In the wake of the Rush Limbaugh/ Sandra Fluke controversy (and Maher himself having fallen under similar scrutiny last year) on Friday night's "Real Time," Bill Maher argued that without outrageous comments by media figures, we'd all be a nation of bland, "Mitt Romneys."
Echoing his recent New York Times op-ed, Maher joked that "If it weren't for throwing conniption fits, we wouldn't get any exercise at all. Cting the recent scandals of Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Gilbert Gottfried and Ashton Kutcher, he offered a solution to the public outcry:
"Here's a crazy idea: if you see or hear something you don't like in the media, just go on with your life!"
Maher briefly commented directly on his and Limbaugh's gaffes, saying that he finds the conservative talk show host "obnoxious" but is able to co-exist with him by not listening to his program. He also hypothesized that humans pay attention to such inflammatory remarks because we feel the need to help society by stopping, "bad people."
"...Bad people, like Hank Williams and Robert De Niro and oh, occasionally, Bill Maher," he said, gesturing to himself.
To demonstrate how different the world would be if we "placed a premium on never offending anyone," Maher used one of the Internet's favorite memes: "The Most Interesting Man In The World" from the Dos Equis beer commercials. He aruges that if we only say what's safe, we all turn into "The MittBot 3000," referring to Romney, or opinion-less drones programmed to change position on every issue, even in the same sentence.
Watch the clip above.