Bill Maher

Comedian Bill Maher is an unabashed atheist and liberal whose satire goads the right but also the left. His stance against Muslim doctrine caused students at Berkeley College in California to petition removing Maher as a speaker there. Maher will speak here -- in Macon. He will perform his stand-up at the Macon Auditorium on Saturday and I talked with him about preparing for a trip to Middle Georgia - a conservative and majority Christian place.

Bill Maher:  I only prepare for more love. The places that are the most "red-statey" are the most enthusiastic for people like me because ... there is always a very sizeable, very enthusiastic liberal minority. Even an atheist minority. Richard Dawkins used to talk about his enjoying his lectures in the south more than any where else. And I think it's the same reason you find that people are very enthusiastic when people show in places where you're not expected, and ... where the liberals don't get to see people who express their point of view that often.

Michael Caputo: Have you been to Macon before?

Maher: No. That's one reason I wanted to go. I'm always looking for place that I never played before. I'm kinda running out of them. No I've never been to Macon Georgia and I'm really looking forward to it. When I was a kid I would read about it because it had a music scene and I'm a music fan.

Caputo: There's been a lot of attacks on free speech lately. Are you perceiving a change in the way Americans view free speech? I mean, direct hits like the Charlie Hebdo and Sony. Direct hits on free speech. Is it changing at all how free speech is viewed?

Maher: People have to consistently be educated about it. It's not just the Charlie Hebdo, which of course is the most alarming. But it's also the free speech we're willing to give up right here in America. People don't have a sense of the great value of not just free speech but of privacy itself. And so it's something that just doesn't stay there by itself. It has to be earned and talked about and it has to be fought for.

Caputo: Have we forgot how to fight for it?

Maher: I haven't. But I think in general it's not just something.... George Washington gave to us and now it's here for good. It's something that has to be reinvigorate everyday. You earn your wings everyday with that.

Caputo: But.... don't you sense that there is an idea that people are simply - I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it from you. I don't want to argue. That's too sensitive. Isn't that the sense of America today?

Maher: That is the sense today. That sensitivity in many people's minds trumps everything, including the truth and you have to fight back for that. When I had that controversy about speaking at Berkeley... lots of people have been uninvited from speaking on college campuses. College campus is supposed to be the bastion of liberalism and one of the hallmarks of free speech. In my speech to those kids in Berkeley I said to them liberals should own the First Amendment as conservatives believe they own the Second Amendment and if you don't keep making that point, I think they will forget that.

Tags: satire, comedy, standup, Maher, Macon, Macon Auditorium