The hilarious and controversial host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher has written his funniest, most opinionated, and most necessary book ever—a brilliantly astute and acerbically funny vivisection of American life, politics, and culture. Some of the smartest commentary about what’s happening in America is coming from a comedian—this comedian being Bill Maher. If you want to understand what’s wrong with this country, it turns out that one of the best informed and most thought-provoking analysts is this very funny pothead. The book was inspired by the “editorial” Bill delivers at the end of each episode of Real Time . These editorials are direct-to-camera sermons about culture, politics, and what’s happening in the world. To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers it all. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary about American culture in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H. L. Mencken. Before hosting Real Time on HBO for the last twenty-one years , Bill Maher created and hosted Politically Incorrect on ABC. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Chapter 1: Parties 1 PARTIES UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS Name almost any job: dental hygienist, rodeo clown, dog walker, mall Santa, chicken-sexer—they all demand some kind of definable skill set. The one exception is member of Congress. You can be in jail and get this job. You can be deranged and get this job. If you have a heart attack, they just let your wife start doing it. All you need is a smile and a flag pin. I’d say all you need is a pulse, but dead people have been elected to Congress; much more is required of an immigrant taking the citizenship test. In forty-eight states you can’t vote if you’re in prison, but in every state, you can run for Congress from prison. Unremarkable people can get a remarkable life in Congress, and that’s what keeps the average backbencher sticking with party-dictated bullshit. It guarantees them something that’s bigger than faith, family, country or objective reality: they get to keep the best job they could ever get with absolutely nothing to recommend their lazy, ignorant ass for it. College degree? You don’t even need a high school degree. Lauren Boebert didn’t get one, and she sits on the Budget Committee. If she wasn’t in Congress, she could probably get a shift at a truck stop, dusting the jerky. But then she wouldn’t have two paid-for offices, one in DC, one in her district. She wouldn’t have a staff that answers the phone for her and kisses her ass all day. No one would put her on TV and ask her opinions. She couldn’t go on exotic paid-for trips—I mean, fact-finding missions. If you want to know what is so great that it can make someone say anything they’re told to say, it’s this: the title, the office, the staff, the attention, the good table at the restaurant. “Congressperson” is literally the only job in the world you can get with so much prestige and so many perks while being a complete doofus with absolutely no skills, knowledge or qualifications. Mike Johnson, I guess, could mop up puke at the Sonic, but it would take him all day. But in Congress, puke-mopper Mike Johnson is a big deal. A man of respect. When he walks in and asks for the best table, they know what to say: “Sir, this is PetSmart, the Cheesecake Factory is next door.” A job in Congress is just so much better than racking the weights at CrossFit, which is what Marjorie Taylor Greene did before she set her crazy eyes on the prize. And once you’ve got the gig, it’s yours for life. The reelection rate in the House for incumbents in 2022 was 95 percent—that’s better job security than a pedophile priest has. In 2022, a video went viral of a Walmart employee quitting her job very publicly. She got on the PA and let it all out: “Fuck this company, fuck this position, and fuck that big lazy bitch Chris Price, I fucking quit!” Texas representative Chip Roy also once told Congress to take his job and shove it. He said: “This institution is a sham. And we should adjourn and shut this place down.” But Chip Roy will never quit. Because there are no other jobs where a moron gets paid to ride around in a limo. Chip gets paid a hundred and seventy-five grand a year, free medical, a great pension, with half the year off, plus a million-and-a-half-dollars-a-year “allowance” for decorating the office, or, um, “sundries.” Oh, also: Lobbyists blow him. And he gets to be on TV for doing nothing, which as we all know, is the American dream. And by “doing nothing,” I mean literally. Once you get elected, you don’t have to actually do anything. There’s no year-end performance review. Nobody calls you into an office and says, “I don’t think this is working out.” You have, essentially, no boss. Well, ex