Jamie

Weinstein

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October 13, 2008

Evan Sayet Explains What Happened to Bill Maher

"Am I destroying my career with every one of these people now?," conservative Hollywood comedian Evan Sayet asks me, smirking, nearing the end of our second interview in Los Angeles. He had just been attacking in colorful language an awful lot of influential television comedians and one would be justified to surmise that he wasn't likely to be invited on the Late Show with David Letterman anytime soon.

But I didn't have the heart to tell him that. Instead, I accentuated the positive by reminding him that he had said a few nice things. A few.

Sayet really doesn't need cheering up since he has pretty much removed himself from the Hollywood community ever since his political transformation from left to right after witnessing his Hollywood friends blame America for the attacks of Sept. 11. Now, free from the fear of being blacklisted for his conservatism, he is happy to share his views and criticisms of the many left-of-center comedians who populate our television sets.

His favorite target is HBO Real Time host Bill Maher. Boy, does Sayet like to talk about him. Sayet worked for Maher's previous show, Politically Incorrect, as a writer and a Creative Consultant in the 1990s, penning jokes that often appeared on the air. When I met up with Sayet in August, Maher's new season of Real Time was just getting ready to premiere. I used the opportunity to ask Sayet what accounts for the noticeable difference between Maher's old show, which seemed more balanced, and his current one, which is skewed far to the left?

"The difference is (that) there was at least an attempt to be thoughtful," Sayet says. "Now mean has replaced funny and agenda has begun to drive his choices as to what he says and what he includes and who he has on the show."

Sayet has been working on a book about how liberals think, so he jumps at the opportunity to explain how Maher thinks and why Maher seems to have shifted to the left ever since starting his HBO show in 2003 after his previous show was canceled by ABC amidst controversy shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The roots of this transformation are not the result of some metamorphic experience, according to Sayet, but simply the result of Maher's need for approval and his geographic shift from New York to Hollywood.  

"To be approved of and admired in New York," Sayet says, "you walk down the street (and) a cab driver yells out 'great show Bill' and suddenly his ego is a little higher. There are no cab drivers in L.A. You get in your car and you drive to the parties you go to and the parties you go to are, if you want to be invited to Susan Sarandon's house, if you want to see her in a bikini or topless in the hot tub, the more radical leftist you are the more likely you are to be invited to Sean Penn's pot parties.

"So being a narcissist, needing desperately to be approved of when he (left) New York City" is the summation of Sayet’s diagnosis of Maher.

A fan of stand-up comedy myself (Sayet even allowed me to try my hand at the craft in August at his Right to Laugh Show at the Laugh Factory) and an observer of Maher since my high-school days, I too have noticed Maher's shift to the left. While hardly a conservative on ABC, Maher was at least thought-provoking with his semi-libertarian views. Now, while he occasionally deviates from the liberal line, more often than not Maher toes it. Still, any fair observer would have to admit that, at least at times, Maher comes off as witty and smart, especially when he’s attacking the illiberal polices of Middle Eastern dictatorships. Sayet has a different view.

"I think he is articulate," Sayet responds when I ask him about Maher's intellect, providing what will be the kindest words he utters about Maher over our two interviews. "Bill Maher is absolutely wonderfully articulate in defense of moronity. His political positions are literally those of the five-year-old child in just more articulate, adult-sounding, sophisticated-sounding words."

Though Maher often attacks religion and even the institution of marriage, arguing that his libertine lifestyle is what is natural and what is natural is what produces happiness, Sayet notes that he doesn't view Maher as a particularly content person. He has always seen Maher as "just bitter and angry."

"Even back when he was doing stand-up he was not one of my favorite stand-ups because there was always a bit of anger and bitterness about him, like I deserve more than this," Sayet says. "Even Rodney Dangerfield, there was a certain smile to his face as he said 'I don't get no respect.' There was a certain irony. There was a certain something. But with Maher it was always meanness. Always."

Maybe as interesting as Sayet's analysis of Maher is pondering what drives Sayet's own contempt for the man – which is hard to miss. On one level, Sayet's contempt is surely driven by sheer disgust for Maher's politics. At a deeper level, though, you detect that there may be some strain of jealously. Sayet is a talented political comedian. It would be only human for him to look at Maher with all his success and feel deep down that it should be he who has a political comedy show on HBO, not Maher. Instead, Sayet hosts a night of conservative stand-up comedy at Hollywood's famed Laugh Factory once a month and speaks at conservative forums. Not bad gigs, but they could hardly have been the dreams and aspirations of a young stand-up paying his dues in the 1980s.

Still, it is not as though Sayet is universally disdainful of comedians with a left-of-center viewpoint.  For more, you will have to wait for Part II tomorrow.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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