Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! (18 page)

I made an opening joke, which the audience dismissed without laughter. Then Maher introduced Dyson—big applause. He introduced me—tepid applause. And I thought to myself:
Screw it. Go for it.

Maher opened by asking me whether Republicans were just being obstructionist. I answered that the party was in disarray, and Obama was providing a great opportunity for Republicans to decide what they stand for. I said that we couldn’t look at Bush as an example of how America should be headed—he had been a big-government advocate, too. I pointed out that Americans ought to look to the libertarian movement in terms of a small-government program, and I cited the fact that Ayn Rand’s books were flying off of the bookshelves.

That’s when it got nasty. Maher immediately claimed that ammo was flying off the shelves, too, because Americans were afraid of Obama and his “Negro army,” implying that red states full
of rednecks were all angry racists. I didn’t let him get away with it. I knew that he had gone there because he was lazy, because the reactionary racial politics of the left dictates that when they have no evidence, they throw out the racism charge.

“Where’s this racism coming from? I haven’t seen it online,” I asked Maher.

“Well, the racism is coming from Rush Limbaugh,” Maher answered. His audience of
MoveOn.org
-trained seals applauded him. It was another lazy move on his part.

I knew that he had gone there because he’d likely never listened to Rush Limbaugh, because I
used to be part of that crowd
. And Maher knew that across the table from him he had Michael Eric Dyson, who was going to reaffirm his points.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I interrupted. “I find that offensive. There’s nothing in this country that is a worse accusation. It’s where in America, if you accuse somebody of racism, that person has to disprove that. It is completely un-American to call him racist—you tell me what he [Limbaugh] has said that is racist. The man has been on the air for twenty-one years, fifteen hours a week….”

Bill pointed to Michael Eric Dyson, his tag-team partner in this matter. And on cue, Dyson answered: “I’ll just tell you, first of all, Rush Limbaugh seems to have a problem with black guys who run things. Think about it. So he was jumping on Donovan McNabb for being a black quarterback…. He got pushed off the air…. Now he’s jumping on Obama.”

At which point Bill jumped in: “He’s said a lot of racist things.”

“No, he hasn’t,” I said.

Then Dyson jumped in again. “He’s not saying that ‘I hate Negroes’ specifically; what he’s doing is creating an atmosphere of such profound vitriol and hatred and, I think, denunciation of black people and of the ideas associated with those people who are
vulnerable, that yeah, there is a strong implication about black people going on there. And if you put Rush Limbaugh in the context of the monkey appearing in the cartoon in the
New York Post
…”

I sat back in my chair. “For crying out loud,” I muttered.

“It’s code language!” Dyson insisted.

“No, it isn’t code language,” I said. “There’s no greater defender of Clarence Thomas than Rush Limbaugh.” The
MoveOn.org
crowd laughed on cue, and I thanked them as such.

Bill stepped in again. “Clarence Thomas, a black man who does not represent ninety-five percent of black people.” The crowd cheered.

“That’s bullshit,” I insisted. “You’re allowed to have independent thought in this country, and this type of intimidation by the Black Studies intelligentsia crowd that intimidates black people who are conservative… That’s why I became conservative.”

Dyson went on another iambic pentameter def poetry slam filibuster for the next three minutes. There was simply no way to stop him. Critical-theory phrases flowed from his mouth like water from a fountain. He babbled about institutional injustice. He called Clarence Thomas a ventriloquist dummy for white supremacy. He called Obama a black man in public housing. I started to answer. And Maher cut me off: “I will let you answer, but I just want to say, that is some motherfucking articulateness!” And the audience, of course, clapped wildly.

Then I brought out my best skill: researching. I had done my Lexis-Nexis searching before the program—I knew that somebody was likely to attack Rush that week, since the Obama Complex had put Rush in its Alinsky crosshairs that week. I also knew that back around 9/11, Maher had made some controversial comments that got him boycotted in several markets, and that Rush had defended him. So before the show, I e-mailed Rush and asked him about
it. “Yes,” Rush told me, “I even received a handwritten thank-you note from Bill Maher.”

“Let me end on this note,” I said. “Back in 2001, when you were attacked by two yahoos down in Houston when you said what you said on
Politically Incorrect
, it was a Republican establishment, it was Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, [and] Dennis Prager who came to your defense, and you sent Rush Limbaugh a letter, a note thanking him for this.” You could actually sense the air go out of the room as the audience stared at Maher,
Holy shit!
written over each and every face. “You’re part of the bullying tactic,” I continued. “Calling a person a racist is the worst thing you can call somebody in this country.”

Maher was silent. I could see he wanted to reach across the table and strangle me. Finally he answered, weakly, “You’re saying that if I actually think he has racist tendencies, that’s off-limits—”

Now I cut him off. “What racist tendencies?”

And Maher answered: “He sang ‘Barack the Magic Negro.’ ”

My heart leaped with joy. I had suspected that Maher would bring up “Barack the Magic Negro,” and once again, I had done my research—thank God Arianna had hired me under those false pretenses. “Barack the Magic Negro” was a parody song Rush had based on a column of the same title by leftist
Los Angeles Times
columnist David Ehrenstein, an absurdist essay in which he sarcastically praised Obama as an ethereal, magical black man who could perform political wizardry because of his intellect and mixed racial heritage. Maher clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.

It devolved from there. Maher asked a question about stem cells and Dyson delivered stem-cell iambic pentameter def poetry slam filibuster remix. I cut through the crap with prepackaged talking points I had cribbed from the estimable Charles Krauthammer,
whose work on the subject seemed eminently plagiarizable. It stopped them in their tracks. If they had asked one follow-up question, of course, I would have fallen to the ground in a puddle of water and curled up in a fetal position and admitted I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But they didn’t. I even challenged his audience at one point when they booed me before I was able to finish my sentence. Even Maher reacted; his Achilles’ heel is that even though he’s a leftie, he exhibits clear contempt for the astroturfed audience he relies upon for his laughs.

The awkwardness continued for a full, commercial-free half hour, defusing the show’s usual comedic touch.
¹
As I walked offstage, comedian Sarah Silverman passed by me on her way onstage without making eye contact, but she did touch Professor Dyson on the arm and tell him he was amazing. She then sat down in the chair I had been sitting in, looked down, swiped the tabletop, and for comedic effect said to Maher and his MoveOn audience, “It’s icky here.”

I walked back to my dressing room, passing the same staffers who had greeted me amicably before the show but who were now looking at me like I had just passed gas at their dinner table. Back in my dressing room, I was received by horror-stricken family and friends. Their collective look was one of being at a loss for words to console me. To them, it was clear that I had been set up.

My BlackBerry started to overflow with texts and e-mails. Dwight Schultz, who played “Howling Mad” Murdock on the hit ’80s show
The A-Team
, was the only one who immediately saw things the way I did. The verdict was otherwise unanimous, and everybody was trying to put the best spin on what appeared to be a horrific car crash of a show. A veteran comedy writer friend of mine who is a longtime Maher aficionado reminds me to this day
that it was by far the strangest episode of the show he ever watched. Even Maher had clearly been thrown off his game.

I felt something different: an almost druglike and ethereal and divine exultation. Recognition that I had been born, publicly and politically, for the first time. It was like looking into a mirror and recognizing,
This is who I am. I’m not going to tap-dance around what I believe in anymore.
Even though I had secretly believed in conservative ideas, and even though I had used different tactics to push them, and even though I had insinuated my ideas into the marketplace and effectively circumvented the Complex by contributing to the New Media, I had never been willing to stick my neck out like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity. I had never been willing to stand out there and be the object of public ridicule. I had feared what it would be like, feared what retribution would come, feared what the social consternation would be, feared what the swords and the slings and the arrows and the rocks upon my body would feel like, feared a comedienne whose work I enjoyed mocking me in her presence. I had feared in both my waking and sleeping hours what it would be like.

And now, walking out of the Maher show, I realized that what I had feared most—expulsion and derision—didn’t really even hurt, not when you are standing up for what you believe. I raised my Cactus Cooler in honor of the individual who came up with the aphorism “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Nietzsche, by the way. I realized that while adulation has its moments and can be like a bath in warm water after coming in from a snowstorm, the psychic high from standing up for what you believe in and being attacked for it far surpassed the comfort to be derived from that bath of praise.

I had passed what I call the Coulter Threshold: the point where you understand that Ann Coulter and those like her are standing up for what they believe in, feeling the righteousness of living
without fear of missing a dinner invite from Tina Brown or fund-raisers with Steve Capus or Ben Sherwood or Steven Spielberg or Jeffrey Katzenberg—or worse, the agony of being excoriated by those conservatives who fret that their liberal overlords will start admonishing them for keeping company with you. Feeling the thrill of sending a message to these people that we reject their worldview the way they reject ours.

I want to bottle that and get it out to every American. I want to teach everyone I know that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself, and that there’s strength in numbers. I’ve been looking directly forward instead of into the rearview mirror, not worrying about what people think about me, and it has empowered me. And it can empower you. Not only can you take assaults, you can weather them and be strengthened by them—and gain the power to punch back, to go on the offensive. Our opponents have spent so many years on the offensive with people lying prone at their feet that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be on the defensive. If we come after them, they won’t know how to respond.

My transformation from empty-headed, pop-culture-infused, talking-points-parroting liberal to New Media warrior took me four decades. But those years in the wilderness taught me some basic rules that I have applied steadily and steadfastly, and that are bearing tremendous results. Before we get to the application of the tactics, and before I lay out my game plan for the next few years, let’s summarize the rules every conservative activist needs to use when fighting the left:

1. Don’t be afraid to go into enemy territory.
This is perhaps the most important rule you’ll read in this book, and the one most
likely to be ignored by the Republican Party and the Old Guard in the conservative movement. They would say I shouldn’t have appeared on Maher, because it was an audience stacked against me. But that’s the same mentality that led the right to abandon Hollywood, academia, and the media—and the effects have been disastrous. The right figures that talk radio, Fox News, and some independent Internet sites will allow us to distribute our ideas to the masses. There’s one problem:
those outlets are exponentially outnumbered and outgunned by the Complex.
They’re Alinsky-ed by the activist left, which insists Fox News is Faux News and talk radio is hate radio. Obama is leading the charge, targeting specific hosts and specific outlets. Remember Rush Limbaugh? Or their insistence that Fox News isn’t a real news outlet like CNN or MSNBC?

The problem is that it works with the vast majority of apolitical voters in America. In my neighborhood, our strategy of disengagement isn’t working too well. People who don’t watch Fox News or listen to Rush have strong, defiant, negative opinions about those outlets, just like I did when I was a liberal. I’d never listened to Rush in my life, but I knew—I knew!—that Rush was the epitome of evil. I knew, just as the Complex wanted me to know, that Rush was a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot that only KKKers listened to while driving their broken-down pickups and drinking moonshine.

The army of the emboldened and gleefully ill-informed is growing. Groupthink happens, and we have to take it head-on. We can’t win the political war until we win the cultural war. The Frankfurt School knew that—that’s why they won the cultural war and then, on its back, the political war. We can do the same, but we have to be willing to enter the arena. By neglecting
The View
or, worse, by ignoring Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Maher, and
David Letterman—we allow them to distort and demean us as they romanticize and elevate themselves. It’s harder to attack people to their faces than behind their backs, and we have to confront them face-to-face. Young people suckle at the teat of pop culture—but by refusing to fight for their attention, we lose by default.

Our most articulate voices, likable faces, and best idea-makers need to go into hostile territory and plant the seeds of doubt in our ideological enemy and the apolitical masses who simply go with the media flow. Our babysitter has an Obama bumper sticker on her car, but admits she knows nothing about politics. How did that happen? It’s what the Complex tells her to do to be cool. We have to use their media control against them by walking into the lion’s den, heads held high, proud of who we are and what we stand for.