A Man for Our Time

Of the many liberals who use humor to go after the Bush administration -- Michael Moore, Stewart and Colbert, Al Franken, Al Gore -- Bill Maher may be the least compromising. He's one of the only comics, for instance, to openly disdain religion. At his worst, he can come off as hectoring, a prickly know-it-all. But more often than not, watching Maher on Real Time taking apart conventional wisdom is a thrilling affair. Plus, he's very funny.

In his Emmy-nominated 2005 stand-up special, I'm Swiss, Maher mocked the War on Drugs ("Look, I don't want to hurt children. But is everything worth sacrificing to that? Drugs have done a lot of good . . . a lot of great songs. I think 'Penny Lane' is worth ten dead kids. I'll be honest. I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth a hundred dead kids. There. I said it") and Bush's seven minutes of immobility in a Florida classroom after being informed of the 9/11 attacks ("Did he think he was being Punk'd?"). When a reference to "my friend Ann Coulter" -- the leggy conservative has been a frequent guest on Maher's program -- elicited a round of boos from the audience, Maher shot back, "I know, I know. But she's different when she's coming."

Maher's candor famously got him into trouble after the September 11th attacks when, on Politically Incorrect, his long-running late-night show on ABC, he took issue with Bush's description of the terrorists as "cowardly," saying, "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Conservatives called for his head, and ABC flinched, canceling the show eight months later. Maher, if anything, has since redoubled his attacks on Bush, with books (When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden), a Broadway stand-up show (Victory Begins at Home) and, of course, Real Time, which focuses the Politically Incorrect panel-discussion format more barbedly on politics. The show's fifth season will begin on August 25th.

Maher lives in a mansion in Beverly Hills. A footpath leads through lush foliage, past a well-stocked koi pond, to his front door, which opens into a cavernous two-story living room decorated entirely with South Asian art, including an ornate wooden swing. "I love these," Maher says, pausing before a pair of temple doors decorated with human figures. "If you look closely, you can see the fuck positions." Maher recently bought the property next door to his home, which is the size of a modest park and includes a full basketball court and a handful of smaller buildings, including a screening room and a rec center with a rooftop tiki bar.

Back at the main house, we step onto a patio, where he pulls together a pair of long pool chairs so the feet ends are touching, forming a "V." We each recline on a chair, side by side, "like a couple of old Jews," Maher says, and he begins to tell me about his life....

>> Get the full article in the current Rolling Stone, on newsstands until August 24th, 2006.

>> Plus: See our pre-Bush talk with Bill Maher for some of the sharpest political comedy around.

>> Selected reader responses will appear in Rolling Stone magazine: Write to us at letters@rollingstone.com.