I’ve been anti–Bill Maher for a few years now, ever since POLITICALLY INCORRECT tran­si­tioned from a unique and con­trar­ian TV show to a vehi­cle for the no-brain com­ments of what­ever four ABC sit­com actors the show was able to book at the last minute. A more notable flash­point, though, occurred in the early 2000s. Maher said some­thing dumb about med­i­cine or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and deliv­ered the remark with such an odd com­bi­na­tion of arro­gance and igno­rance that I wrote him off forever.

Then the Braying Little Man received an over-generous gift: a bum­bling, inar­tic­u­late American pres­i­dent…at war, no less! Deliciously, for Bill Maher, every day of George W. Bush’s post 9/11 pres­i­dency was caked in con­tro­versy and incom­pe­tence (whether real or per­ceived). A gold mine for incon­se­quen­tial come­di­ans everywhere.

Thus, Maher became Johnny One Note. Joke-telling became a sim­ple mat­ter of “Which ‘Bush is Dumb’ Gag Do I Go With Tonight?” The dis­play reeked of intel­lec­tual lazi­ness. Shooting cetaceans in a bar­rel. Naturally, it worked extremely well. Maher’s  TV audi­ences laughed on-cue and Maher became an ass-kicking weisen­heimer fight­ing for the good of the Left! Fuck yeah!

Not every­one was so eas­ily fooled. You might recall that Christopher Hitchens once con­fronted Maher on his Bush-is-Dumb shtick to great effect. And some of us wee com­mon­ers in the blo­gos­phere have pointed out Maher’s lame­ness for years, a prac­tice that usu­ally net­ted deri­sive sneers from our lib­eral friends.

We were in the minor­ity, though. Maher was a pop cul­ture hero; a frisky cham­pion of “cor­rect” pol­i­tics who espoused faux-skeptic views to the delight of faux skep­tics everywhere.

For me, the biggest cringe moment didn’t arrive until Maher made Religulous. As an athe­ist and an admirer of such legit­i­mate and gen­uine skep­tics as James Randi, Michael Shermer, Phil Plait and Penn and Teller, I wor­ried that Maher’s pop­u­lar film would wrongly per­pet­u­ate his sta­tus as a “per­son of rea­son.” And it did. Worry confirmed.

THEN! EVEN WORSE!

Along came the Atheist Alliance International yahoos with a big tro­phy for Maher: the 2009 Richard Dawkins Award. I felt a crush­ing blow of sad­ness and frus­tra­tion when Dawkins, of all people, revealed that he was “delighted” to have Maher receive the honor.

But, dammit, a few deter­mined voices would not abide this pro­fan­ity. “Hold the fuck­ing phone,” is what bril­liant med­ical blog­ger Orac seemed to say in a series of scathing anti-Maher posts at Respectful Insolence. Orac took a sledge­ham­mer to Maher’s ridicu­lous views on “Western” med­i­cine, vac­cines and pseu­do­science. Respectful Insolence soon became a white-hot scalpel that cut through the idiot flesh of Maher Quackery.

Orac’s hyper-articulate dia­tribes woke up the slum­ber­ing giants of the skep­ti­cal com­mu­nity. Such lefty skep­tics as PZ Myers seemed to get the mes­sage: Maher had been given a free pass. Worse, he’d been granted, for all intents and pur­poses, the Dawkins seal of approval. This did not look good.

Thus, many angry athe­ists and skep­tics decided that Maher needed to take his med­i­cine. And this time it would be “Western”…administered rec­tally. The arro­gant lit­tle clown was going to suf­fer for expos­ing woo-proof skep­tics. Maher did some­thing kind of remark­able, after all — he revealed that lots of skep­tics fit the cri­te­ria of skep­tic only nom­i­nally. Many of them see no prob­lem with Bill’s PETA ties and anti-vax crazi­ness but will go after Ben Stein or Sylvia Browne with fangs bared and mouths froth­ing. Does any­one besides me find this troubling?

So, for most of September and October, the crit­i­cism rained down hard on Maher. Worse, the lit­tle dummy added fuel to the fire when he “clar­i­fied” his junk views on REAL TIME. Maher was set­ting him­self up for a big fall.

Soon, the pièce de résis­tance arrived: Michael Shermer, blog­ging at the Huffington Post, of all places — Maher’s home turf, basi­cally — sent a bril­liant open let­ter to the bray­ing lit­tle man, plead­ing for him to re-think his horse­shit take on vac­ci­na­tions and “Western” medicine.

Shermer’s let­ter was excel­lent. It drove home a num­ber of good points. But after read­ing it a sec­ond time, this pas­sage gave me pause:

…Bill, please con­sider the odd jux­ta­po­si­tion of your enthu­si­as­tic sup­port for health care reform and gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion into this aspect of our med­ical lives, with your skep­ti­cism that these same peo­ple – when it comes to vac­ci­na­tions and dis­ease pre­ven­tion – sud­denly lose their sense of moral­ity along with their med­ical train­ing. You exco­ri­ate the polit­i­cal right for not trust­ing the gov­ern­ment with our health, and then in the next breath you inad­ver­tently join their cho­rus when you denounce vac­ci­na­tions, thereby adding fod­der for their ide­o­log­i­cal can­nons. Please remem­ber that it’s the same peo­ple admin­is­trat­ing both health care and vac­ci­na­tion programs.

This is a fine point, and it forced me to scru­ti­nize my own views.

In some ways, my take is the flip side of Maher’s. I’m against nation­al­ized health care yet I’m pro-vaccination. So, am I all that dif­fer­ent from Maher? A bit, because my beef with health care reform is not based on a dis­trust of gov­ern­ment, per se (although the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion has sev­eral igno­ble pip­squeaks whose behav­ior I find…dis­con­cert­ing).

Instead, I fear that health care reform will dimin­ish my auton­omy and make see­ing my doc­tor a less-than-economical propo­si­tion. If I have to pay through the nose more than I already do to see my pre­ferred provider, then I’m not left with much of an option at all.

So, strangely enough, I find myself shar­ing com­mon ground with Maher. I even feel a lit­tle sym­pa­thy for the jerk despite the fact that my “inverted” ver­sion of his posi­tion has more to do with dimin­ished con­sumer rights than gov­ern­ment con­spir­acy the­o­ries. Thus, I’m going to lay off of him for awhile; the Maher-bashing band­wagon is get­ting a lit­tle crowded. Plus, it’s worth not­ing that Shermer pro­vided the dolt with a per­fectly hon­or­able res­o­lu­tion: admit that he is wrong. If Maher does that, I may soften my stance and start watch­ing his show. (He does have good guests on occa­sion, despite the omnipres­ence of such annoy­ing con­trib­u­tors as Matt Taibbi and Janeane Garafolo.)

In sum…Bill Maher: peace be with you. Just don’t dis­pense med­ical advice to your loyal view­ers. Like Oprah’s legion of dimwit house­wives, your audi­ence of 30-something snark-fucks does what­ever you tell them to do; thinks what­ever you tell them to think.

Be care­ful, jerky.

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