On his Friday “Real Time” HBO program, at the end of the“New Rules” segment, host Bill Maher took aim at undecided voters and lamented their importance in the upcoming presidential election.
“New rule —if you’re one of the 5 percent of American voters who are still undecided on who to vote for, it’s ok to admit you just don’t give a shit,” Maher said. “Really, if at this point you still can’t figure out who you like more, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama — stay home, because you probably couldn’t find your polling place anyway. I mean, what more information does someone need to make this choice? Obama has been president for nearly four years, and Mitt Romney has been running for president since 1971, when his space egg incubated, and he burst out of an astronaut’s chest.”
“And they’re really not that much alike. If you can’t tell this man, from this man, you’re not a swing voter. You’re a lesbian. It’s ok that there’s a tiny fraction of uncommitted voters in a few swing states who will decide this election, but can we all please stop treating them like they’re somehow more noble and discerning than the rest of us?”
Maher also harshly criticized the media for treating undecided voters as anything other than complete “dipshits.”
“For example, you know who’s an ‘undecided’ voter?” Maher asked. “The Octomom. Yup, somebody asked her, and well, turns out she doesn’t even know who Mitt Romney is. And that, in a nutshell, is America’s celebrated undecided voter. Put on a pedestal by the media as if they were Hamlet in a think tank, searching out every last bit of information high-minded arbiters poring over policy positions and matching them against their own philosophies. Please, they mostly fall into a category political scientists call ‘low information voters,’ otherwise known as ‘dipshits.’”
“The worst part of all this is that America’s entire electoral process — the debates, the conventions, the ads, the photo-ops with corndogs — it’s all targeted at this tiny segment of the population that’s just not that interested, which would make them, by definition, the least qualified for this ‘decider’s’ role,” Maher said. “When are low-information, wishy-washy people ever desirable to talk to? There’s a reason why when you have a problem, you never seek their advice. ‘Hey, you know who you should talk to about that thing you’re going through? Somebody who doesn’t know anything about it.’”
Maher took a parting shot at Fox News and the on-screen graphics employed by some of the major networks during televised presidential debates.
“This year at the debates we should skip that thing where the undecideds dial in their reactions to every little moment, and instead hook the dial up to their foreheads to see if there’s any measurable brain activity,” Maher continued. “I don’t need to see another focus group with these nincompoops — I’ve seen enough of them to know why they’re called focus groups — because they’re groups of people who have trouble focusing — and if I want to see a bunch of ignorant jackasses bullshitting about the election, I’ll watch ‘Fox & Friends.’”