AVC: Have you had problems with censorship over the years, or with people trying to get you to tone it down on your shows?
BM: Of course! I worked for ABC. I worked for Disney. The time I got fired from Politically Incorrect wasn't the first time I got in trouble over there. It was just the last straw. I always say when people talk about me getting fired, "Yeah, but I lasted six years working for the Disney Company on a show called Politically Incorrect that really was politically incorrect." I don't know how we lasted that long. But that sure wasn't the first time. [Laughs.]
AVC: Any bio of you today will say you were fired from Politically Incorrect for objecting to Bush calling the 9/11 terrorists "cowardly." But it was eight months after that remark that your contract wasn't renewed—it wasn't like goons kicked you out of the building the night you did that show. Could anything else have contributed to ABC's decision to end the series?
BM: Oh no, it was definitely that. That comment about the terrorists not being cowards was six days after 9/11. And nothing happened when I said it—that's one of the key points to that story. Nothing happened the next day. Nothing happened the day after that. It took a while. The Dixie Chicks would tell you the same story about their comments in England about Bush. It takes somebody who wants to whip up people into a frenzy, because normally, people—if somebody says something they don't like or disagree with, they just go, "Oh, what the hell was that?" And then they go on with their lives. Sometimes I read something that I don't like, and I think, "That's offensive." Then I turn the page. I don't like to make it my life's crusade, therefore, to get an apology and make the offensive person disappear.
But there are people with nothing better to do. And two of them were working at a radio station in Houston, Texas. And what I found out later, was that the people who fomented this crusade against me, they had been trying to get me off the air for years, mostly because of what I said about religion. That's really why they hated me. But they saw an opening here. Just like we went into Iraq because we saw an opening. But those Project For The New American Century people in the Bush administration, they wanted to go into Iraq anyway. As soon as 9/11 happened, they were like, "Oh. Here's our excuse. Even though Iraq really had nothing to do with it. Here's our excuse." It was the same thing with me. These guys wanted to get rid of me for years because I made fun of religion and Ronald Reagan, and whatever else pissed them off. And here was their opportunity. It was very easy, in an age where you hit a button to send 25,000 e-mails out to people, to make advertisers feel like there was going to be a boycott or whatever bullshit. And so that's what happened. Advertisers pulled out. By the end of that week, we had lost FedEx and Sears. That sort of started a stampede. Basically, what happened was, you can't do a television show on commercial broadcast without sponsors. And we had trouble getting sponsors.
AVC: Which networks have given you the most space to do exactly what you want to do on a show?
BM: Well, that would be HBO. I have to say, there's a misconception that I hear all the time. "Oh, it's great you're on HBO. Now you can say whatever you want." I always said whatever I wanted. I just got fired for it on the other station. Or I got in trouble for it. But ABC never, ever stopped me from saying what I wanted. As a matter of fact, the issue that they were most sensitive about was pot. As ridiculous as that is. And even then, they didn't stop me from saying what I wanted. They just insisted that when I said what I wanted about drugs, there would be someone from the other side to say the corresponding, ridiculous argument.
AVC: What was it like working with Amazon.com on the Amazon Fishbowl online series?
BM: That was a perfect summer job, because, as I was just describing to you, the intensity of working on Real Time, where I have to be up on all these issues, and I have to talk to Madeleine Albright on the satellite… This was a once-a-week show where I didn't have to really be up on anything except what the people who were coming on that show were selling. So it was a break. It made me realize how much easier it would be to do a traditional type of talk show. Because that's really what it was. It was a much more traditional type of talk show where we had guests who were selling their wares, and I was interviewing them.
AVC: Yourself aside, who's the best talk-show host out there?
BM: [Laughs.] I'm not going to answer that question. I would get into way too much trouble.
AVC: Well, who do you enjoy watching?
BM: I don't watch a lot of any one of them, but when I'm up at that hour—and I'm always up at that hour—if I have the TV on, I see bits of all of them.
AVC: Are there any defunct talk shows that you particularly miss or would like to see revived?
BM: Well, Jack Paar was before my time, but my parents always talked about how great he was. And then I got this DVD set, and he was pretty great. Steve Allen was one of my mentors. His original Tonight! show was of course before my time, but he had a show in the '60s that was really funny. I love Steve Allen. And of course, I lived and slept and dreamt Johnny Carson, and I had him in my blood from the time I was 10—I don't think I missed a Tonight Show from when I was 10 to when I was out of college.
AVC: Is there anybody that you'd like to have on Real Time that you haven't been able to get?
BM: Dozens. Probably hundreds of people.
AVC: Such as?
BM: Bill Clinton.
AVC: What's the first thing you'd ask him?
BM: "Why have you resisted me so long? When I did nothing but support you more than anyone else when you were going through your time of troubles?"
AVC: When we last spoke to you—it's been almost 10 years now—the last question asked was "Are the American people stupid?" How would you answer that today?
BM: They are. Even more so than 10 years ago. People come up to me all the time and say, "This is such a stupid country." And it is. Unfortunately, it is. It has millions of bright people in it. I like to think that they comprise a good part of my audience. But there's no doubt about it, it's a stupid country. It was in The New York Times last week that when they asked the question "Do you think human beings evolved from an earlier species of animal?" the only Western nation that responded "no" more often than America was Turkey. Thirty different countries, including Bulgaria. Ooh, that one hurt. I got to say, that hurt. That was like a knife in the gut. Even Bulgaria gets it about evolution more than we do. That's a stupid country.
AVC: Is there any medium that you haven't touched yet that you'd like to get into?
BM: Not really. I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far, and what I'm doing now.
AVC: Any regrets? Things you've done or said that you wish you could take back?
BM: Sure! Dozens, probably hundreds of things. I lie awake in bed practically every Friday night, thinking "I could have said that better," or "That would have been funnier if I'd just done this." You can't help regretting every opportunity you miss. But you can keep yourself from dwelling on it. You have to. There's another show coming up.
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