Bill Maher's "Religulous"

(*In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am an unapologetic member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the churches Maher derides in his new film, Religulous.)

Bill Maher has made a career of mocking the beliefs and values of those with whom he disagrees. Unfortunately, the poverty of this one-note shtick escapes his most devoted fans because it appeals to their biases. His new film Religulous holds true to form, but it reveals perhaps as much about the man as it does about his subject, and that bears scrutiny.

For his victims, the appeal of Maher's diatribes may be hard to understand, but it goes to the very nature of humor. Mark Twain said (and he should know), "All humor is pathos." Pathos is a classic Greek concept that refers to suffering, empathy with it, sympathy for it or passive observation of it. We laugh at Chaplin's Little Tramp or John Heder's Napolean Dynamite because we empathize with the experience of playing the fool, and we find the characters sufficiently sympathetic that we hope for their eventual triumph. But Maher's derisive contempt demonstrates neither empathy nor sympathy. Instead he consciously relishes the discomfiture of those he considers his intellectual inferiors for the pure delight of seeing them suffer. His humor is quite literally pathetic.

Is this just sadism on Maher's part? No, that would be hypocritical, and clearly his contempt for most Americans is entirely sincere but, as noted before, revealing. It is one of the cliches of our contemporary society that hate is born of fear. Ask Mr. Maher. People who reject homosexuality are homophobic. People who oppose illegal immigration are xenophobic. Bill Maher, who hates God, religion and all who believe, is theophobic. The idea that he fears what religious people do to our society and in our government is a red herring (Fallacy Alert: Red herring). Somewhere at his core, beyond the clever sophistry and the glib mockery, Maher fears that those who believe are right, and if they are, the consequences for him are too appalling to contemplate. However much he may protest or profane, neither Maher nor anyone else would expend so much energy trying to tear something down if he were not threatened by it. The more insistently this fear nags at him, the more loudly he must shout to keep from hearing.

Bill Maher mocks the thing he hates because Bill Maher is a theophobe.