75021999

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on March 19, 2002

It's not official yet, but there's a lot of buzz that ABC is going to cancel "Politically Incorrect."

I don't miss seeing it go. I used to like the show. I thought Maher was sometimes an ass, but overall, I liked the format of the show and the guests that appeared on it didn't take themselves too seriously. When Maher was having "citizen panelists" once a week, I even went down and tried out for the show. I didn't make it past the first round, instead they picked the American Indian who didn't think that anyone should make more than $35,000 a year.

But I'm not bitter. Maher created an uproar shortly after Sept. 11 when he said that the terrorists were brave, flying planes into buildings, while Americans were chicken, launching cruise missiles into caves. Maher deserved all of the grief that he got for that statement. There's an old axiom that "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather."

Death is easy. Living is tough.

But Maher lost me long before that faux pas. Maher lost me as a view because of an even more hateful statement made about a year before.

I'm not sure if you remember the incident, but in April 2001 in Peru a private plane carrying missionaries was shot down by the Peruvian Air Force. The flight was being monitored by U.S. agents. Two Americans died in the tragedy, a 7-month-old girl and her mother.

Maher's comment about the shootdown was what stopped me watching his show from that night on: "Didn't they deserve it?"

The suggestion that the Christian missionaries who were down there in the Peruvian jungle living with the people, providing medical care, charity and sharing their lives somehow deserved to get killed is atrocious. The suggestion that a 7-month-old deserved to die is despicable. If I'd been on the show that night I would've made sure that Maher and Geraldo could pose for one of those "Separated at Birth" pictures.

Tags

[custom-twitter-feeds headertext="Hoystory On Twitter"]

Calendar

Archives

Categories

pencil linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram