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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: Patriotically Incorrect

Aired October 01, 2001 - 07:29   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: When what the "New York Times" calls "the barriers of taste, propriety and patriotism" are in place, what a celebrity says and where he says gets a lot of attention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL MAHER, HOST: We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly.

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST: Absolutely. That is a cowardly...

MAHER: Staying in the airplane when it hits the building...

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST: That is U.S....

MAHER: ... say what you want about it, not cowardly. You're right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Well, that is exactly what ABC's "Politically Incorrect" host Bill Maher got when he suggested, as you just heard, on September 17 that U.S. forces and not the suicide hijackers might be cowardly. Maher's comments roused a chorus of critics and a few defenders.

Joining us now from Washington now to debate the issue are Jonah Goldberg of the "National Review," an outspoken critic, and Jake Tapper of Salon.com, who says Maher was making a valid point. Welcome gentlemen. Good to see the two of you.

JAKE TAPPER, SALON.COM: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Jake, what is the validity of that point?

TAPPER: Well, let me first of all say that his timing was atrocious and the way he articulated it was horrendous. Now, what I'm saying is that the point he was trying to make -- and I disagree that anything the United States has done has been cowardly -- but the point he was trying to make, according to his subsequent apologies is that the U.S. has not adequately retaliated in the past for past acts of terror by Osama bin Laden, whether it comes to the 1998 embassy bombings or the USS Cole in 2000. We have not gone in and taken care of the problem as we needed to.

That's my understanding of what he meant to say and that, I think, is a point that should be debated.

ZAHN: Jonah, is that what he was saying?

JONAH GOLDBERG, "NATIONAL REVIEW": I kind of doubt it. I always thought his greater offense in this regard was probably that he tried to rip off Susan Sontag from the "New Yorker." I do think, you know, in some sense you could make the case that it was cowardly in the sense that Bill Clinton didn't really want to have, you know, an aggressive, you know, and war anywhere. He wanted to sort of do the minimal required.

But I think it gets to the larger point, which is that Bill Maher, the whole show is so dated and his approach to these things is such that if it doesn't happen this time, it's going to happen another time, where he's going to make these sorts of jokes, what he thinks are politically incorrect statements, and eventually he's going to offend more people because his approach to all sorts of things is to ridicule and we don't live in that sort of age right now after September 11 where we ridicule, mock and make fun of America and the politicians.

So if it's not this time, it's going to come another time.

ZAHN: But Jonah, what were you offended by?

GOLDBERG: Well, I've been offended by Bill Maher and the show for a very long time. I'm offended by...

ZAHN: But specifically related to this particular show. Did you think that he basically said American servicemen and servicewomen who put their lives at risks are cowards? Was that your interpretation?

GOLDBERG: Oh, I think Jake is giving Bill Maher a lot more credit than I would. I think he actually was saying that but because so much of the stuff that he says, that Bill Maher says on the show is actually scripted by other people I think basically he was trying to make what was a sophisticated -- what he thought was a sophisticated point by Susan Sontag, which was almost identical in the "New Yorker" -- that somehow because we are enforcing our own foreign policy and we're not risking lives of American servicemen that somehow we're cowardly.

I think it's a dumb point. I think he thought it was a very smart point and I think he deserves to be embarrassed for it. But this isn't about free speech and this isn't about the first amendment. This is about the fact that this show is sort of hard wired to make these kinds of gaffes and will continue to do so.

ZAHN: Jonah, though, do you think there's a question of first amendment rights wrapped into this or not?

GOLDBERG: Not at all. First amendment rights have nothing to do with the...

ZAHN: Or do you just believe that what he said might have been so offensive to people that that's why it's gotten so much attention? GOLDBERG: Well, Maher is -- whenever the topic comes up about Hollywood censorship and so forth, Bill Maher is always talking about how people don't have to watch, people can write letters, people can do all of these things. Well, Maher's show, too, is entertainment and it's not a first amendment issue because it has nothing to do with the government. The first amendment is about what the government can and cannot censor. And this has to do with a private entity which says we don't want to offend our viewers and our sponsors and that's not censorship, that's business.

ZAHN: Jake, is it business?

TAPPER: Well, yes. I mean just as Bill Maher has the right to say what he wants on television, Sears and FedEx, which have, were advertisers on his show and have pulled ads, they have the right to do that, of course. That's the world that we live in, the capitalist system. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary who condemned the remarks, he has absolutely the right to do that and to Ari Fleischer's credit he has also been critical, on behalf of the White House, of remarks by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Congressman Cooksey of Louisiana, a Republican who made an anti-Arab comment.

So I think all of these things are part of the system we have.

The question about Maher's comments, I think, comes into the fact that there are some questions about dissent in the U.S. at this point in time. There have been a couple minor newspaper columnists for minor newspapers who have been fired for being critical of President Bush and I think that that, the media discusses this issue in that larger sense because there is, there are questions right now, the media is grappling with what can we report, what can we say, what can the opinion writers say in terms of being critical of the administration. And that's where his comments come in.

Again, if Bill Maher meant his comments the way that Jonah interpreted them, then I think that that was the stupidest thing I've ever heard and frankly I don't watch the show anyway. But listening to his subsequent explanations and apologies -- his mea culpas may be just trying to save his own skin...

ZAHN: Jonah, I need a final thought for you this morning and then from you, Jake, very briefly here, on where that leaves the status of this debate. I think Jake made a very interesting point about columnists who maybe have attacked the Bush administration getting fired. What kind of tone does that set?

GOLDBERG: Yes, I think Jake is onto a perfectly legitimate point about that. The thing in question is that by 99.999 percent of the columnist and pundits who criticized President Bush haven't been fired because they've done so tastefully. The columnists in question who were fired were from small town newspapers with serious community values and the criticisms were asinine, inappropriate and poorly expressed, and I think that's what got them fired and that's what should get Bill Maher fired.

ZAHN: Jake, you get the final word this morning. TAPPER: Well, I mean that's the point. I think when Ari Fleischer said that people need to watch what they say and what they do, it wasn't the stern Big Brother lecture that a lot of people took it as. I think he was saying this is a very, very sensitive time and people have to be on their guard. Bill Maher's comments were very, very inarticulately expressed and it seemed to be saying, he seemed to be saying that the military was cowardly and that's certainly not the message that we want to convey and it's certainly not what Americans believe.

ZAHN: Jake Tapper, Jonah Goldberg, thank you both for joining us this morning.

GOLDBERG: Thank you, Paula.

TAPPER: Thank you.

ZAHN: Especially both of your coming in. And, Miles, I should make it clear that Mr. Maher did issue a public apology and has tried a number of times to explain exactly what he meant that night.

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