Ann Coulter and Bill Maher Square Off in Obama's Hometown for Closing Night of Speakers Series

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

What was billed (jokingly) as a "wrestle to the death" was less dramatic than that but still held a few surprises last night in BuzzFlash's hometown of Chicago.

Madison Square Garden Entertainment's "Speakers Series: The Minds That Move the World" kicked off the 2009 season with two political firebrands debating each other "live and uncensored." Left-leaning comedian and talk show host Bill Maher was to spar against conservative writer and commentator Ann Coulter, with Time/ABC's Mark Halperin playing referee.

The series, which was limited to Radio City Music Hall In New York in the past, is embarking on a limited tour, making it to only three cities (also Boston). The Windy City was last on that list of cities, and BuzzFlash made it to the Chicago Theater Wednesday night to witness the supposed carnage.

Being privy to the sloppy thirds of the tour, if you will, I assumed the material would be stale. While the two were pretty good at playing their roles, there were cracks showing in the partisan façade.

The media line is that these two have been "friends" for years, raising the question of how much of their punditry is an act. Maher addressed the issue jovially, as soon as he got onstage.

"It is a whole act. She's a flaming liberal offstage," Maher joked about Coulter. He added, in a more genuine tone, that he admired her because "she is not afraid to get booed."

Coulter may not be afraid of audience disapproval, but she sure seemed to be sick of it by the end of night three.

Act or no, right from the start, it wasn't looking good for Coulter. In his introduction, Halperin asked audience members to raise their hands if they voted for Obama and then separately if they had voted for McCain.

Let's just say Chicago is Obama country.

That's not to say we can't laugh at ourselves. Part of Maher's pre-planned speech included a crack at the Midwest that produced uproarious laugher.

"If it wasn't for the coasts, this country would've been sold to China 30 years ago," Maher quipped. Still, he later revealed his soft spot for Chicago, saying the city is "like New York without the attitude."

The thing about Midwesterners is we're down-to-earth. We don't like fakers, and we really can't stand hypocrites. And while Coulter's jabs about the Democratic Party got their fair share of chuckles, she started to lose the audience when asked about the recent news about new mom Bristol Palin splitting with her "baby daddy" Levi Johnston.

"I don't want to judge other people," Coulter said, to a thunderous mix of laughter and expressions of utter disbelief. She insisted that, when the news of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy became public during the 2008 presidential campaign, "it was an embarrassment" to social conservatives such as her.

"I did not want to be judgmental or say something mean about someone's private life... That's why I didn't write about it [at the time]," Coulter said above the groans of the audience.

She went on to insist that parents are not responsible for the actions of their children, straying from the Republican talking point of family values and the idea that parents should raise children instead of relying on outside institutions.

Maher, equally surprisingly, took up the opposite view.

"Parenting does matter," he said. "Parents are responsible for what their 17-year-old children do."

Coulter's insistence that she doesn't want to judge backfired on her for virtually the rest of the debate. Several times after Coulter made a condemnatory remark, audience members were heard yelling back, "Don't judge!"

The combination of hypercritical and hypocritical statements didn't go over too well with the Chicago audience, but Coulter really lost the crowd when she directly questioned their intelligence.

"You're just playing up to a stupid audience," Coulter told Maher after he scored a particularly good laugh from the crowd. She later repeated the assertion, both times to resounding boos.

Coulter's nervous tic of running her fingers through her hair and her plastic laughter at Maher's jokes seemed to show a pundit out of her element.

But ultimately, the whole event is about dollars and exposure for the two pundits. Coulter mentioned her new book mere beats after Maher talked about his new documentary. And, while the price tags on these two mouths aren't public, the Chicago Tribune reports that "one of Coulter's agencies, Nationwide Speakers, lists her in its category of speakers commanding $25,000 to $50,000 for a one-night appearance. So if you extrapolate those figures and make some reasonable assumptions, it's likely that all of the speakers in the series are taking home comparable paychecks here."

So perhaps genuine expression isn't what one should hope for when attending this sort of event. Regardless, I can tell you that Bill Maher playing dress up as liberal funnyman went over much better with Chicagoans than Ann Coulter dressing up as hypocritical ice queen. Go figure.

One of the questions in the "lightening round" at the end of the debate inquired what will be the first line in Sarah Palin's Wikipedia entry decades from now.

"M.I.L.F.," quipped Maher, who had already referred to the vice presidential candidate as "Cruella DeVille" and a car show spokesmodel earlier in the night.

"Forty-sixth president of the United States," proclaimed Coulter.

"Is she serious?" the loud woman seated behind me asked her companion.

Who knows.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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