Maher Slammed Tanks
A few days ago, this blog wroteabout a recent visit with James Underdown, executive director of the Center for Inquiry Los Angeles. Underdown wanted to talk, among other topics, about "Religulous," comedian Bill Maher's recently released major motion picture.
Here's a sort of coda, or hyperlink without the actual hyperlink, to that post?.
On his October 20, 2006 "Real Time" HBO show, Maher raged against think tanks "? calling out the Heritage Foundation and Project For A New American Century in particular "? for providing intellectual justification, or cover, in the lead-up to and aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Maher works blue, so again, no direct link here?.
But here's one Maher line from the commentary: "You can't call yourself a think tank if all your ideas are stupid."
And another: "There a name for people who are always wrong about everything all the time: husbands."
Maher also said the following, which relates to this blog's ongoing 'What Is a think tank'discussion:
"You know, it's a shame what happened to think tanks. They used to produce valuable, apolitical analysis. But partisanship crept into many of them.?"
He's not alone in coming to that conclusion -- or at minimum, coming to the conclusion that tanks are partisan, or at least closely associated with partisan ideas. TTLAwill feature much more on this particular topic throughout 2009.
Illustration copyright and courtesy Richard Nielsen, 2008
