Bill Maher aghast over Jan Brewer’s ‘unprecedented disrespect’ for president

posted at 2:32 pm on January 28, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

From the “you can’t make this stuff up department”: On Thursday, self-styled sage Bill Maher waded into the kerfuffle over Gov. Jan Brewer’s dustup with President Obama (h/t Mediaite). Here is Maher’s assessment of the now-viral image of the governor wagging a finger in Obama’s face:

I think this is unprecedented. I don’t know of any other instance where someone has been this disrespectful to the president and [applause], you know, I don’t know who Miss Daisy there thinks she’s talking to.

You hope for Maher’s sake that he’s joking—but he’s not. He was apparently asleep when Rep. Pete Stark called then-President George W. Bush a “dunce” and an “idiot” on CNBC’s Squawk Box on November 7, 2003:

The political message is that George Bush is a dunce … Eight Americans were killed last night, God knows how many will be killed today because this idiot in the White House has been lying to us….

Or when Stark said on the House floor in 2007 that the president sends American soldiers into battle so they can die for his “amusement.” Or when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Bush was “a total failure” as president.

Or it that’s too localized (since both Stark and Pelosi represent California), how about crowds of Americans booing and jeering Bush at Obama’s inauguration? Blogger William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection offers a challenge:

Please dig deep into the history books and show me another President who was booed at his successor’s inauguration.

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