It took me awhile to appreciate Bill Maher, but now I can’t live without him.

Maybe it was the name of his original show on Comedy Central and ABC, “Politically Incorrect” (a name — and a concept — he still periodically references fondly). I have always cringed at the use of the term Politically Correct or PC to describe the supposed nit-picky nature and rigidity of liberal values and causes. As a college student in the late 80s and early 90s, when the demonization of “PC” became vogue, I can tell you first-hand that it was a construction of conservatives — something made-up to demonize the rising influence of the left in academia. The most open-minded and least rigid people I knew at college were progressive — the most close-minded and unaccepting were the conservative groups crying “PC” at every turn. The idea of “PC,” as a result, simply had no basis in truth.

While I always thought that Maher was a complex political beast, difficult to pigeon-hole, I frequently thought in those early days that his conservative desire for order was winning out over his more libertarian sense of individual rights. He, like politically incorrect conservatives, didn’t have time for all this progressive nuance.

When Bill Maher moved to HBO, though, he changed the name of his show (now “Real Time with Bill Maher”) and his attitude. It would be easy to say he was radicalized, like so many others, by the excesses of the Bush administration, but those of us watching his show realize that the transformation was occurring independent of those (as my new favorite protest sign says) “asses of evil.” The more conservatives he invited on the show, the more he seemed to tire of the vacuity of their arguments. Certain conservative pundits who he regularly invited on the show, such as Ann Coulter, he no longer tolerated.

Slowly Maher has become the closest thing to truth on the airwaves. It is never clearer than when he exposes religious hypocrisy — an issue no one in the mainstream media seems willing to touch.

My inspiration for discussing Maher this week, though, has to do with the “new rule” he set down at the end of his latest show (which premiered Friday night but is being replayed all this week). In his usual style that moves fluidly between hyperbole, common sense and biting humor, Maher sent a message to the protesters in NYC this week attending the Republican National Convention: “You can’t claim you are for peace unless you are willing to disturb it.” He continues (warning: Maher’s tone and gestures are essential to his presentation, but very difficult to capture in writing):

Isn’t this one of those moments when democracy needs to show it’s not afraid to be in the streets? Because you know who has peaceful, planned demonstrations? Totalitarian states with no civil liberties like North Korea and Disneyland. 

Therefore, tonight, I am urging all the protesters in New York next week to riot! I’m talking about good old-fashioned rioting, the kind that made whitey move to the suburbs. Look, protester, you spent two weeks making that papier-mâché Dick Cheney mask. Now light it on fire and torch the nearest GAP store. Two lesbians with a “Lick Bush” sign is not going to make the “Nightly News.” Pick up a garbage can and throw it through a Starbucks window! I don’t want to see a candlelight vigil. This is New York; there’s a body count at Simon and Garfunkel concerts.

If anything with Trump written on it is standing after September 3rd, you’re a bunch of pussies who aren’t worth the hemp in your Timberland shoes.

I want to see cab drivers so nervous they stop picking up the white people. We’re Americans, damn it! We burn cars over basketball games. Let’s make some noise. Let’s kick some ass. If I want to turn on the TV and see nothing, I’ll keep watching the Olympics.

Maher makes me want to re-appropriate the idea of being ?politically incorrect.? Yes, he is being funny and satirical here, but satire always has a serious side, a call for change. Mainstream commentators wouldn’t dare promote the idea of violent protest, but Maher understands that the behind the bedlam of the violent act (think about the ?original? globalization protests in Seattle) lies an energy that both scares and mobilizes people.

Mario Savio, leader of the free speech protests at Berkeley in the 1960s, used to speak of — and I’m paraphrasing here — coming to a time when the machinery of power is so unresponsive that we must all lay our bodies on the very gears of that machinery to make it stop.

Who — besides those crazy and mysterious “anarchists” we hear about — is willing to articulate such a confrontational stance?

(Aside: I can?t believe I?m making a 60s reference here, since I spent so much of my activist days at college hating and trying to run away from what I perceived as the arrogant and overblown baby boomer shadow of the progressive ?glory days.?)

Ultimately, it takes someone like Bill Maher to make us realize the limitations of a “peaceful demonstration.” He knows that chaos is one thing that cannot be co-opted.

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Speaking of political comedy and the mainstream, Renee Graham of the Boston asks today whether Jon Stewart has lost his edge. Unfortunately, she provides no examples — merely her own desire:

For better or worse, “The Daily Show” may be on its way to respectability — which may be fine for Sunday school teachers, but not for a smart, subversive program featuring such segments as “This Week in God.” 

It’s all a bit unnerving for longtime fans (myself included), who liked it just fine when we felt like one of a handful of people tuning in. (The show averages about 1 million viewers per night.)

Even if no one else knew it, we thought of ourselves as the cool kids, happy with Our Thing, which we’ve tried to guard as selfishly as if it were an underground band or hidden café.

Stewart’s show, however, from my vantage point, remains edgy and brilliant.

Sure, the bits are very uneven, but that’s the nature of sketch comedy. And, sure, Stewart is the world’s worst interviewer, but I figure they think the daily celebrity is the way to pay the bills.

The idea is not to compare Stewart to Maher. Stewart’s intended audience is much broader and, I imagine, a little bit younger. The most salient political points are buried effectively under layers of jokes and irony, and they are often made by his “correspondents,” rather than himself. He maintains a necessary distance between himself and the criticism.

Yet his pieces ultimately have an impact. While the show, like Maher’s, does a great job lampooning religious hypocrisy in “This Week in God” (which is consistently funny), Stewart’s forte is criticizing the mainstream media, unearthing a story they never saw.

In any case, both Maher and Stewart go beyond comedy and beyond politics and find a space to create some chaos.