous. But we still have the four singers crowded into the bathtub. That's Denny, over in the corner, underneath the beautiful Michelle and the luscious Cass. What an amazing life lay ahead -- we thought -- if those four hippies could get in the bathtub together like that.

And drink out of the same hat:



"The Mamas and the Papas Deliver." What a great album!

Note the continuing theme of shared, water-containing vessels. What did that mean? Like everything else about the Mamas and the Papas, it meant a world of peace, love, and understanding, achieved through communal living and musical harmony.

Back in the real world, those sexual crosscurrents broke up the group. But there were a couple years -- 1966 and 1967 -- when they seemed exactly perfect. I'm sure my life would have been completely different if I had not gazed on those two album covers and heard the songs inside and wildly imagined what these people were singing about:

You gotta go where you wanna go,
Do what you wanna do
With whomever you want to do it, babe

Curating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The WaPo has an interview with the curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Interesting facts:

• The artists these days have become so aware of the value of their collectibles that some of the bands keep an archivist on their staff.

• Bob Dylan is the artist they've had the hardest time getting donations from.

• Some artists, like Green Day, demand and get private afterhours tours of the museum, while others -- unnamed -- just go in and mingle with the riffraff.

Related post: "Notes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" (my visit to the museum).

"Next to the SEX PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain."

The Sex Pistols decline to show up for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Frame. "Were (sic) not your monkey and so what?" Entirely fitting. And shouldn't The Sex Pistols be entirely fitting?

A year in the life of the blog.

January: I just wrecked my car.

February: Is podcasting good?

March: Is it possible to explain the Schiavo statute on television?

April: "Try to survive a tornado with a post-structuralist"

May: Notes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

June: Who was inconsistent about federalism in Raich?

July: Tattoos remind you of death

August: Where am I?

September: The Roberts confirmation hearing

October: State Street, pre-Halloween

November: In which I advise local liberal lawyers to support Alito

December: How political is that "gay cowboy movie"?

Audible Althouse, #24.

Here. Internet Addiction Disorder, the turn away from medicating one's sexual and emotional problems, encountering solitude, buying Christmas presents for yourself, fussing over your "food swings," what disco means to Camille Paglia, what John Lennon means to me, who belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and what to think of a high school that outs a gay student to her mother. 46 minutes.

Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Miles Davis, Blondie.

The new inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you approve?

Note that Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd got rejected the first seven times they were eligible, and the Sex Pistols got rejected four times.

"It's about time," Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward told Reuters, adding that he had long ago given up on getting inducted.

"What bothered me was not necessarily that Black Sabbath was being passed over but that hard rock and heavy metal was being passed over ... Bands that created heavy metal music or brought it into the foreground ought to have gone into the hall of fame some time ago, quite honestly."

The injustice!

Related post: I visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I'll bet Lynyrd Skynyrd was helped by the very nice presentation they were given on "American Idol" this past season -- backing Bo Bice.

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some questioning of why Miles Davis belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All I can say is: I saw him open for Neil Young & Crazy Horse at the Fillmore East in 1970.

The real reason Jimi didn't go to Vietnam?

Did you see there's a new Jimi Hendrix bio that claims he procured a discharge from the Army by saying he'd fallen in love with another soldier? (Kos has this discussion going.) Hendrix told people he'd been injured in a parachute jump. The book also says he only enlisted to avoid going to jail for stealing cars.

I wonder if that's true. Just recently, I was looking at his childhood drawings at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was quite struck by his vivid interest in the military.

The author of the biography needs a newsy, juicy nugget to get publicity, and this allegation works awfully well. I hope it's not true.

I was just sitting in a café yesterday where they were playing "Are You Experienced?" and fell into a reverie about Jimi. I thought that of all the rock stars who checked out of this world early, the one it would have benefitted us the most to keep with us was Jimi.

Among the cadavers.

On Sunday I blogged about going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I didn't have time to write that I also saw the "Body Worlds 2" exhibit at the Great Lakes Science Center. I blogged about a Gunther von Hagens exhibition of "plasticinated" cadavers in my earliest days of blogging, but it was just by chance that I happened to be right next door to one of these exhibits with a couple extra hours to wander through. I went in.

What was it like walking right up to the dead, dissected bodies? For me, it was not disturbing. The bodies were amazing -- beautiful. You can look into a real human body and see the details of the organs --not bloody and pulsating -- but perfectly preserved. You know nothing about each individual -- who he was, how he died. But there he is, more fully exposed than a nude, for you to walk right up to and inspect. See those testicles, elegantly suspended on long ligaments?

On the walls are cloth hangings each with a single quote from a philosopher or other writer. You contemplate these great thoughts about the human body -- "this quintessence of dust" -- as you make your way around creatively opened-out corpses, perhaps posed as athletes or dancers.

Some of the exhibition is didactic. Take a look at these three sets of lungs, laid out in a glass case: normal, smoker, coal miner. The coal miner's lungs look as if they are made of coal, and the smoker's lungs are nearly as dark. Laid out on a table are vertical slices of two men, one lean and the other obese. The fat man's real body is stuck inside a thick wall of bland, inert material. Kids, don't smoke. Don't get fat.

And what about abortion? Was there a message here too? In a series of small beakers, we see the human embryo at each week of growth in the first trimester. A man and a woman look at the last one in the line. It's less than an inch long, and they are detecting the fingers and eyes. One feels challenged to make a judgment about which of these entities it is acceptable to kill.

The larger unborn bodies are in a separate curtained-off area, behind a sign that assures us that all of them died as a result of disease or accident. In the center of this part of the exhibit is the body of a woman who knew she was unlikely to survive her pregnancy and agreed to be immortalized this way. You can walk right up to her and gaze into her opened womb and see the 5-month-old fetus that died with her.

Arrayed around her are small cases containing fetuses of different ages. As you look at each one, you see into yourself. How do you respond? Do you think there is an interesting potential person? Or is there some age point where you cannot shake the sense of recognition of a fellow human being? Some visitors see that human being in the beaker that is not even shielded in the curtained area. Others gaze coolly on every single unborn body. Perhaps that 20-week-old evokes a primal human instinct to protect that you do not now realize lies within you.

Near the exit is a quote from Seneca:

Death is the release from all pain and complete cessation, beyond which our suffering will not extend. It will return us to that condition of tranquility, which we had enjoyed before we were born. Should anyone mourn the deceased, then he must also mourn the unborn.

Notes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1. Photography is not allowed, so I can't show you the lovely Bobby Sherman stage outfit or the Devo hat or the Jimi Hendrix drawing of an eagle.

2. What touched me very personally: a flyer for a Byrds concert at Newark Symphony Hall on March 27, 1966. I was there. It was my first rock concert.

3. I enjoyed all the stage costumes. Real effort is put into the fashion side of rock music. Many nondescript outfits of jeans and T-shirts have been worn on stage, but a lot of people have really put their art into the visuals. I stood a couple feet away from the bronze-colored bustier Madonna wore in the "Like a Virgin" go-ahead-and-arrest-me performance on the "Blonde Ambition" tour. And you could violate the rules and reach out and touch the hem of three or four ruffled shirts worn by Jimi. But the most impressive costume, I think, is that amazing thing David Bowie wore in the "Ashes to Ashes" video.

4. You can see Jimi's handwritten lyrics for "Purple Haze," with the original title: "Purple Haze/Jesus Saves."

5. There's a tower of TV screens showing fast cut clips from MTV videos. When "Thriller" comes on, a group of five young guys does the zombie dance along with Michael. They do it perfectly. It makes me think about how much love there is for Michael Jackson. People aren't really talking about his trial -- his tragedy -- very much. Maybe we're all just waiting. It will end soon, and when it's over, Michael will go home, right?

6. There's a film that focuses on each year of Hall of Fame inductees. I find myself liking everybody. (Well, I couldn't care less about ZZ Top, but other than that...) I was sitting next to a lady who sang along with each clip. It was annoying, but I realized that if the audience was bursting with sing-along people, it would have been cool. Only one clip drew applause: Led Zeppelin. One clip elicited a mass "aw": The Jackson Five. I became conscious of how much I want Michael Jackson to be acquitted.

7. In front of a case full of Elvis memorabilia, a parent took it upon himself to translate Elvis to his 9-year-old daughter. They were gazing on a classic Elvis-in-Vegas costume.

DAD: When he started wearing these white jumpsuits that was kind of weird.

GIRL: That was awesome!

I loved that. I mean, us older folk assume we know that Elvis went wrong when he put on the white jumpsuit. But here's this girl, and she's correcting her dad. She thinks she knows. She's grounded in some new world. And there, the suit is awesome.

Beautiful Cleveland.

After yesterday's Cleveland picture -- the view from my hotel room -- I feel I owe the city this:



A war monument and a gleaming skyscraper.

A crisply angled skyline:



A sculpture in the park, to cheer up office workers:



And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: