Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2008
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Do Comics Do Corrections, Too?
Nevada’s had a bad enough few weeks, what with the flooding in Fernley, the earthquake in Wells and, here in Vegas, the double-whammy of the ricin incident at the Extended Stay America near the Strip and the hepatitis scare across the entire valley. The news is bad enough without it being embellished, but then the February 29 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Bill Maher did so anyway. He said: “I know we’re fighting them over there so they can’t get us here, but today in Las Vegas they found a vial of deadly ricin gas. Sure, it could be terrorism. They say it may be terrorism, it may not be terrorism but it’s Vegas, they don’t like to judge. Yeah, they found this gas at a motel. There were eight people passed out on the floor. Well, seven from the ricin and then there was David Hasselhoff, he was just eating a hamburger.”
Evidently it took a lot of important factual errors—it was ricin powder and nobody was found passed out—to lead up to a singularly unfunny punchline. I just wonder if someone like Maher, whose show is one-part comedy and two-parts political discussion, ought to be as careful with the truth as those of us in the rest of the media are expected to be.
