{"id":27012,"date":"2012-03-23T07:49:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T12:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=27012"},"modified":"2012-03-23T07:49:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T12:49:54","slug":"the-monkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=27012","title":{"rendered":"The Monkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to respond to Bill Maher&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/opinion\/commentaries\/143893046.html\">&#8220;I&#8217;m Sorry You Overreacted To What I Said&#8221;<\/a> op-ed, dutifully re-run by pretty much every left-of-center paper in America yesterday&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;until I asked myself &#8220;why?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s what he wants. Maher is like a trained zoo monkey, paid well to throw poop at people and then sit on top of his cage and giggle at all the rubes who are angry at having poop on them.<\/p>\n<p>And if I were in his position, I might do it too. Let&#8217;s take a walk back in history.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid-nineties, Maher had a show on Comedy Central. I forget the name. Who cares.<\/p>\n<p>It got picked up by ABC for the late-night line-up, one of many attempts to put something, anything, up against the Tonight Show and Letterman.<\/p>\n<p>It bombed.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xenvVw6sl2I\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>No, bigger than that. \u00a0Seriously.<\/p>\n<p>And it became clear to Bill Maher that it was neither his personality nor his comedic chops that was going to keep him in hookers and blow. \u00a0(Cue outrage that I&#8217;d so insult a public figure. \u00a0Go ahead. \u00a0Be outraged. \u00a0It&#8217;s the Maher way).<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;d have to supplement that with periodic bouts of publicity-mongering &#8220;controversy&#8221;. \u00a0He, like that monkey, will have to throw just a little more poop next time, and giggle just a little harder at those poo-coated rubes.<\/p>\n<p>And he&#8217;ll get away with it, until most of us realize that Bill Maher is nothing but a monkey with a hand full of poop.<\/p>\n<p>I hope I&#8217;ve settled that for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to respond to Bill Maher&#8217;s &#8220;I&#8217;m Sorry You Overreacted To What I Said&#8221; op-ed, dutifully re-run by pretty much every left-of-center paper in America yesterday&#8230; &#8230;until I asked myself &#8220;why?&#8221; It&#8217;s what he wants. Maher is like a trained zoo monkey, paid well to throw poop at people and then sit on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27015,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27012\/revisions\/27015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}