I like Bill Maher, both as a performer and personally, and his most recent comedy special, “#adulting,” is good. I recommend it. Maher’s creeping conservatism is very entertaining to behold. I think he might make a good back-of-the-book columnist here at National Review, although I assume we could never hope to afford him.
But . . . for a guy who is very interested in religion, to such an extent that he made a film about the subject, Maher has some pretty large lacunae in his knowledge of the material. Of course, he is a comedian and does not claim to be a scholar, but one would think that he would want to satisfy what is an obvious personal curiosity.
Today’s Tuesday newsletter (which you will have to actually pay to read henceforth — many thanks to those of you who have signed up for NRPlus in recent weeks) is pretty packed, but I forgot to include one little bit about the cultural ubiquity of Christianity.
In Maher’s special, he uses the phrase “a house divided cannot stand,” which he attributes to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, did use that phrase — famously. But Lincoln is not the origin of it. It was a quotation, which would have been immediately understood by Lincoln’s audience. Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech is a great deal more resonant — with higher stakes than a matter of mere political division — if you understand where the phrase comes from.