Ben Affleck Out-Awfuls Bill Maher

From Stacy McCain, who apparently watches Bill Maher so I don't have to:

Don’t make me take sides with Bill Maher!

Bill Maher and author and neuroscientist Sam Harris battled actor/director Ben Affleck on Real Time on Friday concerning Maher’s recent remarks criticizing Islam.

“Why are you so hostile about this?” Maher asked Affleck.
“It’s gross, it’s racist,” Affleck replied.
“It’s so not,” Maher insisted, though Affleck compared it to using the term, “Shifty Jew.”
“You’re not listening to what we are saying,” Maher insisted.
“You guys are saying, if you want to be liberal, believe in liberal principles,” Affleck said, referencing Maher’s monologue last week. “Like, we are endowed by our forefathers with inalienable rights, all men are created equal.”
Harris, who had complained about criticism of the Muslim religion being dismissed as Islamophobic, countered that liberals should be allowed to criticize bad ideas.
“Islam is the motherload of bad ideas,” Harris argued.
“Jesus,” Affleck said in frustration.
“That’s just a fact,” Maher said, backing Harris up. . . .
“It’s the only religion that acts like the mafia,” Maher said. “They will f*cking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.”

Bill Maher is one of the worst human beings on the planet. He is vile, despicable, loathsome. But is Ben Affleck worse?

What’s going on here, I think, is a generation gap between liberals. Affleck (42) is younger than Maher (58), and that totally explains the difference in their worldviews. Affleck is one of these young fools who, with no useful memory of Cold War history, has no real concept of what an existential threat to civilization really means. Maher, wretched amoral swine though he is, at least is old enough to look back at the 1970s and ’80s and say, “Thank God for the Gipper.”

The other thing going on here, in my opinion, is that it illustrates the difference in the level of thinking between actors (who, to be successful only have to read and remember lines and act them out successfully), and entertainer/pundits who actually have to think through what they are saying.  Note that Affleck thinks you have to genuflect to "liberal principals" and ignore the  obvious horrors that Islam is currently visiting on the world. Bill Maher, to his credit, actually takes facts into his world view. You may not agree with Maher for the most part, but at least he thinks about his opinions.

Linked at The Daley Gator (if you're left, you just ain't right)  in "Five Blogs You Need to Read Today." Thanks, Doug!