I must confess that several years ago I auditioned to be on Bill Maher's show "Politically Incorrect." This was in the late '90s when they were on ABC and they had a period of time that they were having "citizen panelists" on the show once a week. This was long before I started blogging, and I didn't make it on the show -- they picked a 50-year-old hippie who wanted to institute wage controls.

I actually stopped watching Maher's show about a year before ABC canceled it because Maher suggested that two Christian missionaries that were mistakenly killed by a Colombian jet on a drug interdiction mission -- one of them a small child -- deserved what they got.

It was disgusting, heartless statement that showed just how hateful Maher is toward people of faith -- and how little he knows of what missionaries to the Third World actually do.

James Lileks recently had the misfortune of coming across a CBC interview with Maher, and had the following, especially lucid analysis:

I love that – T. S. Elliott was intelligent because he was a great poet, you see. (Dr. Pound; calling Dr. Pound) The old hoary fallacy: achievement in art necessarily confers some sort of moral wisdom. Here you have Maher in all his fatuous glory – religion is a mental illness, but “I mean it’s not criticizing.” He’s just saying, is all. National Health Service passing out pills that suppressed your transcendental desires: Utopia!

Americans are dumb because Americans believe in God. Canadians are smart because Canadians believe in Canada. Bill Maher believes in Bill Maher. Print this out and put in your wallet for future reference.

Again, to repeat the point I’ve made in the last 3 years again and again: it’s not the dissent. It’s the thin, meretricious, self-satisfied quality of the dissent. This is like Tom Selleck giving an interview and saying, “Well, Americans are too stupid to see Clinton for what he is, and they can’t find Bosnia on a map, and the ones who can are all gay atheists, you know.” He'd be held up as a parochial idiot, but Maher's drivel resonates, because he is vibrating on the moonbat frequency.

Thankfully, I very often agree with Lileks' point of view, so I'm not likely to find myself on his bad side. But others should make a note: Don't say anything stupid where Lileks can see it or hear about it.