Maher vs Maher

During Wednesday's White House press conference, CBS reporter Major Garrett asked President Obama a tough question. Which is what a journalist is supposed to do. (That so many do not is to be lamented.)

Virtually wagging a professorial finger, Obama lectured Garrett that his query was "nonsense" and that the reporter "should know better."  And go to the principal's office.

Comedian Bill Maher tweeted his support of the unseemly presidential condescension and waxed venomous about Garrett:

#MajorGarrett is a huge asshole. If U wanna “strike a nerve” with POTUS, why not just scream the N word? That shld get his attention.

But Maher has not always grabbed for the race card and attacked journalists who "Speak truth to power," even where Obama is concerned:

"I don't know why he [Obama] is perhaps the worst president we've had on clamping down on the press," he observed to his HBO Real Time guest, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. "He's used the espionage act more than any other president, right?" (The Hill, 1/21)

To Maher, apparently, whether reporters should be defended or derided turns on ideology. During that Real Time interview, he and Poitras agreed that Edward Snowden deserved credit for exposing governmental secrets and effectively pushing it to live up to the transparency ideal. (Snowden had indeed performed an estimable service.)

But whereas Poitras had herself helped publicize Snowden's revelations, CBS reporter Garrett had previously worked at Fox News. And Maher seemingly never tires of lambasting that network. It's sort of his non-celestial crusade.

To hear Maher tell it FNC, the Tea Party - anyone who thinks to his right - is an inbred and dastardly hate-bumpkin spouting foul rhetoric of the sort probably heard regularly when the stench of burning cross hangs in the night air.

Maher's slurring of Garret was nonsense. He should know better.