Guilty pleasure: Bill Maher's new show "Real Time With Bill Maher" on HBO. http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/

His brand of irreverent, leftist leaning political humor is sometimes, dare I say it, funny. He seems like he'd be a prick to know in person and he can sometimes be reactionary but he's the closest thing liberals have to the Limbaugh's of the Right. Talk radio is not really a space liberals want to own nor is it a market for them. But Maher's able to slam the issues weekly on a much more powerful medium, national television.

Particularly uproarious are his "New Rules" which he concludes each show with. Here are some...

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New Rule: Everyone has to stop pretending that Woody Allen movies don't completely suck. [laughter] [applause] Now, I saw his latest efforts on cable last weekend. Hollywood stars must stop pretending that it's an honor to appear in this unwatchable, recycled tripe. Critics have to stop pretending that a tiny, old Jew could be scoring with Tea Leoni and Helen Hunt. [laughter] Somebody contact wardrobe. The emperor has no clothes. [applause]
- Okay, even as a die-hard Woody fan, I can't help but laugh at this.

New Rule: A hamburger is not the same thing as a car. The Bush Administration wants to reclassify fast-food jobs as manufacturing jobs. [laughter] Talk about parsing the language. Bill Clinton may have finessed the definition of sex, but he never claimed his penis was actually a glass of lemonade. [laughter] [applause] A Quarter Pounder may spend a week in your colon, but that doesn't make it a 'durable good.' [laughter] [applause]


New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. [laughter] It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. [laughter] When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. [laughter] No court has extended the Equal Protection Clause to salmon. [laughter] And for the record, all marriages are same sex marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex. [laughter] [applause]


You know, Republicans used to be the party that opposed social engineering. But now they push programs to outlaw marriage for some people and encourage it for others. If you're straight, there's a billion-five in the budget to promote marriage, but gay marriage is opposed because it threatens or mocks or does something to the 'sanctity' of marriage, as if anything you can do in Vegas, drunk off your ass in front of an Elvis impersonator, could be considered sacred. [laughter] [applause]


And finally, New Rule: Southerners have to at least consider voting for candidates from the North. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] North Carolina Senator John Edwards has a powerful argument in his bid to be the Democratic nominee when he says, 'What I give people is a candidate who can win everywhere in America.' Translation: 'We Southerners ain't gonna vote for no Yankee.' [laughter] 'You suckers up north will take our Clintons and Carters, but we just ain't buyin' Kerrys and Deans.' And that's a shame, not just for Democrats, but for democracy itself. And I feel bad for the millions of intelligent people who live in a region still dominated by so much prejudice that anyone who wants to be president better have a twang in his voice and pronounce all for 'e's' in the word 'shit.' [laughter] [applause]