What Does John Wayne Bobbitt's Severed Dick Think About The Nuclear Reactor In Japan?

HBO is not a cable channel that I receive, so I often forget that Bill Maher still has a television show. This interview in Rolling Stone has reminded me. And almost makes me wish I paid for HBO. Almost. Highlights:

Americans have no idea what's in the budget, so how could they make informed decisions about it? They think public television gets five percent of the budget. We spend $178 billion a year on public television? Somebody should tell Tavis Smiley, because he's been bitching about that ratty old couch in his greenroom for, like, five years, and I'm sure he could use some of that money.

What did you make of Obama’s speech explaining the decision to intervene?

He seemed to be readying America for the idea that we are no longer the big swingin' dicks in the world ... Jefferson would turn over in his slave if he knew we had tens of thousands of troops on bases in Germany, Japan and Korea – wars that we won 50, 60 years ago. It's a concept we would never tolerate in reverse, by the way. If there were 20,000 armed Guatemalans on a military base in San Bernardino, Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber.

Only the fringe people are in the race right now. Donald Trump? Why are we even listening to this forgotten clown? Why don't we ask John Wayne Bobbitt's severed dick what it thinks about fixing the nuclear reactor in Japan? What does the Octomom's vagina have to say about Medicare reform?

You came under fire recently for calling Sarah Palin a "cunt" in your stand-up.

Fox News ginned up this so-called controversy. I don't just walk out there and say, "Sarah Palin's a cunt! Good night!" It's a carefully crafted routine that has been in my act for over a year. This is not a word that we can get along without, because it's a word that talks about a specific type of person – and it can be a man or a woman. I said I'd take it out of my act because of HBO – we're a good fit for each other. Every once in a while you just have to say, "I'm going to pick my battles." I don't need to be a martyr for Sarah Palin's cunt … whoops, I did it again.

When you’re out on the road, doing standup in Oklahoma City, how do you avoid… Willie Nelson problems?

I have only ever smoked marijuana 12 miles off the coast of the United States — that’s where it is legal. I learned that from William F. Buckley. I put a video up on FunnyorDie about a month or so ago called 12 Mile, I interviewed Sarah Silverman, and we had the ocean on a green screen, sailors’ caps — like we were on a boat. That was my subtle way of saying we were both very stoned in that interview — but we were 12 miles off the coast, so it is legal.

So what do you smoke — medical marijuana?

I only smoke what floats up there 12 miles off the coast! It’s lucky that there’s so much intercepted marijuana coming in from Mexico that it is floating out there in the ocean, but beggars can’t be choosers.