Partisan Hackery

A few people took issue with me calling Dennis Miller a partisan hack while also expressing relief that the new season of Real Time with Bill Maher was starting. I finally got to watch last Friday’s episode. Sure, they made fun of Dick Cheney’s hunting accident and had a round of negative things to say about this administrations handling of Iraq (one of the guests was Dan Senor, Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq) but he also grilled Democratic Senator Russ Feingold on the effectiveness of campain finance reform and came out as pro-wiretapping:

[I]f they need to listen to keep a dirty bomb from going off in Long Beach, then I say, “Listen away.”

<snip>

Oh, please, Americans don’t want privacy. They want attention! They’ll put a camera in their shower and show it on the Internet! To get on television, they’ll marry strangers and eat a cow’s rectum, and ice dance with Todd Bridges. They’re trying to get on a show called “Big Brother”!

We are a nation of exhibitionists from “me” to shining “me.” And what we really fear isn’t that someone’s listening; it’s that no one’s listening. This whole country is one big desperate cry for somebody to listen to “listen to me, photograph me, Google me, read my blog! Read my diary; read my memoir. It’s not interesting enough? I’ll make shit up!”

<snip>

I tell you, this country gave the finger to privacy a long time ago.

[Bill Maher’s New Rules for 2/17/2006]

Seems like quite a difference to Dennis Miller calling out John Kerry and Howard Dean a year after the election and having nothing at all negative to say about the Bush administration.

Out of curiosity, I’m wondering what people think of Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame. Partisan Hack or Not?