I've not watched the comedian Bill Maher for more than a few minutes, but HBO has been running advertisements about his show. The advertisements make me want to cancel HBO. The material on Netflix, such as Zoey Barnes's murder on House of Cards, is at least as good as the HBO programming. Who needs HBO?
Why have television and the entertainment industry, which have always emphasized attractive appearance over substance, elevated an announcer as ugly as Maher? After looking at his ad a few times, I thought of a deeper philosophical question: Why does a television network sponsor an announcer who looks like a rat?
Maher's predictable, politically correct views are the obvious answer. Other commentators who have the patience and stomach to watch his show have described his tasteless humor and his bigoted remarks about others' religious beliefs. Putting an announcer on HBO who makes distasteful remarks about Blacks or Jews is unthinkable, and rightfully so. Putting an anti-Catholic bigot like Maher on television is acceptable to the ignorant left-wingers at HBO.
HBO's programs aren't good enough to compensate for Maher, and in addition to the outlandish cost of Comcast's services, Maher offers an excellent reason to terminate cable television service. Many of the left-wing and pro-Fed blogs consider Maher to be "brilliant." In the same way the coarse, realist art under communism and the cliched neoclassical art under Hitler were held up as "brilliant" in those totalitarian lands. When media is state controlled, the coarse, ugly and mediocre are elevated, especially when they serve the state.
