One of the problems with being an atheist is putting up with the kind of people who carry the flag for you. Get annoyed at the likes of a Richard Dawkins, and there's a doofy polemicist like Sam Harris waiting in the wings. And hey, Camille Paglia and Marilyn Manson, don't do us any favors, okay? Back in the day, we had clever bastards like Gore Vidal to go on television and lay down careful traps for the likes of Jerry Falwell to step into; Gore would sit there, smiling his deadly little smile, while the defenders of various sky-gods would work themselves into a frenzy. It's good philosophy as well as good show business to make your target to all the work, while you just sit back and collect the laughs.
That's a lesson that could stand to be learned by Bill Maher, who, with Religulous, his new comic documentary about how religious people are a bunch of silly-heads, has done the unthinkable: he has made blasphemy boring. Maher, who, until he discovered the millions that could be made by playing to one side or the other in the never-ending culture wars, used to be little more than a hack comic with an unrequited love of bad puns and smirky asides. Those characteristics remain with him to this day (witness the title of the film, and his interminable playing to the camera as if he were an agnostic David Brent), but they'd be forgivable if he had an ounce of -- well, faith in the fact that his position is strong enough to let religious nuts hoist them by their own petards. Vidal (and Robert Ingersoll, and Clarence Darrow, and even David Cross) knew that religious people would say a lot of crazy bullshit if you just let them talk long enough; he knew better than to force the point. Maher has no such trust, and when the payoff doesn't seem to be coming fast enough for him, he kills the gag by adding subtitles explaining his real thoughts on the matter at hand, or by cutting to dopey stock footage which he then rolls into a tube and beats you over the head with it.
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