Bill Maher 4/20/07 (and repeats all week)

[Caridwen]

@Liberal

That Maher’s audience is left-wing Democrat? Are you joking? Me, I can tell when they bust the applause meter for left-wing guests while booing right-wing ones. But if that isn’t clue enough, Maher himself and his head writer both know the obvious: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802205_pf.html.

Did I miss something in that article? The only reference to the audience was this-

The show is about to start. Head writer Billy Martin is warming up the studio audience (literally – the studio is kept as cold as a wine locker). Want to hear a joke? Martin asks. Clean or dirty? The audience hoot-votes for the latter. “Dirty, of course,” Martin says. “A liberal audience.” (Maher says he wishes he could get a more mixed crowd.)

[Liberal]

You found the right part. Martin calls the audience liberal, and Maher says he wishes he could get it more mixed (i.e., get more conservatives).

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Montgomery0

This not being GQ or GD, I felt that I had room for hyperbole. Obviously, I don’t stand around every week polling the entire audience on their political affiliation. That said, if you were somehow offended by the statement, I apologize for my laziness, I guess?

Judging solely from audience reactions, it is pretty clear that it is highly skewed toward liberal values. From the incessant applause to the occasional booing, it is obvious, to me at least and to several other board members that the audience very receptive to left wing ideology (and not so much the other side.) Are they all left wing democrats? Are there really a majority of right wingers, except they’re too polite to applaud and boo, maybe their individual mikes are set to low? No, of course I can’t tell you either way. The same way I can tell the sun is hot, I can tell the audience is liberal (yes that’s hyperbole too.)

The reference to the Jerry Springer show is not that they are of any political bent, it is that the Jerry Springer crowd is a trainwreck audience (this was in the response to the statement that Bill Maher, sometimes scolds his audience to an extreme.) They’re the type of people that stand around looking at a trainwreck. They are always out for blood and encourage inappropriate behavior for their voyeuristic needs. They clap for what they like and boo for what they don’t at the drop of a hat, oftentimes to the detriment of the “discussion.” In Bill Maher’s audience, it is a little more subdued, though they do applaud and cheer “too much,” and they do often boo people who they disagree with strongly, much to the detriment of the debate at hand. There have been many times, I have thought, “please, I do agree with what is being said, but stop all the damn clapping and let them get on with it.”

I am a very liberal person myself, I often agree with the liberal panelists and disagree with the conservative panelists, but I’m not watching the show for some liberal version of FOX news. I watch the show because I like to be challenged and I do like to hear all sides of the story. I hate the fact that the only conservative guests that Maher can get are the radicals and crazies because they are the only ones who will brave the highly prejudiced audience (guess I need to add the disclaimer that no I don’t know that all the conservatives are radical and crazy.)

I agree with all this. I guess I just objected to what I thought might be an implication that the audience is intentionally stacked and/or manipulated towards a particular viewpoint. I agree that the audience skews pretty far to the left, but it doesn’t seem to be by design, that’s just who shows up.

The audience used to be a lot more mixed on his ABC show, but I think Maher became something of a pariah for conservatives after he dared to observe that it takes balls to fly a plane into a building (the comment which got him fired from ABC).